Final report of Special prosecutor Mueller is a failed hatchet job: disingenuous and dishonest
Nunes aptly named Mueller final
report "Mueller dossier", as it not that different from Steele dossier
"The foreign country that worked
feverishly to meddle in the 2016 Presidential election and the subsequent rule of Donald Trump is the United Kingdom. Russia is the
patsy."
~Larry C Johnson
The Seekers abandoned their jobs, possessions, and spouses to wait for the flying saucer, but neither the aliens nor the apocalypse
arrived. After several uncomfortable hours on the appointed day, Martin received a “message” saying that the group “had spread so
much light that God had saved the world from destruction.” The group responded by proselytizing with a renewed vigour. According
to Festinger, they resolved the intense conflict between reality and prophecy by seeking safety in numbers. “If more people can be
persuaded that the system of belief is correct, then clearly, it must, after all, be correct.”
... [for members of the cult] "prophecies, per se, almost never fail. They are instead component parts of a complex and interwoven
belief system which tends to be very resilient to challenge from outsiders. While the rest of us might focus on the accuracy of an
isolated claim as a test of a group’s legitimacy, those who are part of that group—and already accept its whole theology—may not
be troubled by what seems to them like a minor mismatch. A few people might abandon the group, typically the newest or least-committed
adherents, but the vast majority experience little cognitive dissonance and so make only minor adjustments to their beliefs. They
carry on, often feeling more spiritually enriched as a result.
Interestingly, the same neocon/neolib alliance which endorsed George W. Bush's case for war with Iraq is pretty much the same
alliance that is now, all these years later organized neo-McCartyism campaign against Russia. Including the same cast of characters reading from the Iraq-war
era playbook.
While Muleer report definitely represents far from anything like an objective investigation (which would lead to investigation of GB and Israeli influence on us
elections) but a hatchet job, the most amazing feature of the report is primitivism of treatment of the subject. Mueller essentially wastes those
30 millions his team have spent -- 90% of his report could be written based on MSM stories without spending a dime, and represent
the same fiction that neoliberal MSM were pushing.
I have an impression that the report was written like a low quality fake.
Some pages can be cited in Onion directly, because facts completely contradict them.
That joke is the the Muller report is similar
to the introduction of a keynote speaker in the small business conference, who was presented as an extremely successful
businessman which business growing and selling potatoes in Maine netter him $250,000. After a long introduction the man got to the
podium and said "Before I begin I must set the record straight. What was said about my business is only partially true. first it was
not Maine , but Texas. Also it was oil not potatoes. But it was a loss not a profit.".
Moon of Alabama has a nice summary of the problems with the report:
While 448-page Mueller report found no conspiracy between Donald
Trump's campaign and Russia, it offered voluminous details to support the sweeping conclusion that the Kremlin worked to secure
Trump's victory. The report claims that the interference operation occurred "principally" on two fronts: Russian military
intelligence officers hacked and leaked embarrassing Democratic Party documents, and a government-linked troll farm orchestrated
a sophisticated and far-reaching social media campaign that denigrated Hillary Clinton and promoted Trump.
But a close examination of the report shows that none of those headline assertions are supported by the report’s
evidence or other publicly available sources.They are further undercut by investigative shortcomings and the conflicts
of interest of key players involved:
The report uses qualified and vague language to describe key events, indicating that Mueller and his investigators do
not actually know for certain whether Russian intelligence officers stole Democratic Party emails, or how those emails were
transferred to WikiLeaks.
The report's timeline of events appears to defy logic. According to its narrative, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
announced the publication of Democratic Party emails not only before he received the documents but before he even
communicated with the source that provided them.
There is strong reason to doubt Mueller’s suggestion that an alleged Russian cutout called Guccifer 2.0 supplied the
stolen emails to Assange.
Mueller’s decision not to interview Assange – a central figure who claims Russia was not behind the hack – suggests an
unwillingness to explore avenues of evidence on fundamental questions.
U.S. intelligence officials cannot make definitive conclusions about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee
computer servers because they did not analyze those servers themselves. Instead, they relied on the forensics of CrowdStrike,
a private contractor for the DNC that was not a neutral party, much as “Russian dossier” compiler Christopher Steele, also a
DNC contractor, was not a neutral party. This puts two Democrat-hired contractors squarely behind underlying allegations in
the affair – a key circumstance that Mueller ignores.
Further, the government allowed CrowdStrike and the Democratic Party's legal counsel to submit redacted records, meaning
CrowdStrike and not the government decided what could be revealed or not regarding evidence of hacking.
Mueller’s report conspicuously does not allege that the Russian government carried out the social media campaign.
Instead it blames, as Mueller said in his closing remarks, "a private Russian entity" known as the Internet Research Agency
(IRA).
Mueller also falls far short of proving that the Russian social campaign was sophisticated, or even more than minimally
related to the 2016 election. As with the collusion and Russian hacking allegations, Democratic officials had a central and
overlooked hand in generating the alarm about Russian social media activity.
John Brennan, then director of the CIA, played a seminal and overlooked role in all facets of what became Mueller’s
investigation: the suspicions that triggered the initial collusion probe; the allegations of Russian interference; and the
intelligence assessment that purported to validate the interference allegations that Brennan himself helped generate. Yet
Brennan has since revealed himself to be, like CrowdStrike and Steele, hardly a neutral party -- in fact a partisan with a deep
animus toward Trump.
Mueller's statements after the repost of issued constitute reprehensible innuendo, which confirm that his main tasks was to
create conditions to impeach Trump:
As B. notes, both this oblique negative "clarification" and Mueller's implication that his hands were tied by DOJ
regulations amounts to a reprehensible attempt to signal that the institutional anti-Trump "Resistance" should vigorously
pursue stitching up Trump despite Mueller's own inability to do so.
It's like a tag-team marathon lynching, and the odious Mueller is handing off the baton to his teammates in malfeasance.
It's not exactly a selfless act on Mueller's part, either. If Trump is prematurely removed from office, or sufficiently
slandered to a point that renders him unelectable, Mueller and his corrupt associates will claim vindication.
The whole Mueller investigation was probably the "insurance" about which Strzok talked to Lisa Page. With previous important (and completely
fraudulent) step of issuing of Brennan's handpicked analysts so called
17 agencies memo, which gave the official start of Russiagate
witch hunt. See
realclearpolitics.com, 2017/07/06 ). It was based on also completely fraudulent
Steele dossier and
Crowdstrike
analysis of DNC hack (which actually was an internal leak; Russian was just scapegoated to whitewash DNC criminal derailing of
Sanders candidacy in favour of Hillary Clinton )
Russiagate main goal was to preserve money flows to military-industrial complex which would be engaged by detente with Russia. It
also was a clear attempt to entrap Trump as well as unleash neo-McCarthyism hysteria
to patch cracks in the neoliberal facade, when the establishment candidate (Hillary) was so hated by the US population that it lost general
election to a newcomer. As such it is criminal conspiracy by intelligence agencies, and first of all CIA, FBI, and MI6 (with
Ukrainian, Australian, Estonian, and several other agencies in supporting roles):
likbez , April 20, 2019 1:12 pm
Arne,
April 20, 2019 11:15 am
"Do you understand that you implicate Obama administration"
They did screw up.
Wrong. The fact that they did not warn/brief Trump suggests that this was an a
deliberate and pre-planned attempt to entrap him by initiating Russian contacts by
FBI/CIA/MI6 moles
Papadopoulos set up ( via Josef Misfud (MI6) and Stefan Halper (CIA) ). At the time
Halper probably was reporting to the current CIA director Gina Haspel who was at this
time CIA station chief in GB. She is a Brennan protégé, of recent Skripals
dead ducks hoax fame.
Surveillance was specifically established to collect compromising material on Trump
and his associates with high level official in Obama administration (and probably Obama
himself) playing coordinating role.
Colonel Lang's blog is a good source of information on those issues with posts by
former intelligence specialists.
And please note that I am not a Trump supporter. I resent him and his policies.
In a way, all political analysis which favors either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party is inherently worthless,
because both parties are parts of a single neoliberal Swap and exist in service of the US led neoliberal empire. If you can't see
that the entire system is one unified block of neoliberal corruption and that ordinary people need to come together and unite
against it, then you really don't understand what you're looking at.
Trump is definitely proved to be one of the most dangerous, impulsive and incompetent President (in the pocket of Israel lobby and neocons).
In many way he reminds me Bush II (Bolton and Pompeo would be at home in Bush Ii administration) .
But that does not mean than RussiaGate witch hunt was justified. Israel (via Adelson, Kushner (and
connected to him Hassid mafia, which is turn is rumored to be connected to Mossad)) can be implicated in trying to influence the elections. That's given. After all Trump is
probably the most
pro-Israel President out of the last ten (Johnson might come close). Look at the NYT cartoon -- it is pretty accurate. I see nothing anti-Semitic in it:
https://www.jpost.com/International/New-York-Times-internationally-prints-antisemitic-cartoon-of-Trump-Netanyahu-588014
The
main lesson from Mueller investigation is the level of control of the Deep state of all branches of the US government. It also
looks like tech millionaires are spy agencies' employee (is not Bezos a CIA guy?). Probably success for those guys was at least
partially linked to their connection to the deep state.
The working hypothesis about Russiagate is that it has nothing to do with Russia. Like in case of JFK assassination US
intelligence agencies went rogue, attempted to stage a coup d'état using false flag operations. They need to be tamed. See
also Do Spies Run the World, by Israel Shamir - The Unz Review
This is a pretty grip picture right out of Orwell 1984, but that's the only framework that allows all the known fact to be put
logically within it. See also these books The Committee of 300 by Dr. John Coleman and The Secret Team, the CIA and its allies in
control of America and the world, by Col. L. Fletcher Prouty.
There
some distinct sign of "hatchet job" type of investigation, which we know from JFK assassination investigation:
Ability to immediately (literally within minutes from the attack) establish a guilty party
JFK analogy: Lee Harvey Osward who was probably a CIA agent was framed as a communist, with links tot the USSR
(defection in the past) and Fidel Castro Cuban government
Russiagate: multiple Russian citizens were frames (Vesselnitskaya, Klimnik, Butina, etc), Putin was blamed despite
absence of any ties to Russian goverment, GRU operatives (organization which does not exists ;-),
Internet research agency (which was mostly engaged in earning money from advertisement, not spending money; with the
exception of some armature, mniscular in size and budget efforts). Muller treatment of GRU and
Internet research agency flimsy evidence clearly point out to the hatchet job nature of his investigation. He did
not interview key people involved in passing the leaked files from DNC (and it was a leak not hack) of DNC criminal emails to Wikileaks. Also pervert Podesta hack was probably performed by NSA specialists and
spear fishing was was a smoke screen
operation to hide exfltration of emails via PRISM. Because otherwise NSA would have a trace (series of IPs involved).
Treatment of Crowstrike. The working hypothesis is the Crowdstike was hired to implant the evidence of Russian hack and
used for this Ukrainian malware or malware from Vault 7. The fact that FBI was no allowed to view the evidence should serve as
a red flag pointing to false flag operation. Also supposedly Crowdstrike was informed about "penetration" in May and
did nothing till June -- another sign of false flag operation. Role of Seth Rich in this whole affair reminds a mystery and
Mueller honchos never did anything to clarify it. Same with Awan brothers scandal.
JFK: media and public opinion refused any other possibility or government involvement as highly unpatriotic
Russiagate: amazingly effective neo-McCarthyism campaign in neoliberal media; set of well coordinated leaks by intelligence
agencies.
Anti-Russian hysteria level reached really high level -- which points on weakness of the evidence. Of course, some
neoliberal MSM bottom feeders like Rachel Maddow tried to exploit this for their own aggrandizement, but generally there was a
systematic and sinister campaign of neoliberal MSM to blackmail Russians, evidence by damned.
Exclusion of other possibilities
JFK: starting point for the commission was just to validate the official story
Russiagate: Mueller investigation was defined to validate preexisting false flag created by Brennan and Co.
Lowering accepted level of security
JFK: motorcade was highly unsecured, Limousine capotte was removed, buildings unsecured
Russiagate: not briefing of Trump about Russian operative attempts to infiltrate and influence its company
(this is logical as most of those operatives were FBI or CIA moles)
Ignored the warnings
DNC ignored FBI warning about compromized of this computer network
In case of Podesta the level of ignorance and stuupidity in treatment suppsed spearfishing attampt was astounding (Podesta dd
nt use any two factor authentication; can you you believe this level of stupidity?)
Another country was blamed for domestic problems (scapegoating)
JFK: Castro and Cuba, communists
Russiagate: Russia while all evidence points on key role of Great Britain in attempts to interfere with the 2016 elections
(Steele dossier is
the most egregious example -- in no way former employee of MI6 can produce such document without official permission
from higher MI6 authorities (it was necessary to justify ongoing surveillance, including part performed by GCHQ on Trump
campaign and was produced in a hurry which partially explain extremely poor quality.
JFK: multiple shots heard, smoke and flashes seen, people running (real snipers), suspicious people seen with sniper shotgun on
a van day before, many more
RussiaGate: Murray evidence that he got file from DNC, Biney evidence that this was download to USB, Assange
evidence and announcement of the reward for finding Seth Rich killer, absence of any serious investigation of Seth Rich murder,
Awan brothers case, etc
Unscientific, naive explanation of events and motives presented
Mueller claim that Internet research agency with its minuscule money
funds (and most ads were bought after the elections) influenced elections is a Mueller fairy tale that does not withstand any
close scrutiny
Putin
is not an idiot and in no way he would help Trump win (especially using such risky operations as hacks) as in some ways Trump is a
more crazy personality then Hillary (as dangerous as Hillary as a female sociopath would be). I think that people who promote this
thesis are either bought stooges (that covers majority of neoliberal MSM), or are neocons, or are incompetents (the last two
categories can be
combined: Max Boot, Robert Kagan, etc)
While Hillary was a crazy neocon warmonger and probably a female sociopath, she was well known to Russians and they
probably have a lot of dirt on her (including dirty dealings of Clinton foundation). It is unclear why Putin would wish that
Trump to win with his crazy ideas of using nuclear weapons and unstable, clearly narcissistic personality? Clinton Parkinson
disease (or some other serious neurological disease at middle stage of development) might be an explanation, but I doubt it.
Russia is not a 'fire brigade' which should rescue the USA from electing a severely affected by neurological disease candidate at
huge cost for themselves.
So in both case American people were lied by the government. In case of Mueller there were several blatant lies which point to
the "hatchet job" type of investigation.
In reality this was British-gate and GB can and should be implicated in Russiagate too (MI6: Christopher Steele,
Joseph Misfud,
Stephan Halper). Like shouting
"sugar sugar" does not provide sweets in your mouth, shouting "Putin, Putin, Putin" from MSM pulpits does not implicates Russians. Among long list
of foreign powers which tried to influence 2016 election GB is clearly No.1. Russiagate should be renamed into British-gate as MI6
and GCHQ were the key players. Althouth the role of Isreal also needs close investigation (as well as the level of connection
of Kushner to Israel government officials and the level of
Lubavitchers sect connection to the Israeli Mossad)
RussiaGate was a large scale false flag operation directed against Trump and Russia. By assortment of intelligence
agencies from at least three countries (the USA, GB, and Australia). With some important help from Estonia and Ukraine.
IMHO this was a large scale false flag operation directed against Trump and Russia. By assortment of intelligence agencies from at
least three countries (the USA, GB, and Australia). With some important help from Estonia and Ukraine. Some important points;
Podesta emails hack was probably internal operation by NSA or Military intelligence. Podesta just proved to
be an idiot (and pervert). Probably done from within the USA.
http://bloviatingzeppelin.net/who-hacked-dncpodesta-emails-and-why-was-it-really-the-russians/
On Sean Hannity’s show Shaffer told Hannity that the Podesta email hack, which Democrats blamed on Russia, were actually carried
out by disgruntled ex-intel officers who wanted to bring down Hillary Clinton.
“Sean, we did it. Not me, but our guys, former members of NSA, retired intelligence officers used these tools to break in
there and get the information out. That’s what the Democrats don’t want to talk about because it doesn’t fit their narrative,”
said Shaffer.
CIA and FBI clearly work on creating a trap for Trump to establish total surveillance on his team (and they succeed in that
Trump tower was totally bugged). Papadopulus case clearly is a case of entrapment where MI6 and CIA worked together with FBI.
Carter Page was probably an FBI mole from the very beginning so entrapment of him was just a pretext for surveillance. Strzok
previous worked for Mueller in Boston, so he probably was a "corrupt cop" from the very beginning.
Veselnitskaya meeting was pushed by Rob Goldstone, probably connected to MI6 and
definitly connected to
Muller investigation was a hatchet job desired to create "process crime" -- attempt to create "obstruction of justice"
charge for Trump in best
Moscow trial style (Russian spy instead of British spy in Moscow trials). Fortunately it can be no "obstruction of justice" is there was
no initial crime to begin with and that saved Trump scalp. Moreover Mueller in the past was connected to mafia (Boston mafia)
and had sent four people to jail for murders they did not commit to cover for a Mafioso who was a FBI informant. So he has a long history
of dirty tricks.
While there are valid reasons to wish Trump impeachment, Mueller or no Mueller (IMHO Trump University scam is enough; money
connection with Russian-Jewish oligarchs might also be enough) any argument about Mueller probe should be considered along with the
analysis of the criminal role of Obama administration, CIA (Brennan) and MI6 in those events (essentially a color revolution staged
against Trump by intelligence agencies with the full support of Clinton wing of Democratic Party and neocon Republicans like McCain).
Mueller proved to be partisan hack and he did not even try to investigate the role on MI6 and CIA in those events. His
report does not withstand even superficial scrutiny:
Major Mueller Report Omissions Suggest Incompetence Or A Coverup
"false claims that the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia would qualify as a
"principal way" in which Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
Mueller's second major oversight – which we have touched on repeatedly – is
the special counsel's portrayal of Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud as a Russian agent –
when available evidence suggests he may have been a Western agent.
Weeks after returning from Moscow, Mifsud – a self-described Clinton Foundation
member – 'seeded' the rumor that Russia had 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton with Trump
campaign adviser George Papadopoulos on April 26, 2016, according to the Mueller report."
So we have -at least- 4 major omissions in the Mueller investigation and report:
1) the Mueller report failed to consider whether the dossier authored by former MI6 spy
Christopher Steele was Russian disinformation (and Steele was not charged with lying to the
FBI).
2) Mueller's portrayal of Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud as a Russian agent – when
available evidence suggests he may have been a Western agent.
3) Mueller declined to talk to the VIPS, who offered evidence that the DNC servers were
not hacked but content was copied onto a disk at the server's location
4) Mueller refused to hear Julian Assange, who offered evidence that it was not the
Russians that had provided WikiLeaks with the emails.
And it was Fusion GPS that worked with the Russians not Trump
That's sedition
Can anybody explain why Mueller did not interview key players in Russiagate (Brennan, McCabe, Clapper, Obama, Assange, Steele, Gina Haspel;
the latter was CIA station chief in GB at the time and probably supervised actions of
Stephan Halper and
Papadopoulos
entrapment (zerohedge 2018-04-04 ) and why he had chosen to rely of existing materials including most probably fraudulent CrowdStrike report
about DNC hack. No respectable prosecutor would take any such material because it definitely smells very badly with falsification.
In this sense his report does not even worth the paper on which it is printed. Of may be only as a historical document about
amorality and criminality of the neoliberal elite.
And any attempt to view concocted into RussiaGate event not as a false flag operation but as as something that deserve our attention (other then for researcher of the struggle for power of
internal factions within the Deep State) are clearly laughable. The reason that Mueller can't go further was probably connected with
Barr appointment and feeling that Barr might prosecute Mueller and his team for all "the service to the country" they did
(especially And they are completely
different from any real or attributed actions of Trump.
They are all have to do with the balance of power between different the Deep State factions including factions within CIA and FBI
and NATO (foreign special interests).
And timing of the report reflects the saying "The Moor has done his duty, the Moor can go": Mueller obstructed for two years any
attempt of Trump administration to pursue independent foreign policy (not that Trump really wanted anything like that as
appointments of Haley, Haspel. BTW Haspel is Brennan protégé, while Pompeo and Bolton are both Adelson's protégé.
So it is unclear why the Deep State was fighting Trump now, after he completely folded to neocons and globalists. That's a real mystery of American Democracy.
"The foreign country that worked feverishly to meddle in the 2016 Presidential election and the subsequent rule of Donald
Trump is the United Kingdom. Russia is the patsy."
~Larry C Johnson
There is a long tail of British actions in Russiagate, some of them really equivalent to blatant interference in the country
election. The same situation was observed during Iraq WDM hysteria:
Another, equally remarkable similarity to the period of 2002-3 is the role foreign lobbyists have played in helping to whip up
a war fever. As readers will no doubt recall, Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, which served, in effect as an
Iraqi government-in-exile, worked hand in hand with the Washington lobbying firm Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey (BKSH) to sell Bush's
war on television and on the op-ed pages of major American newspapers.
Chalabi was also a trusted source of Judy Miller of the Times, which, in an apology to its readers
on May 26, 2004, wrote
: "The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since
at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and
a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles." The pro-war lobbying of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has also been
exhaustivelydocumented .
Though we do not know how widespread the practice has been as of yet, something similar is taking place today. Articles calling
for confrontation with Russia over its alleged "hybrid war" with the West are
appearingwithincreasingregularity . Perhaps
the most egregious example of this newly popular genre appeared on Jan. 1 in
Politico magazine. That
essay, which claims, among many other things, that "we're in a war" with Russia comes courtesy of one Molly McKew.
McKew is seemingly qualified to make such a pronouncement because she, according to her bio on the Politico website, served as
an "adviser to Georgian President Saakashvili's government from 2009-2013, and to former Moldovan Prime Minister Filat in 2014-2015."
Seems reasonable enough. That is until one discovers that McKew is actually
registered with the Department of
Justice as a lobbyist for two anti-Russian political parties, Georgia's UMN and Moldova's PLDM.
Records show her work for the consulting firm Fianna Strategies frequently takes her to Capitol Hill to lobby U.S. Senate and
Congressional staffers, as well as prominent U.S. journalists at The Washington Post and The New York Times, on behalf of her Georgian
and Moldovan clients.
"The truth," writes McKew, "is that fighting a new Cold War would be in America's interest. Russia teaches us a very important
lesson: losing an ideological war without a fight will ruin you as a nation. The fight is the American way." Or, put another way:
the truth is that fighting a new Cold War would be in McKew's interest – but perhaps not America's.
While you wouldn't know it from the media coverage (or from reading deeply disingenuous pieces like McKew's) as things now stand,
the case against Russia is far from certain. New developments are emerging almost daily. One of the latest is a report from the cyber-engineering
company Wordfence, which concluded that "The
IP addresses that DHS [Department of Homeland Security] provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But
they don't appear to provide any association with Russia."
Indeed, according to Wordfence, "The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship
with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website."
On Jan. 4,
BuzzFeed reported that, according to the DNC, the FBI never carried out a forensic examination on the email servers that were
allegedly hacked by the Russian government. "The FBI," said DNC spokesman Eric Walker, "never requested access to the DNC's computer
servers."
What the agency did do was rely on the findings of a private-sector, third-party vendor that was brought in by the DNC after the
initial hack was discovered. In May, the company, Crowdstrike, determined that the hack was the work of the Russians. As one unnamed
intelligence official told BuzzFeed, "CrowdStrike is pretty good. There's no reason to believe that anything that they have concluded
is not accurate."
Perhaps not. Yet Crowdstrike is hardly a disinterested party when it comes to Russia. Crowdstrike's founder and chief technology
officer, Dmitri Alperovitch , is also a senior fellow at the Washington
think tank, The Atlantic Council, which has been at the forefront of escalating tensions with Russia.
As I reported in The Nation in early January
, the connection between Alperovitch and the Atlantic Council is highly relevant given that the Atlantic Council
is funded in part by the State Department, NATO,
the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. In recent years,
it has emerged as a leading voice calling for a new Cold War with Russia.
Historical events tend to repeat, but this time this is not a farce. The danger of WWWIII increased dramatically due to US
neocons subversive operation against their own country. They acted as lobbyists of MIC and Israel, not as responsible citizens. Here
is one interesting comment from
EconoSpeak
blog:
likbez said...
Barkley,
For me the standard of understanding of Russian political situation is Professor Stephen Cohen.
See https://www.thenation.com/article/the-real-costs-of-russiagate/
Sorry, but despite all your bragging, you are not even close.
Politically you are aligned with neocons like Robert Kagan and Max Boot. That's a very sad situation for any academic, as they
are known lobbyists of MIC. Which means that politically you are just a MIC stooge.
I despise such people. They are all intellectual pigmies, unable to see a bigger picture which is the level of threat to the human
civilization. That's why I advice you no longer touch this sensitive topic. You are not intellectually equipped to analyze it. You
have no solid philosophic framework and a set of ethical principles that are pre-requisites for this.
Trump current policy toward Russia is just Hillary policy with an orange wig. He acts as a neocon marionette, even more hapless marionette
then Bush II.
This positions him as far from a Russian stooge as one can get. The fact that he probably took large bribes from Russian and/or Russian-Israeli
oligarchs does not change this one jota.
And in view of the danger to human civilization, your peddling of Russiagate nonsense look completely inappropriate, and even stupid.
This anti-Russia fear-mongering serves to impoverish the US people (aka "deplorable) and line the pockets of "national security parasites"
from the Boing to Pentagon brass, plus Israel, which actually acts as a state-based lobbyist for the US MIC.
Again, politically, Trump has proven himself to be an impulsive, stupid, and impotent neocon stooge. I now do not understand why
he had run, as that means to take those huge risks of exposing your own dirty laundry and shady dealings. To take such huge risks
makes sense if and only if you really want to do something good for the nation, putting yourself under fire, making a personal sacrifice
for the good of the nation.
As the result of Russiagate, the Neo-McCarthyism mentality (that you fully support) have already been baked into post Mueller US
political atmosphere with the huge bills being delivered to the deluded and hapless US taxpayers.
With two very powerful political factions supporting Neo-McCarthyism things will only get worse and it probably this poisonous atmosphere
will last a decade or more.
The best we can hope for at this point is that we avoid a catastrophic mistake that would lead us to a war with Russia that would
end the existence of the US. If not human civilization.
P.S. I also am completely disappointed with the position of Sandwichman, whom I previously respected.
Former FBI Director James Comey testified to Congress last Wednesday that he did not
remember much about what was going on when the FBI deceived the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) Court into approving four warrants for surveillance of Trump campaign
aide Carter Page.
Few outsiders are aware that those warrants covered not only Page but also anyone Page was
in contact with as well as anyone Page's contacts were in contact with – under the
so-called two-hop surveillance procedure. In other words, the warrants extend coverage two
hops from the target – that is, anyone Page talks to and anyone they, in turn, talk
to.
At the hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsay Graham reviewed the facts (most
of them confirmed by the Department of Justice inspector general) showing that none of the
four FISA warrants were warranted.
Graham gave a chronological rundown of the evidence that Comey and his "folks" either
knew, or should have known, that by signing fraudulent FISA warrant applications they were
perpetrating a fraud on the court.
The "evidence" used by Comey and his "folks" to "justify" warrants included Page's
contacts with Russian officials (CIA had already told the FBI those contacts had been
approved) and the phony as a three-dollar bill "Steele dossier" paid for by the
Democrats.
Two Hops to the World
But let's not hop over the implications of two-hop surveillance , which apparently remains
in effect today. Few understand the significance of what is known in the trade as "two-hop"
coverage. According to a former NSA technical director, Bill Binney, when President Barack
Obama approved the current version of "two hops," the NSA was ecstatic – and it is easy
to see why.
Let's say Page was in touch with Donald Trump (as candidate or president); Trump's
communications could then be surveilled, as well. Or, let's say Page was in touch with
Google. That would enable NSA to cover pretty much the entire world. A thorough read of the
transcript of Wednesday's hearing, particularly the Q-and-A, shows that this crucial two-hop
dimension never came up – or that those aware of it, were too afraid to mention it. It
was as if Page were the only one being surveilled.
Here is a sample of The New York Times 's typical coverage
of such a hearing:
"Senate Republicans sought on Wednesday to promote their efforts to rewrite the
narrative of the Trump-Russia investigation before Election Day, using a hearing with the
former F.B.I. director James B. Comey to cast doubt on the entire inquiry by highlighting
problems with a narrower aspect of it.
"Led by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary
Committee spent hours burrowing into mistakes and omissions made by the FBI when it applied
for court permission to wiretap the former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016 and
2017. Republicans drew on that flawed process to renew their claims that Mr. Comey and his
agents had acted with political bias, ignoring an independent review that debunked
the notion of a plot against President Trump."
Flawed process? Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz pinpointed no few
than 17 "serious performance failures" related to the four FISA warrant applications on Page.
Left unsaid is the fact that Horowitz's investigation was tightly circumscribed. Basically,
he asked the major players "Were you biased?" And they said "No."
Chutzpah-full Disingenuousness
Does the NYT believe we were all born yesterday? When the Horowitz report was
released in early December 2019, Fox News' Chris Wallace found those serious performance
failures "pretty shocking." He quoted an
earlier remark by Rep. Will Hurd (R,TX) a CIA alumnus:
"Why is it when you have 17 mistakes -- 17 things that are misrepresented or lapses --
and every one of them goes against the president and for investigating him, you have to say,
'Is that a coincidence'? it is either gross incompetence or intentionality."
Throughout the four-hour hearing on Wednesday, Comey was politely smug – a hair
short of condescending.
There was not the slightest sign he thought he would ever be held accountable for what
happened under his watch. You see, four years ago, Comey "knew" Hillary Clinton was a
shoo-in; that explains how he, together with CIA Director John Brennan and National
Intelligence Director James Clapper, felt free to take vast liberties with the Constitution
and the law before the election, and then launched a determined effort to hide their tracks
post election.
Trump had been forewarned. On Jan. 3, 2017, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY),
with an assist from Rachel Maddow, warned Trump not to get crosswise with the "intelligence
community," noting the IC has six ways to Sunday to get back at you.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/fotKK5kcMOg
Three days later, Comey told President-elect Trump, in a one-on-one conversation, what the
FBI had on him – namely, the "Steele Dossier." The media already had the dossier, but
were reluctant (for a host of obvious reasons) to publish it. When it leaked that Comey had
briefed Trump on it, they finally had the needed peg.
New Parvenu in Washington
After the tête-à-tête with Comey on Jan. 6, 2017, newcomer Trump didn't
know what hit him. Perhaps no one told him of Schumer's warning; or maybe he dismissed it out
of hand. Is that what Comey was up to on Jan. 6, 2017?
Was the former FBI director protesting too much in his June 2017 testimony to the Senate
Intelligence Committee when he insisted he'd tried to make it clear to Trump that briefing
him on the unverified but scurrilous information in the dossier wasn't intended to be
threatening?
It took Trump several months to figure out what
was being done to him.
Trump to NYT: 'Leverage' (aka Blackmail)
In a long Oval Office interview
with the Times on July 19, 2017, Trump said he thought Comey was trying to hold the
dossier over his head.
" Look what they did to me with Russia, and it was totally phony stuff. the dossier Now,
that was totally made-up stuff," Trump said. "I went there [to Moscow] for one day for the
Miss Universe contest, I turned around, I went back. It was so disgraceful. It was so
disgraceful.
"When he [Comey] brought it [the dossier] to me, I said this is really made-up junk. I
didn't think about anything. I just thought about, man, this is such a phony deal. I said,
this is – honestly, it was so wrong, and they didn't know I was just there for a very
short period of time. It was so wrong, and I was with groups of people. It was so wrong that
I really didn't, I didn't think about motive. I didn't know what to think other than, this is
really phony stuff."
The Steele dossier, paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign
and compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, includes a tale of Trump cavorting
with prostitutes, who supposedly urinated on each other before the same bed the Obamas had
slept in at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel.
Trump told the Times : "I think [Comey] shared it so that I would think he had it
out there. As leverage."
Still Anemic
Even with that lesson in hand, Trump still proved virtually powerless in dealing with the
National Security State/intelligence community. The president has evidenced neither the skill
nor the guts to even attempt to keep the National Security State in check.
Comey, no doubt doesn't want to be seen as a "dirty cop," With Trump in power and Attorney
General William Barr his enforcer, there was always the latent threat that they would use the
tools at their disposal to expose and even prosecute Comey and his National Security State
colleagues for what the president now knows was done during his candidacy and presidency.
Despite their braggadocio about taking on the Deep State, and the continuing
investigations, it seems doubtful that anything serious is likely to happen before Election
Day, Nov. 3.
On Wednesday, Comey had the air of one who is equally sure, this time around, who will be
the next president. No worries. Comey could afford to be politely vapid for five more weeks,
and then be off the hook for any and all "serious performance failures" – some of them
felonies.
Thus, a significant downside to a Biden victory is that the National Security State will
escape accountability for unconscionable misbehavior, running from misdemeanors to
insurrection. No small thing.
Sen. Graham concluded the hearing with a pious plea: "Somebody needs to be held
accountable." Yet, surely, he has been around long enough to know the odds.
Given his disastrous presidency, either way the prospects are bleak: no accountability for
the National Security State, which is to be expected, or four more years of Trump.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as
Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President's Daily
Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This
originally appeared at Consortium
News .
U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe recently declassified information
indicating the CIA obtained intelligence in 2016 that the Russians believed the Clinton
campaign was trying to falsely associate Russia with the so-called hack of DNC computers. CIA
Director John Brennan shared the intelligence with President Obama. They knew, in other words,
that the DNC was conducting false Russian flag operation against the Trump campaign . The
following is an exclusive excerpt from The Russia Lie that tells the amazing story in
detail:
On March 19, 2016, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, surrendered his emails
to an unknown entity in a "spear phishing" scam. This has been called a "hack," but it was not.
Instead, it was the sort of flim-flam hustle that happens to gullible dupes on the
internet.
The content of the emails was beyond embarrassing. They
showed election fraud and coordination with the media against the candidacy of Bernie
Sanders. The DNC and the Clinton campaign needed a cover story.
Blaming Russia would be a handy way to deal with the Podesta emails. There was already an
existing Russia operation that could easily be retrofitted to this purpose. The problem was
that it was nearly impossible to identify the perpetrator in a phishing scheme using computer
forensic tools.
The only way to associate Putin with the emails was circumstantially.
The DNC retained a company that called itself "CrowdStrike" to provide assistance.
CrowdStrike's chief technology officer and co-founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, is an anti-Putin,
Russian expat and a senior fellow at the Atlantic
Council .
With the Atlantic Council in 2016, all roads led to Ukraine. The Atlantic Council's list of
significant contributors includes
Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk.
The Ukrainian energy company that was paying millions to an entity that was funneling large
amounts to Hunter Biden months after he was discharged from the US Navy for drug use, Burisma,
also appears prominently on the Atlantic Council's donor list.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the Western puppet installed in Ukraine,
visited the Atlantic Council's Washington offices to make a speech weeks after the
coup.
Pinchuk was also a
big donor (between $10 million and $20 million) to the Clinton Foundation. Back in '15, the
Wall Street Journal published an investigative
piece , " Clinton Charity Tapped Foreign Friends ." The piece was about how Ukraine was
attempting to influence Clinton by making huge donations through Pinchuk. Foreign interference,
anyone?
On June 12, 2016, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
announced : "We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton . . . We have emails
pending publication."
Two days later, CrowdStrike fed the Washington Post a
story , headlined, "Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on
Trump." The improbable tale was that the Russians had hacked the DNC computer servers and got
away with some opposition research on Trump. The article quoted Alperovitch of CrowdStrike and
the Atlantic Council.
The next day, a new blog – Guccifer 2.0 – appeared on the
internet and announced:
Worldwide known cyber security company CrowdStrike announced that the Democratic National
Committee (DNC) servers had been hacked by "sophisticated" hacker groups.
I'm very pleased the company appreciated my skills so highly))) But in fact, it was easy,
very easy.
Guccifer may have been the first one who penetrated Hillary Clinton's and other Democrats'
mail servers. But he certainly wasn't the last. No wonder any other hacker could easily get
access to the DNC's servers.
Shame on CrowdStrike: Do you think I've been in the DNC's networks for almost a year and
saved only 2 documents? Do you really believe it?
Here are just a few docs from many thousands I extracted when hacking into DNC's
network.
Guccifer 2.0 posted hundreds of pages of Trump opposition research allegedly hacked from the
DNC and emailed copies to Gawker and The Smoking Gun . In raw form, the opposition research was
one of the documents obtained in the Podesta emails, with a notable difference: It was widely
reported the document now contained "
Russian fingerprints ."
The three-parenthesis formulation from the original post ")))" is the Russian version of a
smiley face used
commonly on social media. In addition, the blog's author deliberately used a Russian
VPN service visible in its emails even though there would have been many options to hide
any national affiliation.
Under the circumstances, the FBI should have analyzed the DNC computers to confirm the
Guccifer hack. Incredibly, though, the inspection was done by CrowdStrike, the same Atlantic
Council-connected private contractor paid by the DNC that had already concluded in The
Washington Post that there was a hack and Putin was behind it.
CrowdStrike would declare the "hack" to be the work of sophisticated Russian spies.
Alperovitch described it as, " skilled
operational tradecraft ."
There is nothing skilled, though, in ham-handedly disclosing a Russian identity when trying
to hide it. The more reasonable inference is that this was a set-up. It certainly looks like
Guccifer 2.0 suddenly appeared in coordination with the Washington Post 's article that
appeared the previous day.
FBI Director James Comey
confirmed in testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee in January 2017 that the FBI's
failure to inspect the computers was unusual to say the least. "We'd always prefer to have
access hands-on ourselves if that's possible," he said.
But the DNC rebuffed the FBI's request to inspect the hardware. Comey added that the DNC's
hand-picked investigator, CrowdStrike, is "a highly respected private company."
What he did not reveal was that CrowdStrike never corroborated a hack by forensic analysis.
In testimony released in 2020, it was revealed that CrowdStrike
admitted to Congressional investigators as early as 2017 that it had no direct evidence of
Russian hacking.
CrowdStrike's president Shawn Henry testified, "There's not evidence that [documents and
emails] were actually exfiltrated [from the DNC servers]. There's circumstantial evidence but
no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated."
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The circumstantial evidence was Guccifer 2.0.
This was a crucial revelation because the thousand ships of Russiagate launched upon the
positive assertion that CrowdStrike had definitely proven a Russian hack. Yet this fact was
kept from the American public for more than three years.
The reasonable inference is that the DNC was trying to frame Russia and the FBI and
intelligence agencies were going along with the scheme because of political pressure.
Those who assert that it is a "conspiracy theory" to say that CrowdStrike would fabricate
the results of computer forensic testing to create a false Russian flag should know that it was
caught doing exactly that around the time it was inspecting the DNC computers.
On Dec. 22, 2016, CrowdStrike caused an international stir when it claimed to have uncovered
evidence that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery computer app to help pro-Russian
separatists. Voice of America later determined the claim
was false , and CrowdStrike retracted its finding.
Ukraine's Ministry of Defense was forced to eat crow and admit that the hacking never
happened.
If you wanted a computer testing firm to fabricate a Russian hack for political reasons in
2016, CrowdStrike was who you went out and hired.
"... In the infamous Steele dossier , prepared for the Clinton campaign by a 'former' British spy, the first entry that is tying the Trump campaign to the 'Russian DNC hack' was allegedly written on July 28 2016. ..."
"... The president of Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity company which investigated the DNC leak, later said that his company never found any proof that Russia had hacked the DNC. ..."
"... The claims made in the Ratcliffe letter fit the timeline of the scandal as it developed. They supports the assertion that the Clinton campaign made up 'Russiagate' from whole cloth. It was supported in that by a myriad of media and by dozens of high level anti-Trump activists in the FBI and CIA. ..."
"... "There was no transition because they came after me trying to do a coup. They came after me spying on my campaign. They started from the day I won and even before I won. From the day I came down the escalator with our First Lady. They were a disaster. They were a disgrace to our country. And we've caught 'em. We've caught 'em all. We've got it all on tape. We've caught 'em all." ..."
"... The need to then cover for murder added to the urgency to propagate the whole "Russiagate" fiction. The US' misnamed "intelligence community" and mass media both were complicit in the murder of Rich, so they had additional motivation to lead the public off the scent with an entirely fabricated false narrative. ..."
"... I doubt that it was solely a Clinton operation. After all, CIA director Mike Morrell kicked it off with his piece in the NY Times, which signaled some significant level of support at least parts of the intelligence community. ..."
"... The whole Russiagate affaire was very reminiscent of the Ken Starr inquisition, which yielded nothing until Bubba cavalierly incriminated himself with Monica. Trump has yet to prove himself that stupid. ..."
"... Remember when Tulsi Gabbard called out Hillary Clinton about getting the media to support her Russiagating of her? ..."
"... "Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know -- it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It's now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don't cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly." ..."
"... Seriously, Mr. President? You have been given a personal intelligence briefing from your CIA Director that one of the candidates to succeed you in the Presidency is an actual, bought and paid-for agent of Russia? And you don't go public because Ole Meanie Mitch won't let you ? ..."
"... This said to me that Obama knew it was all BS from the beginning. Of course, there have been gobs of disclosures and evidence since that it was fake and BS, and none whatsoever that it was real. ..."
"... Thanks to Wikileaks, we have a copy of an email exchange between Hillary's Campaign Manager, John Podesta and longtime Democratic operative Brent Budowsky talking about how Hillary should take on The Donald. Budowski tells Podesta: "Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin, but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria."" ..."
"... The Russiagate fabrication was a political convenience for the Dems, but it allowed Trump and his NATO/EU agents to sanction, pressurise, interfere with Russia in every dimension, because Trump 'had to' to show they he was not Russia's sock puppets! ..."
"... The video I just watched and linked to on the Week in Review thread makes this observation: The Ds burned the US-Russia relationship while the Rs made no real protest; now we have the Rs burning the US-China relationship while the Ds make no real protest. ..."
"... Assange announced on June 12, 2016 that a new tranche of DNC emails had been leaked to Wikileaks and was being prepared for publication. The effort to manufacture the false narrative about Russian hacking began immediately after that, likely within minutes of the announcement. ..."
"... A "populist outsider" will NEVER be allowed to win the Presidency. It was claimed that Obama was also a "populist outsider" yet he served the Deep State/Empire and the US establishment very well. ..."
"... Russiagate was primarily a means of initiating a new McCarthyism as part of a plan to counter Russia and China. ..."
Where the allegations that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential elections made up by
the Clinton campaign?
A letter sent by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe seems
to suggest so :
On Tuesday, Ratcliffe, a loyalist whom Trump placed atop U.S. intelligence in the spring,
sent Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) a letter claiming that in late July 2016, U.S. intelligence
acquired "insight" into a Russian intelligence analysis. That analysis, Ratcliffe summarized
in his letter, claimed that Clinton had a plan to attack Trump by tying him to the 2016 hack
of the Democratic National Committee.
...
Ratcliffe stated that the intelligence community "does not know the accuracy of this
allegation or to the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect
exaggeration or fabrication."
The letter says that then CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama on the
intelligence. He reported that the Russians believed that Clinton approved the campaign plan on
July 26 2016.
So U.S. intelligence spying on Russian intelligence analysts found that the Russians
believed that Clinton started a 'Trump is supported by the Russian hacking of the DNC'
campaign. The Russian's surely had reason to think that.
Emails from the Democratic National Committee were published by Wikileaks on July 22
2016, shortly before the Democratic National Convention. They proved that during the primaries
the DNC had actively worked against candidate Bernie Sanders.
On July 24 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook went on CNN and made, to my knowledge,
the very first
allegations (video) that Russia had 'hacked' the DNC in support of Donald Trump.
It is likely that the Russian analysts had seen that.
Mook's TV appearance was probably a test balloon raised to see if such claims would
stick.
Two days later Clinton allegedly approved campaign plans to emphasize such claims.
In the infamous Steele
dossier , prepared for the Clinton campaign by a 'former' British spy, the first entry that
is tying the Trump campaign to the 'Russian DNC hack' was allegedly written on July 28
2016.
The president of Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity company which investigated the DNC leak,
later said that his company
never found any proof that Russia had hacked the DNC.
There are suspicions that Seth Rich, an IT administrator for the DNC and Bernie Sanders
supporter, has leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks . Rich was murdered on July 10 2016 in
Washington DC in an alleged 'robbery' during which nothing was stolen.
The claims made in the Ratcliffe letter fit the timeline of the scandal as it developed.
They supports the assertion that the Clinton campaign made up 'Russiagate' from whole cloth. It
was supported in that by a myriad of media and by dozens of high level anti-Trump activists in
the FBI and CIA.
Posted by b on September 30, 2020 at 16:04 UTC |
Permalink
Are you trying to tell me b that "We came, we saw, he died" Clinton is suspected of
wrongdoing?/snark
I am all for bringing down the whole house of corrupt cards that fronts for the private
finance cult. The Clintons are just examples of semi-recent to recent corruption. Obama is in
that boat as is Biden and others.
But just remember that Trump was already entirely corrupt before (s)elected into power.
Trump is just another front for global private finance evil that humanity must face.
Another "conspiracy theory" turned into conspiracy fact.
With regards to Killary being "supported in that by a myriad of media and by dozens of
anti-Trump activists...", well, it's a pay-to-play world and CGI was the
piggybank at that particular time...
thanks b... the timeline certainly fits and is consistent here.... larry johnson at sst has
an article up on the same topic... how much of this is coming out now due the election and
how much of it is coming out now, just because it happens to be coming out now??
It's hard to tell when Trump is ever being truthful, but in last night's debate he clearly
stated:
"There was no transition because they came after me trying to do a coup. They came after
me spying on my campaign. They started from the day I won and even before I won. From the day
I came down the escalator with our First Lady. They were a disaster. They were a disgrace to
our country. And we've caught 'em. We've caught 'em all. We've got it all on tape. We've
caught 'em all."
Whether that is indicative of an imminent substantial October surprise i guess we will all
have to wait and see.
The murder/robbery of Seth Rich has frequently been described as "botched" , which I
have always felt was a strange way to describe a murder. It is as if the mass media were
trying to exculpate the murderer even though we are supposed to not know who the murderer
actually is.
So nothing was taken from Rich, but perhaps that is because the murderer couldn't find
what he was looking for? The USB thumb drive with the purloined emails, maybe? Of course, by
the time Rich was murdered the emails had already been passed along to Wikileaks, but I
suppose the murderer might not have known that at the time. That would make an effort to
retrieve the emails "botched" , wouldn't it? This suggested to me from the moment that
I heard it that those in the mass media who seeded the story of a robbery being
"botched" in fact were knowingly covering for the effort to control the leak which was
what was "botched" .
The need to then cover for murder added to the urgency to propagate the whole
"Russiagate" fiction. The US' misnamed "intelligence community" and mass media
both were complicit in the murder of Rich, so they had additional motivation to lead the
public off the scent with an entirely fabricated false narrative.
With no evidence at all my suspicion is that Rich was killed as a crime of passion committed
by a hotheaded member of his own family, which would explain both the family's reticence and
the somewhat muted investigation.
There are suspicions that Seth Rich, an IT administrator for the DNC and Bernie Sanders
supporter, has leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks. Rich was murdered on July 10 2016 in
Washington DC in an alleged 'robbery' during which nothing was stolen.
That explains why Bernie Sanders suddenly became the "sheep dog". He flat out doesn't want
to be assassinated and doesn't want his family to be also assassinated.
While it would be a boon for the nation, I rather doubt Trump will have Barr indict the
Clintons for their crimes or go after the daily fraud committed at the Fed or on Wall Street.
I doubt Trump has any inkling that in order to truly make America Great Again he must first
destroy the Financial Parasites who caused America's downfall in the first place. Thirty-four
days to go.
Assange repeatedly stated russia didn't leak the emails. i saw no compelling reason to think
he would lie about it. then when the steel dossier came out it was so over the top and reeked
of fabrication. the whole thing was so far fetched and then ratcheted up 1000 fold after she
lost the election as an excuse. she never took any responsibility for her loss.
i think what amazes me most is how the media, and everyone following along, believed this
story that drove the narrative for years. this ridiculous obsession with russia was all part
of a coverup to distract the public from how rotten to the core the dnc is.
The mention of Seth Rich in connection with Russiagate prompted a hazy recollection of an
article over at SST by Larry C Johnson (LCJ), who has been exposing flaws in the Russiagate
fiasco for several years. LCJ deduced from the publicly-available Wikileaks/DNC files that
they couldn't have been hacked over the WWW because the timestamp for each file indicated
that those files came from a portable device, a thumb drive. From that info, and Assange
being very upset about the murder of Seth Rich, LCJ concluded that Rich sent the DNC files to
Wikileaks.
I looked up SST's "Russiagate" files and found the relevant article dated August 28, 2019
from which the following brief extract is the section mentioning file-types which LCJ found
so compelling...
... An examination of the Wikileaks DNC files shows they were created on 23 and 25 May and 26
August respectively. The fact that they appear in a FAT system format indicates the data was
transfered to a storage device, such as a thumb drive.
How can you prove this? The truth lies in the "last modified" time stamps on the
Wikileaks files. Every single one of these time stamps end in even numbers. If you are not
familiar with the FAT file system, you need to understand that when a date is stored under
this system the data rounds the time to the nearest even numbered second.
Bill examined 500 DNC email files stored on Wikileaks and found that all 500 files
ended in an even number -- 2, 4, 6, 8 or 0. If a system other than FAT had been used, there
would have been an equal probability of the time stamp ending with an odd number. But that is
not the case with the data stored on the Wikileaks site. All end with an even number.
...
I doubt that it was solely a Clinton operation. After all, CIA director Mike Morrell kicked
it off with his piece in the NY Times, which signaled some significant level of support at
least parts of the intelligence community.
The whole Russiagate affaire was very reminiscent of the Ken Starr inquisition, which
yielded nothing until Bubba cavalierly incriminated himself with Monica. Trump has yet to
prove himself that stupid.
I suspect that Hillary was delighted at the prospect of revenge for all she and Bubba had
gone through in the 1990s...except that she totally blew it...
Remember when Tulsi Gabbard called out Hillary Clinton about getting the media to support her
Russiagating of her? Here it is, you can see she blames Hillary as the source of the story:
"Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption,
and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have
finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has
been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why.
Now we know -- it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate
media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It's now clear that this primary is
between you and me. Don't cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly."
The Ballad of Tulsi and Hillary shows us how much the US and the world lost by the media
supporting Hillary in her plan to Russiagate the world.
The letter says that then CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama on the
intelligence. He reported that the Russians believed that Clinton approved the campaign plan
on July 26 2016.
I was one of those who thought that the whole Russia conspiracy was dubious from day one,
although I might have been kind of, "Well, maybe " for a day or so.
But that line from your post I quoted above points to one of the earliest and most
convincing pieces of evidence to me that the whole thing was fake. It was reported early on
that Obama had been briefed on the Russian interference and he wanted to go public to the
American people about what was going on, but Senator Mitch McConnell wouldn't agree to
it!
Seriously, Mr. President? You have been given a personal intelligence briefing from your
CIA Director that one of the candidates to succeed you in the Presidency is an actual, bought
and paid-for agent of Russia? And you don't go public because Ole Meanie Mitch won't let
you ?
This said to me that Obama knew it was all BS from the beginning. Of course, there have
been gobs of disclosures and evidence since that it was fake and BS, and none whatsoever that
it was real.
Even with all the revelations debunking the whole Russiagate narrative, the Deep State has
been successful in instilling in the news media, Hollywood, political elites of both parties,
and the overwhelming base of the democratic party that Russia somehow "installed" Trump, that
he is a Putin "puppet/puppy" (your choice), and any resistance to establishment democratic
party power is due to Russian manipulation of social media, and in general Russia (etc.) is
fundamental to causing social and political problems. It took America about seven years to
get over McCarthyism. Russiagate will stay in American discourse for a long time.
The dangerous part of Russiagate is that it has reached the level of hysteria that it can
be used by American Deep State to justify direct and dangerous confrontations with Russia up
to and including war. Russiagate pales the propaganda about Saddam and WNDs. Let us remember
that two days into the US invasion of Iraq, the invasion had a 72% approval rating according
to Gallup. Any conflict with Russia will probably have even higher approval levels.
Between Trump and Biden, it is Biden who will be the most likely to start the final
conflagration.
@hoarsewhisperer I trust that the time stamps indicates that a FAT format was used at a
certain stage. What I don't recall is that how this would exclude workflows which involve an
USB stick at any later stage after a hack. I think this technical proof is not as decisive as
it seems and calculating huge statistical odds does not change that. The fact that the NSA
has not come up with proof, now that does mean something. Something Baskervillish.
Found it interesting that in the very mainstream 'Friends' sitcom it was already a joke in
the 90s that "gi joe looks after american foreign oil interests".
Except for a few conflict sitreps there really hasn't been much of note posted here this
year.
Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney has also argued that the data could not have been
hacked because internet speeds at the time were not sufficient for the transfer of the data
when it was extracted. He claims that the speed was consistent with saving to a thumb drive.
The word "botched" could have been invented to explain why nothing was stolen, in order to
put off those who questioned the motive.
No witness came forward but it could be that someone saw the shooting from a distance and
yelled at the perp.
"Ratcliffe's letter, which is based on information obtained by the CIA, states that Hillary
decided on 26 July 2016 to launch the Russia/Trump strategem. But the CIA was mistaken. The
Clinton effort started in 2015--December 2015 to be precise.
Thanks to Wikileaks, we have a copy of an email exchange between Hillary's Campaign
Manager, John Podesta and longtime Democratic operative Brent Budowsky talking about how
Hillary should take on The Donald. Budowski tells Podesta:
"Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin, but not go too far betting
on Putin re Syria.""
Larry Johnson wrote today in his article "I Told You Long Ago, Hillary's Team Helped
Fabricate the Trump Russia Collusion Lie by Larry C Johnson"
If I remember correctly Obummer signed legislation making it ok for the press to openly lie
to everyone in the us! HR4310, legalized propaganda for US consumption. He gave us fake news!
The constant stream of US, UK, NATO, EU fabrications framing Russia, from MH17, Skripal,
'interfering in elections' garbage, the Navalry poisoning, coupled with endless provocations
like interfering in the Syrian settlement, twisting the OPCW work, attempting to destroy the
Iran nuclear agreement and so much more appear to -finally - running out Russia's strategic
patience with the Trump administration.
1. 24 September Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov:
"...the incumbent US administration has lost its diplomatic skills almost for good."
"we have come to realise that in terms of Germany and its EU and NATO allies' conduct, ...it
is impossible to deal with the West until it stops using provocations and fraud and starts
behaving honestly and responsibly."
The Russiagate fabrication was a political convenience for the Dems, but it allowed Trump
and his NATO/EU agents to sanction, pressurise, interfere with Russia in every dimension,
because Trump 'had to' to show they he was not Russia's sock puppets!
Looks like Russia might be shifting strategy from strictly going through the defined and
agreed processes in relation to problems with the West to perhaps not engaging so
meticulously.
After all, what's the point when the agreed processes are ignored by the other party?
So, does "impossible to deal with" mean "will not deal with"?
The video I just watched and linked to on the Week in Review thread makes this observation:
The Ds burned the US-Russia relationship while the Rs made no real protest; now we have the
Rs burning the US-China relationship while the Ds make no real protest.
Many other nations
are watching, some already having joined the China-Russia bloc while others get ready as they
watch what little remains of US soft power go down the tubes thanks to Imperial tactics being
deployed onto US streets. Meanwhile, lurking not too far away is the coming escalation of the
financial crisis which Trump's Trade War has exacerbated. Those running this show are myopic
to the max--in order to post an economic recovery, the markets existing in those nations now
being alienated will be essential since the domestic market will be far too weak to fuel a
recovery by itself, even with enlightened leadership.
"On July 24 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook went on CNN and made, to my knowledge, the
very first allegations (video) that Russia had 'hacked' the DNC in support of Donald
Trump."
It is not the case that it was the first such allegation. To my knowledge, the first such
allegation that was published was published on 14 June 2016 in the Washington Post,
headlining "Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump"
and I provide here an archived link to it instead of that newspaper's link, so that no
paywall will block a reader from seeing that article: https://archive.is/T4C2G
powerandpeople @28: "So, does "impossible to deal with" mean "will not deal with"?"
Highly unlikely. The Russians will continue to pursue reason even after the war on Russia
goes hot. If the Russians give up on diplomacy then that means Lavrov is out of a job. The
Russians are capable of walking and chewing gum, or shooting and talking as the case may be,
at the same time.
By the way, I think the same is true for the Chinese, even if they have not done much
shooting lately. When America's war against them goes hot they will keep the door to
diplomacy open throughout the conflict. Neither of these countries wants a war and it is the
US that is pushing for one. They will be happy to stop the killing as soon as the US does.
Personally I think that may be a mistake because when the war goes hot and the US suffers
some military defeats and sues for peace, if America still has the capability to wage war
then the peace will just be temporary. The US will use any cessation of hostilities to rearm
and try to catch its imagined enemies off guard.
Whether or not the US will be able to rearm after significant military defeats in its
current de-industrialized condition is another matter.
How can the US possibly contemplate a war with China? The US cannot function without China's
production. To cite just one example; eighty percent of US pharmaceuticals are produced in
China. The US needs China far more than China needs the US. A war with China is a war the US
cannot win.
Assange announced on June 12, 2016 that a new tranche of DNC emails had been leaked to
Wikileaks and was being prepared for publication. The effort to manufacture the false
narrative about Russian hacking began immediately after that, likely within minutes of
the announcement.
We already knew that Hillary had engaged Steele in Spring 2016 as what was termed an
"insurance policy". This "insurance" angle makes no sense: 1) Hillary was the overwhelming
favorite when she engaged Steele and had virtually unlimited resources that she could call
upon. And, 2) the bogus findings in Steele's dossier could easily be debunked by any
competent intelligence agency so it wasn't any sort of "insurance" at all.
<> <> <> <> <>
That Hillary started Russiagate is not surprising. This limited hangout, which is
so titillating to some, is meant to cover for a far greater conspiracy than Hillary's
vindictiveness.
We should first recognize a few things:
the Empire is a bi-partisan affair;
the Presidency is the lynch-pin of the Empire;
it became apparent in 2013-14 that the Empire (aka "World Order") was at grave risk as
Russia's newfound militancy showed that her alliance with China had teeth.
the 2016 race was KNOWN to be rigged via Hillary's collusion with DNC and Sanders'
sheepdogging (Note: After the collusion became know, Hillary gave disgraced Debra
Wasserman-Shultz a high-level position within Hillary's campaign - further angering
progressives). Why does it surprise anyone that the General Election was also rigged?
These facts lead to the following conclusions:
A "populist outsider" will NEVER be allowed to win the Presidency. It was claimed that
Obama was also a "populist outsider" yet he served the Deep State/Empire and the US
establishment very well.
Hillary's 2016 "campaign mistakes" were likely deliberate/calculated to allow Trump to
win. MAGA Nationalist Trump was the Deep State's favorite. This explains why Trump
announced that he would not investigate the Clintons within days of his being elected and
why Trump picked close associates of all his 'Never Trump' Deep State enemies to fill key
posts in his Administration such as: John Brennan's gal Gina Haspel for CIA Director; John
McCain's guy Mike Pence as VP; the Bush's guy William Barr for Attorney General; and the
neocon's John Bolton for NSA.
Russiagate was primarily a means of initiating a new McCarthyism as part of a plan to
counter Russia and China.
David @32: "How can the US possibly contemplate a war with China?"
Sadly, the United States is suffering from delusions of exceptionality. Mass psychosis.
The importance of industrial capacity is radically underestimated by the top economic
theorists (and thus advisors) in the West, and except for some of the deplorable working
people in America and perhaps about five or six Marxists in the country, the rest of the
American population is equally delusional. "Well, if we can't get it from China then we
will just order it from Amazon!
The Awan Brothers aided former DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz in making threatening voice modulated phone calls to
attorneys suing the DNC for election fraud.
Lt. Colonel Tony Schaffer told
Fox
News
that Schultz ordered the Awan Brothers to scare off the lawyers due to the threat they pose in exposing widespread
election fraud committed by the Democratic Party in 2016.
Disobedientmedia.com
reports: If substantiated, the claims may have significance for the DNC fraud lawsuit proceedings,
and add to the growing controversy surrounding the recent arrest of Imran Awan on bank fraud charges.
Jared Beck, and attorney litigating the DNC Fraud Lawsuit noted
on Twitter
:
"We take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and
domestic. And sadly, the domestic enemies to our voting system and our honoring of the
Constitution are right at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with their allies in the Congress of the
United States".
Amazing that Pelosi is suddenly aware of her duty.
Thank you karlof1 - LMFAO - coffee all over the keyboard.
Perhaps Pelosi should take her own advice and discuss this belief of hers with Debbie
Wasserman Schultz. After all Schultz promoted the Awan family spy and blackmail ring to other
members of the Democrat caucus in Congress.
Another swamp pond yet to drain, take note Barr, there is still a lot of work ahead ha ha
ha.
Trump DID commit obstruction of justice... he refused to force HIS Dept of Justice to indict Hillary, Comey, Brennan and Clapper
for their obvious major felonies.
"... Speaking as an outside observer, it does seem to me that there is little difference between the FBI investigators and those methods used by the KGB in preparing people to appear at Stalin;s show trials. ..."
"... Mueller is not senile. That was an act. He knows he did terrible things. He does not want to testify as some ambitious prosecutors may wish to do to him,What he did to others ..."
"... An investigation that comes up with zero evidence to back up an accusation, is usually known as a wild goose chase.. ..."
The former FBI chief broke his silence last night, when
the Washington Post published a Mueller-penned op-ed hitting all the expected notes.
Reminding the public - well, more like implying - that Stone knows all the secrets of the
Russia-Wikileaks-Trump connection. The DNC hack, Hillary's missing emails, all those twitter
bots - all of these victories surely helped sway voters in Trump's favor, Mueller argues.
And without Russia's tacit support, Mueller argues, they would never have happened. But was
Stone really so integral to these operations? His reputation as a fabricator and an exaggerator
were well covered during the case.
We now have a detailed picture of Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The special counsel's office identified two principal operations directed at our election:
hacking and dumping Clinton campaign emails, and an online social media campaign to disparage
the Democratic candidate. We also identified numerous links between the Russian government
and Trump campaign personnel -- Stone among them. We did not establish that members of the
Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its activities. The investigation
did, however, establish that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump
presidency and worked to secure that outcome. It also established that the campaign expected
it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian
efforts.
Uncovering and tracing Russian outreach and interference activities was a complex task.
The investigation to understand these activities took two years and substantial effort. Based
on our work, eight individuals pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial, and more than two
dozen Russian individuals and entities, including senior Russian intelligence officers, were
charged with federal crimes.
Congress also investigated and sought information from Stone. A jury later determined he
lied repeatedly to members of Congress. He lied about the identity of his intermediary to
WikiLeaks. He lied about the existence of written communications with his intermediary. He
lied by denying he had communicated with the Trump campaign about the timing of WikiLeaks'
releases. He in fact updated senior campaign officials repeatedly about WikiLeaks. And he
tampered with a witness, imploring him to stonewall Congress.
Stone was found guilty by a jury back in November of all seven charges that he faced. He was
charged with lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction. At the time, the press
reported that Stone could face up to 50 years in prison. He was eventually sentenced to between
3 and four years after being convicted on all 7 counts he faced, including the witness
tampering charge, which carried a maximum penalty of 20 years, while the maximum for each of
the other six charges is five years. Stones convictions will stand, and he will remain a
felon.
Mueller also insisted he made every decision based "solely on the facts", though we wonder
how tipping off CNN to the military-style raid that brought Stone into federal custody relates
to Mueller's "by the book" credo.
Russian efforts to interfere in our political system, and the essential question of
whether those efforts involved the Trump campaign, required investigation. In that
investigation, it was critical for us (and, before us, the FBI) to obtain full and accurate
information. Likewise, it was critical for Congress to obtain accurate information from its
witnesses. When a subject lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government's
efforts to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable. It may ultimately impede those
efforts.
We made every decision in Stone's case, as in all our cases, based solely on the facts and
the law and in accordance with the rule of law. T he women and men who conducted these
investigations and prosecutions acted with the highest integrity. Claims to the contrary are
false.
Unsurprisingly, Mueller's latest communique (expect the WaPo op-ed, like the Mueller report
before it, to be transformed into its own book - then who knows? Maybe a maybe motion picture
based on the limited communications of Robert Swan Mueller III?) triggered a wave of
hand-wringing in Washington, including among some Republicans, who have groused about Trump's
decision to intercede on behalf of his one-time advisor (and, reportedly, friend). Despite
being a firm Trump backer and friend, Graham has made noises about joining with Democrats and
granting permission to bring Mueller in to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee
(nearly a year ago, Mueller
participated in a marathon series of hearings before the House Intelligence Committee and House
Judiciary).
Most Republicans have generally opposed another round of Mueller testimony, But Graham is
facing a competitive election bid, and grandstanding on this topic allows him to both feign
bipartisan cooperation while upping the pressure for a Congressional investigation into the
origins of the 'Witch Hunt' which would presumably target Mueller, Comey and the rest of the
FBI/DoJ leadership who were caught up in it.
Arctic_Fox , 47 minutes ago
Mueller seems about as senile as Biden. They both come across as pretty much over the
hill. Get them off the scripted notes and it'll be quite a fiasco.
William Dorritt , 43 minutes ago
Mueller is an act
As soon as it became apparent that the Hoax was falling apart,
Mueller began acting senile
Shouldn't stop him from hanging.
Cardinal Fang , 55 minutes ago
The irony is that the FBI, then Mueller and then Congress were played in a Hillary
Campaign oppo research disinfo campaign.
orangedrinkandchips , 1 hour ago
I'm confused. Russia did it all but 4 years and billions later he came up with nothing? That a sore loser
d_7878 , 1 hour ago
There is nothing better Senators on both sides of the aisle love to do more than call
people to testify in from of them. A real spectacle where they can pontificate forever with
no real substance.That is other than flying around in first class with their entire entourage
and spending on lavish outings and much deserved retreats on our dime.
Trump could be re-elected if he would implement term limits as he promised.
Bay of Pigs , 47 minutes ago
He doesn't have the power to institute term limits. Congress has to pass legislation.
Welsh Bard , 1 hour ago
Speaking as an outside observer, it does seem to me that there is little difference
between the FBI investigators and those methods used by the KGB in preparing people to appear
at Stalin;s show trials.
The only difference in the US is that if you plead guilty under a plea bargain , you will
receive a lesser sentence otherwise it is life.
MCDirtMigger , 1 hour ago
Grahmnesty is part of the deep state, just like Sleepy Sesssions . He will do nothing
while clucking like the c0ckrobbin that he is.
Amanita Virosa , 2 hours ago
It's time for a multimillion march on Washington. Now
Ron_Mexico , 10 minutes ago
and let's all hold up pictures of whites killed by black criminals . . .
d_7878 , 2 hours ago
Can't wait until January. It will be good to get back to normal with old Lindsey, any way
the wind blows, Graham calling Trump an idiot again. Just like the good old days. Make
America Normal Again.
emdrive , 2 hours ago
Google, Twitter and FB are trying so hard to influence the upcoming election, along with
the Marxist News Networks that it dwarfs any tiny efforts by Russia to do same. Youtube came
out and said they found $50,000 in spending by Russians to influence the 2016 election.
That's less 'influence' than one suspended comment by Twitter.
This is all right in front of us - they aren't hiding their bias yet the 'news' never
mentions it outside of a couple of people on Fox.
spam filter , 2 hours ago
The former FBI chief broke his silence last night, when
the Washington Post published a Mueller-penned op-ed hitting all the expected notes
Which we all know someone else wrote it for him going by how clueless he was before
congress last time about his supposedly own investigation with his name on it.(blank stares,
looks to his handlers)
Would like to see him, and Biden go head to head on Jeopardy.
William Dorritt , 2 hours ago
TREASON IN PLAIN SIGHT
UK Intelligence planned, organized, and implemented the overthrow of the US elected
Govt
The Leaders of both parties in the Congress, The Chief Justice, Big Media & Big Tech
Oligarchs, and various members of Congress participated in the Treason every step of the
way.
The Leadership of the totally corrupt FBI, CIA, DOJ and the Federal Judges implemented the
ongoing attempted overthrow of the Elected Govt. supported by an unparalleled Propaganda
Offensive on all communications and media platforms.
Most recently Pentagon Leadership outed themselves as Coup Participants when they mutinied
under fire.
tangent , 2 hours ago
I would like to see Stone's jury and judge face the death penalty because they all know
they were a kangaroo court operation. They literally tried to destroy someone's life for
being associated with Trump.
Goodsport 1945 , 2 hours ago
More theater on tap. The questions and performances will be terrific, truths will emerge
and nothing meaningful will be done about it. Jail time for the guilty please.
givenoquarter , 3 hours ago
Raise your hand if you think Mueller actually wrote that editorial...
I need to know who the gullible people are so I can fleece them at my convenience...
107cicero , 2 hours ago
At this point I don't think Mueller can defecate by himself let alone write prose.
Whodathunkit , 3 hours ago
and the rest of the FBI/DoJ leadership who were caught up in it.
its obvious by now that they planned AND executed it. Far from "caught up in it". Who
wrote this trash?
pparalegal , 3 hours ago
Obama used clemency power more often than any president since Truman. Overall, Obama granted clemency to 1,927 individuals, a figure that includes 1,715
commutations and 212 pardons.
Nothing will happen, it's just the sequel to the last 3 years of a political circus with
another sequel coming, as they always do.. because orange man bad.
zeropjbaggot , 7 hours ago
The two 302s from flynns intrrview disappeared- why
Supposed flynn testified honestly
As both agents said
The agents reports should be compared with wiretap trsnscript.
If wiretap transcript dishonestly altered
It devices. From 302s
zeropjbaggot , 7 hours ago
Comey did same thing as it dawned him that he might pay for his crimes. He testified he could not remember anything. Just like mueller
It means he is aware he could be a target of Durham. As well he should be
zeropjbaggot , 7 hours ago
Mueller is not senile. That was an act. He knows he did terrible things. He does not want to testify as some ambitious prosecutors may wish to do to him,What he did to others
Scipio Africanuz , 7 hours ago
An investigation that comes up with zero evidence to back up an accusation, is usually
known as a wild goose chase..
Try chasing a wild goose, and while you'll probably burn energy while doing so (good
cardio exercise..), catching the goose however, is next to impossible and why?
While it's possible to have "free range" geese, there's no such animal as a "wild"
goose!
And thus, the accusation without backing evidence, though thoroughly investigated, is what
investigators with integrity know as a nothing burger or if you prefer plain speak,
********!
And that's that..
And as appropriate, here's the Commanding Comforter..
In any event, the publication of the Mueller report has cleared things up for me. I get it now. The investigation was never about
Trump colluding with Russia. It was always about Trump obstructing the investigation of the collusion with Russia that the investigation
was not about. Mueller was never looking for collusion. It was not his job to look for collusion.
His job was to look for obstruction of his investigation of alleged obstruction of his investigation of non-collusion, which he
found, and detailed at length in his report, and which qualifies as an impeachable offense.
... ... ...
In other words, his investigation was launched in order to investigate the obstruction of his investigation. And, on those terms,
it was a huge success. The fact that it didn't prove "collusion" means nothing -- that's just a straw man argument that Trump and
his Russian handlers make. The goal all along was to prove that Trump obstructed an investigation of his obstruction of that investigation,
not that he was "colluding" with Putin, or any of the other paranoid nonsense that the corporate media were forced to report on,
once an investigation into his obstruction of the investigation was launched.
DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Agent Smith, you testified that the Russians hacked the DNC computers, is that correct?
FBI AGENT JOHN SMITH: That is correct.
DEF ATT: Upon what information did you base your testimony?
AGENT: Information found in reports analyzing the breach of the computers.
DEF ATT: So, the FBI prepared these reports?
AGENT: (cough) . (shift in seat) No, a cyber security contractor with the FBI.
DEF ATT: Pardon me, why would a contractor be preparing these reports? Do these contractors run the FBI laboratories where
the server was examined?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: No? No what? These contractors don't run the FBI Laboratories?
AGENT: No. The laboratories are staffed by FBI personnel.
DEF ATT: Well I don't understand. Why would contractors be writing reports about computers that are forensically examined in
FBI laboratories?
AGENT: Well, the servers were not examined in the FBI laboratory.
(silence)
DEF ATT: Oh, so the FBI examined the servers on site to determine who had hacked them and what was taken?
AGENT: Uh .. no.
DEF ATT: They didn't examine them on site?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Well, where did they examine them?
AGENT: Well, uh .. the FBI did not examine them.
DEF ATT: What?
AGENT: The FBI did not directly examine the servers.
DEF ATT: Agent Smith, the FBI has presented to the Grand Jury and to this court and SWORN AS FACT that the Russians hacked
the DNC computers. You are basing your SWORN testimony on a report given to you by a contractor, while the FBI has NEVER actually
examined the computer hardware?
AGENT: That is correct.
DEF ATT: Agent Smith, who prepared the analysis reports that the FBI relied on to give this sworn testimony?
AGENT: Crowdstrike, Inc.
DEF ATT: So, which Crowdstrike employee gave you the report?
AGENT: We didn't receive the report directly from Crowdstrike.
DEF ATT: What?
AGENT: We did not receive the report directly from Crowdstrike.
DEF ATT: Well, where did you find this report?
AGENT: It was given to us by the people who hired Crowdstrike to examine and secure their computer network and hardware.
DEF ATT: Oh, so the report was given to you by the technical employees for the company that hired Crowdstrike to examine their
servers?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Well, who gave you the report?
AGENT: Legal counsel for the company that hired Crowdstrike.
DEF ATT: Why would legal counsel be the ones giving you the report?
AGENT: I don't know.
DEF ATT: Well, what company hired Crowdstrike?
AGENT: The Democratic National Committee.
DEF ATT: Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You are giving SWORN testimony to this court that Russia hacked the servers
of the Democratic National Committee. And you are basing that testimony on a report given to you by the LAWYERS for the Democratic
National Committee. And you, the FBI, never actually saw or examined the computer servers?
AGENT: That is correct.
DEF ATT: Well, can you provide a copy of the technical report produced by Crowdstrike for the Democratic National Committee?
AGENT: No, I cannot.
DEF ATT: Well, can you go back to your office and get a copy of the report?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Why? Are you locked out of your office?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: I don't understand. Why can you not provide a copy of this report?
AGENT: Because I do not have a copy of the report.
DEF ATT: Did you lose it?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Why do you not have a copy of the report?
AGENT: Because we were never given a final copy of the report.
DEF ATT: Agent Smith, if you didn't get a copy of the report, upon what information are you basing your testimony?
AGENT: On a draft copy of the report.
DEF ATT: A draft copy?
AGENT: Yes.
DEF ATT: Was a final report ever delivered to the FBI?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Agent Smith, did you get to read the entire report?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Why not?
AGENT: Because large portions were redacted.
DEF ATT: Agent Smith, let me get this straight. The FBI is claiming that the Russians hacked the DNC servers. But the FBI never
actually saw the computer hardware, nor examined it? Is that correct?
AGENT: That is correct.
DEF ATT: And the FBI never actually examined the log files or computer email or any aspect of the data from the servers? Is
that correct?
AGENT: That is correct.
DEF ATT: And you are basing your testimony on the word of Counsel for the Democratic National Committee, the people who provided
you with a REDACTED copy of a DRAFT report, not on the actual technical personnel who supposedly examined the servers?
AGENT: That is correct.
DEF ATT: Your honor, I have a few motions I would like to make at this time.
PRESIDING JUDGE: I'm sure you do, Counselor. (as he turns toward the prosecutors) And I feel like I am in a mood to grant them.
Brilliant! that sums it up nicely. of course, if the servers were not hacked and were instead "thumbnailed" that leads to a
whole pile of other questions (including asking wiileaks for their source and about the murder of seth rich).
CrowdStrike, the private cyber-security firm that first accused Russia of hacking Democratic
Party emails and served as a critical source for U.S. intelligence officials in the years-long
Trump-Russia probe, acknowledged to Congress more than two years ago that it had no concrete
evidence that Russian hackers stole emails from the Democratic National Committee's server.
Crowdstrike President Shawn Henry: "We just don't have the evidence..."
CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry's admission under oath, in a recently declassified
December 2017 interview before the House Intelligence Committee, raises new questions about
whether Special Counsel Robert Mueller, intelligence officials and Democrats misled the public.
The allegation that Russia stole Democratic Party emails from Hillary Clinton, John Podesta and
others and then passed them to WikiLeaks helped trigger the FBI's probe into now debunked
claims of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to steal the 2016 election. The
CrowdStrike admissions were released just two months after the Justice Department retreated
from its its other central claim that Russia meddled in the 2016 election when it dropped
charges against Russian troll farms it said had been trying to get Trump elected.
Henry personally led the remediation and forensics analysis of the DNC server after being
warned of a breach in late April 2016; his work was paid for by the DNC, which refused to turn
over its server to the FBI. Asked for the date when alleged Russian hackers stole data from the
DNC server, Henry testified that CrowdStrike did not in fact know if such a theft occurred at
all: "We did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated [moved electronically]
from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated," Henry said.
Henry reiterated his claim on multiple occasions:
"There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in
this case it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence
that says it actually left."
"There's not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There's circumstantial
evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated."
" There is circumstantial evidence that that data was exfiltrated off the network... We
didn't have a sensor in place that saw data leave. We said that the data left based on the
circumstantial evidence. That was the conclusion that we made."
"Sir, I was just trying to be factually accurate, that we didn't see the data leave, but
we believe it left, based on what we saw."
Asked directly if he could "unequivocally say" whether "it was or was not exfiltrated out
of DNC," Henry told the committee: "I can't say based on that."
Rep. Adam Schiff: Democrat held up interview transcripts, but finally relented after acting
intel director Richard Grenell suggested he would release them himself. (Senate Television via
AP)
In a later exchange with Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah, Henry offered an explanation
of how Russian agents could have obtained the emails without any digital trace of them leaving
the server. The CrowdStrike president speculated that Russian agents might have taken
"screenshots" in real time. "[If] somebody was monitoring an email server, they could read all
the email," Henry said. "And there might not be evidence of it being exfiltrated, but they
would have knowledge of what was in the email. There would be ways to copy it. You could take
screenshots."
Henry's 2017 testimony that there was no "concrete evidence" that the emails were stolen
electronically suggests that Mueller was at best misleading in his 2019 final report, in which
he stated that Russian intelligence "appears to have compressed and exfiltrated over 70
gigabytes of data from the file server."
It is unlikely that Mueller had another source to make his more confident claim about
Russian hacking.
The stolen emails, which were published by Wikileaks – whose founder, Julian Assange
has long denied they came from Russia – were embarrassing to the party because, among
other things, they showed the DNC had favored Clinton during her 2016 primary battles against
Sen. Bernie Sanders for the presidential nomination. The DNC eventually issued an apology to
Sanders and his supporters "for the inexcusable remarks made over email." The DNC hack was
separate from the FBI's investigation of Clinton's use of a private server while serving as
President Obama's Secretary of State.
The disclosure that CrowdStrike found no evidence that alleged Russian hackers exfiltrated
any data from the DNC server raises a critical question: On what basis, then, did it accuse
them of stealing the emails? Further, on what basis did Obama administration officials make far
more forceful claims about Russian hacking?
Michael Sussmann: This lawyer at Perkins Coie hired CrowdStrike to investigate the DNC
breach. He was also involved with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele in producing the
discredited Steele dossier.
The January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which formally accused Russia of a
sweeping influence campaign involving the theft of Democratic emails, claimed the Russian
intelligence service GRU "exfiltrated large volumes of data from the DNC." A July 2018
indictment claimed that GRU officers "stole thousands of emails from the work accounts of DNC
employees."
According to everyone concerned, the cyber-firm played a critical role in the FBI's
investigation of the DNC data theft. Henry told the panel that CrowdStrike "shared intelligence
with the FBI" on a regular basis, making "contact with them over a hundred times in the course
of many months." In congressional testimony that same year, former FBI Director James Comey
acknowledged that the FBI "never got direct access to the machines themselves," and instead
relied on CrowdStrike, which "shared with us their forensics from their review of the system."
According to Comey, the FBI would have preferred direct access to the server, and made
"multiple requests at different levels," to obtain it. But after being rebuffed, "ultimately it
was agreed to [CrowdStrike] would share with us what they saw."
Henry's testimony seems at variance with Comey's suggestion of complete information sharing.
He told Congress that CrowdStrike provided "a couple of actual digital images" of DNC hard
drives, out of a total number of "in excess of 10, I think." In other cases, Henry said,
CrowdStrike provided its own assessment of them. The firm, he said, provided "the results of
our analysis based on what our technology went out and collected." This disclosure follows
revelations from the case of Trump operative Roger Stone that CrowdStrike provided three
reports to the FBI in redacted and draft form. According to federal prosecutors, the government
never obtained CrowdStrike's unredacted reports.
CrowdStrike's newy disclosed admissions raise new questions about whether Special Counsel
Robert Mueller (above), intelligence officials and Democrats misled the public.
There are no indications that the Mueller team accessed any additional information beyond
what CrowdStrike provided. According to the Mueller report, "the FBI later received images of
DNC servers and copies of relevant traffic logs." But if the FBI obtained only "copies" of data
traffic – and not any new evidence -- those copies would have shown the same absence of
"concrete evidence" that Henry admitted to.
Adding to the tenuous evidence is CrowdStrike's own lack of certainty that the hackers it
identified inside the DNC server were indeed Russian government actors. Henry's explanation for
his firm's attribution of the DNC hack to Russia is replete with inferences and assumptions
that lead to "beliefs," not unequivocal conclusions. "There are other nation-states that
collect this type of intelligence for sure," Henry said, "but what we would call the tactics
and techniques were consistent with what we'd seen associated with the Russian state." In its
investigation, Henry said, CrowdStrike "saw activity that we believed was consistent with
activity we'd seen previously and had associated with the Russian Government. We said that we
had a high degree of confidence it was the Russian Government."
But CrowdStrike was forced to retract a similar accusation months after it accused Russia in
December 2016 of hacking the Ukrainian military, with the same software that the firm had
claimed to identify inside the DNC server.
The firm's work with the DNC and FBI is also colored by partisan affiliations. Before
joining CrowdStrike, Henry served as executive assistant director at the FBI under Mueller.
Co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin and a senior fellow at the
Atlantic Council, the pro-NATO think tank that has consistently promoted an aggressive policy
toward Russia. And the newly released testimony confirms that CrowdStrike was hired to
investigate the DNC breach by Michael Sussmann of Perkins Coie – the same Democratic-tied
law firm that hired Fusion GPS to produce the discredited Steele dossier, which was also
treated as central evidence in the investigation. Sussmann played a critical role in generating
the Trump-Russia collusion allegation. Ex-British spy and dossier compiler Christopher Steele
has
testified in British court that Sussmann shared with him the now-debunked Alfa Bank server
theory, alleging a clandestine communication channel between the bank and the Trump
Organization.
Henry's recently released testimony does not mean that Russia did not hack the DNC. What it
does make clear is that Obama administration officials, the DNC and others have misled the
public by presenting as fact information that they knew was uncertain. The fact that the
Democratic Party employed the two private firms that generated the core allegations at the
heart of Russiagate -- Russian email hacking and Trump-Russia collusion – suggests that
the federal investigation was compromised from the start.
The 2017 Henry transcript was one of dozens just released after a lengthy dispute. In
September 2018, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee unanimously voted to
release witness interview transcripts and sent them to the U.S. intelligence community for
declassification review. In March 2019, months after Democrats won House control, Rep. Adam
Schiff ordered the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to withhold the
transcripts from White House lawyers seeking to review them for executive privilege. Schiff
also refused to release vetted transcripts, but finally relented after acting ODNI Director
Richard Grenell suggested this month that he would release them himself.
Several transcripts, including the interviews of former CIA Director John Brennan and Comey,
remain unreleased. And in light of the newly disclosed Crowdstrike testimony, another secret
document from the House proceedings takes on urgency for public viewing. According to Henry,
Crowdstrike also provided the House Intelligence Committee with a copy of its report on the DNC
email theft.
This is nationwide gaslighting by Clinton gang of neoliberals who attempted coup d'état, and Adam Schiff was just one of the
key figures in this coupe d'état, king of modern Joe McCarthy able and willing to destroy a person using false evidence
What is interesting is that Tucker attacked Republicans for aiding and abetting the coup
d'état against Trump
So the RussiaGate was giant gaslighting of the US electorate by Clinton gang and intelligence
agencies rogues.
Notable quotes:
"... For two and a half years the House Intelligence Committee knew CrowdStrike didn't have the goods on Russia. Now the public knows too. ..."
"... House Intelligence Committee documents released Thursday reveal that the committee was told two and half years ago that the FBI had no concrete evidence that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers to filch the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks ..."
"... Henry testifies that "it appears it [the theft of DNC emails] was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence that says it actually left." ..."
"... This, in VIPS view, suggests that someone with access to DNC computers "set up" selected emails for transfer to an external storage device – a thumb drive, for example. The Internet is not needed for such a transfer. Use of the Internet would have been detected, enabling Henry to pinpoint any "exfiltration" over that network. ..."
"... Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director and a VIPs member, filed a sworn affidavit in the Roger Stone case. Binney said: "WikiLeaks did not receive stolen data from the Russian government. Intrinsic metadata in the publicly available files on WikiLeaks demonstrates that the files acquired by WikiLeaks were delivered in a medium such as a thumb drive." ..."
"... Both pillars of Russiagate–collusion and a Russian hack–have now fairly crumbled. ..."
"... Thursday's disclosure of testimony before the House Intelligence Committee shows Chairman Adam Schiff lied not only about Trump-Putin "collusion," [which the Mueller report failed to prove and whose allegations were based on DNC and Clinton-financed opposition research] but also about the even more basic issue of "Russian hacking" of the DNC. [See: "The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate."] ..."
"... Fortunately, the cameras were still on when I approached Schiff during the Q&A: "You have every confidence but no evidence, is that right?" I asked him. His answer was a harbinger of things to come. This video clip may be worth the four minutes needed to watch it. ..."
"... Schiff and his partners in crime will be in for much tougher treatment if Trump allows Attorney General Barr and US Attorney John Durham to bring their investigation into the origins of Russia-gate to a timely conclusion. Barr's dismissal on Thursday of charges against Flynn, after released FBI documents revealed that a perjury trap was set for him to keep Russiagate going, may be a sign of things to come. ..."
For two and a half years the House Intelligence Committee knew CrowdStrike didn't have
the goods on Russia. Now the public knows too.
House Intelligence Committee
documents released Thursday reveal that the committee was told two and half years ago that
the FBI had no concrete evidence that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers
to filch the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks in July 2016.
The until-now-buried, closed-door testimony came on Dec. 5, 2017 from Shawn Henry, a
protégé of former FBI Director Robert Mueller (from 2001 to 2012), for whom
Henry served as head of the Bureau's cyber crime investigations unit.
Henry retired in 2012 and took a senior position at CrowdStrike, the cyber security firm
hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign to investigate the cyber intrusions that occurred
before the 2016 presidential election.
The following excerpts from Henry's testimony
speak for themselves. The dialogue is not a paragon of clarity; but if read carefully, even
cyber neophytes can understand:
Ranking Member Mr. [Adam] Schiff: Do you know the date on which the Russians
exfiltrated the data from the DNC? when would that have been?
Mr. Henry: Counsel just reminded me that, as it relates to the DNC, we have
indicators that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have no indicators that it was
exfiltrated (sic). There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say
conclusively. But in this case, it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't
have the evidence that says it actually left.
Mr. [Chris] Stewart of Utah: Okay. What about the emails that everyone is so, you
know, knowledgeable of? Were there also indicators that they were prepared but not evidence
that they actually were exfiltrated?
Mr. Henry: There's not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There's
circumstantial evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated.
Mr. Stewart: But you have a much lower degree of confidence that this data actually
left than you do, for example, that the Russians were the ones who breached the security?
Mr. Henry: There is circumstantial evidence that that data was exfiltrated off the
network.
Mr. Stewart: And circumstantial is less sure than the other evidence you've
indicated.
Mr. Henry: "We didn't have a sensor in place that saw data leave. We said that the data
left based on the circumstantial evidence. That was the conclusion that we made.
In answer to a follow-up query on this line of questioning, Henry delivered this classic:
"Sir, I was just trying to be factually accurate, that we didn't see the data leave, but we
believe it left, based on what we saw."
Inadvertently highlighting the tenuous underpinning for CrowdStrike's "belief" that Russia
hacked the DNC emails, Henry added: "There are other nation-states that collect this type of
intelligence for sure, but the – what we would call the tactics and techniques were
consistent with what we'd seen associated with the Russian state."
Interesting admission in Crowdstrike CEO Shaun Henry's testimony. Henry is asked when
"the Russians" exfiltrated the data from DNC.
Henry: "We did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated from the DNC,
but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated." ?? pic.twitter.com/TyePqd6b5P
Try as one may, some of the testimony remains opaque. Part of the problem is ambiguity in
the word "exfiltration."
The word can denote (1) transferring data from a computer via the Internet (hacking) or
(2) copying data physically to an external storage device with intent to leak it.
As the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity has been reporting for more than
three years, metadata and other hard forensic evidence indicate that the DNC emails were not
hacked – by Russia or anyone else.
Rather, they were copied onto an external storage device (probably a thumb drive) by
someone with access to DNC computers. Besides, any hack over the Internet would almost
certainly have been discovered by the dragnet coverage of the National Security Agency and
its cooperating foreign intelligence services.
Henry testifies that "it appears it [the theft of DNC emails] was set up to be
exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence that says it actually left."
This, in VIPS view, suggests that someone with access to DNC computers "set up"
selected emails for transfer to an external storage device – a thumb drive, for
example. The Internet is not needed for such a transfer. Use of the Internet would have been
detected, enabling Henry to pinpoint any "exfiltration" over that network.
Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director and a VIPs member, filed a sworn
affidavit in the Roger Stone case. Binney said: "WikiLeaks did not receive stolen data from
the Russian government. Intrinsic metadata in the publicly available files on WikiLeaks
demonstrates that the files acquired by WikiLeaks were delivered in a medium such as a thumb
drive."
The So-Called Intelligence Community Assessment
There is not much good to be said about the embarrassingly evidence-impoverished
Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of Jan. 6, 2017 accusing Russia of hacking the
DNC.
But the ICA did include two passages that are highly relevant
and demonstrably true:
(1) In introductory remarks on "cyber incident attribution", the authors of the ICA made a
highly germane point: "The nature of cyberspace makes attribution of cyber operations
difficult but not impossible. Every kind of cyber operation – malicious or not –
leaves a trail."
(2) "When analysts use words such as 'we assess' or 'we judge,' [these] are not intended
to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on
collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary High confidence in a judgment
does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong."
[And one might add that they commonly ARE wrong when analysts succumb to political pressure,
as was the case with the ICA.]
The intelligence-friendly corporate media, nonetheless, immediately awarded the status of
Holy Writ to the misnomered "Intelligence Community Assessment" (it was a rump effort
prepared by "handpicked analysts" from only CIA, FBI, and NSA), and chose to overlook the
banal, full-disclosure-type caveats embedded in the assessment itself.
Then National Intelligence Director James Clapper and the directors of the CIA, FBI, and
NSA briefed President Obama on the ICA on Jan. 5, 2017, the day before they gave it
personally to President-elect Donald Trump.
On Jan. 18, 2017, at his final press conference, Obama saw fit to use lawyerly language on
the key issue of how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks , in an apparent effort to cover
his own derriere.
Obama: "The conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking
were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through
which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked."
So we ended up with "inconclusive conclusions" on that admittedly crucial point. What
Obama was saying is that U.S. intelligence did not know -- or professed not to know --
exactly how the alleged Russian transfer to WikiLeaks was supposedly made, whether
through a third party, or cutout, and he muddied the waters by first saying it was a hack,
and then a leak.
From the very outset, in the absence of any hard evidence, from NSA or from its foreign
partners, of an Internet hack of the DNC emails, the claim that "the Russians gave the DNC
emails to WikiLeaks " rested on thin gruel.
In November 2018 at a public forum, I asked Clapper to explain why President Obama still
had serious doubts in late Jan. 2017, less than two weeks after Clapper and the other
intelligence chiefs had thoroughly briefed the outgoing president about their
"high-confidence" findings.
Clapper
replied : "I cannot explain what he [Obama] said or why. But I can tell you we're, we're
pretty sure we know, or knew at the time, how WikiLeaks got those emails." Pretty
sure?
Preferring CrowdStrike; 'Splaining to Congress
CrowdStrike already had a tarnished reputation for credibility when the DNC and Clinton
campaign chose it to do work the FBI should have been doing to investigate how the DNC emails
got to WikiLeaks . It had asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery
app, resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine's struggle with separatists supported
by Russia. A Voice of America
report explained why CrowdStrike was forced to retract that claim.
Why did FBI Director James Comey not simply insist on access to the DNC computers? Surely
he could have gotten the appropriate authorization. In early January 2017, reacting to media
reports that the FBI never asked for access, Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee
there were "multiple requests at different levels" for access to the DNC servers.
"Ultimately what was agreed to is the private company would share with us what they saw,"
he said. Comey described
CrowdStrike as a "highly respected" cybersecurity company.
Asked by committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) whether direct access to the servers and
devices would have helped the FBI in their investigation, Comey said it would have. "Our
forensics folks would always prefer to get access to the original device or server that's
involved, so it's the best evidence," he said.
Five months later, after Comey had been fired, Burr gave him a Mulligan in the form of a
few kid-gloves, clearly well-rehearsed, questions:
BURR: And the FBI, in this case, unlike other cases that you might investigate
– did you ever have access to the actual hardware that was hacked? Or did you have to
rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected?
COMEY: In the case of the DNC, we did not have access to the devices themselves. We
got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done
the work. But we didn't get direct access.
BURR: But no content?
COMEY: Correct.
BURR: Isn't content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence
standpoint?
COMEY: It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks – the people who
were my folks at the time is that they had gotten the information from the private party that
they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016.
In June last year it was
revealed that CrowdStrike never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the
government because the FBI never required it to, according to the Justice Department.
By any normal standard, former FBI Director Comey would now be in serious legal trouble,
as should Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, et al. Additional evidence of FBI
misconduct under Comey seems to surface every week – whether the abuses of FISA,
misconduct in the case against Gen. Michael Flynn, or misleading everyone about Russian
hacking of the DNC. If I were attorney general, I would declare Comey a flight risk and take
his passport. And I would do the same with Clapper and Brennan.
Schiff: Every Confidence, But No Evidence
Both pillars of Russiagate–collusion and a Russian hack–have now fairly
crumbled.
Thursday's disclosure of testimony before the House Intelligence Committee shows
Chairman Adam Schiff lied not only about Trump-Putin "collusion," [which the Mueller report
failed to prove and whose allegations were based on DNC and Clinton-financed opposition
research] but also about the even more basic issue of "Russian hacking" of the DNC. [See:
"The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate."]
Five days after Trump took office, I had an opportunity to confront Schiff personally
about evidence that Russia "hacked" the DNC emails. He had repeatedly given that canard the
patina of flat fact during an address at the old Hillary Clinton/John Podesta "think tank,"
The Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Fortunately, the cameras were still on when I approached Schiff during the Q&A:
"You have every confidence but no evidence, is that right?" I asked him. His answer was a
harbinger of things to come. This video
clip may be worth the four minutes needed to watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/SdOy-l13FEg
Schiff and his partners in crime will be in for much tougher treatment if Trump allows
Attorney General Barr and US Attorney John Durham to bring their investigation into the
origins of Russia-gate to a timely conclusion. Barr's dismissal on Thursday of charges
against Flynn, after released FBI documents revealed that a perjury trap was set for him to
keep Russiagate going, may be a sign of things to come.
Given the timid way Trump has typically bowed to intelligence and law enforcement
officials, including those who supposedly report to him, however, one might rather expect
that, after a lot of bluster, he will let the too-big-to-imprison ones off the hook. The
issues are now drawn; the evidence is copious; will the Deep State, nevertheless, be able to
prevail this time?
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of
the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as
Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President's Daily
Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This
originally appeared at Consortium
News .
Former Trump attorney John Dowd says it's "staggering" that former
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's "so-called Dream Team would put on such a fraud," after the
Wednesday release of the investigation's "scope memo" revealed that Mueller was tasked with
investigating accusations from Clinton-funded operative Christopher Steele which the DOJ
already knew were debunked . "In the last few days, I have been going back through my files
and we were badly misled by Mueller and his senior people , particularly in the meetings that
we had," Dowd told Fox News Radio host Brian Kilmeade on Thursday.
The scope memo also revealed that Mueller's authority went significantly beyond what was
previously known - including "allegations that Carter Page committed a crime or crimes by
colluding with Russian government officials with respect to the Russian government's efforts to
interfere with the 2016 election for President of the United States, in violation of United
States law," yet as John Solomon of
Just The News noted on Wednesday - the FBI had already:
fired Steele as an informant for leaking;
interviewed Steele's sub-source, who disputed information attributed to him;
ascertained that allegations Steele had given the FBI specifically about Page were
inaccurate and likely came from Russian intelligence sources as disinformation;
been informed repeatedly by the CIA that Page was not a Russian stooge but, rather, a
cooperating intelligence asset for the United States government.
" There's no question it's a fraud I think the whole report is just nonsense and it's
staggering that the so-called 'Dream Team' would put on such a fraud ," Dowd said, according to
Fox News .
"Durham has really got a load on his hands tracking all this down," Dowd said.
Durham was appointed last year by Attorney General Bill Barr to review the events
leading up to Trump's inauguration. However, Durham has since expanded his investigation to
cover a post-election timeline spanning the spring of 2017, when Mueller was appointed as
special counsel. - Fox News
"Nancy's Liar"
Dowd also circled back to a claim by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff that
there was "direct evidence" that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016
election, despite the fact that transcripts of House Intelligence Committee interviews proving
otherwise .
"Schiff doesn't release these interviews because they're going to make him a liar," said
Dowd, adding "They're going to expose him and he'll be run out of town."
"He lied for months in the impeachment inquiry. He's essentially Nancy [Pelosi]'s liar and
he's now going to be exposed."
Yes pft, the favored candidate of the DNC is clearly Trump.
Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Feb 6 2020 19:25 utc | 58
Only if the ungrateful commoners who identify as Democrats or moderates can't be brought to
heel and give their full throated support for the DNC's favoured Cookie Cutter candidate who
might as well be one of those dolls with a string and a recording you hear when you pull the
string.
Then yes, they would prefer 'fore moar years!!' of the Ugliest American ever to be
installed as President of the United States.
One of things I respect about Tulsi Gabbard is she ain't no Doll with a string attached.
When she made the comment about cleaning out the rot in the Democratic Party, she left no
doubt her intent and goals. And to take on hillary, the Red Queen to boot, why that was
simply delicious.
Alas, the View, the DNC, it's web of evil rich and the media will never forgive her for
Soldiering for her Country.
Bezos held a party in DC recently at his place attended by top officials from the Trump
Administration. Jared Kushner was there before. They hang out together.
How odd that Bezos is somehow portrayed as some anti-Trump owner of WaPo. Bezos serves his
role in Beltway...
It should be clear on what the fight is really about in the US. It's about stopping the rise
of socialism. Regardless of party affiliation, the elites know what the populace wants and
are desperately trying to stop it. I refuse to accept that the Democrats have no idea what
they're doing.
I honestly can't see Sanders getting the nomination with all the corruption openly being
displayed. I would be pleasantly surprised if Sanders did manage to get it, but he still have
to deal with the ELECTORAL COLLEGE (EC). The Electors have the final say. Yes, one can point
out that some States have laws forcing Electors to vote what the populace wants, but that is
being challenged in court. The debate on whether such laws are unconstitutional or not,
remains to be seen. It's too late now to deal with the EC for this election, but people need
to be more active in politics at the State level as that's where Electors are (s)elected.
IF Sanders is genuine then he should prepare to run as an independent just to get the EC
attention.
RR @ 14;
Everything in the U$A today, is driven by the unofficial Party of $, and it's reach
transcends both Dems & repubs. It's cadre is the majority of the D.C. "rule makers", so
we get what they want, not what "we the people" want or need.
They own the banks, MSM media, and even our voting systems.
IMO, to assume one party is to blame for conditions in the U$A is a bit naive.
Question is, can anything the masses do, change the system? Or is rank and file America
just along for the ride?
I'm assuming us peons will get what the party of $ wants this November also.
P.S. If any blame is given, it needs to go to the American public, because " you get the
kind of Gov. you deserve" through your inactions...
It's a lot like living, death is certain, but until that occurs, I'll move forward trying
to mitigate current paradigms.
The Justice Department now appears to have concluded that there was ""insufficient
predication to establish probable cause" in the last two renewals in 2017. Probable cause
is the legal standard to obtain a secret warrant against suspected agents of a foreign
power.
The letter is classified, but is referenced in a new order declassified by a judge on
Thursday. The Justice Department said it would sequester all the material it collected
against Mr. Page pending further internal review of the matter.
-Wall Street Journal
"The court understands the government to have concluded, in view of the material
misstatements and omissions, that the court's authorizations in (two applications) were not
valid," wrote Judge James Emanuel Boasberg, a federal district judge in Washington who also
sits on the FISA court.
As The Federalist notes, this could have far-reaching consequences for special
counsel Robert Mueller's findings.
"... That is if the MSM get their way! Maybe I am being overoptimistic, but Russia - as a permanent member of the UNSC and a member of the OPCW - will do everything in it's powers to pursue this matter, and it seems quite possible they will be able to force it onto the main agenda within 2020. If that happens it will be impossible for the MSM to push it under the rug. ..."
"... The other aspect it is that the MSM ability to suppress this news is dependent on behaviour of the MSM community in its totality, and the relationship to reader plausibility ..."
"... What determines whether one MSM decides to break the pack and publish news on OPCW? Well, for one thing, MoA articles can influence individual journalists and individual editors! ..."
B, under the "major stories covered" title you should include Skripal, about which you wrote
many important articles; I believe ultimately - like OPCW and Russiagate - it will prove to
be history-making event in terms of impact on public perceptions of media and the ability of
the media to control public opinion. Probably eventually whistleblowers will come forward
like the OPCW, and only thin will it have it's maximum impact.
(Well, the original event was 2018 not 2019, but some of the reports were in 2019
anyway)
My predictions on these issue for next year are:
...
Mainstream media have suppressed all news about the OPCW scandal. This will only change if
major new evidence comes to light.
That is if the MSM get their way! Maybe I am being overoptimistic, but Russia - as a
permanent member of the UNSC and a member of the OPCW - will do everything in it's powers to
pursue this matter, and it seems quite possible they will be able to force it onto the main
agenda within 2020. If that happens it will be impossible for the MSM to push it under the
rug.
The other aspect it is that the MSM ability to suppress this news is dependent on
behaviour of the MSM community in its totality, and the relationship to reader plausibility.
There are a few factors that could influence this independently of major new evidence, such
as the behaviour of a few outlier MSM's that decide to release information (and whether or
not that information then takes off in the public consciousness); pressure that could build
up in social media calling for the MSM to respond and attacking MSM credibility; or other
forms of pressure from the public calling on the MSM to respond. It is therefore a dynamic
that is not entirely predictable.
Both of the above are distinct from the emergence of new major evidence, although both
cases would seem likely to provoke new revelations in turn.
What determines whether one MSM decides to break the pack and publish news on OPCW? Well,
for one thing, MoA articles can influence individual journalists and individual editors!
Here's a key point - on June 12, Assange announces that Wikileaks will soon be releasing
info pertinent to Hillary. HE DOES NOT SAY THAT HE WILL BE RELEASING DNC EMAILS.
And yet, on June 14, Crowdstrike reports a Russian hack of the DNC servers - and a day later, Guccifer
2.0 emerges and proclaims himself to be the hacker, takes credit for the upcoming Wikileaks
DNC releases, publishes the Trump oppo research which Crowdstrike claimed he had taken, and
intentionally adds "Russian footprints" to his metadata.
So how did Crowdstrike and G2.0 know
that DNC EMAILS would be released?
Because, as Larry postulates, the US intelligence
community had intercepted communications between Seth Rich and Wikileaks in which Seth had
offered the DNC emails (consistent with the report of Sy Hersh's source within the FBI).
So
US intelligence tipped off the DNC that their emails were about to be leaked to Wikileaks.
That's when the stratagem of attributing the impending Wikileaks release to a Russian hack
was born - distracting from the incriminating content of the emails, while vilifying the Deep
State's favorite enemies, Assange and Russia, all in one neat scam.
Looks like CrowdStrike was was to plant the evidence of the Russian hack
Notable quotes:
"... All the evidence we're accumulating clearly says and implies, the US government -- namely the FBI, CIA, the DOJ, and of course State Department -- all these people involved in this hack, bought a dossier and all of the information going forward to the FISA court. ..."
"... All of them knew that this was a fake from the very beginning, because this Guccifer 2.0 character was fabricating it. They were using him plus the Internet Research Agency [IRA] as "supposed trolls of the Russian government". ..."
"... Well, when they sent their lawyers over to challenge that in a court of law, the government failed to prove they had any connection with the Russian government. ..."
"... Then the entire Rosenstein indictment is also a fabrication and a fake and a fraud for the same reasons. The judges seem to be involved in trying to keep this information out of the public domain. ..."
BILL BINNEY: I basically have always been saying that all of this Russian hack never
happened, but we have some more evidence coming out recently.
We haven't published it yet, but what we have seen is that there are at least five items
that we've found that were produced by Guccifer 2.0 back on June 15th, where they had the
Russian fingerprints in them, suggesting the Russians made the hack. Well, we found the same
five items published by Wikileaks in the Podesta emails.
Those items do not have the Russian fingerprints, which directly implies that Guccifer 2.0
was inserting these into the files to make it look like the Russians did this hack. Taking that
into account with all the other evidence we have; like the download speeds from Guccifer 2.0
were too fast, and they couldn't be managed by the web.
And that the files he was putting together and saying that he actually hacked, the two files
he said he had were really one file, and he was playing with the data; moving it to two
different files to claim two hacks.
Taking that into account with the fabrication of the Russian fingerprints, it leads us back
to inferring that in fact the marble framework out of the Vault 7 compromise of CIA hacking
routines was a possible user in this case.
In other words, it looked like the CIA did this, and that it was a matter of the CIA making
it look like the Russians were doing the hack. So, when you look at that and also look at the
DNC emails that were published by Wikileaks that have this phat file format in them, all 35,813
of these emails have rounded off times to the nearest even second.
That's a phat file format property; that argues that those files were, in fact, downloaded
to a thumb drive or CD-rom and physically transported before Wikileaks posted them. Which again
argues that it wasn't a hack.
So, all of the evidence we're finding is clearly evidence that the Russians were not in fact
hacking; it was probably our own people. It's very hard for us to get this kind of information
out. The mainstream media won't cover it; none of them will. It's very hard. We get some
bloggers to do that and some radio shows.
Also, I put all of this into a sworn affidavit in the Roger Stone case. I did that because
all of the attack on him was predicated on him being connected with this Russian hack which was
false to being with.
All the evidence we're accumulating clearly says and implies, the US government --
namely the FBI, CIA, the DOJ, and of course State Department -- all these people involved in
this hack, bought a dossier and all of the information going forward to the FISA
court.
All of them knew that this was a fake from the very beginning, because this Guccifer 2.0
character was fabricating it. They were using him plus the Internet Research Agency [IRA] as
"supposed trolls of the Russian government".
Well, when they sent their lawyers over to challenge that in a court of law, the
government failed to prove they had any connection with the Russian government.
They basically were chastised by the judge for fabricating a charge against this company.
So, if you take the IRA and the trolls away from that argument, and Guccifer 2.0, then the
entire Mueller report is a provable fabrication; because it's based on Guccifer 2.0 and the
IRA.
Then the entire Rosenstein indictment is also a fabrication and a fake and a fraud for
the same reasons. The judges seem to be involved in trying to keep this information out of the
public domain.
So, we have a really extensive shadow government here at work, trying to keep the
understanding and knowledge of what's really happening away from the public of the United
States. That's the really bad part. And the mainstream media is a participant in this; they're
culpable.
His dissent from the consensus view that Russia interfered with the 2016 US election
appears to be based on Russian disinformation."
They provide no footnote or linked-to source for their allegation
Ever since Binney went public criticizing U.S. intelligence agencies, they have been trying
to discredit him.
Thus far, however, their efforts have been nothing more than insinuations against his
person, without any specific allegation of counter-evidence that discredits any of his actual
assertions.
Martin Usher ,
The "Russia" thing was never able to differentiate between "Russians" and "the Russian
state". Its a product of a Cold War mindset that can't conceive of that country without it
being 150 million puppets all controlled by string from an office in the Kremlin. In reality
its just another country, one that offers goods and services to the world just like anywhere
else. So while we just assume that a company like SCL (Cambridge Analytica's parent) would
have personnel from and offices in many countries and have contracts with various political
parties in many countries we just can't seem to get our heads around the idea that a company
operating inside -- or even headquartered -- in Russia isn't automatically some kind of
Kremlin front. (Well, yes, it could be but the same way that a company in the UK could be a
front for the UK government, e.g. the Gateside Mill story in Scotland's Daily Record).
Another factor that might come into play is the idea that 'analytics', the key to business
on the Internet, is actually nothing more than a sophisticated form of traffic analysis, a
well known espionage tool. Any government worth its salt that's likely to be on the receiving
end of a propaganda campaign would be very interested in understanding the reach of such a
tool and learning how to manage that reach. So its possible that if we find the Russian
government taking out advertisements on Facebook through a front company to 'influence'
people its likely that they're more interested in evaluating that reach than the simplistic
view that they're 'trying to influence an election' (its not as if foreign interests or even
governments ever try to influence elections)(color revolution, anyone?). Allowing unfettered
access by these tools to one's nation is a bit like taking down one's defenses -- fine if
you're happy with vassal state ("ally") status but not if you're potentially an adversary --
so its important to know how to control it, no less important than having a decent air
defense system.
And in a further retort to all this nonsense, Harold Wilson, the last socialist leader of the
Labour Party back in the 1970s, won four general elections, a feat that's never been
repeated by any party leader.
This does directly relate to this thread, because the Americans overthrew Wilson. Just as they have done now with Corbyn. You really need to take your country back, whether you're a Brit or American.
paul ,
We are fortunate that there are still persons of integrity even in the spook organisations
– Binney, Kyriakou, Manning, Snowden. Without them and Assange a lot of this
criminality would never have seen the light of day.
Jack_Garbo ,
Diagnosing the disease does not imply the cure has been found. You simply know how much
sicker you are. Not helpful.
Nothing has changed despite all the revelations of intelligence shenanigans. Apologies do not
cure the patient when they're still spreading the disease. In fact, the opposite.
paul ,
Wikipedia holds out the begging bowl to anybody who uses it now.
I don't know why – they get plenty of CIA and Soros money.
All they've got to do now is wheel out the psychopath and war criminal, Tony Blair, to say:
"it's the Russians wot dunnit".
Oh my God
Jen ,
They don't need to, they have Tony Blair's fellow Brit psycho Boris Johnson to go on
autopilot and blame the Russians the moment something happens and just before London Met
start their investigations.
ZigZagWanderer ,
@ 1.15.58 "Intelligence community has become a self licking ice cream cone"
Larry Johnson and Bill Binney always worth listening to. Try to find the time.
Antonym ,
True except for Trump. Just look how hard deep state tries to unseat him.
Damaging your own puppet is not normal for a puppeteer.
J_Garbo ,
I suspected that Deep State has at least two opposing factions. The Realistists want him to
break up the empire, turn back into a republic; the Delusionals want to extend the empire,
continue to exploit and destroy the world. If so, the contradictions, reversals, incoherence
make sense. IMO as I said.
Gary Weglarz ,
I predict that all Western MSM will begin to accurately and vocally cover Mr. Binney's
findings about this odious and treasonous U.S. government psyop at just about the exact time
that – "hell freezes over" – as they say.
The possibility of CrowdStrike central role in creation of Russiagate might be one reason that Congressional Democrats (and
Republicans) were trying to swipe under the carpet the part of Trump conversation where he asked Zelenski to help to recover
server images CrowdStrike shipped to Ukraine.
Another question is that now it is possible that one of CrowdStrike employees or Alperovich himself played the role of Gussifer
2.0
Notable quotes:
"... There is strong reason to doubt Mueller's suggestion that an alleged Russian cutout called Guccifer 2.0 supplied the stolen emails to Assange. ..."
"... Mueller's decision not to interview Assange – a central figure who claims Russia was not behind the hack – suggests an unwillingness to explore avenues of evidence on fundamental questions. ..."
"... the government allowed CrowdStrike and the Democratic Party's legal counsel to submit redacted records, meaning CrowdStrike and not the government decided what could be revealed or not regarding evidence of hacking. ..."
"... John Brennan, then director of the CIA, played a seminal and overlooked role in all facets of what became Mueller's investigation: the suspicions that triggered the initial collusion probe; the allegations of Russian interference; and the intelligence assessment that purported to validate the interference allegations that Brennan himself helped generate. Yet Brennan has since revealed himself to be, like CrowdStrike and Steele, hardly a neutral party -- in fact a partisan with a deep animus toward Trump. ..."
Most of the material in this article will be familiar to regular readers of SST because I
wrote about it first. Here are the key conclusions:
The report uses qualified and vague language to describe key events, indicating that
Mueller and his investigators do not actually know for certain whether Russian intelligence
officers stole Democratic Party emails, or how those emails were transferred to
WikiLeaks.
The report's timeline of events appears to defy logic. According to its narrative,
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced the publication of Democratic Party emails not
only before he received the documents but before he even communicated with the source that
provided them.
There is strong reason to doubt Mueller's suggestion that an alleged Russian cutout
called Guccifer 2.0 supplied the stolen emails to Assange.
Mueller's decision not to interview Assange – a central figure who claims
Russia was not behind the hack – suggests an unwillingness to explore avenues of
evidence on fundamental questions.
U.S. intelligence officials cannot make definitive conclusions about the hacking of the
Democratic National Committee computer servers because they did not analyze those servers
themselves. Instead, they relied on the forensics of CrowdStrike, a private contractor for
the DNC that was not a neutral party, much as "Russian dossier" compiler Christopher Steele,
also a DNC contractor, was not a neutral party. This puts two Democrat-hired contractors
squarely behind underlying allegations in the affair – a key circumstance that Mueller
ignores.
Further, the government allowed CrowdStrike and the Democratic Party's legal counsel
to submit redacted records, meaning CrowdStrike and not the government decided what could be
revealed or not regarding evidence of hacking.
Mueller's report conspicuously does not allege that the Russian government carried out
the social media campaign. Instead it blames, as Mueller said in his closing remarks, "a
private Russian entity" known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).
Mueller also falls far short of proving that the Russian social campaign was
sophisticated, or even more than minimally related to the 2016 election. As with the
collusion and Russian hacking allegations, Democratic officials had a central and overlooked
hand in generating the alarm about Russian social media activity.
John Brennan, then director of the CIA, played a seminal and overlooked role in all
facets of what became Mueller's investigation: the suspicions that triggered the initial
collusion probe; the allegations of Russian interference; and the intelligence assessment
that purported to validate the interference allegations that Brennan himself helped generate.
Yet Brennan has since revealed himself to be, like CrowdStrike and Steele, hardly a neutral
party -- in fact a partisan with a deep animus toward Trump.
I encourage you to read the piece. It is well written and provides an excellent overview of
critical events in the flawed investigation.
Republicans are afraid to raise this key question. Democrats are afraid of even mentioning CrowdStrike in Ukrainegate hearings.
The Deep State wants to suppress this matter entirely.
Alperovisch connections to Ukraine and his Russophobia are well known. Did Alperovich people played the role of "Fancy Bear"? Or
Ukrainian SBU was engaged? George Eliason clams that
"I have already clearly shown the Fancy Bear hackers are Ukrainian Intelligence Operators." ... "Since there is so much crap surrounding
the supposed hack such as law enforcement teams never examining the DNC server or maintaining control of it as evidence, could the hacks
have been a cover-up?"
Notable quotes:
"... So far at least I cannot rule out the possibility that that this could have involved an actual 'false flag' hack. A possible calculation would have been that this could have made it easier for Alperovitch and 'CrowdStrike', if more people had asked serious questions about the evidence they claimed supported the 'narrative' of GRU responsibility. ..."
"... What she suggested was that the FBI had found evidence, after his death, of a hack of Rich's laptop, designed as part of a 'false flag' operation. ..."
"... On this, see his 8 October, 'Motion for Discovery and Motion to Accept Supplemental Evidence' in Clevenger's own case against the DOJ, document 44 on the relevant 'Courtlistener' pages, and his 'Unopposed Motion for Stay', document 48. Both are short, and available without a 'PACER' subscription, and should be compulsory reading for anyone seriously interested in ascertaining the truth about 'Russiagate.' (See https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6775665/clevenger-v-us-department-of-justice/ .) ..."
"... And here, is is also material that he may have had more than one laptop, that 'hard drives' can be changed, and that the level of computer skills that can be found throughout the former Soviet Union is very high. Another matter of some importance is that Ed Butowsky's 'Debunking Rod Wheeler's Claims' site is back up online. (See http://debunkingrodwheelersclaims.net ) ..."
"... The question of whether the 'timeline' produced by Hersh's FBI informant was accurate, or a deliberate attempt to disguise the fact that all kinds of people were well aware of Rich's involvement before his murder, and well aware of the fact of a leak before he was identified as its source, is absolutely central to how one interprets 'Russiagate.' ..."
"... Why did Crowdstrike conclude it was a "Russian breach", when other evidence does show it was an internal download. What was Crowdstrike's method and motivation to reach the "Russian" conclusion instead. Why has that methodology been sealed? ..."
"... Why did Mueller wholly accept the Crowdstrike Russian conclusion, with no further or independent investigation and prominently put this Crowdstrike generated conclusion in his Russiagate report? Which also included the conclusion the "Russians" wanted to help Trump and harm Clinton. Heavy stuff, based upon a DNC proprietary investigation of their own and unavailable computers. ..."
"... What were the relationships between Crowdstrike, DNC, FBI and the Mueller team that conspired to reach this Russian conclusion. ..."
"... Why did the Roger Stone judge, who just sent Stone away for life, refuse Stone's evidentiary demand to ascertain how exactly Crowdstrike reached its Russsian hacking conclusion, that the court then linked to Stone allegedly lying about this Russian link ..."
"... Indeed, let's set out with full transparency the Ukraine -- Crowsdtrike player links and loyalties to see if there are any smoking guns yet undisclosed. Trump was asking for more information about Crowdstrike like a good lawyer - never ask a question when you don't already know the right answer. Crowdstrike is owned by a Ukrainian by birth ..."
"... Among the 12 engineers assigned to writing a PGP backdoor was the son of a KGB officer named Dmitri Alperovich who would go on to be the CTO at a company involved in the DNC Hacking scandal - Crowdstrike. ..."
"... In addition to writing a back door for PGP, Alperovich also ported PGP to the blackberry platform to provide encrypted communications for covert action operatives. ..."
"... His role in what we may define as "converting DNC leak into DNC hack" (I would agree with you that this probably was a false flag operation), which was supposedly designed to implicated Russians, and possibly involved Ukrainian security services, is very suspicious indeed. ..."
"... Mueller treatment of Crowdstrike with "kid gloves" may suggest that Alperovich actions were part of a larger scheme. After all Crowdstike was a FBI contactor at the time. ..."
The favor was for Ukraine to investigate Crowdstrike and the 2016 DNC computer breach.
Reliance on Crowdstrike to investigate the DNC computer, and not an independent FBI investigation, was tied very closely to
the years long anti-Trump Russiagate hoax and waste of US taxpayer time and money.
Why is this issue ignored by both the media and the Democrats. The ladies doth protest far too much.
what exactly, to the extend I recall, could the Ukraine contribute the the DNC's server/"fake malware" troubles? Beyond, that
I seem to vaguely recall, the supposed malware was distributed via an Ukrainan address.
On the other hand, there seems to be the (consensus here?) argument there was no malware breach at all, simply an insider copying
files on a USB stick.
If people discovered there had been a leak, it would perfectly natural that in order to give 'resilience' to their cover-up
strategies, they could have organised a planting of evidence on the servers, in conjunction with elements in Ukraine.
So far at least I cannot rule out the possibility that that this could have involved an actual 'false flag' hack. A possible
calculation would have been that this could have made it easier for Alperovitch and 'CrowdStrike', if more people had asked serious
questions about the evidence they claimed supported the 'narrative' of GRU responsibility.
The issues involved become all the more important, in the light of the progress of Ty Clevenger's attempts to exploit the clear
contradiction between the claims by the FBI, in response to FOIA requests, to have no evidence relating to Seth Rich, and the
remarks by Ms. Deborah Sines quoted by Michael Isikoff.
What she suggested was that the FBI had found evidence, after his death, of a hack of Rich's laptop, designed as part of
a 'false flag' operation.
On this, see his 8 October, 'Motion for Discovery and Motion to Accept Supplemental Evidence' in Clevenger's own case against
the DOJ, document 44 on the relevant 'Courtlistener' pages, and his 'Unopposed Motion for Stay', document 48. Both are short,
and available without a 'PACER' subscription, and should be compulsory reading for anyone seriously interested in ascertaining
the truth about 'Russiagate.' (See
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6775665/clevenger-v-us-department-of-justice/
.)
It is eminently possible that Ms. Hines has simply made an 'unforced error.'
However, I do not – yet – feel able totally to discount the possibility that what is actually at issue is a 'ruse', produced
as a contingency plan to ensure that if it becomes impossible to maintain the cover-up over Rich's involvement in its original
form, his laptop shows 'evidence' compatible with the 'Russiagate' narrative.
And here, is is also material that he may have had more than one laptop, that 'hard drives' can be changed, and that the
level of computer skills that can be found throughout the former Soviet Union is very high. Another matter of some importance
is that Ed Butowsky's 'Debunking Rod Wheeler's Claims' site is back up online. (See
http://debunkingrodwheelersclaims.net )
Looking at it from the perspective of an old television current affairs hack, I do think that, while it is very helpful to
have some key material available in a single place, it would useful if more attention was paid to presentation.
In particular, it would be a most helpful 'teaching aid', if a full and accurate transcript was made of the conversation with
Seymour Hersh which Ed Butowsky covertly recorded. What seems clear is that both these figures ended up in very difficult positions,
and that the latter clearly engaged in 'sleight of hand' in relation to his dealings with the former. That said, the fact that
Butowsky's claims about his grounds for believing that Hersh's FBI informant was Andrew McCabe are clearly disingenuous does not
justify the conclusion that he is wrong.
It is absolutely clear to me – despite what 'TTG', following that 'Grub Street' hack Folkenflik, claimed – that when Hersh
talked to Butowsky, he believed he had been given accurate information. Indeed, I have difficulty seeing how anyone whose eyes
were not hopelessly blinded by prejudice, a\nd possibly fear of where a quest for the truth might lead, could not see that, in
this conversation, both men were telling the truth, as they saw it.
However, all of us, including the finest and most honourable of journalists can, from time to time, fall for disinformation.
(If anyone says they can always spot when they are being played, all I can say is, if you're right, you're clearly Superman, but
it is more likely that you are a fool or knave, if not both.)
The question of whether the 'timeline' produced by Hersh's FBI informant was accurate, or a deliberate attempt to disguise
the fact that all kinds of people were well aware of Rich's involvement before his murder, and well aware of the fact of a leak
before he was identified as its source, is absolutely central to how one interprets 'Russiagate.'
1. Why did Crowdstrike conclude it was a "Russian breach", when other evidence does show it was an internal download. What
was Crowdstrike's method and motivation to reach the "Russian" conclusion instead. Why has that methodology been sealed?
2. Why did Mueller wholly accept the Crowdstrike Russian conclusion, with no further or independent investigation and prominently
put this Crowdstrike generated conclusion in his Russiagate report? Which also included the conclusion the "Russians" wanted to
help Trump and harm Clinton. Heavy stuff, based upon a DNC proprietary investigation of their own and unavailable computers.
3. What were the relationships between Crowdstrike, DNC, FBI and the Mueller team that conspired to reach this Russian
conclusion.
4. Why did the Roger Stone judge, who just sent Stone away for life, refuse Stone's evidentiary demand to ascertain how
exactly Crowdstrike reached its Russsian hacking conclusion, that the court then linked to Stone allegedly lying about this Russian
link .
5. Indeed, let's set out with full transparency the Ukraine -- Crowsdtrike player links and loyalties to see if there are
any smoking guns yet undisclosed. Trump was asking for more information about Crowdstrike like a good lawyer - never ask a question
when you don't already know the right answer. Crowdstrike is owned by a Ukrainian by birth .
Why did Mueller wholly accept the Crowdstrike Russian conclusion, with no further or independent investigation and prominently
put this Crowdstrike generated conclusion in his Russiagate report? Which also included the conclusion the "Russians" wanted
to help Trump and harm Clinton. Heavy stuff, based upon a DNC proprietary investigation of their own and unavailable computers.
Alperovich is really a very suspicious figure. Rumors are that he was involved in compromising PGP while in MacAfee( June 2nd,
2018 Alperovich's DNC Cover Stories Soon To Match With His Hacking Teams - YouTube ):
Investigative Journalist George Webb worked at MacAfee and Network Solutions in 2000 when the CEO Bill Larsen bought a small,
Moscow based, hacking and virus writing company to move to Silicon Valley.
MacAfee also purchased PGP, an open source encryption software developed by privacy advocate to reduce NSA spying on the
public.
The two simultaneous purchase of PGP and the Moscow hacking team by Metwork Solutions was sponsored by the CIA and FBI in order
to crack encrypted communications to write a back door for law enforcement.
Among the 12 engineers assigned to writing a PGP backdoor was the son of a KGB officer named Dmitri Alperovich who would
go on to be the CTO at a company involved in the DNC Hacking scandal - Crowdstrike.
In addition to writing a back door for PGP, Alperovich also ported PGP to the blackberry platform to provide encrypted
communications for covert action operatives.
His role in what we may define as "converting DNC leak into DNC hack" (I would agree with you that this probably was a
false flag operation), which was supposedly designed to implicated Russians, and possibly involved Ukrainian security services,
is very suspicious indeed.
Mueller treatment of Crowdstrike with "kid gloves" may suggest that Alperovich actions were part of a larger scheme. After
all Crowdstike was a FBI contactor at the time.
While all this DNC hack saga is completely unclear due to lack of facts and the access to the evidence, there are some stories
on Internet that indirectly somewhat strengthen your hypothesis:
"... Alperovitch is a nonresident senior fellow of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, which takes a hawkish approach toward Russia. The Council in turn is financed by Google Inc. ..."
"... In a perhaps unexpected development, another Atlantic Council funder is Burisma, the natural gas company at the center of allegations regarding Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Those allegations were the subject of Trump's inquiry with Zelemsky related to Biden. The Biden allegations concern significant questions about Biden's role in Ukraine policy under the Obama administration. This took place during a period when Hunter Biden received $50,000 a month from Burisma. ..."
"... Google, Soros's Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Fund and an agency of the State Department each also finance a self-described investigative journalism organization repeatedly referenced as a source of information in the so-called whistleblower's complaint alleging Trump was "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 presidential race. ..."
"... Another listed OCCRP funder is the Omidyar Network, which is the nonprofit for liberal billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. ..."
"... Together with Soros's Open Society, Omidyar also funds the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which hosts the International Fact-Checking Network that partnered with Facebook to help determine whether news stories are "disputed." ..."
There are common threads that run through an organization repeatedly relied upon in the
so-called whistleblower's complaint about President Donald Trump and CrowdStrike, the outside
firm utilized to conclude that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee's servers
since the DNC would not allow the U.S. government to inspect the servers.
One of several themes is financing tied to Google, whose Google Capital led a $100 million
funding drive that financed Crowdstrike. Google Capital, which now goes by the name of
CapitalG, is an arm of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company. Eric Schmidt, the chairman of
Alphabet, has been a staunch and active supporter of Hillary Clinton and is a longtime donor
to the Democratic Party.
CrowdStrike was mentioned by Trump in his call with Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Perkins Coie, the law firm that represented the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign,
reportedly helped draft CrowdStrike to aid with the DNC's allegedly hacked server.
On behalf of the DNC and Clinton's campaign, Perkins Coie also paid the controversial
Fusion GPS firm to produce the infamous, largely-discredited anti-Trump dossier compiled by
former British spy Christopher Steele.
CrowdStrike is a California-based cybersecurity technology company co-founded by Dmitri
Alperovitch.
Alperovitch is a nonresident senior fellow of the
Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, which takes a hawkish approach toward
Russia. The Council in turn is financed
by Google Inc.
In a perhaps unexpected development, another Atlantic Council
funder is Burisma, the natural gas company at the center of allegations regarding Joe
Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Those allegations were the subject of Trump's inquiry with
Zelemsky related to Biden. The Biden allegations concern significant questions about Biden's
role in Ukraine policy under the Obama administration. This took place during a period when
Hunter Biden received $50,000 a month from Burisma.
Besides Google and Burisma funding, the Council is also financed by billionaire activist
George Soros's Open Society Foundations as well as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc. and
the U.S. State Department.
Google, Soros's Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Fund and an agency of the State
Department each also finance a self-described investigative journalism organization
repeatedly referenced as a source of information in the so-called whistleblower's complaint
alleging Trump was "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign
country" in the 2020 presidential race.
The charges in the July 22 report referenced in the whistleblower's document and released
by the Google and Soros-funded organization, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting
Project (OCCRP), seem to be the public precursors for a lot of the so-called whistleblower's
own claims, as Breitbart News
documented .
One key section of the so-called whistleblower's document claims that "multiple U.S.
officials told me that Mr. Giuliani had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of
other Zelensky advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the
Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov."
This was allegedly to follow up on Trump's call with Zelensky in order to discuss the
"cases" mentioned in that call, according to the so-called whistleblower's narrative. The
complainer was clearly referencing Trump's request for Ukraine to investigate the Biden
corruption allegations.
Even though the statement was written in first person – "multiple U.S. officials
told me" – it contains a footnote referencing a report by the Organized Crime and
Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
That footnote reads:
In a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) on
22 July, two associates of Mr. Giuliani reportedly traveled to Kyiv in May 2019 and met
with Mr. Bakanov and another close Zelensky adviser, Mr. Serhiy Shefir.
The so-called whistleblower's account goes on to rely upon that same OCCRP report on three
more occasions. It does so to:
Write that Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko
"also stated that he wished to communicate directly with Attorney General Barr on these
matters." Document that Trump adviser Rudi Giuliani "had spoken in late 2018 to former
Prosecutor General Shokin, in a Skype call arranged by two associates of Mr. Giuliani."
Bolster the charge that, "I also learned from a U.S. official that 'associates' of Mr.
Giuliani were trying to make contact with the incoming Zelenskyy team." The so-called
whistleblower then relates in another footnote, "I do not know whether these associates of
Mr. Giuliani were the same individuals named in the 22 July report by OCCRP, referenced
above."
The OCCRP
report repeatedly referenced is actually a "joint investigation by the Organized Crime
and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and BuzzFeed News, based on interviews and court and
business records in the United States and Ukraine."
BuzzFeed infamously also first
published the full anti-Trump dossier alleging unsubstantiated collusion between Trump's
presidential campaign and Russia. The dossier was paid for by Hillary Clinton's campaign and
the Democratic National Committee and was produced by the Fusion GPS opposition dirt
outfit.
The OCCRP and BuzzFeed "joint investigation" resulted in both OCCRP and BuzzFeed
publishing similar lengthy pieces on July 22 claiming that Giuliani was attempting to use
connections to have Ukraine investigate Trump's political rivals.
The so-called whistleblower's document, however, only mentions the largely unknown OCCRP
and does not reference BuzzFeed, which has faced scrutiny over its reporting on the Russia
collusion claims.
Another listed OCCRP funder is the Omidyar Network, which is the nonprofit for liberal
billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
Together with Soros's Open Society, Omidyar also
funds the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which hosts the International
Fact-Checking Network that partnered with Facebook to help determine whether news stories are
"disputed."
Like OCCRP, the Poynter Institute's so-called news fact-checking project is openly
funded by not only Soros' Open Society Foundations but also Google and the National
Endowment for Democracy.
CrowdStrike and DNC servers
CrowdStrike, meanwhile, was brought up by Trump in his phone call with Zelensky. According to the transcript, Trump told Zelensky, "I would like you to find out what
happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike I guess you have one of
your wealthy people The server, they say Ukraine has it."
In his extensive
report , Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller notes that his investigative team did not
"obtain or examine" the servers of the DNC in determining whether those servers were hacked
by Russia.
The DNC famously refused to allow the FBI to access its servers to verify the allegation
that Russia carried out a hack during the 2016 presidential campaign. Instead, the DNC
reached an arrangement with the FBI in which CrowdStrike conducted forensics on the server
and shared details with the FBI.
In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in January 2017, then-FBI Director
James Comey
confirmed that the FBI registered "multiple requests at different levels," to review the
DNC's hacked servers. Ultimately, the DNC and FBI came to an agreement in which a "highly
respected private company" -- a reference to CrowdStrike -- would carry out forensics on the
servers and share any information that it discovered with the FBI, Comey testified.
A senior law enforcement official stressed the importance of the FBI gaining direct access
to the servers, a request that was denied by the DNC.
"The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to
servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been
mitigated," the official was quoted by the news media as saying.
"This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information. These actions
caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier," the
official continued.
... ... ...
Aaron Klein is Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter.
He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, "
Aaron Klein Investigative
Radio ." Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
Joshua Klein contributed research to this article.
Russians did not hack the DNC system, a Russian named Dmitri Alperovitch is the hacker
and he works for President Obama. In the last five years the Obama administration has
turned exclusively to one Russian to solve every major cyber-attack in America, whether the
attack was on the U.S. government or a corporation. Only one "super-hero cyber-warrior" seems
to "have the codes" to figure out "if" a system was hacked and by "whom."
Dmitri's company, CrowdStrike has been called in by Obama to solve mysterious attacks on
many high level government agencies and American corporations, including: German Bundestag,
Democratic National Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the White
House, the State Department, SONY, and many others.
CrowdStrike's philosophy is: "You don't have a malware problem; you have an adversary
problem."
CrowdStrike has played a critical role in the development of America's cyber-defense policy.
Dmitri Alperovitch and George Kurtz, a former head of the FBI cyberwarfare unit founded
CrowdStrike. Shawn Henry, former executive assistant director at the FBI is now CrowdStrike's
president of services. The company is crawling with former U.S. intelligence agents.
Before Alperovitch founded CrowdStrike in 2011, he was working in Atlanta as the chief
threat officer at the antivirus software firm McAfee, owned by Intel (a DARPA company). During
that time, he "discovered" the Chinese had compromised at least seventy-one companies and
organizations, including thirteen defense contractors, three electronics firms, and the
International Olympic Committee. He was the only person to notice the biggest cyberattack in
history! Nothing suspicious about that.
Alperovitch and the DNC
After CrowdStrike was hired as an independent "vendor" by the DNC to investigate a possible
cyberattack on their system, Alperovitch sent the DNC a proprietary software package called
Falcon that monitors the networks of its clients in real time. According to Alperovitch,
Falcon "lit up," within ten seconds of being installed at the DNC. Alperovitch had his
"proof" in TEN SECONDS that Russia was in the network. This "alleged" evidence of Russian
hacking has yet to be shared with anyone.
As Donald Trump has pointed out, the FBI, the agency that should have been immediately
involved in hacking that effects "National Security," has yet to even examine the DNC system to
begin an investigation. Instead, the FBI and 16 other U.S. "intelligence" agencies simply
"agree" with Obama's most trusted "cyberwarfare" expert Dmitri Alperovitch's "TEN SECOND"
assessment that produced no evidence to support the claim.
Also remember that it is only Alperovitch and CrowdStrike that claim to have evidence
that it was Russian hackers . In fact, only two hackers were found to have been in the
system and were both identified by Alperovitch as Russian FSB (CIA) and the Russian GRU (DoD).
It is only Alperovitch who claims that he knows that it is Putin behind these two hackers.
Alperovitch failed to mention in his conclusive "TEN SECOND" assessment that Guccifer 2.0
had already hacked the DNC and made available to the public the documents he hacked –
before Alperovitch did his ten second assessment. Alperovitch reported that no other hackers
were found, ignoring the fact that Guccifer 2.0 had already hacked and released DNC documents
to the public. Alperovitch's assessment also goes directly against Julian Assange's repeated
statements that the DNC leaks did not come from the Russians.
The ridiculously fake cyber-attack assessment done by Alperovitch and CrowdStrike
naïvely flies in the face of the fact that a DNC insider admitted that he had released the
DNC documents. Julian Assange implied in an interview that the murdered Democratic
National Committee staffer, Seth Rich, was the source of a trove of damaging emails the website
posted just days before the party's convention. Seth was on his way to testify about the DNC
leaks to the FBI when he was shot dead in the street.
It is also absurd to hear Alperovitch state that the Russian FSB (equivalent to the CIA) had
been monitoring the DNC site for over a year and had done nothing. No attack, no theft, and no
harm was done to the system by this "false-flag cyber-attack" on the DNC – or at least,
Alperovitch "reported" there was an attack. The second hacker, the supposed Russian military
(GRU – like the U.S. DoD) hacker, had just entered the system two weeks before and also
had done "nothing" but observe.
It is only Alperovitch's word that reports that the Russian FSB was "looking for files on
Donald Trump."
It is only this false claim that spuriously ties Trump to the "alleged"
attack. It is also only Alperovitch who believes that this hack that was supposedly "looking
for Trump files" was an attempt to "influence" the election. No files were found about Trump by
the second hacker, as we know from Wikileaks and Guccifer 2.0's leaks. To confabulate that
"Russian's hacked the DNC to influence the elections" is the claim of one well-known Russian
spy. Then, 17 U.S. intelligence agencies unanimously confirm that Alperovitch is correct
– even though there is no evidence and no investigation was ever conducted .
How does Dmitri Alperovitch have such power? Why did Obama again and again use Alperovitch's
company, CrowdStrike, when they have miserably failed to stop further cyber-attacks on the
systems they were hired to protect? Why should anyone believe CrowdStrikes false-flag
report?
After documents from the DNC continued to leak, and Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks made
CrowdStrike's report look foolish, Alperovitch decided the situation was far worse than he had
reported. He single-handedly concluded that the Russians were conducting an "influence
operation" to help win the election for Trump . This false assertion had absolutely no
evidence to back it up.
On July 22, three days before the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, WikiLeaks dumped a
massive cache of emails that had been "stolen" (not hacked) from the DNC. Reporters soon found
emails suggesting that the DNC leadership had favored Hillary Clinton in her primary race
against Bernie Sanders, which led Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair, along with three
other officials, to resign.
Just days later, it was discovered that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
(DCCC) had been hacked. CrowdStrike was called in again and once again, Alperovitch immediately
"believed" that Russia was responsible. A lawyer for the DCCC gave Alperovitch permission to
confirm the leak and to name Russia as the suspected author. Two weeks later, files from the
DCCC began to appear on Guccifer 2.0's website. This time Guccifer released information about
Democratic congressional candidates who were running close races in Florida, Ohio, Illinois,
and Pennsylvania. On August 12, Guccifer went further, publishing a spreadsheet that included
the personal email addresses and phone numbers of nearly two hundred Democratic members of
Congress.
Once again, Guccifer 2.0 proved Alperovitch and CrowdStrike's claims to be grossly incorrect
about the hack originating from Russia, with Putin masterminding it all. Nancy Pelosi offered
members of Congress Alperovitch's suggestion of installing Falcon , the system that
failed to stop cyberattacks at the DNC, on all congressional laptops.
Key Point: Once Falcon was installed on the computers of members of the U.S.
Congress, CrowdStrike had even further full access into U.S. government accounts.
Alperovitch's "Unbelievable" History
Dmitri was born in 1980 in Moscow where his father, Michael, was a nuclear physicist, (so
Dmitri claims). Dmitri's father was supposedly involved at the highest levels of Russian
nuclear science. He also claims that his father taught him to write code as a child.
In 1990, his father was sent to Maryland as part of a nuclear-safety training program for
scientists. In 1994, Michael Alperovitch was granted a visa to Canada, and a year later the
family moved to Chattanooga, where Michael took a job with the Tennessee Valley Authority.
While Dmitri Alperovitch was still in high school, he and his father started an
encryption-technology business. Dmitri studied computer science at Georgia Tech and went on to
work at an antispam software firm. It was at this time that he realized that cyber-defense was
more about psychology than it was about technology. A very odd thing to conclude.
Dmitri Alperovitch posed as a "Russian gangster" on spam discussion forums which brought his
illegal activity to the attention of the FBI – as a criminal. In 2005, Dmitri flew to
Pittsburgh to meet an FBI agent named Keith Mularski, who had been asked to lead an undercover
operation against a vast Russian credit-card-theft syndicate. Alperovitch worked closely with
Mularski's sting operation which took two years, but it ultimately brought about fifty-six
arrests. Dmitri Alperovitch then became a pawn of the FBI and CIA.
In 2010, while he was at McAfee, the head of cybersecurity at Google told Dmitri that Gmail
accounts belonging to human-rights activists in China had been breached. Google suspected the
Chinese government. Alperovitch found that the breach was unprecedented in scale; it affected
more than a dozen of McAfee's clients and involved the Chinese government. Three days after his
supposed discovery, Alperovitch was on a plane to Washington where he had been asked to vet a
paragraph in a speech by the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.
2014, Sony called in CrowdStrike to investigate a breach of its network. Alperovitch needed
just "two hours" to identify North Korea as the adversary. Executives at Sony asked Alperovitch
to go public with the information immediately, but it took the FBI another three weeks before
it confirmed the attribution.
Alperovitch then developed a list of "usual suspects" who were well-known hackers who had
identifiable malware that they commonly used. Many people use the same malware and
Alperovitch's obsession with believing he has the only accurate list of hackers in the world is
plain idiocy exacerbated by the U.S. government's belief in his nonsense. Alperovitch even
speaks like a "nut-case" in his personal Twitters, which generally have absolutely no
references to the technology he is supposedly the best at in the entire world.
Dmitri – Front Man for His Father's Russian Espionage Mission
After taking a close look at the disinformation around Dmitri and his father, it is clear to
see that Michael Alperovitch became a CIA operative during his first visit to America.
Upon his return to Russia, he stole the best Russian encryption codes that were used to protect
the top-secret work of nuclear physics in which his father is alleged to have been a major
player. Upon surrendering the codes to the CIA when he returned to Canada, the CIA made it
possible for a Russian nuclear scientist to become an American citizen overnight and gain a
top-secret security clearance to work at the Oakridge plant, one of the most secure and
protected nuclear facilities in America . Only the CIA can transform a Russian into an
American with a top-secret clearance overnight.
We can see on Michael Alperovitch's Linked In page that he went from one fantastically
top-secret job to the next without a break from the time he entered America. He seemed to be on
a career path to work in every major U.S. agency in America. In every job he was hired as the
top expert in the field and the leader of the company. All of these jobs after the first one
were in cryptology, not nuclear physics. As a matter of fact, Michael became the top expert in
America overnight and has stayed the top expert to this day.
Most of the work of cyber-security is creating secure interactions on a non-secure system
like the Internet. The cryptologist who assigns the encryption codes controls the system
from that point on .
Key Point: Cryptologists are well known for leaving a "back-door" in the base-code so
that they can always have over-riding control.
Michael Alperovitch essentially has the "codes" for all Department of Defense sites, the
Treasury, the State Department, cell-phones, satellites, and public media . There is hardly
any powerful agency or company that he has not written the "codes" for. One might ask, why do
American companies and the U.S. government use his particular codes? What are so special about
Michael's codes?
Stolen Russian Codes
In December, Obama ordered the U.S. military to conduct cyberattacks against Russia in
retaliation for the alleged DNC hacks. All of the attempts to attack Russia's military and
intelligence agencies failed miserably. Russia laughed at Obama's attempts to hack their
systems. Even the Russian companies targeted by the attacks were not harmed by Obama's
cyber-attacks. Hardly any news of these massive and embarrassing failed cyber-attacks were
reported by the Main Stream Media. The internet has been scrubbed clean of the reports that
said Russia's cyber-defenses were impenetrable due to the sophistication of their encryption
codes.
Michael Alperovitch was in possession of those impenetrable codes when he was a top
scientist in Russia. It was these very codes that he shared with the CIA on his first trip
to America . These codes got him spirited into America and "turned into" the best
cryptologist in the world. Michael is simply using the effective codes of Russia to design
his codes for the many systems he has created in America for the CIA .
KEY POINT: It is crucial to understand at this junction that the CIA is not solely working
for America . The CIA works for itself and there are three branches to the CIA – two of
which are hostile to American national interests and support globalism.
Michael and Dmitri Alperovitch work for the CIA (and international intelligence
corporations) who support globalism . They, and the globalists for whom they work, are
not friends of America or Russia. It is highly likely that the criminal activities of Dmitri,
which were supported and sponsored by the FBI, created the very hackers who he often claims are
responsible for cyberattacks. None of these supposed "attackers" have ever been found or
arrested; they simply exist in the files of CrowdStrike and are used as the "usual culprits"
when the FBI or CIA calls in Dmitri to give the one and only opinion that counts. Only Dmitri's
"suspicions" are offered as evidence and yet 17 U.S. intelligence agencies stand behind the
CrowdStrike report and Dmitri's suspicions.
Michael Alperovitch – Russian Spy with the Crypto-Keys
Essentially, Michael Alperovitch flies under the false-flag of being a cryptologist who
works with PKI. A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a system for the creation, storage, and
distribution of digital certificates which are used to
verify that a particular public key belongs to a certain entity. The PKI creates digital
certificates which map public keys to entities, securely stores these certificates in a central
repository and revokes them if needed. Public key cryptography is a
cryptographic
technique that enables entities to securely communicate on an insecure
public network (the Internet), and reliably verify the identity of an entity via digital signatures .
Digital signatures use Certificate Authorities to digitally sign and publish the public key
bound to a given user. This is done using the CIA's own private key, so that trust in the user
key relies on one's trust in the validity of the CIA's key. Michael Alperovitch is
considered to be the number one expert in America on PKI and essentially controls the
market .
Michael's past is clouded in confusion and lies. Dmitri states that his father was a nuclear
physicist and that he came to America the first time in a nuclear based shared program between
America and Russia. But if we look at his current personal Linked In page, Michael claims he
has a Master Degree in Applied Mathematics from Gorky State University. From 1932 to 1956, its
name was State University of Gorky. Now it is known as Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni
Novgorod – National Research University (UNN), also known as Lobachevsky University. Does
Michael not even know the name of the University he graduated from? And when does a person with
a Master's Degree become a leading nuclear physicist who comes to "visit" America. In Michael's
Linked In page there is a long list of his skills and there is no mention of nuclear
physics.
Also on Michael Alperovitch's Linked In page we find some of his illustrious history that
paints a picture of either the most brilliant mind in computer security, encryption, and
cyberwarfare, or a CIA/FBI backed Russian spy. Imagine that out of all the people in the world
to put in charge of the encryption keys for the Department of Defense, the U.S. Treasury, U.S.
military satellites, the flow of network news, cell phone encryption, the Pathfire (media control)
Program, the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Global Information Grid, and TriCipher
Armored Credential System among many others, the government hires a Russian spy . Go
figure.
Michael Alperovitch's Linked In Page
Education:
Gorky State University, Russia, MS in Applied Mathematics
VT
IDirect -2014 – Designing security architecture for satellite communications
including cryptographic protocols, authentication.
Principal SME (Contractor)
DISA
-Defense Information Systems Agency (Manager of the Global Information Grid) – 2012-2014
– Worked on PKI and identity management projects for DISA utilizing Elliptic Curve
Cryptography. Performed application security and penetration testing.
Technical Lead (Contractor)
U.S.
Department of the Treasury – 2011 – Designed enterprise validation service
architecture for PKI certificate credentials with Single Sign On authentication.
Comtech Mobile
Datacom – 2007-2010 – Subject matter expert on latest information security
practices, including authentication, encryption and key management.
BellSouth – 2003-2006 – Designed and built server-side Jabber-based messaging
platform with Single Sign On authentication.
Principal Software Research Engineer
Pathfire – 2001-2002
– Designed and developed Digital Rights Management Server for Video on Demand and content
distribution applications. Pathfire provides digital media distribution and management
solutions to the television, media, and entertainment industries. The company offers Digital
Media Gateway, a digital IP store-and-forward platform, delivering news stories, syndicated
programming, advertising spots, and video news releases to broadcasters. It provides solutions
for content providers and broadcasters, as well as station solutions.
Obama – No Friend of America
Obama is no friend of America in the war against cyber-attacks. The very agencies and
departments being defended by Michael Alperovitch's "singular and most brilliant" ability to
write encryption codes have all been successfully attacked and compromised since Michael set up
the codes. But we shouldn't worry, because if there is a cyberattack in the Obama
administration, Michael's son Dmitri is called in to "prove" that it isn't the fault of his
father's codes. It was the "damn Russians", or even "Putin himself" who attacked American
networks.
Not one of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies is capable of figuring out a successful
cyberattack against America without Michael and Dmitri's help. Those same 17 U.S. intelligence
agencies were not able to effectively launch a successful cyberattack against Russia. It seems
like the Russian's have strong codes and America has weak codes. We can thank Michael and
Dmitri Alperovitch for that.
It is clear that there was no DNC hack beyond Guccifer 2.0. Dmitri Alperovitch is a
"frontman" for his father's encryption espionage mission.
Is it any wonder that Trump says that he has "his own people" to deliver his intelligence
to him that is outside of the infiltrated U.S. government intelligence agencies and the Obama
administration ? Isn't any wonder that citizens have to go anywhere BUT the MSM to find
real news or that the new administration has to go to independent news to get good intel?
It is hard to say anything more damnable than to again quote Dmitri on these very
issues: "If someone steals your keys to encrypt the data, it doesn't matter how secure the
algorithms are." Dmitri Alperovitch, founder of CrowdStrike
"... And RUH8 is allied with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike. ..."
"... Russia was probably not one of the hacking groups. The willful destruction of evidence by the DNC themselves probably points to Russia not being one of the those groups. The DNC wouldn't destroy evidence that supported their position. Also, government spy agencies keep info like that closely held. They might leak out tidbits, but they don't do wholesale dumps, like, ever. ..."
"... That's what the DNC is lying about. Not that hacks happened (they undoubtedly did), but about who did them (probably not Russian gov), and if hacks mattered (they didn't since everything was getting leaked anyway). ..."
"... The DNC/Mueller/etc are lying, but like most practiced liars they're mixing the lies with half-truths and unrelated facts to muddy the waters: ..."
"... An interesting question is, since it's basically guaranteed the DNC got hacked, but probably not by the Russians, is, what groups did hack the DNC, and why did the DNC scramble madly to hide their identities? ..."
"... And while you think about that question, consider the close parallel with the Awan case, where Dems were ostensibly the victims, but they again scrambled to cover up for the people who supposedly harmed them. level 2 ..."
"... DNC wasn't even hacked. Emails were leaked. They didn't even examine the server. Any "evidence" produced is spoofable from CIA cybertools that we know about from wikileaks. It's important to know how each new lie is a lie. But man I am just so done with all this Russia shit. level 2 ..."
"... Crowdstrike claims that malware was found on DNC server. I agree that this has nothing to do with the Wikileaks releases. What I am wondering is whether Crowdstrike may have arranged for the DNC to be hacked so that Russia could be blamed. Continue this thread level 1 ..."
"... George Eliason promises additional essays: *The next articles, starting with one about Fancy Bear's hot/cold ongoing relationship with Bellingcat which destroys the JIT investigation, will showcase the following: Fancy Bear worked with Bellingcat and the Ukrainian government providing Information War material as evidence for MH17: ..."
"... Fancy Bear is an inside unit of the Atlantic Council and their Digital Forensics Lab ..."
Cyberanalyst George Eliason has written some intriguing blogs recently claiming that the
"Fancy Bear" which hacked the DNC server in mid-2016 was in fact a branch of Ukrainian intelligence linked to the Atlantic
Council and Crowdstrike. I invite you to have a go at one of his recent essays:
Since I am not very computer savvy and don't know much about the world of hackers - added
to the fact that Eliason's writing is too cute and convoluted - I have difficulty navigating Eliason's thought. Nonetheless,
here is what I can make of Eliasons' claims, as supported by independent literature:
Russian hacker Konstantin Kozlovsky, in Moscow court filings, has claimed that he did the
DNC hack – and can prove it, because he left some specific code on the DNC server.
Kozlovsky states that he did so by order of Dimitry Dokuchaev (formerly of the FSB, and
currently in prison in Russia on treason charges) who works with the Russian traitor hacker group Shaltai Boltai.
According to Eliason, Shaltai Boltai works in collaboration with the Ukrainian hacker group
RUH8, a group of neo-Nazis (Privat Sektor) who are affiliated with Ukrainian intelligence.
And RUH8 is allied with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike.
Cyberexpert Jeffrey Carr has stated that RUH8 has the X-Agent malware which our
intelligence community has erroneously claimed is possessed only by Russian intelligence, and used by "Fancy Bear".
This might help explain why Adam Carter has determined that some of the malware found on
the DNC server was compiled AFTER Crowdstrike was working on the DNC server – Crowdstrike was in collusion with Fancy Bear
(RUH8).
In other words, Crowdstrike likely arranged for a
hack by Ukrainian intelligence that they could then attribute to Russia.
As far as I can tell, none of this is pertinent to how Wikileaks obtained their DNC emails,
which most likely were leaked.
How curious that our Deep State and the recent Mueller indictment have had nothing to say
about Kozlovsky's confession - whom I tend to take seriously because he offers a simple way to confirm his claim. Also
interesting that the FBI has shown no interest in looking at the DNC server to check whether Kozlovsky's code is there.
Its worth noting that Dimitri Alperovich's (Crowdstrike) hatred of Putin is
second only to Hillary's hatred for taking responsibility for her actions.
level 1
Thanks - I'll continue to follow Eliason's work. The thesis that Ukrainian
intelligence is hacking a number of targets so that Russia gets blamed for it has intuitive appeal.
level 1
and have to cringe.
Any hacks weren't related to Wikileaks, who got their info from leakers, but
that is not the same thing as no hack. Leaks and hacks aren't mutually exclusive. They actually occur together
pretty commonly.
DNC's security was utter shit. Systems with shit security and obviously
valuable info usually get hacked by multiple groups. In the case of the DNC, Hillary's email servers, etc.,
it's basically impossible they weren't hacked by dozens of intruders. A plastic bag of 100s will not sit
untouched on a NYC street corner for 4 weeks. Not. fucking. happening.
Interestingly, Russia was probably not
one of the hacking groups. The willful destruction of evidence by the DNC themselves probably points to Russia
not being one of the those groups. The DNC wouldn't destroy evidence that supported their position. Also,
government spy agencies keep info like that closely held. They might leak out tidbits, but they don't do
wholesale dumps, like, ever.
That's
what the DNC is lying about.
Not that hacks
happened
(they undoubtedly did), but about
who
did them (probably not Russian gov), and if hacks mattered
(they didn't since everything was getting leaked anyway).
The DNC/Mueller/etc are lying, but like most practiced liars they're mixing
the lies with half-truths and unrelated facts to muddy the waters:
Any "evidence" produced is spoofable from CIA cybertools
Yes, but that spoofed 'evidence' is not the direct opposite of the truth,
like I see people assuming. Bad assumption, and the establishment plays on that to make critic look bad. The
spoofed evidence is just mud.
An interesting question is, since it's basically guaranteed the DNC got
hacked, but probably not by the Russians, is, what groups
did
hack the
DNC, and why did the DNC scramble madly to hide their identities?
And while you think about that question, consider the close parallel with
the Awan case, where Dems were ostensibly the victims, but they again scrambled to cover up for the people who
supposedly harmed them.
level 2
What's hilarious about the 2 down-votes is I can't tell if their from
pro-Russiagate trolls, or from people who who can't get past binary thinking.
level 1
DNC wasn't even hacked. Emails were leaked. They didn't even examine the
server.
Any "evidence" produced is spoofable from CIA cybertools that we know about
from wikileaks. It's important to know how each new lie is a lie. But man I am just so done
with all this Russia shit.
level 2
Crowdstrike claims that malware was found on DNC server. I agree that this
has nothing to do with the Wikileaks releases. What I am wondering is whether Crowdstrike may have arranged for
the DNC to be hacked so that Russia could be blamed.
Continue this thread
level 1
George Eliason promises additional essays: *The next articles, starting with one about Fancy Bear's hot/cold ongoing
relationship with Bellingcat which destroys the JIT investigation, will showcase the following: Fancy Bear worked with Bellingcat and the Ukrainian government providing
Information War material as evidence for MH17:
Fancy Bear is an inside unit of the Atlantic Council and their Digital
Forensics Lab
Fancy Bear worked with Crowdstrike and Dimitri Alperovich Fancy Bear is
Ukrainian Intelligence
How Fancy Bear tried to sway the US election for Team Hillary
Fancy Bear worked against US Intel gathering by providing consistently
fraudulent data
Fancy Bear contributed to James Clapper's January 2017 ODNI Report on Fancy
Bear and Russian Influence. [You really can't make this shit up.]
Fancy Bear had access to US government secure servers while working as
foreign spies.*
level 1
Fancy Bear (also know as Strontium Group, or APT28) is a Ukrainian cyber espionage group. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike incorrectly has said
with a medium level of confidence that it is associated with the Russian military intelligence
agency GRU . CrowdStrike
founder,
Dmitri Alperovitch , has colluded with Fancy Bear. American journalist
George Eliason has written extensively on the subject.
There are a couple of caveats that need to be made when identifying the Fancy Bear hackers.
The first is the identifier used by Mueller as Russian FSB and GRU may have been true- 10 years
ago. This group was on the run trying to stay a step ahead of Russian law enforcement until
October 2016. So we have part of the Fancy bear hacking group identified as Ruskie traitors and
possibly former Russian state security. The majority of the group are Ukrainians making up
Ukraine's Cyber Warfare groups.
Eliason lives and works in Donbass. He has been interviewed by and provided analysis for RT,
the BBC , and Press-TV. His
articles have been published in the Security Assistance Monitor, Washingtons Blog, OpedNews,
the Saker, RT, Global Research, and RINF, and the Greanville Post among others. He has been
cited and republished by various academic blogs including Defending History, Michael Hudson,
SWEDHR, Counterpunch, the Justice Integrity Project, among others.
Fancy Bear is Ukrainian IntelligenceShaltai Boltai
The "Fancy Bear hackers" may have been given the passwords to get into the servers at the
DNC because they were part of the Team Clinton opposition research team. It was part of their
job.
According to Politico ,
"In an interview this month, at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing
ethnic communities -- including Ukrainian-Americans -- she said that, when Trump's unlikely
presidential campaign. Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev
and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private
intelligence operatives. While her consulting work began surging in late 2015, she began
focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump's ties to Russia, as well."
[1]
The only investigative journalists, government officials, and private intelligence
operatives that work together in 2014-2015-2016 Ukraine are Shaltai Boltai, CyberHunta, Ukraine
Cyber Alliance, and the Ministry of Information.
All of these hacking and information operation groups work for Andrea
Chalupa with EuroMaidanPR and Irena
Chalupa at the Atlantic Council. Both Chalupa sisters work directly with the Ukrainian
government's intelligence and propaganda arms.
Since 2014 in Ukraine, these are the only OSINT, hacking, Intel, espionage , terrorist , counter-terrorism, cyber, propaganda , and info war channels
officially recognized and directed by Ukraine's Information Ministry. Along with their American
colleagues, they populate the hit-for-hire website Myrotvorets with people who stand against
Ukraine's criminal activities.
The hackers, OSINT, Cyber, spies, terrorists, etc. call themselves volunteers to keep safe
from State level retaliation, even though a child can follow the money. As volunteers motivated
by politics and patriotism they are protected to a degree from retribution.
They don't claim State sponsorship or governance and the level of attack falls below the
threshold of military action. Special Counsel Robert Mueller had a lot of latitude for
making the attribution Russian, even though the attacks came from Ukrainian Intelligence. Based
on how the rules of the Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber are
written, because the few members of the coalition from Shaltai Boltai are Russian in
nationality, Fancy Bear can be attributed as a Russian entity for the purposes of retribution.
The caveat is if the attribution is proven wrong, the US will be liable for damages caused to
the State which in this case is Russia.
How large is the Fancy Bear unit? According to their propaganda section InformNapalm, they
have the ability to research and work in over 30 different languages.
This can be considered an Information Operation against the people of the United States and
of course Russia. After 2013, Shaltay Boltay was no longer physically available to work for
Russia. The Russian hackers were in Ukraine working for the Ukrainian government's Information
Ministry which is in charge of the cyber war. They were in Ukraine until October 2016 when they
were tricked to return to Moscow and promptly arrested for treason.
From all this information we know the Russian component of Team Fancy Bear is Shaltai
Boltai. We know the Ukrainian Intel component is called CyberHunta and Ukraine Cyber Alliance
which includes the hacker group RUH8. We know both groups work/ worked for Ukrainian
Intelligence. We know they are grouped with InformNapalm which is Ukraine's OSINT unit. We know
their manager is a Ukrainian named Kristina Dobrovolska. And lastly, all of the above work
directly with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike's Dimitry Alperovich.
In short, the Russian-Ukrainian partnership that became Fancy Bear started in late 2013 to
very early 2014 and ended in October 2016 in what appears to be a squabble over the alleged
data from the Surkov leak.
But during 2014, 2015, and 2016 Shaltai Boltai, the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance, and CyberHunta
went to work for the DNC as opposition researchers .
The
First Time Shaltai Boltai was Handed the Keys to US Gov Servers
The setup to this happened long before the partnership with Ukrainian Intel hackers and
Russia's Shaltai Boltai was forged. The hack that gained access to US top-secret servers
happened just after the partnership was cemented after Euro-Maidan.
In August 2009 Hillary Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff at the State Department Huma Abedin
sent the passwords to her Government laptop to her Yahoo mail account. On August 16, 2010,
Abedin received an email titled "Re: Your yahoo account. We can see where this is going, can't
we?
"After Abedin sent an unspecified number of sensitive emails to her Yahoo account, half a
billion Yahoo accounts were hacked by Russian cybersecurity expert and Russian intelligence
agent, Igor Sushchin, in 2014. The hack, one of the largest in history, allowed Sushchin's
associates to access email accounts into 2015 and 2016."
Igor Sushchin was part of the Shaltai Boltai hacking group that is charged with the Yahoo
hack.
The time frame has to be noted. The hack happened in 2014. Access to the email accounts
continued through 2016. The Ukrainian Intel partnership was already blossoming and Shaltai
Boltai was working from Kiev, Ukraine.
So when we look at the INFRASTRUCTURE HACKS, WHITE HOUSE HACKS, CONGRESS, start with looking
at the time frame. Ukraine had the keys already in hand in 2014.
Alexandra
Chalupa hired this particular hacking terrorist group, which Dimitry Alperovich and
Crowdstrike dubbed "Fancy Bear", in 2015 at the latest. While the Ukrainian hackers worked for
the DNC, Fancy Bear had to send in progress reports, turn in research, and communicate on the
state of the projects they were working on. Let's face it, once you're in, setting up your
Fancy Bear toolkit doesn't get any easier. This is why I said the DNC hack isn't the big crime.
It's a big con and all the parties were in on it.
Hillary Clinton exposed secrets to hacking threats by using private email instead of secured
servers. Given the information provided she was probably being monitored by our intrepid
Ruskie-Ukie union made in hell hackers. Anthony Weiner exposed himself and his wife
Huma Abedin using
Weiner's computer for top-secret State Department emails. And of course Huma Abedin exposed
herself along with her top-secret passwords at Yahoo and it looks like the hackers the DNC hired to
do opposition research hacked her.
Here's a question. Did Huma Abedin have Hillary Clinton's passwords for her private email
server? It would seem logical given her position with Clinton at the State Department and
afterward. This means that Hillary Clinton and the US government top secret servers were most
likely compromised by Fancy Bear before the DNC and Team Clinton hired them by using legitimate
passwords.
Dobrovolska
Hillary Clinton retained State Dept. top secret clearance passwords for 6 of her former
staff from 2013 through prepping for the 2016 election. [2][3] Alexandra Chalupa was
running a research department that is rich in (foreign) Ukrainian Intelligence operatives,
hackers, terrorists, and a couple Ruskie traitors.
Kristina Dobrovolska was acting as a handler and translator for the US State Department in
2016. She is the Fancy Bear *opposition researcher handler manager. Kristina goes to Washington
to meet with Chalupa.
Alexandra types in her password to show Dobrovolska something she found and her eager to
please Ukrainian apprentice finds the keystrokes are seared into her memory. She tells the
Fancy Bear crew about it and they immediately get to work looking for Trump material on the US
secret servers with legitimate access. I mean, what else could they do with this? Turn over
sensitive information to the ever corrupt Ukrainian government?
According to the Politico article, Alexandra Chalupa was meeting with the Ukrainian embassy
in June of 2016 to discuss getting more help sticking it to candidate Trump. At the same time
she was meeting, the embassy had a reception that highlighted female Ukrainian leaders.
Four Verkhovna Rada [parlaiment] deputies there for the event included: Viktoriia Y.
Ptashnyk, Anna A. Romanova, Alyona I. Shkrum, and Taras T. Pastukh. [4]
According to CNN ,
[5] DNC sources said Chalupa
told DNC operatives the Ukrainian government would be willing to deliver damaging information
against Trump's campaign. Later, Chalupa would lead the charge to try to unseat president-elect
Trump starting on Nov 10, 2016.
Accompanying them Kristina Dobrovolska who was a U.S. Embassy-assigned government liaison
and translator who escorted the delegates from Kyiv during their visits to Albany and
Washington.
Kristina Dobrovolska is the handler manager working with Ukraine's DNC Fancy Bear Hackers.
[6] She took the Rada
[parliament] members to dinner to meet Joel Harding who designed Ukraine's infamous Information
Policy which opened up their kill-for-hire-website Myrotvorets. Then she took them to meet the
Ukrainian Diaspora leader doing the hiring. Nestor Paslawsky is the surviving nephew to the
infamous torturer The WWII OUNb leader, Mykola Lebed.
Fancy Bear's Second Chance at Top
Secret Passwords From Team Clinton
One very successful method of hacking is called
social engineering . You gain access to the office space and any related properties and
physically locate the passwords or clues to get you into the hardware you want to hack. This
includes something as simple as looking over the shoulder of the person typing in
passwords.
The Fancy Bear hackers were hired by Alexandra Chalupa to work for DNC opposition research.
On different occasions, Fancy Bear handler Kristina Dobrovolska traveled to the US to meet the
Diaspora leaders, her boss Alexandra Chalupa, Irena Chalupa, Andrea Chalupa, US Dept of State
personnel, and most likely Crowdstrike's Dimitry Alperovich. Alperovich was working with the
hackers in 2015-16. In 2016, the only groups known to have Fancy Bear's signature tools called
X-tunnel and X-Agent were Alperovich, Crowdstrike, and Fancy Bear (Shaltai Boltai, CyberHunta,
Ukraine Cyber Alliance, and RUH8/RUX8. Yes, that does explain a few things.
Alleged DNC
hack
There were multiple DNC hacks. There is also clear proof supporting the download to a USB
stick and subsequent information exchange (leak) to Wikileaks . All are separate events.
The group I previously identified as Fancy Bear was given access to request password
privileges at the DNC. And it looks like the DNC provided them with it.
the Podesta email hack looks like a revenge hack.
The reason Republican opposition research files were stolen can be put into context now
because we know who the hackers are and what motivates them.
At the same time this story developed, it overshadowed the Hillary Clinton email scandal. It
is a matter of public record that Team Clinton provided the DNC hackers with passwords to
State Department
servers on at least 2 occasions, one wittingly and one not. Fancy Bear hackers are Ukrainian
Intelligence Operators.
If the leak came through Seth Rich , it may have been because he saw
foreign Intel operatives given this access from the presumed winners of the 2016 US presidential
election . The leaker may
have been trying to do something about it. I'm curious what information Wikileaks might
have.
Alperovitch and Fancy Bear
George Eliason, Washingtonsblog: Why Crowdstrike's Russian Hacking Story Fell
Apart- Say Hello to Fancy Bear. investigated. [7]
In the wake of the JAR-16-20296 dated December 29, 2016 about hacking and influencing
the 2016 election, the need for real evidence is clear. The joint report adds nothing
substantial to the October 7th report. It relies on proofs provided by the cyber security
firm Crowdstrike that is clearly not on
par with intelligence findings or evidence. At the top of the report is an "as is"
statement showing this.
The difference bet enough evidence is provided to warrant an investigation of
specific parties for the DNC hacks. The real story involves specific anti-American actors
that need to be investigated for real crimes. For instance, the malware used was an
out-dated version just waiting to be found. The one other interesting point is that the
Russian malware called Grizzly Steppe is from Ukraine. How did Crowdstrike miss this when
it is their business to know?
The bar for identification set by Crowdstrike has never been able to get beyond words
like probably, maybe, could be, or should be, in their attribution. The bar Dimitri
Alperovitch set for identifying the hackers involved is that low. Other than asking
America to trust them, how many solid facts has Alperovitch provided to back his claim of
Russian involvement?
information from outside intelligence agencies has the value of rumor or
unsubstantiated information at best according to policy. Usable intelligence needs to be
free from partisan politics and verifiable. Intel agencies noted back in the early 90's
that every private actor in the information game was radically political.
Alperovitch first gained notice when he was the VP in charge of threat research with
McAfee. Asked to comment on Alperovitch's discovery of Russian hacks on Larry King, John
McAfee had this to say. "Based on all of his experience, McAfee does not believe that
Russians were behind the hacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), John Podesta's
emails, and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. As he told RT, "if it looks like
the Russians did it, then I can guarantee you it was not the Russians."
How does Crowdstrike's story part with reality? First is the admission that it is
probably, maybe, could be Russia hacking the DNC. "Intelligence agencies do not have
specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin 'directing' the identified
individuals to pass the Democratic emails to Wiki Leaks." The public evidence never goes
beyond the word possibility. While never going beyond that or using facts, Crowdstrike
insists that it's Russia behind both Clinton's and the Ukrainian losses.
NBC carried the story because one of the partners in Crowdstrike is also a consultant
for NBC. According to NBC the story reads like this."The company, Crowdstrike, was hired
by the DNC to investigate the hack and issued a report publicly attributing it to Russian
intelligence. One of Crowdstrike's senior executives is Shawn Henry , a former senior FBI
official who consults for NBC News.
In June, Crowdstrike went public with its findings that two separate Russian
intelligence agencies had hacked the DNC. One, which Crowdstrike and other researchers
call Cozy Bear, is believed to be linked to Russia's CIA, known as the FSB. The other,
known as Fancy Bear, is believed to be tied to the military intelligence agency, called
the GRU." The information is so certain the level of proof never rises above "believed to
be." According to the December 12th Intercept article "Most importantly, the Post
adds that "intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in
the Kremlin 'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to
WikiLeaks."
The SBU, Olexander Turchinov, and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense all agree that
Crowdstrike is dead wrong in this assessment. Although subtitles aren't on it, the former
Commandant of Ukrainian Army Headquarters thanks God Russia never invaded or Ukraine
would have been in deep trouble. How could Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike be this
wrong on easily checked detail and still get this much media attention?
Crowdstrike CEO Dmitri Alperovitch story about Russian hacks that cost Hillary
Clinton the election was broadsided by the SBU (Ukrainian Intelligence and Security) in
Ukraine. If Dimitri Alperovitch is working for Ukrainian Intelligence and is providing
intelligence to 17 US Intelligence Agencies is it a conflict of interest?
Is giving misleading or false information to 17 US Intelligence Agencies a crime? If
it's done by a cyber security industry leader like Crowdstrike should that be
investigated? If unwinding the story from the "targeting of Ukrainian volunteers" side
isn't enough, we should look at this from the American perspective. How did the Russia
influencing the election and DNC hack story evolve? Who's involved? Does this pose
conflicts of interest for Dmitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? And let's face it, a
hacking story isn't complete until real hackers with the skills, motivation, and reason
are exposed.
According to journalist and DNC activist Andrea Chalupa on her Facebook page "After
Chalupa sent the email to Miranda (which mentions that she had invited this reporter to a
meeting with Ukrainian journalists in Washington), it triggered high-level concerns
within the DNC, given the sensitive nature of her work. "That's when we knew it was the
Russians," said a Democratic Party source who has been directly involved in the internal
probe into the hacked emails. In order to stem the damage, the source said, "we told her
to stop her research."" July 25, 2016
If she was that close to the investigation Crowdstrike did how credible is she? Her
sister Alexandra was named one of 16 people that shaped the election by Yahoo news.
The DNC hacking investigation done by Crowdstrike concluded hacking was done by
Russian actors based on the work done byAlexandra Chalupa? That is the
conclusion of her sister Andrea Chalupa and obviously enough for Crowdstrike to make the
Russian government connection.
How close is Dimitri Alperovitch to DNC officials? Close enough professionally he
should have stepped down from an investigation that had the chance of throwing a
presidential election in a new direction. According to Esquire.com, Alperovitch has
vetted speeches for Hillary Clinton about cyber security issues in the past. Because of
his work on the Sony hack, President Barrack Obama personally called and said the
measures taken were directly because of his work.
Alperovitch's relationships with the Chalupas, radical groups, think tanks, Ukrainian
propagandists, and Ukrainian state supported hackers [show a conflict of interest]. When
it all adds up and you see it together, we have found a Russian that tried hard to
influence the outcome of the US presidential election in 2016.
The Chalupas are not Democrat or Republican. They are OUNb. The OUNb worked hard
to start a war between the USA and Russia for the last 50 years. According to the
Ukrainian Weekly in a rare open statement of their existence in 2011, "Other
statements were issued in the Ukrainian language by the leadership of the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (B) and the International Conference in
Support of Ukraine. The OUN (Bandera wing) called for" What is
OUNb Bandera? They follow the same political policy and platform that was developed
in the 1930's by Stepan Bandera . When these
people go to a Holocaust memorial they are celebrating
both the dead and the OUNb SS that killed.[8] There is no
getting around this fact. The OUNb have no concept of democratic values and want an
authoritarian
fascism .
Alexandra Chalupa- According to the Ukrainian Weekly , [9]
"The effort, known as Digital Miadan, gained momentum following the initial Twitter storms.
Leading the effort were: Lara Chelak, Andrea Chalupa, Alexandra Chalupa, Constatin Kostenko
and others." The Digital Maidan was also how they raised money for the coup. This was how the
Ukrainian emigres bought the bullets that were used on Euromaidan. Ukraine's chubby nazi,
Dima Yarosh stated openly he was taking money from the Ukrainian emigres during Euromaidan
and Pravy Sektor still fundraises openly in North America. The "Sniper Massacre" on the
Maidan in Ukraine by Dr. Ivan Katchanovski, University of Ottowa shows clearly detailed
evidence how the massacre happened. It has Pravy Sektor confessions that show who created the
"heavenly hundred. Their admitted involvement as leaders of Digital Maidan by both Chalupas
is a clear violation of the Neutrality Act and has up to a 25 year prison sentence attached
to it because it ended in a coup.
Andrea Chalupa-2014, in a Huff Post article Sept. 1 2016, Andrea Chalupa
described Sviatoslav Yurash as one of Ukraine's important "dreamers." He is a young
activist that founded Euromaidan Press. Beyond the gushing glow what she doesn't say
is who he actually is. Sviatoslav Yurash was Dmitri Yarosh's spokesman just after
Maidan. He is a hardcore Ukrainian nationalist and was rewarded with the Deputy
Director position for the UWC (Ukrainian World Congress) in Kiev.
In January, 2014 when he showed up at the Maidan protests he was 17 years old. He
became the foreign language media representative for Vitali Klitschko, Arseni
Yatsenyuk, and Oleh Tyahnybok. All press enquiries went through Yurash. To meet
Dimitri Yurash you had to go through Sviatoslav Yurash as a Macleans reporter found
out.
At 18 years old, Sviatoslav Yurash became the spokesman for Ministry of Defense
of Ukraine under Andrei Paruby. He was Dimitri Yarosh's spokesman and can be seen
either behind Yarosh on videos at press conferences or speaking ahead of him to
reporters. From January 2014 onward, to speak to Dimitri Yarosh, you set up an
appointment with Yurash.
Andrea Chalupa has worked with Yurash's Euromaidan Press which is associated with
Informnapalm.org and supplies the state level hackers for Ukraine.
Irene Chalupa- Another involved Chalupa we need to cover to do the story justice
is Irene Chalupa. From her bio– Irena Chalupa is a nonresident fellow with the
Atlantic Council's Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center. She is also a senior correspondent
at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), where she has worked for more than
twenty years. Ms. Chalupa previously served as an editor for the Atlantic Council,
where she covered Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Irena Chalupa is also the news anchor
for Ukraine's propaganda channel org She is also a Ukrainian emigre leader.
According to Robert Parry's article [10] At the forefront
of people that would have taken senior positions in a Clinton administration and
especially in foreign policy are the Atlantic Council . Their main
goal is still a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.
The Atlantic Council is the think tank associated and supported by the CEEC (Central
and Eastern European Coalition). The CEEC has only one goal which is war with Russia.
Their question to candidates looking for their support in the election was "Are you
willing to go to war with Russia?" Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support
throughout the campaign.
What does any of this have to do with Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? Since the
Atlantic Council would have taken senior cabinet and policy positions, his own fellowship
status at the Atlantic Council and relationship with Irene Chalupa creates a definite
conflict of interest for Crowdstrike's investigation. Trump's campaign was gaining ground
and Clinton needed a boost. Had she won, would he have been in charge of the CIA, NSA, or
Homeland Security?
When you put someone that has so much to gain in charge of an investigation that
could change an election, that is a conflict of interest. If the think tank is linked
heavily to groups that want war with Russia like the Atlantic Council and the CEEC, it
opens up criminal conspiracy.
If the person in charge of the investigation is a fellow at the think tank that wants
a major conflict with Russia it is a definite conflict of interest. Both the Atlantic
Council and clients stood to gain Cabinet and Policy positions based on how the result of
his work affects the election. It clouds the results of the investigation. In Dmitri
Alperovitch's case, he found the perpetrator before he was positive there was a
crime.
Alperovitch's relationship with Andrea Chalupa's efforts and Ukrainian intelligence
groups is where things really heat up. Noted above she works with Euromaidanpress.com and
Informnapalm.org which is the outlet for Ukrainian state-sponsored hackers.
When you look at Dimitri Alperovitch's twitter relationships, you have to ask why the
CEO of a $150 million dollar company like Crowdstrike follows Ukrainian InformNapalm and
its hackers individually. There is a mutual relationship. When you add up his work for
the OUNb, Ukraine, support for Ukraine's Intelligence, and to the hackers it needs to be
investigated to see if Ukraine is conspiring against the US government. Crowdstrike is
also following their hack of a Russian government official after the DNC hack. It closely
resembles the same method used with the DNC because it was an email hack.
Crowdstrike's product line includes Falcon Host, Falcon Intelligence, Falcon
Overwatch and Falcon DNS. Is it possible the hackers in Falcons Flame are another service
Crowdstrike offers?
In an interview with Euromaidanpress these hackers say they have no need for the CIA.
[11] They consider the
CIA amateurish. They also say they are not part of the Ukrainian military Cyberalliance
is a quasi-organization with the participation of several groups – RUH8, Trinity,
Falcon Flames, Cyberhunta. There are structures affiliated to the hackers – the
Myrotvorets site, Informnapalm analytical agency."
Although this profile says Virginia, tweets are from the Sofia, Bulgaria time zone and he
writes in Russian. Another curiosity considering the Fancy Bear source code is in Russian. This
image shows Crowdstrike in their network. Crowdstrike is part of Ukrainian nationalist hacker
network. In the image it shows a network diagram of Crowdstrike following the Surkov leaks. The
network communication goes through a secondary source. Although OSINT Academy sounds fairly innocuous, it's the official twitter account for
Ukraine's Ministry of Information head Dimitri Zolotukin. It is also Ukrainian Intelligence.
The Ministry of Information started the Peacekeeper or Myrotvorets website that geolocates
journalists and other people for assassination. If you disagree with OUNb politics, you could
be on the list.
Should someone tell Dimitri Alperovitch that Gerashchenko, who is now in charge of
Peacekeeper recently threatened president-elect Donald Trump that he would put him on his
"Peacemaker" site as a target? The same has been done with Silvio Berscaloni in the
past.
Trying not to be obvious, the Head of Ukraine's Information Ministry (UA
Intelligence) tweeted something interesting that ties Alperovitch and Crowdstrike to the
Ukrainian Intelligence hackers and the Information Ministry even tighter. This single
tweet on a network chart shows that out of all the Ukrainian Ministry of Information
Minister's following, he only wanted the 3 hacking groups associated with both him and
Alperovitch to get the tweet. Alperovitch's story was received and not retweeted or
shared. If this was just Alperovitch's victory, it was a victory for Ukraine. It would be
shared heavily. If it was a victory for the hacking squad, it would be smart to keep it
to themselves and not draw unwanted attention.
These same hackers are associated with Alexandra, Andrea, and Irene Chalupa through
the portals and organizations they work with through their OUNb. The hackers are funded
and directed by or through the same OUNb channels that Alperovitch is working for and
with to promote the story of Russian hacking.
When you look at the image for the hacking group in the euromaidanpress article,
one of the hackers identifies themselves as one of Dimitri Yarosh's Pravy Sektor
members by the Pravy Sektor sweatshirt they have on. Noted above, Pravy Sektor
admitted to killing the people at the Maidan protest and sparked the coup.
Going further with the linked Euromaidanpress article the hackers say "Let's
understand that Ukrainian hackers and Russian hackers once constituted a single very
powerful group. Ukrainian hackers have a rather high level of work. So the help of
the USA I don't know, why would we need it? We have all the talent and special means
for this. And I don't think that the USA or any NATO country would make such sharp
movements in international politics."
What sharp movements in international politics have been made lately? Let me spell it
out for the 17 US Intelligence Agencies so there is no confusion. These state sponsored,
Russian language hackers in Eastern European time zones have shown with the Surkov hack
they have the tools and experience to hack states that are looking out for it. They are
also laughing at US intel efforts.
The hackers also made it clear that they will do anything to serve Ukraine. Starting
a war between Russia and the USA is the one way they could serve Ukraine best, and hurt
Russia worst. Given those facts, if the DNC hack was according to the criteria given by
Alperovitch, both he and these hackers need to be investigated.
According to the Esquire interview "Alperovitch was deeply frustrated: He thought
the government should tell the world what it knew. There is, of course, an element of
the personal in his battle cry. "A lot of people who are born here don't appreciate
the freedoms we have, the opportunities we have, because they've never had it any
other way," he told me. "I have."
While I agree patriotism is a great thing, confusing it with this kind of nationalism
is not. Alperovitch seems to think by serving OUNb Ukraine's interests and delivering
a conflict with Russia that is against American interests, he's a patriot. He isn't
serving US interests. He's definitely a Ukrainian patriot. Maybe he should move to
Ukraine.
The evidence presented deserves investigation because it looks like the case for
conflict of interest is the least Dimitri Alperovitch should look forward to. If these
hackers are the real Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, they really did make sharp movements in
international politics. By pawning it off on Russia, they made a worldwide embarrassment
of an outgoing President of the United States and made the President Elect the suspect of
rumor.
Obama, Brazile, Comey, and CrowdStrike
According to Obama the
hacks continued until September 2016. According to ABC, Donna Brazile says the hacks didn't stop
until after the elections in 2016. According to Crowdstrike the hacks continued into
November.
Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile said Russian hackers persisted in trying
to break into the organization's computers "daily, hourly" until after the election --
contradicting President Obama's assertion that the hacking stopped in September after he warned
Russian President Vladimir Putin to "cut it out."-ABC
This time frame gives a lot of latitude to both hacks and leaks happening on that server and
still agrees with the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPs). According to
Bill
Binney , the former Technical Director for the NSA, the only way that data could move off
the server that fast was through a download to a USB stick. The transfer rate of the file does
not agree with a Guciffer 2.0 hack and the information surrounding Guciffer 2.0 is looking
ridiculous and impossible at best.
The DNC fiasco isn't that important of a crime. The reason I say this is the FBI would have
taken control over material evidence right away. No law enforcement agency or Intel agency ever
did. This means none of them considered it a crime Comey should have any part of investigating.
That by itself presents the one question mark which destroys any hope Mueller has proving law
enforcement maintained a chain of custody for any evidence he introduces.
It also says the US government under Barrack Obama and the victimized DNC saw this as a
purely political event. They didn't want this prosecuted or they didn't think it was
prosecutable.
Once proven it shows a degree of criminality that makes treason almost too light a charge in
federal court. Rest assured this isn't a partisan accusation. Team Clinton and the DNC gets the
spotlight but there are Republicans involved.
Investigative Jouralist George Webb worked at MacAfee and Network Solutions in 2000 when the
CEO Bill Larsen bought a small, Moscow based, hacking and virus writing company to move to
Silicon Valley.
MacAfee also purchased PGP, an open source encryption software developed by privacy advocate
to reduce NSA spying on the public.
The two simultaneous purchase of PGP and the Moscow hacking team by Metwork Solutions was
sponsored by the CIA and FBI in order to crack encrypted communications to write a back door
for law enforcement.
Among the 12 engineers assigned to writing a PGP backdoor was the son of a KGB officer named
Dmitri Alperovich who would go on to be the CTO at a company involved in the DNC Hacking
scandal - Crowdstrike.
In addition to writing a back door for PGP, Alperovich also ported PGP to the blackberry
platform to provide encrypted communications for covert action operatives.
"... Only a computer illiterate would think that CrowdStrike needed to take the physical DNC server to Ukraine in order to analyze it. Any computer can be cloned and its digital image can be sent within minutes anywhere on the planet in the form of ones and zeroes. It can also exist in multiple digital copies, carrying not just confidential archives, but also history logs and other content that can reveal to an expert whether the hacking occurred, and if so, by whom. ..."
"... The copies of the DNC server on CrowdStrike computers are likely to hold the key to understanding what really happened during the 2016 election, the origin of the anti-Trump witch hunt, and the toxic cloud of lies that had been hanging over the world and poisoning minds during the last three years. ..."
"... And now the new Ukrainian government might subpoena these copies from CrowdStrike and finally pass them to FBI experts, which should've been done three years ago. The danger of this happening is a much greater incentive for the Democrats to preemptively destroy Trump than all the dirt Joe Biden had been rolling in as Obama's vice president. ..."
"... I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. ..."
"... The fraudulent "CrowdStrike conspiracy" deflection is not a show of the Democrats' strength. Instead, It betrays their desperation and panic, which tells us that Trump is squarely over the target. ..."
"... Yet DOJ Mueller conclusively signed off on the unsubtaniated fact the Russians had hacked the DNC computers in his final Weissman Report. Just one more part of the curious Mueller report that was far more a CYA hit piece against future claims of Obama crimes, than an investigation of past Trump ones. ..."
The conspiracy theory that exposes the Democrats' desperation and panic.
Fri Nov 29, 2019
Oleg Atbashian
133 In the last few days, media talking heads have been saying the word "CrowdStrike" a
lot, defining it as a wild conspiracy theory originating in Moscow. They were joined by Chris
Wallace at Fox News, who informed us that president Trump and his ill-informed fans believe in
a crazy idea that the DNC wasn't hacked by the Russians but by some Ukrainian group named
CrowdStrike that stole the DNC server and brought it to Ukraine , and that it was Ukraine that
meddled in our 2016 election and not Russia.
A crazy idea indeed. Except that neither Trump nor his fans had ever heard of it until the
Democrat-media complex condescendingly informed them that these are their beliefs.
Let's look at the facts:
Fact 1. In 2016 the DNC hired the Ukrainian-owned firm CrowdStrike to analyze their server
and investigate a data breach.
Fact 2. CrowdStrike experts determined that the culprit was Russia.
Fact 3. The FBI never received access to the DNC server, so the Russian connection was never
officially confirmed and continues to be an allegation coming from the DNC and its
Ukrainian-owned contractor.
Fact 4. Absent the official verdict, other theories continue to circulate, including the
possibility that the theft was an inside job by a DNC employee, who simply copied the files to
a USB drive and sent it to WikiLeaks.
None of these facts was ever disputed by anyone. The media largely ignored them except for
the part about the Russian hackers, which boosted their own, now debunked, wild conspiracy
theory that Trump was a Russian agent.
Now that Trump had asked the newly elected Ukrainian president Zelensky to look into
CrowdStrike during that fateful July phone call, the media all at once started telling us that
"CrowdStrike" is a code word for a conspiracy theory so insane that only Trump could believe in
it, which is just more proof of how insane he is.
But if Trump had really said what Mr. Wallace and the media claim, Ukrainians would be the
first to call him on it and the impeachment would've been over by now. Instead, Ukrainians back
Trump every step of the way.
So where did this pretzel-shaped fake news come from, and why is it being peddled
now ?
Note this is a classic case study of propaganda and media manipulation:
Take an idea or a story that you wish to go away and make up an obviously bogus story
with the same names and details as the real one.
Start planting it simultaneously on media channels until the fake story supplants the
real one, while claiming this is what your opponents really believe.
Have various fact-checking outlets debunk your fake story as an absurd conspiracy theory.
Ridicule those who allegedly believe in it. Better yet, have late night comedians do it for
you.
Once your opponent is brought down, mercilessly plant your boot on his face and never let
up.
This mass manipulation technology had been tested and perfected by the Soviet propaganda
machine, both domestically and overseas, where it was successfully deployed by the KGB. The
Kremlin still uses it, although it can no longer afford it on the same grandiose scale. In this
sense, the Democratic think tanks are the true successors of the KGB in deviousness, scope, and
worldwide reach of fake narratives. How they inherited these methods from the KGB is a story
for another day.
For a long time this technology was allowing the Democrats to delegitimize opposition by
convincing large numbers of Americans that Republicans are
Haters
Racists
Fascists
Deniers of science
Destroyers of the environment
Heartless sellouts to corporate interests
And so on - the list is endless.
The Soviet communists had aptly named it "disinformation," which a cut above the English
word "misinformation." It includes a variety of methods for a variety of needs, from bringing
down an opponent to revising history to creating a new historical reality altogether. In this
sense, most Hollywood movies on historical subjects today disinform us about history,
supplanting it with a bogus "progressive" narrative. The Soviet term for such art was
"socialist realism."
Long story short, the Democrat-media complex has successfully convinced one half of the
world that Trump is a Russian agent. Now they're acting as if they'd spent the last three years
in a coma, unaware of any bombshell stories about collusion. And bombshell stories without any
continuation are a telltale sign of fake narratives. The only consequence of these bombshells
is mass amnesia among the foot soldiers.
The Trump-Russian outrage is dead, long live the Trump-Ukraine outrage. And when that
outrage is dead, the next outrage that will be just outrageous.
The current impeachment narrative alleges that Trump used military aid as leverage in asking
Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden (which implies the Democrats know Biden is dirty, otherwise
why bother?). What's not in this picture is CrowdStrike. Even though Trump mentioned it in the
phone call, it has nothing to do with the Bidens nor the Javelin missiles. CrowdStrike has
nothing to do with impeachment. We're told it's just a silly conspiracy theory in Trump's head,
that it's a nonissue.
But then why fabricate fake news about it and plant blatant lies simultaneously in all media
outlets from Mother Jones to Fox News? Why risk being exposed over such a nonissue? Perhaps
because it's more important than the story suggests.
Only a computer illiterate would think that CrowdStrike needed to take the physical DNC
server to Ukraine in order to analyze it. Any computer can be cloned and its digital image can
be sent within minutes anywhere on the planet in the form of ones and zeroes. It can also exist
in multiple digital copies, carrying not just confidential archives, but also history logs and
other content that can reveal to an expert whether the hacking occurred, and if so, by
whom.
The copies of the DNC server on CrowdStrike computers are likely to hold the key to
understanding what really happened during the 2016 election, the origin of the anti-Trump witch
hunt, and the toxic cloud of lies that had been hanging over the world and poisoning minds
during the last three years.
And now the new Ukrainian government might subpoena these copies from CrowdStrike and
finally pass them to FBI experts, which should've been done three years ago. The danger of this
happening is a much greater incentive for the Democrats to preemptively destroy Trump than all
the dirt Joe Biden had been rolling in as Obama's vice president.
This gives the supposedly innocuous reference to CrowdStrike during Trump's call a lot more
gravity and the previously incoherent part of the transcript begins to make sense.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been
through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened
with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike... I guess you have one of your
wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went
on, the whole situation.
If you read the transcript on the day it was released, you probably didn't understand what
Trump was even talking about, let alone what had caused such a disproportionate outrage,
complete with whistle blowing and calls for impeachment. What in that mild conversation could
possibly terrify the Democrats so much? They were terrified because, unlike most Americans, the
Democrats knew exactly what Trump was talking about. And now you know, too.
The fraudulent "CrowdStrike conspiracy" deflection is not a show of the Democrats'
strength. Instead, It betrays their desperation and panic, which tells us that Trump is
squarely over the target.
It also helps us to see who at Fox News can be trusted to tell us the truth. And it ain't
Chris Wallace.
Fine dissection of the CrowdStrike story. Of course if the DNC was serious about
finding out who breached their security they would have allowed the FBI to investigate.
They didn't - which means they're covering something up.
And who doesn't have at least one backup system running constantly, I have two and am
just a home user and the DNC would not have been dumb enough not to have one on the
premises and one off site for safety and preservation and the FBI could have gotten to
either one if they wanted to. DWS was involved in something very similar and the FBI
backed off again. I thought the DNC and the FBI were on the same page and would have
liked to find out how the "transfer" happened?
Yet DOJ Mueller conclusively signed off on the unsubtaniated fact the Russians had
hacked the DNC computers in his final Weissman Report. Just one more part of the curious Mueller report that was far more a CYA hit piece
against future claims of Obama crimes, than an investigation of past Trump ones.
Seth Rich - paper trail to Wikilinks needs to come out in any Senate impeachment trail
since Democrats claim the Ukraine phone call was Trump's alleged downfall. CROWDSTRIKE
was the only favor Trumps asked for.
There are two important facts to glean from this article:
1) Crowdstrike, the DNC contractor, is Ukrainian
2) that the famous server may have been backed up in Ukraine and not tampered with.
From the MSM we were given the 'interpretation' that Trump is an idiot who believes
that the DNC shipped the server with no changes to the Ukraine. No folks. He 'gets'
technology and security. He actual ran a business! (imagine).
I'd love to hear that in Hillary's own voice. :) You know, cleaned with a cloth?
That pretty much sums it up. MSM in total cahoots on this too since they put the
entire topic of the CROWDSTRIKE part of the phone call into the cone of silence.
The Left and media (One and the same within the "Deep State") have been playing "Three
Card Monte" with America for a while; it stops now!
The "Impeachment" media show being run by the Lefty tool cretins in the House has
NOTHING to do with wrong doing by President Trump. It has EVERYTHING to do with the fear
that President Trump will expose the depth of the swamp and bring the criminals on the
Left down to Justice!
We are s close to getting to the bottom of the conspiracies that threaten our nation.
Time to make the America haters pay for the harm they have done to our nation!
We need open and in depth prosecution of the criminal activities of the Left. There
needs to be LONG prison sentences and, yes, even executions for those that seek to
undermine our nation.
People need to know that there our GRAVE penalties for betraying our nation!
In fact, when I first heard this story - that is: very recently - I was puzzled: why
should a major party in the Country that invented IT and is still at its leading edge,
ask an obscure firm of a crumbling, remote foreign State to do their IT security
research? I'm not saying that Ukraine is a s++thole Country, but... you get me.
Either they have very much to hide, or they fear some closeted rightwing geek that works
in any of the many leftist US technofirms. Or, CrowdStrike were involved from the
beginning of the story, from the Steele dossier perhaps?
The whole Crowdstrike fiasco has been around for years - plus became a solid CYA part
of the Mueller report too - just in case the Democrats needed to bury it later.
don't you get it? The DNC is completely infiltrated by Ukrainian graft. Even Joe Biden
was on the take. Why won't they run their IT? (there is no Research in IT here, just
office software)
If you want to sell and deliver State Secrets and Intel to our enemies, then you
(Obama, the Clintons, the DNC) simply make it easier for THEM to access. They have done
this for years, and this is why they had to fill the DOJ, the FBI and the State
Department with traitors and haters of America and American principles. Barack Hussein
Obama, the Clintons, their evil administrations and even two-faced RINOS like McCain,
Romney, and Jeff Sessions were actively involved. This is treason pure and simple, and
all of the above could be legitimately and justifiably hung or shot without recourse, and
rightly so!
I have known about "Crowdstrike" since Dec. 2017. Pres. Trump is just subtlety
introducing background on what will be the biggest story of treachery, subversion,
treason and corruption ever. QAnon that the fakenews tries to vilify as a LARP has been
dropping crumbs about "Crowdstrike", Perkins Coir, Fusion GPS, FVEY and so much more!
Crowdstrike mentioned 7x in the last 2 years. I can't urge people enough to actually
investigate the Q posts for themselves! You will be stunned at what you have been
missing. Q which says "future proves past" and "news will unlock" what I see in the media
now is old news to those of us following Q. Q told us that "Senate was the prize" "Senate
meant more" that the investigations started in the House would now move to the Senate and
all this that the Dems and Rinos have been trying to hide is going to be exposed.
Fakenews corporate media has litterally written hundreds of hit pieces against Q - me
knows "they doth protest to much" - Recent Q post told "Chairman Graham its time. Senate
was the target"
Keep up with the Q posts and Pres. Trump's tweets in once place:
https://qmap.pub/ - And if you are still having a hard time believing this is legit
Pres. Trump himself has confirmed Q posts by "Zero Delta" drops - if you think this is
fake - try and tweet within 1 minute of when Pres. Trump does BUT your tweet has to
anticipate his! YOU have to tweet first and HE has to follow you within 1 minute.
MATHEMATICAL IMPOSSIBILITY UNLESS you are in the same immediate space or communicating at
the time of the tweets! To all you doubters that think Q is just a by chance scam - NO
WAY. There have been MANY, MANY of these ZERO DELTA PROOFS over the last 2 years. The
most recent was Nov. 20th.
Crowdstrike in the dog who did not bark. The Democrat cone of silence they put on even
the mention of the word has been the most damning clue this is where the real action
is.
The assertion that a digital image of the computer can be transmitted quickly all
around the world is not necessarily correct in my experience as a cyber security analyst.
I'm not an upper echelon type, but I am aware that it can take up to weeks to transmit
such images depending on the hard disk, where it is, and the connections/network to your
device creating the image. The FBI should have physically taken the device since there
was a suspicion of wrong doing by Hillary Clinton. Had it been Donald Trump's computer I
do not doubt the FBI would either have imaged it on the spot or taken the device.
Last night I completely removed Catalina-Safari on my older Mac Book Air and
re-installed Mohave-Safari from my backup to the day before I installed Catalina
including the data and system just like it was before. It took around 5 hours and was
cabled and not on Wi-Fi and it was perfect and reset the clock, my old e-mails and the
newer ones as well. I can't believe being hooked into real broadband or fiber couldn't do
the same in a relatively short period of time, but still significantly longer than a
thumb drive or external hard drive.
One variable is how big your hard drive is. If it is a big drive at a remote location,
say somewhere in California to the Midwest, it can take weeks for a forensic backup. I
only say that because . . . well, I'm not allowed to say. But you get it.
The assertion is a figure of speech. Today's IT infrastructure companies sell the
service of maintaining clones in real-time in two or more locations for safety purposes.
VMware and other off-the-shelf products makes this kind of setup easy to deploy. Did
Crowdstrike offer that service and did the DNC buy it, that is the question? And, if so,
did Crowdstrike keep the image on their backups in Ukraine?
(Note: it is not obvious that such a setup would preserve the forensic data the FBI would
be looking for, but its a start).
E stablishment Democrats and those who amplify them continue to project
blame for the public's doubt in the U.S. election process onto outside influence, despite the clear history of the party's subversion
of election integrity. The total inability of the Democratic Party establishment's willingness to address even one of these critical
failures does not give reason to hope that the nomination process in 2020 will be any less pre-ordained.
The Democratic Party's bias against Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential nomination, followed by the DNC defense counsel
doubling down on its right to rig the race during the
fraud lawsuit brought
against the DNC , as well as the irregularities in the races between former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova,
indicate a fatal breakdown of the U.S. democratic process spearheaded by the Democratic Party establishment. Influences transcending
the DNC add to concerns regarding the integrity of the democratic process that have nothing to do with Russia, but which will also
likely impact outcomes in 2020.
The content of the DNC and
Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks demonstrated that
the DNC acted in favor of Hillary Clinton in the lead up to the 2016 Democratic primary. The emails also revealed corporate media
reporters acting as surrogates of the DNC and its pro-Clinton agenda, going
so far as to promote Donald Trump during the GOP primary process as a preferred "
pied-piper candidate ." One cannot assume that similar evidence will be presented
to the public in 2020, making it more important than ever to take stock of the unique lessons handed down to us by the 2016 race.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a 2016 Democratic primary debate. (YouTube/Screen shot)
Social Media Meddling
Election meddling via social media did take place in 2016, though in a different guise and for a different cause from that which
are best remembered. Twitter would eventually admit to actively suppressing
hashtags referencing the DNC and Podesta emails in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Additional
reports indicated that tech giant Google also showed measurable "pro-Hillary
Clinton bias" in search results during 2016, resulting in the alleged swaying of between 2 and 10 millions voters in favor of Clinton.
On the Republican side, a recent episode of CNLive! featured
discussion of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which undecided voters were micro-targeted with tailored advertising narrowed with
the combined use of big data and artificial intelligence known collectively as "dark strategy." CNLive! Executive Producer
Cathy Vogan noted that SCL, Cambridge Analytica's parent company, provides data, analytics and strategy to governments and military
organizations "worldwide," specializing in behavior modification. Though Cambridge Analytica shut down in 2018, related companies
remain.
The Clinton camp was hardly absent from social media during the 2016 race. The
barely-legal activities of Clintonite David Brock
were previously reported by this author to have included $2 million in funding
for the creation of an online " troll army " under the name Shareblue. The
LA Times described the project as meant to
"to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is
highly paid and highly tactical." In other words, the effort attempted to create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton
campaign.
In terms of interference in the actual election process, the New York City Board of Elections was shown to have
purged over one hundred thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls
before the 2016 primary, a move that the Department of Justice found
broke federal law . Despite this, no prosecution
for the breach was ever attempted.
Though the purge was not explicitly found to have benefitted Clinton, the admission falls in line with allegations across the
country that the Democratic primary was interfered with to the benefit of the former secretary of state. These claims were further
bolstered by reports indicating that voting results from the 2016 Democratic
primary showed evidence of fraud.
DNC Fraud Lawsuit
"Bernie or Bust" protesters at the Wells Fargo Center during Democrats' roll call vote to nominate Hillary Clinton. (Becker1999,
CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The proceedings of the DNC fraud lawsuit provide the most damning evidence of the failure of the U.S. election process, especially
within the Democratic Party. DNC defense lawyers argued in open court for the party's
right to appoint candidates at its own discretion, while simultaneously denying
any "fiduciary duty" to represent the voters who donated to the Democratic Party under the impression that the DNC would act impartially
towards the candidates involved.
In 2017, the Observer reported that the DNC's defense counsel argued
against claims that the party defrauded Sanders' supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders' supporters knew the process
was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral and unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC's lawyers
argued that it was the party's right to select candidates.
The Observer noted the sentiments of Jared Beck, the attorney representing the plaintiffs of the lawsuit:
"People paid money in reliance on the understanding that the primary elections for the Democratic nominee -- nominating process
in 2016 were fair and impartial, and that's not just a bedrock assumption that we would assume just by virtue of the fact that
we live in a democracy, and we assume that our elections are run in a fair and impartial manner. But that's what the Democratic
National Committee's own charter says. It says it in black and white."
The DNC defense counsel's argument throughout the course of the DNC fraud lawsuit doubled down repeatedly in defense of the party's
right to favor one candidate over another, at one point actually claiming that such favoritism was
protected by the First Amendment . The DNC's lawyers wrote:
"To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege would run directly contrary to long-standing Supreme Court
precedent recognizing the central and critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties, especially when it comes
to selecting the party's nominee for public office ." [Emphasis added]
The DNC's shameless defense of its own rigging disemboweled the most fundamental organs of the U.S. body politic. This no indication
that the DNC will not resort to the same tactics in the 2020 primary race,
Tim Canova's Allegations
Tim Canova with supporters, April 2016. (CanovaForCongress, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
If Debbie Wasserman Schultz's role as disgraced chairwoman of the DNC and her forced 2016 resignation wasn't enough, serious interference
was also alleged in the wake of two contests between Wasserman Schultz and professor Tim Canova in Florida's 23rd congressional district.
Canova and Wasserman Schultz first faced off in a 2016 Democratic primary race, followed by a 2018 general congressional election
in which Canova ran as an independent.
Debacles followed both contests, including improper vote counts, illegal
ballot destruction , improper
transportation of ballots, and generally
shameless displays of cronyism. After the controversial
results of the initial primary race against Wasserman Schultz, Canova sought to have ballots checked for irregularities, as the
Sun-Sentinel reported at the time:
"[Canova] sought to look at the paper ballots in March 2017 and took Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes to court three months
later when her office hadn't fulfilled his request. Snipes approved the destruction of the ballots in September, signing a certification
that said no court cases involving the ballots were pending."
Ultimately, Canova was granted a summary judgment against Snipes, finding that she had committed what amounted to multiple felonies.
Nonetheless, Snipes was not prosecuted and remained elections supervisor through to the 2018 midterms.
Republicans appear no more motivated to protect voting integrity than the Democrats, with
The Nation reporting that the GOP-controlled
Senate blocked a bill this week that would have "mandated paper-ballot backups in case of election machine malfunctions."
Study of Corporate Power
A 2014
study published by Princeton University found that corporate power had usurped the voting rights of the public: "Economic elites
and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average
citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."
In reviewing this sordid history, we see that the Democratic Party establishment has done everything in its power to disrespect
voters and outright overrule them in the democratic primary process, defending their right to do so in the DNC fraud lawsuit. We've
noted that interests transcending the DNC also represent escalating threats to election integrity as demonstrated in 2016.
Despite this, establishment Democrats and those who echo their views in the legacy press continue to deflect from their own wrongdoing
and real threats to the election process by suggesting that mere discussion of it represents a campaign by Russia to attempt to malign
the perceptionof the legitimacy of the U.S. democratic process.
Hillary Clinton's recent comments to the effect that Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is being "groomed" by Russia, and that the former
Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein is a "Russian asset", were soon echoed by DNC-friendly pundits. These sentiments
externalize what Gabbard called the "rot"
in the Democratic party outward onto domestic critics and a nation across the planet.
Newsweek provided a particularly glaring example of this phenomenon
in a recent op-ed penned by columnist Naveed Jamali, a former FBI double agent whose book capitalizes on Russiagate. In an op-ed
titled: " Hillary Clinton Is Right. Tulsi Gabbard Is A Perfect Russian Asset – And Would Be A Perfect Republican Agent," Jamali
argued :
"Moscow will use its skillful propaganda machine to prop up Gabbard and use her as a tool to delegitimize the democratic process.
" [Emphasis added]
Jamali surmises that Russia intends to "attack" our democracy by undermining the domestic perception of its legitimacy. This thesis
is repeated later in the piece when Jamali opines : "They want to see a retreat
of American influence. What better way to accomplish that than to attack our democracy by casting doubt on the legitimacy of our
elections." [Emphasis added]
The only thing worth protecting, according to Jamali and those who amplify his work (including former Clinton aide and establishment
Democrat Neera Tanden), is the perception of the democratic process, not the actual functioning vitality of it. Such deflective
tactics ensure that Russia will continue to be used as a convenient international pretext for
silencing domestic dissent as we move into 2020.
Given all this, how can one expect the outcome of a 2020 Democratic Primary -- or even the general election – to be any fairer
or transparent than 2016?
Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter, co-host of CN Live! and regular contributor to Consortium News.
If you value this original article, please consider making
a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.
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It appears that the DNC is responsible in fomenting this new cold war with Russia.
The party has become a war party and made the world very unsafe.
Instead of taking responsibility for Russiagate, it simply has progressed on to impeachment, no apologies simply moving on
to the next tactic.
And why you might ask?
And weren't we a bit put off by our own intelligence agencies contributing to the overthrow of the Trump administration using
the NYT and WAPO to spread innuendo and political chaos ?
Great analysis, yes it is the DNC, but larger than that it is the corporate oligarch which monoplize the power in both so-called
parties which gave us Trump and which still prefer him to Sanders.
Perception is everything. That is why the rigged "superdelegate" system was so effective. Clinton's sham "lead" became self-fulfilling
prophesy. Many people told me, "I like Bernie but I'm voting for Hillary because she's more electable." Pure perception.
To test this widely held view, in March 2016 I started tallying every poll (at Real Clear Politics) that pitted Sanders and
Clinton not against each other, but against GOP contenders including a reality-show buffoon named Trump. I did this all the way
through early June, tallying 150 polls with no cherrypicking.
Result? Sanders outperformed Clinton against GOP candidates in 135 of 150 polls. That's 90 percent of the time. You can still
see the results posted at my site BernieWorks.com.
What's more, Sanders remained consistently strong. It was so remarkable, so I dubbed him Iron Man Sanders. Meanwhile, Clinton's
pattern of results across dozens upon dozens of polls showed disturbing signs of electoral weakness.
No one was paying attention. The corrupt system's rigged structure played a crucial role. The criminally fraudulet DNC and
complicit corporate media played their respective roles.
So, disastrously wrong public perception won.
My tallies clearly show that if Sanders had become the nominee, he would have wiped the floor with Trump. And we would be living
in a different world.
vinnieoh , November 6, 2019 at 12:01
As to your last sentence: yes I think he would have won handily, but no we would not be living in a different world. Recall
that virtually no-one who should have endorsed Sanders did so – not Warren, and certainly not that oft-touted icon of "progressivism"
my own Senator Sherrod Brown; in fact none in the D party that I can think of. They all obeyed the dictate of their undemocratic
ruling central cabal. You need friends and allies to propose and enact legislation, and Bernie would have had few. As for foreign
policy, aka WAR in US-speak, there was a completely unacknowledged military coup in 2000, right here in the good ol' US. The POTUS
does not direct the ambitions of this empire.
Do I wish he would have won – absolutely, and that possibility yet exists. We've all watched the very unsubtle way in which
the media is colluding with the D establishment. As soon as one candidate rises in the polls the media ignores them and focuses
on one of the vote diluters inserted there to staunch the gathering rebellion. There was a piece by Jake Johnson on CD about the
Sanders' campaign rightfully complaining about blatant misrepresentation of Sanders popularity in the polls. When distortion or
silence proves ineffective look for primary election fraud to ensue.
My younger brother was one that was under the spell of that establishment party perception in '16 and I argued with him several
times about it. I was flabbergasted and somewhat angry to hear him say recently that "Sanders could have won" then, but he can't
now.
Good points in the article the main point being the democratic party was far more guilty of interfering with the democratic
primaries by undermining Sanders. The media was complicit and should be considered an accessory to election rigging.
We the people didn't hold the democratic party heads accountable and therefore we are seeing a repeat happening again. I refuse
to be forced to vote force someone I deplore just because they aren't republican. I will always vote for the best candidate. The
duopoly is fiercely maintained by the oligarchs for just that reason. They correctly predict that consumer zombies will stay loyal
to their team and I think they lost control of the process in 2016 by thinking if they ran Krusty the Clown Trump against Hillary,
she certainly win. They didn't have a good handle on the animosity so many people had for Hillary, including millions of progressives
who were are bitter about the wicked, illegal, immoral, unethical, un-American machinations by the democratic henchmen as laid
out expertly in the article.
Korey Dykstra , November 5, 2019 at 22:48
It must be nearly impossible to be an honest politician when many charges made against you are based on lies couched as the
truth (with out evidence) which in turn has to be defended in a way that conveys knowledge and truthfulness. Extremely difficult
against an opponent versed in or deflecting from factual and/or provable information. Great article. I have not read too mcu on
Consortium but will read it consistently from now on
Manqueman , November 5, 2019 at 20:35
Actually, far more harm to democratic institutions has been done not by the DNC or Russians and foreign interests but by our
own GOP.
Ash , November 6, 2019 at 14:55
Thank you for that totally unbiased and nonpartisan viewpoint.
Maura , November 5, 2019 at 19:19
How foolish to use Russia in their plots against republicans.And still nothing gets done!
Walton Andrews , November 5, 2019 at 18:40
Impeachment is all about manufacturing a crime and using an investigation to damage your political opponent. The goal is to
give your friends in the establishment media excuses for an endless series of negative headlines slamming your opponent. The "Russia
collusion" charges were extremely useful in generating propaganda even though they fizzled out when it came time to present some
actual evidence. Today, the Democrats are running the investigations. But the Republicans are open to the same tactics (Remember
the Benghazi hearings?). Congress doesn't have time to address the real problems of the country – they are playing political games.
I will vote third party in 2020 because any vote for a Democrat or a Republican is sending the message that you will go along
with the degenerate system in Washington.
mary-lou , November 6, 2019 at 12:17
vote, but make your ballot paper invalid (in Europe we do this): this way they can see you support the democratic process,
but not the political system. cheers!
Nathan Mulcahy , November 5, 2019 at 18:03
Until Obama's first election in 2008 I was Dem leaning. That's when I started to complain to my Democratic supporting friends
that I find it more meaningful and satisfying to debate and discuss political issues with Republicans as opposed to Democrats.
My rationale was that while I do not agree with the Republicans' worldview I see a rationale. In contrast, Democrats argue illogically
and irrationally.
I was smart enough to recognize what a fraud Obama is, and Ended up not Voting Obama. Instead I voted for the Greens.
Needless to say that that cost me a lot, including friendships Only now do I realize how perceptive I was. The irrationality
and cognitive dissonance of the Dims (among the way I thought it appropriate to change the name of the Party) are in full bloom
now. Only the sheeple are unable to recognize their mental disorder.
Mike K , November 6, 2019 at 02:43
In contrast, Democrats argue illogically and irrationally.
Yes, yes they do.
Richard Annotico , November 6, 2019 at 05:06
[And Look How Well They Did .You are Brilliant
You thereby might be responsible fot TRUMP the CON MAN !!! Take A bow !!!!
Skip Edwards , November 5, 2019 at 16:29
As our country is ever more exposed to be the democratic hypocrisy that it is, we are finding that oligarchic empires never
last. History certainly has proven that time and again. What leaves me in dismay, however, is how seemingly educated, intelligent
societies continually fall asleep while any basic securities that the majority of those populations rely on are stolen away. It
is like sailors whose ship has gone down, we cling to any flotation available to hold us up for one last breath of air as the
sharks circle. What is the answer, you might be asking? Is there an answer? That we certainly cannot be sure of. But one thing
is for certain; and that is, taking the same steps to solve this problem and expecting anything different from the usual results
does not speak wisely of an intelligent people. As the article states, or maybe it was a comment, elections have not, and will
not, change one thing in our entire existence as a nation. Taking to the streets just might be our only answer if we are to retain
any pride in ourselves. And, without pride, what are we?
Mike K. , November 6, 2019 at 03:01
Those sharks you speak of consist of among others, the multinational companies who bribe congresspeople to pass bad trade bills
and rewrite tax code which allowed those companies to offshore good paying jobs and otherwise exfiltrate our wealth. The election
of Trump may well change some things in Washington DC. After the investigations by Durham, Barr, and Horowitz are completed, you
will see the depths that govt officials and various media pundits, descended in their illegal, unconstitutional effort to overturn
the 2016 election results. Hopefully, congress will retract their claws long enough to pass a bill giving congress vastly more
oversight of our IC including the NSA and CIA, along with the FBI.
Lois Gagnon , November 5, 2019 at 16:28
Western Empire centered in the US is being challenged and its illegitimacy exposed by increased wars of aggression abroad and
creeping authoritarianism domestically. Those profiting off the system for decades will resort to the usual tactics of lies, smears
and violence to prevent having to surrender their power.
Elections have no doubt been rigged for a long time, but it's being done in the open now. Those who continue to believe they
live in a functioning democracy being attacked by Russia are probably beyond hope for the short term. The cognitive dissonance
is more than they can deal with. Trump's mistaken elevation to the presidency seems to have turned once functioning brains into
easily controlled masses of obedient children. It's been surreal to watch the transformation.
Perhaps after another election fiasco for the ruling establishment, people will being to question who is really responsible
for the way things are. Then again, maybe not.
karlof1 , November 5, 2019 at 16:13
Pardon me, but how many people were cited to have committed felonies but were never prosecuted for their criminality? Might
I presume that's merely the tip of an iceberg and that the truth of the matter is the entire electoral process within the USA
is utterly corrupt and thus illegitimate?! And of course there's a bipartisan effort to ensure no legislation regulating political
parties ever gets to a vote so we the people have no means to alter their behavior!
I've looked long, hard and deep into the USA's fundamental problems and have mused about various bandages for the 1787 Constitution
that might put the nation back into the hands of those in whose name it was organized–The People–but most people just don't seem
to give a damn or argue that the situation isn't all that bad and just greater citizen activism is all that's required. What was
it JFK said–"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." If the electoral process
is completely illegitimate as it certainly appears to be, then the only real recourse citizens retain is revolution. Have the
corporate pukes at the DNC & RNC thought through the outcome of their behavior; or perhaps revolution is what they want to see
occur so they can crush it and establish the dictatorship their actions deem they prefer.
Yes Ill join the revolution but please, just one more game of Candy Crush first. Can't you see I'm busy.
Charlene Richards , November 5, 2019 at 16:00
Progressives will NEVER have a seat at the Democrat Party table.
The Democrats and the DNC are hopelessly corrupt and the only way to strip them of their power is for ALL true Progressive
Americans to walk away and refuse to vote for ANY Democrat, Trump or no Trump.
Just as Sanders got screwed by them and he and his supporters KNEW it and he STILL supported and campaigned for Hillary Clinton
who is a known liar and corrupt criminal!
I will vote for Tulsi in the California primary only because she had the guts to call out Clinton for what she is.
But I can promise all of you, if necessary the Superdelegates will step in to stop Sanders and when the corruption happens
again next year I will start campaigning for Trump.
Believe me. Not playing their games with them is the ONLY way to stop them.
And I hope Canova will run against DWS again as an Independent. She is evil!!
Skip Edwards , November 5, 2019 at 16:52
Thank you, Charlene, for your simple clarity on a viable, trustworthy candidate to work for. That person is Tulsi Gabbard.
Bernie lost it for me when he "supported and campaigned for Hillary Clinton" after what the Clinton/DNC did to him in the last
election (sorry Bernie; but, you showed your true staying power with that one). Though again I will say it; it will take most
of us in the streets to make the changes we need. Climate change is our real enemy with regards to our survival. US created endless
wars blind us from this reality along with the silent killer, unrelenting population growth on a finite planet. If you care about
any future for those coming after us, those three issues are all that really matter.
ML , November 5, 2019 at 20:07
It seems to me though, that not voting at all would be preferable in the circumstances you describe, to voting for such a one
as trump. I'll never give my vote to any wickedly repulsive human being, no matter their party affiliation. Most Green Party candidates
have been ethical, reasonable, kind, highly intelligent, and have good plans for the commons. But of course, to each his or her
own, Charlene. Cheers, regardless.
Mike K , November 6, 2019 at 03:35
ML one more thing, would you vote for a candidate who hasn't initiated any regime change type of war and is doing his best
to extricate us from the ones he inherited?
Even saint obama sent mountains of arms to Syria via Libya, which ended up in ISIS hands and killed US troops. Despicable!
rosemerry , November 5, 2019 at 15:28
"casting doubt on the legitimacy of our elections". I am not an American but cannot believe that anyone could even pretend
that there is any aspect of democracy in the US electoral process. As well as gerrymandering, the overwhelming effect of donors"
ie bribes, and the appointment of partisan judges to SCOTUS and most of the other courts in the land make the selection and election
of candidates a completely undemocratic procedure.Interference by Russia could never be significant, especially if, as Pres. Putin
pointed out, the difference between the policies o the two Parties is minimal.
Steve Naidamast , November 5, 2019 at 15:27
I am a Green I don't care anymore :-(
Michael Crockett , November 5, 2019 at 14:03
I agree with your assessment of the DNC. They deflect from their own reprehensible conduct to blame Russia for interfering
in our elections. No evidence is needed. It just a mind numbing stream of Russia! Russia! Russia! US elections are among the most
corrupt in the world (Carter Foundation). It appears that our criminal justice system, to include our courts, can not or will
not offer any remedy to this crisis.
Hopelb , November 5, 2019 at 13:55
The only way we US citizens can circumvent this undemocratic treachery is to hold a parallel vote on paper ballots that can
be publicly counted if the election results are contested. Just read that Amazon or was it google has the cloud contract for tabulating
votes in 40% of our elections.
HRC/the DNC not screaming night and day for I hackable paper ballots/publicly counted puts the lie to their Russia hoax.
Thanks for the great article! Love your show.
DH Fabian , November 5, 2019 at 13:42
We've spent years reading and talking about the illegitimacy of elections, interspersed with people railing against those who
don't vote. Each election is "the most important of our lifetimes," and "every vote counts," and if Democrats lose, we're back
to shouting that (fill in the blank) stole the election.
We've gone over "politics 101" a thousand times. Most votes come down to economic issues, and these are the very issues by
which the Clinton right wing divided and conquered the Dem voting base., middle class vs. poor. The Obama years confirmed that
this split is permanent. It isn't the result of arcane ideological differences, much less "Facebook trolls," but of the suffering
caused by the policies of the Democrat Party. Predictably, we once again see much work going into to setting the stage to blame
an expected election defeat on anything/everything other than this.
Antiwar7 , November 5, 2019 at 13:12
One cannot?
The Democratic Party will probably annoint Warren or Biden, one of the establishment candidates. After all, they could point
to Trump as justification for "managing" their primary voters!
And then anyone with a brain and a heart will vote third party.
C.K. Gurin , November 5, 2019 at 18:52
Anyone with a brain and a heart will vote Bernie.
Why the heck do you think the DNC IS working so hard to stab him in the back again.
Mike from Jersey , November 5, 2019 at 13:11
Excellent article.
It seems that dishonesty is not just acceptable to the two political parties and to the media but it is now considered "accepted
practice."
This, of course, has nothing to do with real democracy. Real democracy requires honesty to function properly.
One can only conclude that we no longer have a democracy in this country.
Sam F , November 5, 2019 at 13:00
Very well said. While the DNC corruption is the proper focus for reformers, the Repubs celebrate corruption as an ideal. In
Florida where "Canova was granted a summary judgment against Snipes [but] Snipes was not prosecuted and remained elections supervisor"
I have an ongoing investigation of racketeering involving the theft of over 100 million in conservation funds by wealthy scammers
in government, all of whom do far are Repubs. They regularly sell public offices to donors (get yours now): $2K for committee
memberships and $32K for chairmanships, including your state university board of trustees, no qualifications at all required.
They include judges state and federal, governors, prominent senators, you name it. Money=virtue=qualification is the core of their
belief system, and white-collar theft is their profession and only skill.
I am astounded that Canova got a summary judgment against Snipes, but not that Snipes had no prosecution or penalty and remained
in the very office in which the public trust was utterly betrayed.
michael , November 6, 2019 at 07:40
Your comment calls out corruption by Republicans, but the one concrete example you give is of Brenda Snipes, a Democrat, stealing
a Democratic primary for Wasserman Schultz over Canova? As Federal and Florida judge Zloch noted, primaries are a mere formality.
The DNC can pick any candidates they want, votes are meaningless. The GOP has always been the party of business, mean and corrupt.
But since the Clintons, the DNC has passed them in Wall Street support, corruption and war mongering; and of course they have
abandoned their constituents, the Poor, the Working Class, and Progressives, knowing they will not vote for Republicans and "have
nowhere else to go".
Thank you for reinforcing my cynicism in the two party system in America. Both parties are at fault here of denigrating the
public's confidence in the electoral process. How better than to blame the Russian boogie man in trying to rig our already rigged
system. That's the purview of the plutocrat and oligarch cabal and their elite enablers in government. Stay in your lane.
Jill , November 5, 2019 at 12:50
This article makes many excellent points.
The US hasn't had an authentic election in a very long time. Even if the process was at one time more transparent, the CIA
and OGA/other entities have taken out presidents who they didn't like. Then we come to 2000 where the election for president was
clearly stolen by Bush and again in 2004, there was a likely election theft by Bush. (These thefts may have been by agreement
of both legacy parties, as opposed to actual election theft. I say this because the Democratic party did not fight tooth and nail
to make votes count or challenge voter roll purges that were happening in plain sight.)
What has changed now are the tools available to engage in mass election theft/voter disenfranchisement. Microsoft will be determining
the coming election as they are the ones rolling out the voting machines. This is why we desperately need paper ballots. I lived
in Ohio and I knew people who saw their vote changed in front of their eyes. As we will not get paper we need to figure out some
way around unverifiable machine votes. That may be by filming one's vote or community efforts to have people come out of the polls
and mark a citizen provided private paper ballot. Basically, a citizen run paper parallel voting apparatus that could provide
some basis to challenge unverified machine votes.
This article points out some other things which have changed in the current society. The ability to ignore what most people
really want is endemic. This is coupled with the ability to manipulate people to "want" someone they actually wouldn't "want"
as a candidate where it not for massive propaganda and information restriction. Further, the government is lawless. The powerful
will not be held to account for rigging or stealing elections. That has been made perfectly clear. The lack of legal accountability
has necessitated making certain that citizens will not ask for evil and illegal actions committed by "their" parties' candidate/office
holder to be questioned or called out. The government/corporate amalgam needs a closed system, no legal questions, no citizen
questions. This allows complete impunity for all wrongdoing.
Thus we find ourselves in an incredibly dangerous place. People cling to a party/candidate with a zeal once reserved for cult
leaders. As the cults run most of the discourse and have most of the information (as cults generally do) I think we must look
at ways that people have successfully left cults and apply these stories to our own lives. We must break out of the cult.
Dfnslblty , November 5, 2019 at 12:48
Thanks for a good essay
Keep writing
torture this , November 5, 2019 at 12:30
LOL! I just changed from unaffiliated to Democrat so I can caucus/vote* for the least worst Democrat knowing that I'll end
up voting Green-no-in-between anyway when the multi-party rigged election happens. I never feel dumber than when I waste my time
filling out ballots or showing up for caucuses.
* Colorado changed procedures and I haven't given enough of a shit to figure out what I have to do, yet.
Jeff Harrison , November 5, 2019 at 12:11
The Economist, of course, has called the US a flawed democracy and they were probably being kind. On top of the chicanery Ms.
Vos identifies here, we have the Republicans doing their dead level best to suppress the vote of anyone that even looks like they'd
vote for someone else besides a Republican.
This is the Republicans pure and simple. They are the ones that are focused on winning at all costs. And both parties are now
Republicans. There is, of course, the Republican party which has become extremely right wing in the wake of St. Ronnie, driving
any moderate Republican out of the party and those people have infested the Democratic party as DINOs. Three Names herself is
a former Goldwater Girl. The highly anticipated rematch between Donnie Murdo and Three Names will be a real disaster. (Hint: Donnie
Murdo might get impeached but he'll never be convicted in the Senate)
Was there ever a better argument put forth that would prove that the Chinese Communist Party is a far better form of government
than is the corrupt democratic process in the USA. At least the CCP gives the Chinese people a competant government, with the
over all well being of the population first and foremost. Just look at where this democratic????? system of government has gotten
us. The entire system looks like the movie " The Gangs of New York" with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as the rival gang leaders.
Well one thing is certain, we won`t be seeing this op ed in the New York Times or Newsweek or any other major American news
outlet any time soon.
Antonio Costa , November 5, 2019 at 11:25
Yes the rot that is the DNC!
Thank you for this great summary, that brings us to now.
These parties must be eliminated. They cannot be reformed.
Paul , November 5, 2019 at 11:23
When I read this I have to wonder if the Russia agenda is anything less than a raging success. The Democrat party is doing
the work for them by splitting the country by their single minded focus on Impeaching Trump. I do not know if that was the intent
but it certainly is the result.
michael , November 5, 2019 at 11:08
According to REAL CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou a Russian "asset" is someone paid by the Kremlin. The only people paid by
Putin were the Clintons who received $500,000 for a talk to Putin's bank in Moscow while Hillary was Secretary of State.
The only recent documented interference in Elections was by New Knowledge pretending to be Russians to swing the Alabama US
Senate race from Moore to Jones: a 'technological advance that we'll see much more of from NSA/State department spin-offs in 2020).
And by Ukraine's fake Black Ledger which knocked Paul Manafort from Chairman of the Trump Campaign, thus helping Hillary Clinton
in the 2016 Campaign. Manafort is a sleazy corrupt politico just like the Bidens, Ciaramalla, the Podestas and Greg Craig, the
latter two working closely with Manafort in the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine.
jmg , November 5, 2019 at 10:24
A prediction from 2016 that turned out to be correct:
"Hillary Clinton just planted a bomb under American Democracy . . .
"By far the most irresponsible and dangerous Hillary Clinton has done is however to accuse a foreign power – Russia – of meddling
in the election in order to prevent her winning, and to impose Donald Trump on the American people.
"This is dangerous and irresponsible at so many levels that it is difficult to know where to start.
"Firstly, it is not true. . . ."
(Hillary Clinton just planted a bomb under American Democracy -- The Duran -- Oct 31, 2016)
Great article. The use of Russia as the red herring to confuse the public and to serve the Democratic Party apparatchiks. Not
a surprise as ordinary folks like me can see it yet it works. Witnessing the venom in Mueller's voice when he spoke about the
evil Russians interfering in our elections says a lot about the Washington mindset.
Then the point that people don't matter, money does is not a new idea but a telling one about the way we select our leaders.
Throw in the media that benefits most from the money flow and you get what Ms. Vos eloquently describes in the article, a very
corrupt and damaging system.
Skip Scott , November 5, 2019 at 09:16
Excellent commentary! It is apparent to anyone who bothers to think that the DNC did more to destroy our democratic process
than anything Russia could ever be capable of. They constantly cry about the electoral college, yet they have "superdelegates"
set up in the primary process to ensure that "corporate sponsored warmonger from column B" becomes the only Democratic Party option
in the General Election. To call it blatant hypocrisy is an understatement.
Democracy has always been a farce in the USA, and Russia has nothing to do with it.
If everyone started boycotting corporate news shows, it would go a long way toward ending their negative influence over our
lives. There is no excuse for watching CNN, MSNBC or any of the other corporate news outlets, unless of course you want to hear
the lies that the billionaires want you to hear.
Sixty years now of mass delusion. The southern strategy has worked well during the decades.. BUT. This president has exposed
it all. Money Honey, and the Southerners are starting to feel.. STUPID.
I must say, of all of it's confessions, the "we left enough soldiers to protect the oil" (In Iraq/Iran) was casually blurted out
as plain speech.
It's the beginning of the end..good riddance gop.
Paul Ellis , November 5, 2019 at 04:19
Thank you very much for putting all this together in one article. It's great to have as a resource to help people see what's
going on with the DNC.
Jeff Harrison , November 5, 2019 at 01:26
Fortunately, the DNC doesn't want any of my money or support for their candidates. And the RNC is, if anything worse.
torture this , November 5, 2019 at 12:32
Are you crazy (I know you're not)? They lust for your vote and will do ANYTHING they can to get it except offer you anything
you need.
Realist , November 5, 2019 at 00:09
As a life-long registered Democrat I have felt totally betrayed by the DNC for the fraudulent and illegal acts that Ms. Vos
so lucidly and comprehensively outlines in her piece. It is beyond my understanding why so many rank and file party members continue
to embrace the lies and seditious acts that the organisation they entrust with defending their constitutional rights has never
stopped perpetrating, even after being repeatedly caught red-handed. Undoubtedly the collusion of a fully partisan mass media
has a great deal to do with this sad reality. However, one must insist that Trump Derangement Syndrome and extreme Russophobia,
widely propagated by that corrupt media, are not valid reasons to adopt the same sleazy standards and morals reflexively attributed
by Democrats to Republicans for generations. Maybe it used to be only half the country, when Democrats purportedly stood for strictly
objective empirical truth, impartiality and fair play, but now, in light of proven shameless Democratic fraud, deception, false
narratives and phony alibis, most of the country insists upon brazenly embarrassing itself beyond all belief. People don't seem
to care whether they are governed by a rigorously open constitutional process or a demagogic dictator who seizes or sneaks into
power through fraud, as long as that dictator is from "their" tribe. Shameful.
Ditto! It's like a pass interference call in football. My team never deserves a flag and the other side always does.
Sam F , November 5, 2019 at 13:05
Yes, primitive tribalism remains at the core of politics, due to the extreme political ignorance spawned by our corrupt mass
media.
michael , November 6, 2019 at 09:52
"It is beyond my understanding why so many rank and file party members continue to embrace the lies and seditious acts that
the organisation they entrust with defending their constitutional rights has never stopped perpetrating, even after being repeatedly
caught red-handed. "
The rank and file party members have nowhere else to go and the DNC leadership knows it.
jadan , November 4, 2019 at 23:27
Our electoral system doesn't work because no one can have any confidence that their vote is counted as cast in a state wide
or national venue. Aside from gerrymandering, the purging of voter rolls, and other tricks and techniques of election rigging,
there is the manipulation of numbers in computerized vote counts that undermines the validity of US election results. It's not
the Russians or any other outside influence. It's not possible as a practical matter to do a recount of a presidential election.
Why would any rational person have confidence in the outcome?
Fixing the electoral system would be easy in theory but too many players depend on a rigged system. Fact is, no one wants a
true count of the majority vote because it would run counter to special interests that have grown accustomed to buying elections.
The DNC becomes just another special interest. An electoral system that counted every vote as cast and could be recounted would
destroy the oligarchy.
"Our democracy" is a fantasy. Funny how no politician calls for reform of the electoral process. Not even Bernie.
Sam F , November 5, 2019 at 13:12
Yes, and the reforms are quite easy, although some require amendments to the Constitution:
1. Limiting campaign contributions to the average day's pay annually (or similar means) with accounting and penalties.
2. Monitor public officials and all relatives and associate for life, with heavy penalties for payoffs etc.
3. Similar measures to isolate mass media (say over 10% of market in subject area or region) from economic power.
4. Strict monitoring of voting machine design/production/usage, or requirement of manual balloting.
But as you note, "too many players depend on a rigged system."
DH Fabian , November 5, 2019 at 13:52
Agree, and while such reforms have been needed for decades, they would not change the consequences of Democrats successfully
splitting apart their own voting base. By now, middle class liberals simply appear to be unaware of, or unconcerned about, this
split, making it a lost cause.
Bethany , November 5, 2019 at 16:18
Right. Not even Bernie. And no one talks about Julian Assange either. None of them, including Bernie, wanted what WikiLeaks
revealed to be revealed. Bernie's refusal to fight the obvious rigging last time and his subsequent directive to vote for Hillary
were very enlightening. His weak defense of Tulsi Gabbard was also enlightening. Every day I am aware of what Hannah Arendt described
as 'the iron bands' of totalitarianism tightening and don't foresee relief in the future.
nondimenticare , November 5, 2019 at 17:45
It puts me in mind of the election of Liberal Justin Trudeau, who campaigned on a platform of reforming the unfair, he said,
Canadian voting system of first past the post to a form of proportional representation. (This was after years of a Conservative
government.) What a surprise that when he won the election with a majority government, he had a middle-of-the-night epiphany that
the voting system is quite fine as is.
The same reason we haven't gotten tax reform in the US even when people had a modicum of power: Everyone was sure that s/he
was a rich person hiding in a poor person's body and, by golly, when that rich person emerged s/he wanted to keep all the loot.
A pipe dream then, a virtual impossibility now.
Erelis , November 5, 2019 at 22:16
"Fixing the electoral system would be easy in theory but too many players depend on a rigged system. " Indeed. First, I have
worked many an election and the ONLY people who can steal an election are the people inside the electoral infrastructure. That
is, no Russian hacker sitting in Moscow who can change the results of an election. In America it is Americans cheating other Americans.
(Just look to the the centuries long disenfrancshment of African America voters or recently in Georgia–not a Russian in sight.)
In 2000 I thought the democratic party leadership would lead the way to electoral reform as there were just a ton of compliants
about computer based voting machines. Nada. Instead the democrats blamed Nader. There is only one conclusion. Neither the democrats
nor republicans want to give up their electoral advantages to change and alter and the direction of the outcomes of an election.
Zhu , November 4, 2019 at 23:23
I first voted in the US in 1972. Nothing important has ever improved because of voting. We get more wars on third world people,
more homelessness, no matter which team wins. No wonder more than half never vote!
Sweet William , November 5, 2019 at 11:30
that's just silly. Encouraging people not to vote has been highly successful in this country. thanks for your help in making
it a successful tactic. CN plays a part in that same old sorry: both sides are equally evil.
ML , November 5, 2019 at 20:30
This is to Sweet William: Denying party leaders legitimacy, which they both richly deserve to be denied them, is but one way
to deal with the utter sham that comprises our electoral system. I don't judge people for not voting out of sheer outrage and
protestation. I have always voted and since I could not abide either candidate in 2016, I voted Green, but don't judge people
for making the decision not to participate in protest. It's one thing to be completely incurious and apathetic, it's quite another
to be raging mad and calling the system out for what it is- a completely corrupted unethical mess like our fascistic, lying, murdering,
bellicose empire, the USA. I am not proud to be an American. But my right to vote includes my right NOT to, Sweet William.
jadan , November 5, 2019 at 23:01
People do not believe their votes are counted as cast because they aren't. There is no way to recount a national election.
Nothing changes for most people by and large while great benefits accrue to the elites. The war racket continues. exploitation
of the environment and labor continues. People do not trust their government to work for them, so why vote? This is the result
of a rigged system that is not transparent. It is easy to fix the system. Paper ballots will not solve the problem. We need to
develop a block chain system for voting. Just as a bitcoin is secure, so can a voter's ID be secure. You could easily check to
see if your vote was counted as cast. The election itself could be recounted quickly and easily. The majority of people are not
right wing libertarian or left wing radicals. If the voice of the genuine majority were delivered in an election, the oligarchy
would collapse.
Jeffery Denton , November 4, 2019 at 22:11
Next I would like to hear your take on WHY the Republicans went along with the russiagate conspiracy theory. And what Joe thinks
as well.
Skip Scott , November 5, 2019 at 09:20
The MIC funds both parties to a large extent. Trump's musings about detente with Russia made him the enemy of the establishment
on both sides of the aisle.
Antiwar7 , November 5, 2019 at 13:15
Because either 1) they're on the national security gravy train, or 2) they can be easily pressured by all the forces of 1).
DH Fabian , November 5, 2019 at 13:54
Republicans fully support the "Russia-gate" insanity because they see how it has driven away more Dem voters, making Democrats
too dangerous to vote for.
ML , November 5, 2019 at 20:42
I think Antiwar7 has it just about right and so does Skip Scott. I'd add that Trump's musings on detente with Russia went no
further in his tiny, grasping mind than "what will I get out of this personally" if I encourage rapprochement with Russia? Except
that the word "rapprochement" isn't in his vocabulary- but you get the idea.
Noah Way , November 4, 2019 at 21:54
Despite the blatant manipulation of the 2016 election by the Dems (to Hillary's chagrin, LOL) and the coordinated post-election
disenfranchisement of the elected president (no matter how awful he is) by the collapsed accusations of RussiaGate and likewise
the totally fabricated UkraineGate (just think about this for a millisecond – they're using an anonymous CIA "source" to blame
Trump for something Biden actually did, and which has been a basic tool of US foreign policy since WWII), this is only part of
domestic election meddling by both parties that includes gerrymandering, voter disenfranchisement, media manipulation, unlimited
anonymous money in politics, electronic vote hacking, supreme court interference, etc., etc., etc.
The entire system is corrupt from the top to the bottom.
Nadler:Corey what time is it? Corey :It's 2pm. Nadler: The clock shows 1:59 . Charge Corey for
lying to Congress! All a gotcha game by a group of angry haters.
Nadler:Corey what time is it? Corey :It's 2pm. Nadler: The clock shows 1:59 . Charge Corey for
lying to Congress! All a gotcha game by a group of angry haters.
"... The source was said to be responsible for the reporting used by the former director of the CIA, John Brennan, in making the case that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered Russian intelligence services to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election for the purpose of tipping the scales in favor of then-candidate Donald Trump. ..."
"... On closer scrutiny, however, this aspect of the story falls apart, as does just about everything CNN, The New York Times ..."
"... "And Ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free," John 8:32, is etched into the wall of the main lobby of the Old CIA Headquarters Building. ..."
"... Every Russian diplomat assigned to the United States is screened to ascertain his or her susceptibility for recruitment. The FBI does this from a counterintelligence perspective, looking for Russian spies. The CIA does the same, but with the objective of recruiting a Russian source who can remain in the employ of the Russian government, and thereby provide the CIA with intelligence information commensurate to their standing and access. Turning a senior Russian diplomat is difficult; recruiting a junior Russian diplomat like Oleg Smolenkov less so. Someone like Smolenkov would be viewed not so much by the limited access he provided at the time of recruitment, but rather his potential for promotion and the increased opportunity for more essential access provided by such. ..."
"... The reality is, however, that the CIA and the FBI have different goals and objectives when it comes to the Russians they recruit. As such, Smolenkov's recruitment was most likely a CIA-only affair, run by NR but closely monitored by the Russian Operations Group of the Agency's Central Eurasia Division, who would have responsibility for managing Smolenkov upon his return to Moscow. ..."
"... But his job as foreman of the Rossotrudnichestvo coop was not the kind of job a Maurive Thorez graduate gets; Smolenkov had to have felt slighted. He allegedly turned to drink, and his marriage was on the rocks; his colleagues spoke of a man who believed his salary was too low. ..."
"... The enticements of money and future opportunity -- the CIA's principle recruitment ploys -- more than likely were a factor in convincing this dissatisfied diplomat to defect. ..."
"... the fact is, sometime in 2007-2008, Smolenkov was recruited by the CIA. ..."
"... He was granted a "second-level" security clearance, which allowed him to handle top secret information. ..."
"... Moscow Station, however, was having trouble carrying out its clandestine tasks. In the fall of 2011, the CIA's chief of station in Moscow, Steven Hall, had been approached by his counterpart in the Russian Federal Security Service (the FSB, Russia's equivalent of the FBI) and warned that the CIA should stop trying to recruit agents from within the FSB ranks; the FSB had detected several of these attempts, which it deemed inappropriate given the ongoing cooperation between the intelligence services of the two countries regarding the war on terrorism. ..."
"... The loss of Hall at this very sensitive time created a problem for both the CIA and Smolenkov. Smolenkov's new assignment was a dream come true for the CIA -- never before had the agency managed to place a controlled agent into the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation. ..."
"... With communications down, and the chief of station evicted, Smolenkov was left in a state of limbo while the CIA trained up new case officers capable of operating in Moscow and sought a replacement for Hall. ..."
"... "To put it mildly," Ushakov said, "it is surprising that this extremely crude, clumsy attempt at recruitment took place in a situation where both President Obama and President Putin have clearly stated the importance of more active cooperation and contacts between the special services of the two countries." ..."
"... As a senior aide to Ushakov, Smolenkov was ideally positioned to gather intelligence about the Russian response. If he was able to communicate this information to the CIA, it would have provided Obama and his advisers time to prepare a response to the Russian letter. The situation meant that Smolenkov may have been reporting on events related to the expulsion of Hall, one of the CIA officers specifically trained to manage his reporting. ..."
"... Smolenkov's success was directly linked to the work of his boss, Ushakov. In June 2015, Ushakov was put in charge of establishing a high-level working group in the fuel and energy sector for the purpose of improving bilateral cooperation with Azerbaijan. The reporting Smolenkov would have been able to provide on the work of this group would have been of tremendous assistance to those in the Obama administration working on U.S. energy policy, especially as it related to countering Russian moves in the former Soviet Republics. ..."
"... Ushakov's 10-year tenure as Russia's ambassador to the U.S. gave him unprecedented insight into U.S. decision making, experience and expertise Putin increasingly relied upon as he formulated and implemented responses to U.S. efforts to contain and punish Russia on the international stage. ..."
"... While Ushakov's meetings with Putin were conducted either in private, or in small groups of senior advisers, meaning Smolenkov was not present, Smolenkov was able to collect intelligence on the periphery by photographing itineraries and working papers, as well as overhearing comments made by Ushakov, that collectively would provide U.S. policymakers with important insight into Putin's thinking. ..."
"... According to the FSB, the Russians were adept at identifying CIA officers working under State Department cover and would subject these individuals to extensive surveillance. ..."
"... In addition to the decimation of its staff, Moscow Station was experiencing an alarming number of its agents being discovered by the FSB and arrested. While the Russians were circumspect about most of these cases, on several occasions they indicated that they had uncovered a spy by intercepting the electronic communications between him and the CIA. This meant that the Russians were aware of, and actively pursuing, the Google-based internet-based system used by the CIA to communicate with its agents in Russia. ..."
"... Sometime in early August 2016, a courier from the CIA arrived at the White House carrying a plain, unmarked white envelope. Inside was an intelligence report from Smolenkov that CIA Director Brennan considered to be so sensitive that he kept it out of the President's Daily Brief, concerned that even that restrictive process was too inclusive to adequately protect the source. The intelligence was to be read by four people only -- Obama, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Deputy National Security Advisor Avril Haines and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough. The document was to be returned to the courier once it had been read. ..."
"... The contents of the report were alarming -- Putin had personally ordered the cyber attack on the Democratic National Committee for the purpose of influencing the 2016 presidential election in favor of the Republican candidate, Donald Trump. ..."
"... The White House found the Smolenkov report so convincing that in September 2016, during a meeting of the G-20 in China, Obama pulled Putin aside and told him to stop meddling in the U.S. election. Putin was reportedly nonplussed by Obama's intervention. ..."
"... It is not publicly known what prompted the report from Smolenkov which Brennan found so alarming. Was it received out of the blue, a target of opportunity which Smolenkov exploited? Was it based upon a specific tasking submitted by Smolenkov's CIA handlers in response to a tasking from above? Or was it a result of the intervention of the CIA director, who tasked Smolenkov outside normal channels? In any event, once Brennan created his special analytical unit, Smolenkov became his dedicated source. If Smolenko was in this for the money, as appears to be the case, he would have been motivated to come up with the "correct" answer to Brennan's tasking for information on Putin's role. By late 2016, Western media had made quite clear what kind of answer Brennan wanted. ..."
"... Brennan took the extraordinary measure of sequestering the source from the rest of the Intelligence Community. He also confronted the head of the Russian FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, about the risks involved in interfering in U.S. elections. ..."
"... The Washington Post ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... Smolenkov's firing occurred right before the Intelligence Community released its much-anticipated assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election ..."
"... Brennan had sold the Smolenkov reporting to both President Obama and President-elect Trump, along with the rest of the intelligence community, as "high-quality information." It was, at best, nothing more than uncorroborated rumor or, at worst, simple disinformation. This reporting, which was parroted by an unquestioning mainstream media that accepted it as fact, created an impression amongst the American public that Vladimir Putin had personally ordered and directed a Russian interference campaign during the 2016 election designed "to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible," according to the ICA. ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... The Washington Post ..."
"... Concerned that Smolenkov could be arrested by the Russians and, in doing so, have control over the narrative of Russian interference transfer to Moscow, the CIA once again approached Smolenkov to defect to the United States. This time the Russian agent agreed. ..."
"... Sometime in June 2018, Smolenkov and his wife bought a home worth nearly $1 million in northern Virginia. The couple used their real names. They were not afraid. ..."
"... I can only speculate as to the circumstances that led to Smolenkov's firing by secret decree. Normally, Russians charged with transmitting classified material to the intelligence services of a foreign state are arrested, placed on trial and given lengthy prison sentences, or worse. This did not happen to Smolenkov. ..."
"... In any case, the Smolenkov report in the white envelope represented a level of access that would have significantly deviated from what one could expect from a person in his position and which suggests he may have been telling the CIA what he knew Brennan wanted to hear. ..."
"... The third scenario is that Smolenkov, a low-level failure of a diplomat with drinking issues, marital problems and monetary frustrations, was recruited by the CIA, but only with the complicity of the Russian security services. ..."
"... The same red flags that the CIA looks for when recruiting agents are also looked at by Russian counterintelligence. At what point in the recruitment process the Russians stepped in is unknown (if they did at all.) ..."
"... Moreover, this muddling diplomat whose questionable behavioral practices scream "recruit me" is, within three years of returning to Moscow, given a significant promotion that enables him to follow Ushakov into the Presidential Administration–a posting which would require extensive vetting by the Russian security services. Smolenkov's promotion pattern is enough, in and of itself, to raise red flags within the counterintelligence offices tasked with monitoring such things. The fact that it did not indicates that the quality and quantity of reporting being provided by Smolenkov was deemed by the Americans too important to interfere with. ..."
"... In this scenario, Smolenkov would have been playing to a script written by the Russian security services. Since he, technically, had broken no laws by serving as a double agent, he would not be subjected to arrest and trial. But once his existence became the fodder of the U.S. media via inference and speculation, his services as a double agent were no longer needed. He was fired from his position, via a secret Presidential proclamation, and set free to live his life as he saw fit. ..."
"... In my view, if one assumes that the Smolenkov July 2016 report at the center of this drama was not a result of serendipity, but rather a product derived from a specific request from his CIA managers to find out how high up in the Russian decision-making chain the authorization went for what U.S. intelligence agencies were already publicly pushing as an alleged DNC cyber attack, then the answer I believe becomes clear–the Russians knew the U.S. had an intelligence deficit. ..."
"... In my view, the CIA, Russia and Smolenkov were happy to maintain the status quo, with Smolenkov living in comfortable retirement with his family, the CIA continuing to accuse Russia of interfering in the 2016 presidential election, and Russia denying it. ..."
"... Trump's instructions to Barr are linked to a desire on the part of the president to hold to account those responsible for creating the narrative of possible collusion. Reports indicate that Barr is particularly interested in finding out how and why the CIA concluded that Putin personally ordered the Russian intelligence services to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. ..."
"... Seen in this light, the timing of the CNN and New York Times reports about the "exfiltration" of the CIA's "sensitive source" seems to be little more than a blatant effort by Brennan and his allies in the media to shape a narrative before Barr uncovers the truth. ..."
"... A few days following Smolenkov's "outing" by the U.S. media, the Russian government filed a request with Interpol for an investigation into how someone who had gone missing in Montenegro was now living in the United States. ..."
"... The only person at risk from this entire sordid affair is Brennan, whose reputation and potential livelihood is on the line. At best, Brennan is guilty of extremely poor judgement; at worst, he actively conspired to use the office of Director of the CIA to interfere in the outcome of a U.S. presidential election. Neither option speaks well of the U.S. Intelligence Community and those in Congress charged with oversight of its operations. ..."
"... Watch Scott Ritter discussing this article on ..."
"... Consortium News does not necessarily endorse the views of its authors. ..."
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"... And under the third scenario, with Smolenkov a double agent all along, Ritter writes: "But once his existence became the fodder of the U.S. media via inference and speculation, his services as a double agent were no longer needed. He was fired from his position, via a secret Presidential proclamation, and set free to live his life as he saw fit." ..."
"... That doesn't make sense to me. In fact I see the opposite: if he had been a successfully run double agent all that time, then when his usefulness had ended he would have been decently pensioned off – not simply cut loose to fend for himself – but *not* allowed to travel abroad unimpeded (with his whole family, no less) where he would have the opportunity to cause mischief. ..."
"... In the extremely sophisticated world of high grade intelligence I have repeatedly said that the Brennan, Clapper, Comey trio were lead-footed imbeciles ..."
"... Read The CIA as Organized Crime and Strength of the Wolf and Strength of the Pack by Douglas Valentine. ..."
"... "Kiriakou also notes that the way Smolenkov's intelligence was handled raises echoes of the CIA's manipulation of intelligence to help justify the Iraq war. The information from Smolenkov was handled personally by then-CIA Director John Brennan. Brennan reportedly sidelined other CIA analysts and kept the Smolenkov information out of the Presidential Daily Briefing – instead delivering it personally to President Obama and a small group of officials." ..."
"... More like a Le Carre' film. The CIA was originally sold as an intelligence gathering and analysis organization, and was not supposed to be involved in operations. Thus, it was founded on lies and the lies have only grown since. ..."
"... Even the former communist state governments in Europe and the Soviet Union rued the day that they unleashed their secret police from accountability, and thereby became subservient to their power. ..."
"... I suspect Scott was provided a great deal of the reporting in this fascinating article from a disgruntled insider, or former insider. Knowledge of Brennan's break with protocol to form a select 'stand alone fusion cell' that reported only to him is something that I haven't seen reported before. In any case this story adds another red flag to the entire Russiagate hoax. ..."
"... Just as Mueller failed to interview Julian Assange or Christopher Steele for his report -- obvious red flags -- we should now watch the conduct of Barr's investigation. Will Barr's investigators interview Smolenkov? ..."
"... ( ) the timing of the CNN and New York Times reports about the "exfiltration" of the CIA's "sensitive source" seems to be little more than a blatant effort by Brennan and his allies in the media to shape a narrative before Barr uncovers the truth. ..."
"... "If Smolenkov was a spy, he could have delivered important insights about Russia's foreign policy thinking and planning to U.S. intelligence. But if he was the source for the U.S. intelligence community's certainty that Putin personally orchestrated a covert interference campaign, that certainty rests on a weak foundation. Smolenkov served the wrong boss in the Kremlin to get reliable information about such ventures." ..."
OPINION: Scott Ritter probes Oleg Smolenkov's role as a CIA asset and the use of his data by
the director of the CIA to cast doubt over the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
By Scott Ritter Special to Consortium News
Reports that the CIA conducted an emergency exfiltration of a long-time human intelligence
source who was highly placed within the Russian Presidential Administration sent shock waves
throughout Washington, D.C.
The source was said to be responsible for the reporting used by the
former director of the CIA, John Brennan, in making the case that Russian President Vladimir
Putin personally ordered Russian intelligence services to interfere in the 2016 U.S.
presidential election for the purpose of tipping the scales in favor of then-candidate Donald
Trump.
According to CNN's Jim Sciutto, the decision to exfiltrate the source was driven in part
by concerns within the CIA over President Trump's cavalier approach toward handling classified
information, including his willingness to share highly classified intelligence with Russia's
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a controversial visit to the White House in May 2017.
On closer scrutiny, however, this aspect of the story falls apart, as does just about
everything CNN, The New York Times and other mainstream media outlets have reported.
There was a Russian spy whose information was used to push a narrative of Russian
interference in the 2016 presidential election; this much appears to be true. Everything else
that has been reported is either a mischaracterization of fact or an outright fabrication
designed to hide one of the greatest intelligence failures in U.S. history -- the use by a CIA
director of intelligence data specifically manipulated to interfere in the election of an
American president.
The consequences of this interference has deleteriously impacted U.S. democratic
institutions in ways the American people remain ignorant of -- in large part because of the
complicity of the U.S. media when it comes to reporting this story.
This article attempts to set the record straight by connecting the dots presented by
available information and creating a narrative shaped by a combination of derivative analysis
and informed speculation. At best, this article brings the reader closer to the truth about
Oleg Smolenkov's role as a CIA asset; at worst, it raises issues and questions that will help
in determining the truth.
"And Ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free," John 8:32, is etched into
the wall of the main lobby of the Old CIA Headquarters Building.
The Recruit
Oleg Smolenkov
In 2007, Oleg Smolenkov was living the life of a Russian diplomat abroad, serving in the
Russian embassy in Washington. At 33 years of age, married with a 1-year old son, Smolenkov was
the picture of a young diplomat on the rise. A protégé of Russian Ambassador Yuri
Ushakov, Smolenkov worked as a second secretary assigned to the Russian Cultural Center, a
combined museum and exhibition hall operated by the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of
Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad and International Humanitarian Cooperation
(better known by its common Russian name, Rossotrudnichestvo), an autonomous government agency
operating under the auspices of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In addition to hosting Russian artists and musicians, Rossotrudnichestvo oversaw a program
where it organized all-expense paid cultural exchanges for young Americans to travel to Russia,
where they were accommodated in luxury hotels and met with Russian officials. Smolenkov's boss,
Yegeny Zvedre, would also tour the United States, speaking at public forums where he addressed
U.S.-Russian cooperation. As for Smolenkov himself, life was much more mundane -- he served as
a purchasing agent for Rossotrudnichestvo, managing procurement and contract issues for a store
operating out of the Rossotrudnichestvo building, which stood separate from the main embassy
compound.
Rossotrudnichestvo had a darker side: the FBI long suspected that it operated as a front to
recruit Americans to spy for Russia, and as such every Russian employee was viewed as a
potential officer in the Russian intelligence service. This suspicion brought with it a level
of scrutiny which revealed much about the character of the individual being surveilled,
including information of a potentially compromising nature that could be used by the American
intelligence services as the basis of a recruitment effort.
Every Russian diplomat assigned to the United States is screened to ascertain his or her
susceptibility for recruitment. The FBI does this from a counterintelligence perspective,
looking for Russian spies. The CIA does the same, but with the objective of recruiting a
Russian source who can remain in the employ of the Russian government, and thereby provide the
CIA with intelligence information commensurate to their standing and access. Turning a senior
Russian diplomat is difficult; recruiting a junior Russian diplomat like Oleg Smolenkov less
so. Someone like Smolenkov would be viewed not so much by the limited access he provided at the
time of recruitment, but rather his potential for promotion and the increased opportunity for
more essential access provided by such.
The responsibility within the CIA for recruiting Russian diplomats living in the United
States falls to the National Resources Division, or NR, part of the Directorate of Operations,
or DO -- the clandestine arm of the CIA. In a perfect world, the CIA domestic station in
Washington, D.C., would coordinate with the local FBI field office and develop a joint approach
for recruiting a Russian diplomat such as Smolenkov.
The reality is, however, that the CIA and
the FBI have different goals and objectives when it comes to the Russians they recruit. As
such, Smolenkov's recruitment was most likely a CIA-only affair, run by NR but closely
monitored by the Russian Operations Group of the Agency's Central Eurasia Division, who would
have responsibility for managing Smolenkov upon his return to Moscow.
The precise motive for Smolenkov to take up the CIA's offer of recruitment remains unknown.
He graduated from one of the premier universities in Russia, the Maurice Thorez Moscow State
Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages, and he married his English language instructor.
Normally a graduate from an elite university such as Maurice Thorez has his or her pick of jobs
in the Foreign Ministry, Ministry of Defense or the security services. Smolenkov was hired by
the Foreign Ministry as a junior linguist, assigned to the Second European Department, which
focuses on Great Britain, Scandinavia and the Baltics, before getting assigned to the embassy
in Washington.
Felt Underpaid
But his job as foreman of the Rossotrudnichestvo coop was not the kind of job a Maurive
Thorez graduate gets; Smolenkov had to have felt slighted. He allegedly turned to drink, and
his marriage was on the rocks; his colleagues spoke of a man who believed his salary was too
low.
The enticements of money and future opportunity -- the CIA's principle recruitment ploys --
more than likely were a factor in convincing this dissatisfied diplomat to defect. Did the CIA
compromise him by dangling the temptation of contract-based embezzlement? Or did the FBI
uncover some sort of personal or financial impropriety that made the Russian diplomat
vulnerable to recruitment? Only the CIA and Smolenkov know the precise circumstances behind the
Russian's decision to betray his country. But the fact is, sometime in 2007-2008, Smolenkov
was recruited by the CIA.
After Smolenkov accepted the CIA's offer, there was much work to be done -- the new agent
had to be polygraphed to ascertain his reliability, trained on covert means of intelligence
collection, including covert photography, as well as on how to securely communicate with the
CIA in order to transmit information and receive instructions. Smolenkov was also introduced to
his "handler," a CIA case officer who would be responsible for managing the work of Smolenkov,
including overseeing the bank account where Smolenkov's CIA "salary" would be deposited.
Various contingencies would be prepared for, including procedures for reestablishing
communications should the existing means become unavailable, emergency contact procedures and
emergency exfiltration plans in case Smolenkov became compromised.
Took Away His Name, and Gave Him a Code
The recruitment of a diplomat willing to return to Moscow and be run in place is a rare
accomplishment, and Smolenkov's identity would become a closely guarded secret within the ranks
of the CIA. Smolenkov's true identity would be known to only a few select individuals; to
everyone else who had access to his reporting, he was simply a codename, comprised of a
two-letter digraph representing Russia (this code changed over time), followed by a word chosen
at random by a CIA algorithm (for example, Adolf Tolkachev, the so-called "billion dollar spy,"
was known by the codename CKSPHERE, with CK being the digraph in use for the Soviet Union at
the time of his recruitment.) Because the specific details from the information provided by
Smolenkov could compromise him as the source, the Russian Operations Group would "blend" his
reporting in with other sources in an effort to disguise it before disseminating it to a wider
audience.
Smolenkov followed Ambassador Ushakov when the latter departed the United States for Moscow
in the summer of 2008; soon after arriving back in Moscow, Smolenkov and his wife divorced.
Ushakov took a position as the deputy chief of the Government Staff of the Russian Federation
responsible for international relations and foreign policy support. Part of the Executive
Office of the Government of the Russian Federation, Ushakov coordinated the international work
of the prime minister, deputy prime ministers and senior officials of the Government Executive
Office. Smolenkov took up a position working for Ushakov, and soon found himself moving up the
ranks of the Russian Civil Service, being promoted in 2010 to the rank of state advisor to the
Russian Federation of the Third Class, a second-tier rank that put him on the cusp of joining
the upper levels of the Russian government bureaucracy. He was granted a "second-level"
security clearance, which allowed him to handle top secret information.
Moscow Station
Ukashov, r. with Putin (Kremlin photo)
In 2013 Ushakov received a new assignment, this time to serve in the Presidential Executive
Office as the aide for international relations. Smolenkov joined Ushakov as his staff manager.
Vladimir Putin was one year into his second stint as president and brought Ushakov, who had
advised him on foreign relations while Putin was prime minister, to continue that service.
Ushakov maintained an office at the Boyarsky Dvor (Courtyard of the Boyars), on 8 Staraya
Square.
The Boyarsky Dvor was physically separate from the Kremlin, meaning neither Ushakov nor
Smolenkov had direct access to the Russian president. Nevertheless, Smolenkov's new job had to
have pleased his CIA masters. In the five years Smolenkov worked at the Executive Office of the
Government, he was not privy to particularly sensitive information. His communications with CIA
would most likely have been administrative in nature, with the CIA more interested in
Smolenkov's growth potential than immediate value of any intelligence he could produce.
Smolenkov's arrival in the Presidential Administration coincided with a period of
operational difficulty for the CIA in Moscow. First, the CIA's internet-based covert
communications system, which used Google's email platform as the foundation for accessing
various web pages where information was exchanged between the agent and his CIA handlers, had
been globally compromised. Smolenkov had been trained on this system, and it provided his
lifeline to the CIA. The compromise first occurred in Iran, and then spread to China; in both
countries, entire networks of CIA agents were rounded up, with many being subsequently
executed . China is believed to have shared the information on how to detect the covert
communication-linked web pages with Russia; fortunately for Moscow Station, they were able to
make the appropriate changes in the system to safeguard the security and identity of its
agents. In the meantime, communications between the CIA and Smolenkov were cut off until the
CIA could make contact using back-up protocols and re-train Smolenkov on the new communications
procedures.
Moscow Station, however, was having trouble carrying out its clandestine tasks. In the
fall of 2011, the CIA's chief of station in Moscow, Steven Hall, had been approached by his
counterpart in the Russian Federal Security Service (the FSB, Russia's equivalent of the FBI)
and warned that the CIA should stop trying to recruit agents from within the FSB ranks; the FSB
had detected several of these attempts, which it deemed inappropriate given the ongoing
cooperation between the intelligence services of the two countries regarding the war on
terrorism.
But Hall had his orders, and after a year-long pause to review its operating procedures,
Moscow Station resumed its targeting of FSB officers. Things went real bad real fast. In
January 2013, a CIA officer named Benjamin Dillon was arrested by the FSB as he tried to
recruit a Russian agent, declared persona non grata, and expelled from Russia. Then in May 2013
the FSB arrested another CIA officer, Ryan Fogle. Fogle was paraded before television cameras
together with his spy paraphernalia, and like Dillon before him, expelled from the country.
Moreover, the Russians, in condemning the CIA actions, revealed the identity of the CIA's
Moscow chief of station (Hall), who because of the public disclosure was compelled to depart
Russia.
A CIA Dream
Steve Hall (CNN/YouTube)
The loss of Dillon and Fogle was a serious blow to Moscow Station, but one from which the
CIA could recover. But the near simultaneous loss of two case officers and the chief of
station was a different matter altogether. Hall was one of the few people in the CIA who had
been "read in" on the recruitment of Smolenkov, and as such was involved in the overall
management of the Russian agent. The loss of Hall at this very sensitive time created a
problem for both the CIA and Smolenkov. Smolenkov's new assignment was a dream come true for
the CIA -- never before had the agency managed to place a controlled agent into the
Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation.
But while Smolenkov had been able to provide evidence of access, by way of photographs of
presidential documents, the CIA needed to confirm that Smolenkov hadn't been turned by the
Russians and was not being used to pass on disinformation designed to mislead those who used
Smolenkov's reporting. Normally this was done by subjecting the agent to a polygraph
examination -- a "swirl," in CIA parlance. This examination could take place at an improvised
covert location in Russia, or in a more controlled environment outside of Russia, if Smolenkov
was able to exit on work or during vacation. But arranging the examination required close
coordination between the CIA and its agent, as well as a healthy degree of trust between the
agent and those directing him. With communications down, and the chief of station evicted,
Smolenkov was left in a state of limbo while the CIA trained up new case officers capable of
operating in Moscow and sought a replacement for Hall.
One of the ironies surrounding the arrest and expulsion of CIA officer Fogle, and the
subsequent outing and eviction of Hall, was that Smolenkov was ideally positioned to provide an
inside perspective on how the Russian leadership reacted to the incident. Smolenkov's boss,
Ushakov, was tasked with overseeing Russia's diplomatic response. In a statement given to the
Russian media, Ushakov expressed surprise at the timing of the incident. "To put it mildly,"
Ushakov said, "it is surprising that this extremely crude, clumsy attempt at recruitment took
place in a situation where both President Obama and President Putin have clearly stated the
importance of more active cooperation and contacts between the special services of the two
countries."
Ushakov coordinated closely with the head of Putin's Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev,
regarding the content of a letter Putin was planning to send in response to a previous
communication from Obama. While the original text focused on missile defense issues, Ushakov
and Patrushev inserted language about the Fogle incident. As a senior aide to Ushakov,
Smolenkov was ideally positioned to gather intelligence about the Russian response. If he was
able to communicate this information to the CIA, it would have provided Obama and his advisers
time to prepare a response to the Russian letter. The situation meant that Smolenkov may have
been reporting on events related to the expulsion of Hall, one of the CIA officers specifically
trained to manage his reporting.
The Center
Amid the operational challenges and opportunity provided by Smolenkov's new position within
the Russian Presidential Administration, the CIA underwent a radical reorganization which
impacted how human agents, and the intelligence they produced, would be managed. The past
practice of having intelligence operations controlled by insular regional divisions, which
promoted both a physical and philosophical divide between the collectors and their analytical
counterparts in the respective regional division within the Directorate of Intelligence, or DI,
was discontinued by Brennan, who had taken over as director of the CIA in May 2013.
To replace what he viewed as an antiquated organizational structure, Brennan created what he
called "Mission Centers," which combined analytical, operational, technical and support
expertise under a single roof. For Moscow Station and Smolenkov, this meant that the Russia and
Eurasia Division, with its Russian Operations Group, no longer existed. Instead, Moscow Station
would take its orders from a new Europe and Eurasia Mission Center headed by an experienced CIA
Russia analyst named Peter Clement.
Clement, who had earned a PhD in Russian history from Michigan State University, had a
diverse resumé with the CIA which included service as the director for Russia on the
National Security Council and as the CIA representative to the U.S. Mission to the United
Nations. Clement served as the director of the Office of Russian and Eurasian Analysis and as
the CIA's Russia issue manager from 1997 to 2003; as the President's Daily Brief (PDB) briefer
for Vice President Dick Cheney from 2003-2004, and from 2005-2013, as the deputy director for
intelligence for analytic programs. In 2015 Brennan appointed Clement to serve as the deputy
assistant director of CIA for Europe and Eurasia, where he directed the activities of the newly
created Europe and Eurasia Mission Center. If one was looking for the perfect candidate to
manage the fusion of operational, analytical and technical experience into a singular,
mission-focused entity, Peter Clement was it.
Peter Clement (C-Span)
As Clement got on with the business of whipping the Europe and Eurasia Mission Center into
shape, Smolenkov was busy establishing himself as an intelligence source of some value. Smolenkov's success was directly linked to the work of his boss, Ushakov. In June 2015,
Ushakov was put in charge of establishing a high-level working group in the fuel and energy
sector for the purpose of improving bilateral cooperation with Azerbaijan. The reporting
Smolenkov would have been able to provide on the work of this group would have been of
tremendous assistance to those in the Obama administration working on U.S. energy policy,
especially as it related to countering Russian moves in the former Soviet Republics.
Another project of interest was Russia's sale of advanced Mi-35 helicopters to Pakistan in
support of their counterterrorism efforts. Coming at a time when U.S.-Pakistani relations were
floundering, the Russian sale of advanced helicopters was viewed with concern by both the
Department of State and the Department of Defense. Again, Smolenkov's reporting on this issue
would have been well received by critical policymakers in both departments.
But the most critical role played by Ushakov was advising Putin on the uncertain state of
relations between the U.S. and Russia in the aftermath of the 2014 crisis in Ukraine, and
Russia's annexation of Crimea. Ushakov's 10-year tenure as Russia's ambassador to the U.S.
gave him unprecedented insight into U.S. decision making, experience and expertise Putin
increasingly relied upon as he formulated and implemented responses to U.S. efforts to contain
and punish Russia on the international stage.
While Ushakov's meetings with Putin were conducted either in private, or in small groups
of senior advisers, meaning Smolenkov was not present, Smolenkov was able to collect
intelligence on the periphery by photographing itineraries and working papers, as well as
overhearing comments made by Ushakov, that collectively would provide U.S. policymakers with
important insight into Putin's thinking.
Managing an important resource like Smolenkov was one of the critical challenges faced by
Clement and the Europe and Eurasia Mission Center. Smolenkov's reporting continued to be
handled using special HUMINT procedures designed to protect the source. However, within the
Center knowledge of Smolenkov's work would have been shared with analysts who worked side by
side with their operational colleagues deciding how the intelligence could best be used, as
well as coming up with follow-up questions for Smolenkov regarding specific issues of
interest.
Given the unique insight Smolenkov's reporting provided into Putin's thinking, it would be
logical that intelligence sourced from Smolenkov would frequently find itself briefed to the
president and his inner circle via the PDB process, which was exacting in terms of vetting the
accuracy and reliability of any intelligence reporting that made it onto its pages. As a
long-time Russia expert with extensive experience in virtually every aspect of how the CIA
turned raw reporting into finished intelligence, Clement was ideally suited to making sure his
Center handled the Smolenkov product responsibly, and in a manner which maximized its
value.
Meanwhile, Moscow Station continued to exhibit operational problems. By 2015 the CIA had
managed to rebuild its stable of case officers operating from the U.S. embassy. But the FSB
always seemed to be one step ahead. According to the FSB, the Russians were adept at
identifying CIA officers working under State Department cover and would subject these
individuals to extensive surveillance. As if to prove the Russian's point, in short order
the FSB rounded up the newly assigned case officers, along with the deputy chief of station,
declared them persona non grata, and expelled them from Russia. To make matters worse, the FSB
released surveillance video of all these officers, who in some cases were joined by their
spouses, as they engaged in elaborate ruses to evade Russian surveillance in order to carry out
their covert assignments.
Moscow Station's string of bad luck continued into 2016, when one of its officers, having
been detected by the FSB during a meeting, fled via taxi to the U.S. embassy, only to be
tackled by a uniformed FSB officer as he tried to enter the compound. In the scuffle that
followed, the CIA officer managed to make entry into the embassy building, compelling the FSB
guard to release him once jurisdiction was lost. The CIA officer, who suffered a separated
shoulder during the incident, left Russia shortly thereafter, together with a female colleague
who had also been detected by the FSB while engaged in clandestine activities and subsequently
declared persona non grata.
FSB Headquarters in the Lubyanka Building, Moscow.
The FSB indicated, at the time these two officers were being expelled, that it had evicted
three other CIA officers during the year. In addition to the decimation of its staff, Moscow
Station was experiencing an alarming number of its agents being discovered by the FSB and
arrested. While the Russians were circumspect about most of these cases, on several occasions
they indicated that they had uncovered a spy by intercepting the electronic communications
between him and the CIA. This meant that the Russians were aware of, and actively pursuing, the
Google-based internet-based system used by the CIA to communicate with its agents in
Russia.
Meanwhile, Smolenkov continued to send his reports to his CIA handlers unabated, using the
same internet-based system. Under normal circumstances, an exception to compromise would raise
red flags within the counterintelligence staff that evaluated an agent's reporting and
activity. But by the summer of 2016, nothing about the work of the CIA, and in particular the
Europe and Eurasia Mission Center could be considered "normal" when it came to the Russian
target.
Little White Envelope
Sometime in early August 2016, a courier from the CIA arrived at the White House carrying
a plain, unmarked white envelope. Inside was an intelligence report from Smolenkov that CIA
Director Brennan considered to be so sensitive that he kept it out of the President's Daily
Brief, concerned that even that restrictive process was too inclusive to adequately protect the
source. The intelligence was to be read by four people only -- Obama, National Security Advisor
Susan Rice, Deputy National Security Advisor Avril Haines and White House Chief of Staff Denis
McDonough. The document was to be returned to the courier once it had been read.
Brennan in Oval Office where he had envelope delivered. (White House photo/Pete Souza)
The contents of the report were alarming -- Putin had personally ordered the cyber attack
on the Democratic National Committee for the purpose of influencing the 2016 presidential
election in favor of the Republican candidate, Donald Trump.
The intelligence report was not a product of Clement's Europe and Eurasia Mission Center,
but rather a special unit of handpicked analysts from the CIA, NSA and FBI who were brought
together under great secrecy in late July and reported directly to Brennan. These analysts were
made to sign non-disclosure agreements protecting their work from their colleagues.
This new analytical unit focused on three new sensitive sources of information -- the
Smolenkov report, additional reporting provided by a former MI6 officer named Christopher
Steele, and a signals intelligence report provided by a Baltic nation neighboring Russia. The
Steele information was of questionable provenance, so much so that FBI Director James Comey
could not, or would not, vouch for its credibility. The same held true for the NSA's assessment
of the Baltic SIGINT report. By themselves, the Steele reporting and Baltic SIGINT report were
of little intelligence value. But when viewed together, they were used to corroborate the
explosive contents of the Smolenkov intelligence. The White House found the Smolenkov report
so convincing that in September 2016, during a meeting of the G-20 in China, Obama pulled Putin
aside and told him to stop meddling in the U.S. election. Putin was reportedly nonplussed by
Obama's intervention.
It is extraordinarily difficult for a piece of intelligence to be deemed important and
reliable enough to be briefed to the president of the United States. The principal forum for
such a briefing is the Presidential Daily Brief, which prior to 2004 was a product produced
exclusively by the CIA. When the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act was signed
into law in 2004, the responsibility for the PDB was transferred to the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence (ODNI), a newly created entity responsible for oversight and
coordination of the entire Intelligence Community, or IC. The PDB is considered to be an IC
product, the production of which is coordinated by ODNI's PDB staff in partnership with the CIA
Directorate of Intelligence (DI)'s President's Analytic Support Staff.
Since he began reporting about his work in the Russian Presidential Administration in 2013,
Smolenkov had, on numerous occasions, produced intelligence whose content and relevance was
such that it would readily warrant inclusion in the PDB. After 2015, the decision to submit a
Smolenkov-sourced report for inclusion in the PDB would be made by Clement and his staff. For a
report to be nominated, it would have to pass an exacting quality control review process which
evaluated it for accuracy, relevance and reliability.
U.S. Embassy Moscow ( Wikimedia Commons)
Sometime in the leadup to August 2016, this process was halted. Oleg Smolenkov was a
controlled asset of the CIA. While he was given certain latitude on what information he could
collect, generally speaking Smolenkov worked from an operations order sent to him by his CIA
controllers which established priorities for intelligence collection based upon information
provided by Smolenkov about what he could reasonably access. Before tasking Smolenkov, his CIA
handlers would screen the request from an operational and counterintelligence perspective,
conducting a risk-reward analysis that weighed the value of the intelligence being sought with
the possibility of compromise. Only then would Smolenkov be cleared to collect the requested
information.
It is not publicly known what prompted the report from Smolenkov which Brennan found so
alarming. Was it received out of the blue, a target of opportunity which Smolenkov exploited?
Was it based upon a specific tasking submitted by Smolenkov's CIA handlers in response to a
tasking from above? Or was it a result of the intervention of the CIA director, who tasked
Smolenkov outside normal channels? In any event, once Brennan created his special analytical
unit, Smolenkov became his dedicated source. If Smolenko was in this for the money, as appears
to be the case, he would have been motivated to come up with the "correct" answer to Brennan's
tasking for information on Putin's role. By late 2016, Western media had made quite clear what
kind of answer Brennan wanted.
Every intelligence report produced by a controlled asset is subjected to a
counterintelligence review where it is examined for any evidence of red flags that could be
indicative of compromise. One red flag is the issue of abnormal access. Smolenkov did not
normally have direct contact with Putin, if ever. His intelligence reports would have been
written from the perspective of the distant observer. His report about Putin's role in
interfering in the 2016 election, however, represented a whole new level of access and trust.
Under normal circumstances, a report exhibiting such tendency would be pulled aside for
additional scrutiny; if the report was alarming enough, the CIA might order the agent to be
subjected to a polygraph to ensure he had not been compromised.
This did not happen. Instead, Brennan took the extraordinary measure of sequestering the
source from the rest of the Intelligence Community. He also confronted the head of the Russian
FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, about the risks involved in interfering in U.S. elections.
Whether Brennan further tasked Smolenkov to collect on Putin is not known. Nor is it known
whether Smolenkov produced more than that single report about Putin's alleged direct role in
ordering the Russian intelligence services to intervene in the 2016 U.S. presidential
elections.
Despite Brennan's extraordinary effort to keep the existence of a human source within the
Russian Presidential Administration a closely-held secret, by December 2016 both The
Washington Post and The New York Times began quoting their sources about the
existence of a sensitive intelligence source close to the Russian president. The timing of
these press leaks coincided with Smolensky being fired from his job working for the
Presidential Administration; the method of firing came in the form of a secret decree. When the
CIA found out, they desperately tried to convince Smolenkov to agree to extraction, fearing for
his safety should he remain in Moscow. This Smolenkov allegedly refused to do, prompting the
counterintelligence-minded within the CIA to become concerned that Brennan and his coterie of
analysts had been taken for a ride by a Russian double agent.
Trump and Barr on Feb. 14, 2019. (Wikimedia Commons)
Smolenkov's firing occurred right before the Intelligence Community released its
much-anticipated assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election . Like the special
analytical unit created by Brennan to handle the intelligence about Putin ordering the Russian
intelligence services to intervene in favor of Trump in the 2016 election, Brennan opted to
produce the Russian interference assessment outside the normal channels. Usually, when the IC
opts to produce an assessment, there is a formal process which has a national intelligence
officer (NIO) from within the National Intelligence Council take the lead on coordinating the
collection and assessment of all relevant intelligence. The NIO usually coordinates closely
with the relevant Mission Centers to ensure no analytical stone was left unturned in the
pursuit of the truth.
The 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) was produced differently -- no Mission
Center involvement, no NIO assigned, no peer review. Just Brennan's little band of sequestered
analysts.
Smolenkov's information took top billing in the ICA, "Assessing Russian Activities and
Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections," published on Jan. 6, 2017. "We assess," the unclassified
document stated, "Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed
at the U.S. presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S.
democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential
presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for
President-elect Trump." Smolenkov's reporting appears to be the sole source for this
finding.
The ICA went on to note, "We have high confidence in these judgments." According to the
Intelligence Community's own definition, "high confidence'" generally indicates judgments based
on high-quality information, and/or the nature of the issue makes it possible to render a solid
judgment. A "high confidence" judgment is not a fact or a certainty, however, and still carries
a risk of being wrong.
The same day the ICA was published, Brennan, accompanied by Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper, and Admiral Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security
Agency, met with President-elect Trump in Trump Tower, where he was briefed on the classified
information behind the Russian ICA. Included in this briefing was the intelligence from "a
top-secret source" close to Putin which sustained the finding of Putin's direct
involvement.
Brennan had sold the Smolenkov reporting to both President Obama and President-elect
Trump, along with the rest of the intelligence community, as "high-quality information." It
was, at best, nothing more than uncorroborated rumor or, at worst, simple disinformation. This
reporting, which was parroted by an unquestioning mainstream media that accepted it as fact,
created an impression amongst the American public that Vladimir Putin had personally ordered
and directed a Russian interference campaign during the 2016 election designed "to help
President-elect Trump's election chances when possible," according to the ICA.
As CIA director, Brennan understood very well the role played by intelligence in shaping the
decisions of key policy makers, and the absolute need for those who brief the president and his
key advisers to ensure only the highest quality information and derived assessments are
briefed. In this, Brennan failed.
Coming in From the Cold
Tivat, Montenegro
After being fired from his position within the Presidential Administration, Smolenkov
continued to live in Moscow, very much a free man. By this time he was the father of three
children, his new wife having given birth to two daughters. Following Trump's inauguration on
Jan. 20, 2017, Brennan resigned as CIA director. By May, Brennan was testifying before Congress
about the issue of Russian interference. Increasingly, attention was being drawn to the
existence of a highly-placed source near Putin, with both The New York Times and The
Washington Post publishing surprisingly detailed reports.
Concerned that Smolenkov could be arrested by the Russians and, in doing so, have control
over the narrative of Russian interference transfer to Moscow, the CIA once again approached
Smolenkov to defect to the United States. This time the Russian agent agreed.
In July 2017, Smolenkov, accompanied by his wife and three children, travelled to Montenegro
on vacation. They arrived in the resort city of Tivat, flying on a commercial air flight from
Moscow. The CIA took control of the family a few days later, spiriting them away aboard a yacht
that had been moored at the Tivat marina. Upon his arrival in the U.S., Smolenkov and his
family were placed under the control of the CIA's resettlement unit.
According to the Russian media, Smolenkov's disappearance was discovered in September 2017.
The FSB opened an investigation into the matter, initially suspecting foul play. Soon, however,
the FSB reached a different conclusion -- that Smolenkov and his family had defected to the
United States.
Normally a defector would be subjected to a debriefing, inclusive of a polygraph, to confirm
that he or she had not been turned into a double agent. Smolenkov had, over the course of a
decade of spying, accumulated a considerable amount of money which the CIA was holding in
escrow. This money would be released to Smolenkov upon the successful completion of his
debriefing. In the case of Smolenkov, however, there doesn't seem to have been a detailed,
lengthy debriefing. His money was turned over to him. Sometime in June 2018, Smolenkov and
his wife bought a home worth nearly $1 million in northern Virginia. The couple used their real
names. They were not afraid.
I can only speculate as to the circumstances that led to Smolenkov's firing by secret
decree. Normally, Russians charged with transmitting classified material to the intelligence
services of a foreign state are arrested, placed on trial and given lengthy prison sentences,
or worse. This did not happen to Smolenkov.
But this does not mean the Russian authorities were ignorant of his activities. This raises
another possibility, that Smolenkov could have been turned by the Russian security services
before he had compromised any classified information, and that he operated as a double agent
his entire CIA career. Since the only classified information he transferred would, in this
case, be approved for release by the Russian security services, he would not have technically
committed a crime. If Smolenkov was working both sides, it could have been a Russian vehicle to
create distrust between the U.S. intelligence community and Trump.
Smolenkov was fired, and left to his own devices, once his utility to Russia had expired.
Having escaped being arrested as a spy, Smolenkov believed he might be able to live a normal
life in Moscow. But when the potential for compromise arose due to leaks to the press, I assess
that it was in the CIA's interest to bring Smolenkov in, if for no other reason than to control
the narrative of Russian interference.
Three Scenarios
Old CIA building in Langely, Virginia.
There are three scenarios that could be at play regarding Smolenkov's bone fides as a human
intelligence source for the CIA. First, that this was a solid recruitment, that Smolenkov was
the high-level asset the CIA and Brennan claim he was, and the information he provided
regarding the involvement of Putin was unimpeachable. Mitigating against this is the fact that
when Smolenkov was fired from his position in late 2016, he was not arrested and put on trial
for spying.
Russia is fully capable of conducting secret trials, and controlling the information that is
made available about such a trial. Moreover, Russia is a vindictive state–persons who
commit treason are not tolerated. As Putin himself noted in comments made in March 2018,
"Traitors will kick the bucket. Trust me. These people betrayed their friends, their brothers
in arms. Whatever they got in exchange for it, those thirty pieces silver they were given, they
will choke on them." The odds of Smolenkov being fired for committing treason, and then being
allowed to voluntarily exit Russia with his family and passports, are virtually nil.
The second scenario is a variation of the first, where Smolenkov starts as a solid
recruitment, with his reporting commensurate with his known level of access–peripheral
contact with documents and information pertaining to the work of the aide to President Putin on
international relations. Sometime in July 2016 Smolenkov produces a report that catches the
attention of DCI Brennan, who flags it and pulls Smolenkov out of the normal operational
channels for CIA-controlled human sources, and instead creating a new, highly-compartmentalized
fusion cell to handle this report, and possibly others.
Three questions emerge from the second scenario. First, was Smolenkov responding to an
urgent tasking from Brennan to find out how high up the Russian chain of command went the
knowledge of the alleged DNC cyber attack, or did Smolenkov produce this report on his own
volition? Was Brennan arranging evidence to show that there was indeed a Russian hack. After
all, all the FBI had to go by was a draft of a report by the virulently anti-Russian private
security firm CrowdStrike. The FBI never examined the DNC server itself.
In any case, the Smolenkov report in the white envelope represented a level of access
that would have significantly deviated from what one could expect from a person in his position
and which suggests he may have been telling the CIA what he knew Brennan wanted to hear. As
such, normal counterintelligence procedures should have mandated an operational pause while the
intelligence report in question was scrubbed to ensure viability. Under no circumstances would
a report so flagged be allowed to be put into the Presidential Daily Brief. However, by pulling
the report from the control of the Europe and Eurasian Mission Center, turning it over to a
stand-alone fusion cell, and bypassing the PDB process to brief the president and a handful of
advisors, there would be no counterintelligence concerns raised. This implies that Brennan had
a role in the tasking of Smolenkov, and was waiting for the report to come in, which Brennan
then took control of to preclude any counter-intelligence red flags being raised.
The third scenario is that Smolenkov, a low-level failure of a diplomat with drinking
issues, marital problems and monetary frustrations, was recruited by the CIA, but only with the
complicity of the Russian security services.
The same red flags that the CIA looks for when recruiting agents are also looked at by
Russian counterintelligence. At what point in the recruitment process the Russians stepped in
is unknown (if they did at all.) But it is curious that this professional failure was
suddenly transferred from running a co-op to being the right hand man of one of the most
influential foreign policy experts in Russia–Yuri Ushakov.
Moreover, this muddling diplomat whose questionable behavioral practices scream "recruit
me" is, within three years of returning to Moscow, given a significant promotion that enables
him to follow Ushakov into the Presidential Administration–a posting which would require
extensive vetting by the Russian security services. Smolenkov's promotion pattern is enough, in
and of itself, to raise red flags within the counterintelligence offices tasked with monitoring
such things. The fact that it did not indicates that the quality and quantity of reporting
being provided by Smolenkov was deemed by the Americans too important to interfere
with.
In this scenario, Smolenkov would have been playing to a script written by the Russian
security services. Since he, technically, had broken no laws by serving as a double agent, he
would not be subjected to arrest and trial. But once his existence became the fodder of the
U.S. media via inference and speculation, his services as a double agent were no longer needed.
He was fired from his position, via a secret Presidential proclamation, and set free to live
his life as he saw fit.
The most pressing question that emerges from this possibility is why? Why would the Russian
security services want to cook the books, so to speak, in a manner which made the Russians look
guilty of the very thing they were publicly denying?
In my view, if one assumes that the Smolenkov July 2016 report at the center of this
drama was not a result of serendipity, but rather a product derived from a specific request
from his CIA managers to find out how high up in the Russian decision-making chain the
authorization went for what U.S. intelligence agencies were already publicly pushing as an
alleged DNC cyber attack, then the answer I believe becomes clear–the Russians knew the
U.S. had an intelligence deficit.
I am speculating here, but if the Russians provided an answer guaranteed to attract
attention at a critical time in the U.S. presidential election process, it would inject the CIA
and its reporting into the democratic processes of the United States, and thereby politicize
the CIA and the entire intelligence community by default. This would suppose, however, that the
agencies did not have their own motives for wanting to stop Trump.
Rogers, Comey, Clapper and Brennan all in a row.
In this scenario, the Russians would have been in control of when to expose the CIA's
activities–all they had to do was fire Smolenkov, which in the end they did, right as
Smolenkov's report was front and center in the post-election finger-pointing that was taking
place regarding the allegation of Russian interference. The best acts of political sabotage are
done subtlety, where the culprit remains in the shadows while the victims proceed, unaware that
they have been played.
For the Russians, it didn't matter who won the election, even if they may have favored
Trump; simply getting President Obama to commit to the bait by confronting Putin at the G20
meeting in September 2016 would have been a victory, because I assess that at that point the
Russians knew that they were driving the American narrative. When the President of the United
States acts on intelligence that later turns out to be false, it is an embarrassment that
drives a wedge between the intelligence community and the Executive Branch of government. I
have no solid evidence for this. But in my speculation on what may have happened, this was the
Russian objective–to drive that wedge.
An Idyllic Truce
In my view, the CIA, Russia and Smolenkov were happy to maintain the status quo, with
Smolenkov living in comfortable retirement with his family, the CIA continuing to accuse Russia
of interfering in the 2016 presidential election, and Russia denying it. As well, Russia
seems to have brushed off the sanctions that resulted from this alleged "interference." This
idyllic truce started to unravel in May 2019, when Trump ordered Attorney General William Barr
to "get to the bottom" of what role the CIA played in initiating the investigation into
allegations of collusion between Trump's campaign and the Russians that led to the appointment
of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller's investigation concluded earlier this year, with a
400-plus page report being published which did not find any evidence of active collusion
between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
Trump's instructions to Barr are linked to a desire on the part of the president to hold
to account those responsible for creating the narrative of possible collusion. Reports indicate
that Barr is particularly interested in finding out how and why the CIA concluded that Putin
personally ordered the Russian intelligence services to interfere in the 2016 presidential
election.
Barr's investigation will inevitably lead him to the intelligence report that was hand
couriered to the White House in early August 2016, which would in turn lead to Smolenkov, and
in doing so open up the can of worms of Smolenkov's entire history of cooperation with the CIA.
Not only could the entire foundation upon which the intelligence community has based its
assessment of Russian interference collapse, it could also open the door for potential charges
of criminal misconduct by Brennan and anyone else who helped him bypass normal vetting
procedures and, in doing so, allowed a possible Russian double agent to influence the decisions
of the president of the United States.
Seen in this light, the timing of the CNN and New York Times reports about the
"exfiltration" of the CIA's "sensitive source" seems to be little more than a blatant effort by
Brennan and his allies in the media to shape a narrative before Barr uncovers the
truth.
At the end of the day, Smolenkov and his family are not at risk. If the Russian government
wanted to exact revenge for his actions, it would have done so after firing him in late 2016.
In any event, Smolenkov and his family would never have been allowed to leave Russia had he
been suspected or accused of committing crimes against the state. A few days following
Smolenkov's "outing" by the U.S. media, the Russian government filed a request with Interpol
for an investigation into how someone who had gone missing in Montenegro was now living in the
United States.
The only person at risk from this entire sordid affair is Brennan, whose reputation and
potential livelihood is on the line. At best, Brennan is guilty of extremely poor judgement; at
worst, he actively conspired to use the office of Director of the CIA to interfere in the
outcome of a U.S. presidential election. Neither option speaks well of the U.S. Intelligence
Community and those in Congress charged with oversight of its operations.
Watch Scott Ritter discussing this article on CN Live! Episode 9.
Consortium News does not necessarily endorse the views of its authors.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet
Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm,
and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.
If you value this original article, please considermaking a donationto Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
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Linda Wood , September 17, 2019 at 00:34
Brennan may have written the white envelope report and attributed it to Smolenkov, who may
or may not have been a double agent. The Russian interference story is not just something
Brennan wanted to hear, it's what the military industrial complex needs us to believe.
Dan Anderson , September 16, 2019 at 22:09
I trust Scott Ritter. Had we listened to him, the USA would not have invaded Iraq over
WMDs.
Reading the piece added to my distrust of our intelligence community, remembering this
haunting exchange on live TV.
January 3, 2017 – Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer:
"Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday to
get back at you. So, even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he is being
really dumb to do this."
Rachel Maddow:
"What do you think the intelligence community would do if they were motivated to?"
Schumer: "I don't know, but from what I am told, they are very upset with how he has
treated them and talked about them," -- The Rachel Maddow Show Jan 3, 2017
David G , September 16, 2019 at 18:32
I'm surprised Scott Ritter thinks it likely that Russia engineered the "Putin meddled"
narrative – that just seems unbelievable to me. There are enough moving parts here that one doesn't have to commit to one of Ritter's
three scenarios: numerous variations are possible. For instance, Smolenkov may have been fired for some mundane mix of reasons going to
performance and reliability. He may have been considered dubious without Russian
counterintelligence having fingered him as a U.S. agent.
And under the third scenario, with Smolenkov a double agent all along, Ritter writes: "But once his existence became the fodder of the U.S. media via inference and speculation,
his services as a double agent were no longer needed. He was fired from his position, via a
secret Presidential proclamation, and set free to live his life as he saw fit."
That doesn't make sense to me. In fact I see the opposite: if he had been a successfully
run double agent all that time, then when his usefulness had ended he would have been
decently pensioned off – not simply cut loose to fend for himself – but *not*
allowed to travel abroad unimpeded (with his whole family, no less) where he would have the
opportunity to cause mischief.
Were it not so powerful militarily and financially, the United States would be the
laughingstock of the world. This entire business is just another avenue travelled in America's nonstop Russophobia
lunatic wanderings. The DNC material was not hacked as a number of true experts have told us, including the
key one now languishing in a British prison. Putin had no plan because nothing ever happened.
Nothing. And I think we've all seen that when Putin plans something, it happens. The article is interesting for its laying out of elaborate security procedures –
kind of a high-level almost academic "police procedural" – but I do feel in the end it
is not that helpful, much as I respect Mr Ritter.
When nothing has happened, it does seem a bit odd to scrutinize every piece of fiber and
bit of dust and to construct a massive scenario of "what ifs."
Meanwhile, the murder of Seth Rich, a genuine and meaningful event, goes virtually
uninvestigated.
No wonder you are in so much trouble, America, and no wonder you make so much trouble for
others.
Anonymot , September 16, 2019 at 15:16
In the extremely sophisticated world of high grade intelligence I have repeatedly said
that the Brennan, Clapper, Comey trio were lead-footed imbeciles. That has been the CIA
tradition since Dulles left. All of those in our intelligence racket have led us to the
trough of poisoned water and all of our Presidents drank. They have all become very rich, but
not from book sales nor from consulting fees.
It says a lot about the entire echelon of those who decide our fates. There is no way to
know whether it stems from ignorance or incompetence, but those with the Deep State mindset
like each other, hire each other, and have been in some sort of daisy chain since university.
We not only need to describe How it happens as this article does very well, but even more
importantly Why. Only then can we start to do something about it, although it is probably far
too late – it would be like taking the shell off of an egg and leaving that delicate
interior membrane just inside the shell intact.
Clods like these (add the Clintons) should have their post-employment millions confiscated
and put on trial.
Sorry, but "Big Intelligence" is always a failure, and on many levels. It is not a matter of any "clods." It is a matter of the very nature of the institution and the nature of the people who use
its output. The CIA only has a good record at doing bad things. I refer to its operations side and the havoc and violence they have released through the
decades. It is an army of richly-equipped thugs without uniforms interfering in the business of
others, "lying, cheating, and stealing."
I find it maddening that we "puppet proles" are treated like stupid fools, lied to
constantly, and nothing happens to stop the mad lying/false flag garbage that keeps on. Now,
today, after Bolton departure, out of the weirdness comes Pompous Pompeo spewing even worse
madness that could tip "us" into attacking Iran! Saudis are insane, Netanyahu faces his
electorate tomorrow, and we should believe MbS and cronies? Trump is nothing but a
stooge!
Maricata , September 16, 2019 at 19:28
Read The CIA as Organized Crime and Strength of the Wolf and Strength of the Pack by Douglas
Valentine.
Please, CN, have Mr. Valentine on your livc broadcast
Jeff Harrison , September 16, 2019 at 14:36
It occurs to me that this may have an inappropriate title. Plausibly Mr. Ritter has pegged
what Smolenkov was eventually – a double agent. In which case I would probably call him
pretty successful.
hetro , September 16, 2019 at 13:06
Also published yesterday, this Aaron Mate interview with John Kiriakou on Smolenkov:
"Kiriakou also notes that the way Smolenkov's intelligence was handled raises echoes of
the CIA's manipulation of intelligence to help justify the Iraq war. The information from
Smolenkov was handled personally by then-CIA Director John Brennan. Brennan reportedly
sidelined other CIA analysts and kept the Smolenkov information out of the Presidential Daily
Briefing – instead delivering it personally to President Obama and a small group of
officials."
"That is a highly highly unusual thing to do, but I think [Brennan] did it because he knew
that the source wasn't well placed, he knew that the source was lying about his access to
Putin -- or information coming from Putin -- and I think that for whatever reason John
Brennan really wanted the president to run with this narrative that the Russians were trying
to somehow impact the 2016 election, when the intelligence just simply wasn't there,"
Kiriakou says.
When Trump campaigned against the bloody foreign policies of the duopoly he was also
campaigning against an out of control, coup making, drug running, blackmailing, imperial CIA.
my comment to The Brennan wanted to 'get' Trump to save his own hide, the CIA, and the
duopoly from further embarrassment.
If Smolenkov is missing from his Virginia home (Chancellor below at 9.15.19 at 23:40)
hopefully he is in hiding to assure he can tell a Grand Jury about any instructions or
suggestions he may have received from Brennan, or others regarding the election of Donald
Trump.
Zhu , September 16, 2019 at 05:25
Re John 8:32, people forget Pilate's remark, "what is truth"?
Igor Bundy , September 16, 2019 at 04:29
The next report from the CIA will be from hogwarts and how the measter is concatenating a
secret potion on how to turn dykes into donkeys.. This is especially impotent to the CIA and
such.. to hide in plain sight..
Imagine them trying to make a bond movie from this. Or more of Bourne.. But now it makes
sense of all the shows that show the CIA as protector of humanity and the good guys.. There
are no righteous intelligence agencies anywhere, only how evil and their limits.. Why their
powers should be limited and their actions also limited to a small sphere. Because where does
it stop? Once given the power to shape reality, then the entire world is shaped according to
a few with psychopathic tendencies. Which normal person would want to control everyone
according to their own reality? When you cant control your very own family, you have to be
one heck of a control freak to do it globally and to force everyone to do as told. But these
are the dreams and aspirations of an ape.. To remake the world in his own image.. and the
prize is the banana..
John Wright , September 16, 2019 at 15:11
More like a Le Carre' film. The CIA was originally sold as an intelligence gathering and analysis organization, and
was not supposed to be involved in operations. Thus, it was founded on lies and the lies have
only grown since.
Neither the CIA nor the FBI are salvageable at this point. They need to be abolished,
their functions reconsidered and new institutions which adhere to the Constitution created.
Of course, the entire military intelligence complex needs to be dismantled, starting with the
DHS, but that will require a revolution in this country.
Even the former communist state governments in Europe and the Soviet Union rued the day
that they unleashed their secret police from accountability, and thereby became subservient
to their power.
Chancellor , September 15, 2019 at 23:40
"But his job as foreman of the Rossotrudnichestvo coop was not the kind of job a Maurive
(sic) Thorez graduate gets;"
Of course it isn't, because that was never really his job. My guess is that his real job
all along was to be recruited by the CIA, when, in fact, he was always a double agent. The
rumors that he drank too much, was dissatisfied with his pay, and so on, strike me as too
obvious a come-on to an over-confident CIA. If Mr. Ritter knows that this is the type of
individual the CIA looks for, then the Russian security services know this as well. After
all, they tagged every American on the Moscow Station. Clearly, they have excellent
tradecraft.
The final coup by the Russian security services was to create a situation where Smolenkov
would have to be extracted by the CIA, although the Russians probably didn't think it would
take so long. Now it appears that Smolenkov is missing from the Virginia home that he
purchased openly under his own name. I wouldn't be surprised if he is living comfortably
somewhere back in Russia–this time having been "extracted" by the Russians, since his
cover as a CIA asset was finally blown.
Clearly this is speculation, but no more so than the scenarios Mr. Ritter posits.
Fabrizio Zambuto , September 16, 2019 at 14:11
Third scenario seems possible. He starts to drink, he shows how unsatisfied he is, knows
Americans will target him.
Meanwhile he gets spoonfed the intel he will have to share with the CIA.
According to Lavrov, he was a employee with little access to the echelons.
Last but not least: Putin said traitors will be punished but they don't get killed,
they're sent to Prison and handed years like Skripal which managed to go to UK thanks to a
swap.
Overall I like the article but too much Hollywood in the story. Why was he fired?
John Wright , September 15, 2019 at 23:38
[The Chinese play Go, the Russians Chess and the Americans Poker (badly)]
I think it's pretty clear that Mr. Ritter's third scenario is the correct interpretation
of the facts. I wouldn't even be surprised if the Russians surreptitiously got the U.S. media
to out their double agent. Timing is everything, after all, and now he's Langley's problem to
deal with.
The Russians know that the corrupt Anglo-American Deep State will work against any
relationship which is beneficial to Russia, so they have absolutely nothing to lose by
feeding the Deep State a narrative that can potentially wreak havoc within it.
Having Smolenkov feed this narrative into the bowels of the CIA clearly helped advance the
Deep State's rather obvious operation to create the appearance of collusion between the Trump
campaign and Russia, all the more reason for Brennan and company to swallow it hook, line and
sinker.
So Deep State tool Obama bites on the interference narrative, confronts Putin and takes
illegal actions that, if exposed, have the potential to seriously damage his legacy and the
presidency. This plausible result would cause Americans to lose even more faith in their
increasingly corrupt and dysfunctional government and affect world opinion.
We now see that if Barr actually does his job as mandated by the Constitution, then this
becomes a very distinct possibility.
Had the rabid neocon Clinton won, her administration would've undoubtedly buried Obama's
unconstitutional indiscretion, but fingerprints would've lingered for a future Republican to
possibly uncover and cause chaos with. It's even possible that Smolenkov would've remained in
place and continued to feed even more poisonous disinformation to the U.S. intelligence
morass, setting Clinton up for who knows what.
However, the unstable, narcissistic and easily played Trump miraculously wins. He's
immediately and continuously hit with RussiaGate. Trump reacts predictably by fanning the
flames of distraction when he calls out the Deep State and keeps punching back. The Executive
Branch is divided against itself, Congress and the electorate are further polarized and a
significant amount of energy is tied up with unproductive domestic political
machinations.
Almost three years of noise and crisis worked to increase Trump's natural dysfunction
while the Russians and Chinese quietly manage their coordinated effort to transform the
global power structure in their favor.
Will this Russian gift keep on giving?
Will Barr, or someone else if Trump fires him, dig into the entire RussiaGate mess and
expose all the lies and blatant illegality potentially causing a serious national crisis,
further damaging the reputation and credit worthiness of the U.S. ?
Or will Barr remain a faithful Deep State fixer, convince Trump that taking down Obama
would not be good for the economic health of the country (and his re-election), and carefully
steer everything he can down the memory hole?
Are those vodka glasses I hear clinking in Beijing?
[I'm just left wondering who will produce the deliciously embarrassing (to the U.S.) film
that this would make.]
Taras77 , September 15, 2019 at 19:42
Remarkable detail on the recruitment and control of agents by the CIA. In this case, it
would appear that Brennan has been played big time. IMO, to see Smolenkov walk away with his
loot in the bank, there can not be any other conclusion.
Hence, the obvious panic by brennan to use the likely suspects, NYT and wapo, to cast more
haze on the story. If there were treason, I doubt Smolenkov would be walking because the
Russians do not take that lightly. Actually, they have acted and are acting with competence
and confidence in the face of the bumbling, fumbling bombast and threats of the group around
trump which passes themselves off as diplomats and security advisors.
Brennan in his obsession to interfere with the political process prob contributed to his
malfeasance and a possible crime-I am no legal expert but it certainly seems that he
committed crimes.
Of course, this raises the question as to whether barr et al will act accordingly and
bring him to justice-I have strong doubts about barr taking on the cia as they will certainly
close ranks to protect him. My doubts about barr, however, go well beyond this particular
issue vis-a-vis the cia.
SilentPartner , September 15, 2019 at 18:58
I suspect Scott was provided a great deal of the reporting in this fascinating article
from a disgruntled insider, or former insider. Knowledge of Brennan's break with protocol to
form a select 'stand alone fusion cell' that reported only to him is something that I haven't
seen reported before. In any case this story adds another red flag to the entire Russiagate
hoax.
Just as Mueller failed to interview Julian Assange or Christopher Steele for his report --
obvious red flags -- we should now watch the conduct of Barr's investigation. Will Barr's
investigators interview Smolenkov? This should be an important metric to determine how
serious his investigation is. Another metric for Barr will be whether Ghislaine Maxwell is
indicted and arrested in the Jefferey Epstein affair. If not, we will soon know just how deep
goes the corruption of the ruling class.
Sam F , September 15, 2019 at 18:28
Many thanks to Scott Ritter for this information and cogent argument.
However it is not clear how Russia would expect to benefit by allowing Smolenkov to
deceive the CIA that Putin directly ordered interference in the US election. While later
discrediting of the US "Russia-gate" nonsense would make the US IC look bad, it is unclear
that this could be done, and it would have been done by now to reduce political tensions, but
still has not been done. Putin himself denied the accusations as nonsense.
So something is missing: if that was not the plan, Smolenkov was not asked to do that, and
he would not have been viewed as harmless when fired for that. If he had other incriminating
info on decision makers there, he would not have been allowed to leave, and having escaped,
he would have concealed his new location. Perhaps his superiors ill-advisedly asked him to
make false statements, for which he was not blamed.
Anon , September 16, 2019 at 07:09
I agree. The logic of "embarrassing" the CIA and dividing them from the president by
passing inflammatory information seems a stretch. On the other hand, I agree there do appear
a number of "red flags."
I'm wondering about the merit of the idea that this guy cooked up the story himself,
though I'm not sure that works either. It just seems to me something is missing.
Ojkelly , September 16, 2019 at 12:00
I thought the idea was that a Brennan minion planted or asked for the "Putin is
interfering " report, or even made it up and attributed it to a minor asset.
Brendan , September 15, 2019 at 15:00
( ) the timing of the CNN and New York Times reports about the "exfiltration" of the
CIA's "sensitive source" seems to be little more than a blatant effort by Brennan and his
allies in the media to shape a narrative before Barr uncovers the truth.
That's very likely to be true, but I think there's more to it than just getting Brennan's
version of events published before anyone elses. If you want to implant your narrative in the
public's mind it certainly does help to get your story out first, but in this case there's an
additional motive for leaking the spy story.
One effect of the leak was that Smolenko suddenly disappeared. His family apparently fled
their house in a hurry, leaving belongings lying around according to media reports.
Normally the CIA would never 'out' a valued asset, even a used one, because that would
discourage potential informers. And CNN and the NYT would not reveal details that would
identify a Russian defector – as happened in this case when Russian Kommersant
identified Smolenkov. American mainstream media would first check that it was OK to publish
those details.
This looks far too unusual to be simply a result of incompetence by Americans. A much
better explanation is that some powerful people were really desperate to make Smolenko
disappear. And the reason is that he knew too much. And now he has gone into hiding,
supposedly to escape vengeance from Putin. What is most significant is that he does not face
as many questions about his role in Russiagate.
A general search for Intel on google doesn't yield an abundance of articles that mention
its move to Israel in 1974, but I discovered it when the Spectre/Meltdown (intentional
Israeli processor security flaws, I mean "features") became known in 2018. "Nothing is ever
impossible, in this life" except for a computer that's not infested with the US-Israeli
partnership. We are also not surprised that Intel was not on Donald Trump's list of American
companies to bring back to the US.
Mike from Jersey , September 15, 2019 at 14:23
Good article. This is the kind of analysis you will not find in the New York Times or the Washington
Post. This is why I come to the Consortium News.
hetro , September 15, 2019 at 13:46
If I'm following properly, the white paper from Smolenkov is at the heart of the January
6, 2017, "assessments" that the case would be made–Trump as dupe of Putin.
Recall, too, that these "assessments" differed. Brennan's and Comey's were "high";
Clapper's was "moderate."
And, as Scott Ritter points out, they were "estimates" not based on hard proof; they were
essentially "guesses."
Why the discrepancy? (Related: William Binney says this "moderate" from Clapper means the
NSA knows Russia did not hack the DNC.)
I think this discrepancy question is important. How could a (supposedly) verifiable report
via white paper from a verifiable double agent Smolenkov be anything but a slam dunk
(unanimous) "high" for the major intelligence agencies?
The other question is Scott's WHY the Russian intelligence apparatus, with Putin
complicit, would set out to embarrass the US intelligence agencies with a cooked up
story–that made Putin look bad?
Of course, they could not know back at that time how the story would cook and proliferate
across US mainstream media with all the glee of Russia-bashing run amok and its TDS.
This view would also suggest a belief that somewhere in the US justice system was the
integrity to dig everything out and expose the fraud.
nwwoods , September 15, 2019 at 17:56
I believe that it was NSA which declared "moderate confidence", so no, not Clapper.
Clapper, in my opinion, was in on the gambit, a witting confederate of ringleader
Brennan.
hetro , September 16, 2019 at 11:30
Yes. Technically Clapper resigned as head of the NSA in 2016, and it was Mike Rogers, the
new head in 2017 who declared the assessment "moderate." Clapper had been involved with
Brennan and Comey in forming the January 6, 2017 assessment.
The question still remains: why the discrepancy in this "assessment" at the very beginning
of Trump's presidency, with its powerful impact.
JP McEvoy , September 15, 2019 at 12:33
One thing is for sure, if anything bad happens to the mole, it's won't be the Russians who did it.
Watch your back Mr. Skrip – er – I mean Smolenkov.
Robert Emmett , September 15, 2019 at 11:25
Damn! Please allow me to toss the "curveball" too. What's that? The real one or the fake,
you say? Ha ha. Yes, exactly! O, Vaunted sacred screed of PDB where the truth shall set you
free to prime the pump with lies. (hint: to spare your soul don't look into their eyes)
I haven't exactly been able to figure out what's wrong with Brennan's face, 'til I just
got it. He's been double-yoked! His own plus Barrack's (truer sp.). Egg that just won't wash
off! So you have to wear it everywhere, every day. Talk about serviceable villains hiding in
plain sight. Hey, Clapper! Don't get any on ya! Haha. Too late!
Carroll Price , September 15, 2019 at 10:43
Another example of checker champions competing with chess masters.
CortesKid , September 15, 2019 at 10:33
Brilliant and thorough. As I was reading Mr. Ritter's analysis, an overwhelming impression
was building, analogous to the third scenario, that Smolenkov , indeed, was a lure perfectly
placed to catch an intelligence agency or three. As I've watched and read many Russian
official's communications, especially their diplomatic efforts, it has become obvious to me
that, on average, they are some of the few "adults in the room." In broadstrokes, they are
playing chess, while the whole of the West, with its increasingly senile elites, is at the
Checkers table.
And in even broader strokes, I believe that at the heart of all of these shenanigans, is a
foundational turning away from a matured-and-deflating West, to an energized and expanding
Eurasia (Brezhinki's nightmare). As you know, changes on the scale of hegemon are never easy.
"Dying empires don't lay down, they double-down."
And I don't necessarily think Smolenkov and family are safe–from, for instance,
"Novichok" delivered via some American ally's secret service–as a pretense for further
demonization of Russia.
Brendan , September 15, 2019 at 07:51
Sorry but the theory that's proposed above is a bit too convoluted to be believable
– that Russia manipulated the CIA with the fake hacking story from Smolenkov and then
the CIA chief Brennan used it to manipulate Obama who then unwittingly revealed to Putin that
the USA was fooled by the story.
I'd rather follow Occam's razor and go for a simpler scenario. Brennan and the CIA
persuaded Smolenkov to invent the story (that he had inside knowledge that Putin ordered the
hacking of the DNC).
Not only that, but Obama suspected that the story was fake, since it was passed on to him
outside the normal channels and was investigated in a similar unconventional way. It's hard
to believe that Obama was easily hoodwinked and simply accepted the story as fact without any
convincing evidence.
The Democratic Party's fingerprints are all over the Russiagate story. The DNC
commissioned the Steele dossier and Steele met officials in the Obama administration's State
Department before the 2016 election. We're expected to believe that this all went on behind
President Obama's back.
We're also expected to believe that Obama innocently believed Smolenkov's report, as if
the CIA and FBI would never tell a lie. He's not completely stupid – at the very least
he must have had serious doubts about the allegations, or he could even have been in on the
Russiagate fabrication himself.
Maricata , September 16, 2019 at 19:34
It is more and more difficult to ascertain reality from fantasy, certainty from
assumptions. And this all plays into the hands of the ruling elites and their international
and national pratorean guards.
Americans do not ask questions. They prefer to believe than to know and thus the {swirl}
will yield nothing.
F. G. Sanford , September 15, 2019 at 07:05
Putin must surely have smirked. The little white envelope worked.
The debate made it plain he had pulled Brennan's chain,
And behind the scene subterfuge lurked!
Only four people went to the meeting. Connections might prove rather fleeting.
The "puppet" rebuke at the time seemed a fluke,
No one dared claim that Clinton was cheating!
Brennan's confidence level was high. He had sources and methods to spy.
He had top secret stuff that he claimed was enough,
But no evidence he'd specify!
Then Clinton claimed Russian subversion. In retrospect, not a diversion.
She must have been tipped by somebody loose lipped,
And she ran with the Putin incursion!
Strzok and Page were kept out of the loop. They didn't get insider poop.
They found no 'there' there, Comey's cupboard looked bare,
Brennan's spy had not yet flown the coop.
The durable lie picked up traction. Their spook would require extraction.
How could Clinton be sure that the blame would endure,
And the Steele Dossier would get action?
The 'Agent in Place' was a double. He didn't get in any trouble.
Hillary's pride had some hubris to hide,
In the end it would burst Brennan's bubble!
The big secret meeting was leaked. On the stage, "He's a puppet!" she shrieked.
Perhaps Susan Rice was inclined to be nice,
And her duty to Hillary peaked!
So now, they blame Trump for the outing. But it's over except for the shouting.
The 'insurance' is void, the illusion destroyed,
And poor Hillary just keeps on pouting!
David Otness , September 14, 2019 at 23:41
Scott -- so glad I got the head's-up on this via the CN Live show. I just now finished it
and am putting it into perspective. Well-researched, and well-written -- it's truly a web so
very reminiscent of what should have remained Cold War 1.0 finis.
And Episode Nine of CN Live is showing us where this internet platform can go with the
assembled experience and talent exhibited. The tech glitches were too bad, but the audio was
quite good enough.
Thanks for this travel guide to the heart of the labyrinth. Hopefully good things come of it.
I do worry about Barr's too many allegiances to his CIA incubator though, especially with all
of the ongoing coverups of the Epstein fiasco (engineered or not,) that complicate and
obfuscate the twin scandals that both end up under Barr's purview.
Ya done good, nonetheless. Thank you.
Abe , September 14, 2019 at 22:07
"After the U.S. reports came out, an anonymous, well-informed Russian Telegram channel,
The Ruthless PR Guy, reported that the asset was Kremlin official Oleg Smolenkov. On Tuesday
(10 September 2019] morning, the Moscow daily Kommersant published a story confirming that it
was him based on anonymous sources and some pretty convincing circumstantial evidence. [
]
"If Smolenkov was a spy, he could have delivered important insights about Russia's foreign
policy thinking and planning to U.S. intelligence. But if he was the source for the U.S.
intelligence community's certainty that Putin personally orchestrated a covert interference
campaign, that certainty rests on a weak foundation. Smolenkov served the wrong boss in the
Kremlin to get reliable information about such ventures."
Mr Ritter, Very lightly done. " Curveball made me do it" is the defense.
Brennan, well,I am not knowledgeable , but tight with Barry, unprofessional to my view, has
an issue. He made the most outrageous statements, Commander believing his own BS, NYT
magazine. Imagine going around saying that Trump was a Russian agent . Did incomparable
harm.And Morrell endorsing Hillary Clinton :beyond the pale , Professional members of the
agency must've been? Shocked appalled, whatever.
Jeff Harrison , September 14, 2019 at 21:52
Whooof! Obviously the MSM won't touch any of this stuff. I also don't have a lot of
confidence in the US government's ability to clean up the mess it has made. Amusingly, I've
watched the US's ham handed operations around the world and wondered when somebody would
return the complement. If Mr. Ritter is to be believed, it seems the Russians have started.
As Mr. Lawrence pointed out on CN live, Americans need to dispense with the notion that we
are exceptional. That's a weakness as it leads to complacency. How many more bricks of trust
in our government will we have to see broken before the entire edifice collapses? I would
also like to point out that we wouldn't be having these kind of problems if we weren't hell
bent on being the global hegemon.
Clark M Shanahan , September 14, 2019 at 22:54
"If Mr. Ritter is to be believed"
Jeffrey, I've followed Mr Ritter.
You can believe what he is stating, he's a good man.
my bad: Ritter starts at 48 minutes, before Nixon & Maupin
Jeff Harrison , September 15, 2019 at 17:43
I'm hip, Clark. I said that simply because I have no other collaborating commentary.
Ritter had my vote when he stood up to Shrub over Iraq's WMDs. But you do have to keep the
realization that you could be wrong so if Mr. Ritter is to be believed. I think that the odds
that Ritter is wrong are in the general vicinity of the odds that the US will start acting
like a normal nation.
DNC is a criminal organization and the fact that Debbie Wasserman
Schultz escaped justice is deeply regreatable.
Notable quotes:
"... The problem facing the Democratic National Committee today remains the same as in 2016: How to block even a moderately left-wing social democrat by picking a candidate guaranteed to lose to Trump, so as to continue the policies that serve banks, the financial markets and military spending for Cold War 2.0. ..."
"... Trump meanwhile has done most everything the Democratic Donor Class wants: He has cut taxes on the wealthy, cut social spending for the population at large, backed Quantitative Easing to inflate the stock and bond markets, and pursued Cold War 2.0. Best of all, his abrasive style has enabled Democrats to blame the Republicans for the giveaway to the rich, as if they would have followed a different policy. ..."
"... The effect has been to make America into a one-party state. Republicans act as the most blatant lobbyists for the Donor Class. But people can vote for a representative of the One Percent and the military-industrial complex in either the Republican or Democratic column. That is why most Americans owe allegiance to no party. ..."
"... I'm just curious about how much longer this log-jam situation can persist before real political realignment takes place. Bernie Sander is ultimately a relic not a representative of new political vigor running through the party, like Trump he would be largely be on his own without much congressional support from his own party. ..."
"... As the 2016 election and Brexit have illuminated, globalisation is a religion for the upper middle classes. ..."
"... They just refuse to understand that political solidarity, key to any such policies is permanently damaged by immigration. ..."
"... If you make people chose between their ethnicity being displaced and class conflict, they'll pick the preservation of their ethnicity and it's territory every time. I ..."
"... My prediction: The elites in the US won't give way, people will simply become demoralised and the Trump/Sanders moment will pass with significant damage done to the legitimacy of American democracy and media but with progressives unable to deal with immigration (Much like the right can't deal with global warming) they will fail to get much done. The general population has become too atomised and detached, beaten-down bystanders to their own politics and society to mount a popular political movement. Immigrants, recent descendants of immigrants and the upper middle classes will continue to instinctually understand globalisation is how they loot America and will not vote for 'extreme' candidates that threaten this. The upper middle class will continue to dominate the overton window and use it to inject utter economic lies to the public. ..."
I hope that the candidate who is clearly the voters' choice, Bernie Sanders, may end up as the party's nominee. If he is, I'm
sure he'll beat Donald Trump handily, as he would have done four years ago. But I fear that the DNC's Donor Class will push Joe Biden,
Kamala Harris or even Pete Buttigieg down the throats of voters. Just as when they backed Hillary the last time around, they hope
that their anointed neoliberal will be viewed as the lesser evil for a program little different from that of the Republicans.
So Thursday's reality TV run-off is about "who's the least evil?" An honest reality show's questions would focus on "What are
you against ?" That would attract a real audience, because people are much clearer about what they're against: the vested
interests, Wall Street, the drug companies and other monopolies, the banks, landlords, corporate raiders and private-equity asset
strippers. But none of this is to be permitted on the magic island of authorized candidates (not including Tulsi Gabbard, who was
purged from further debates for having dared to mention the unmentionable).
Donald Trump as the DNC's nominee
The problem facing the Democratic National Committee today remains the same as in 2016: How to block even a moderately left-wing
social democrat by picking a candidate guaranteed to lose to Trump, so as to continue the policies that serve banks, the financial
markets and military spending for Cold War 2.0.
DNC donors favor Joe Biden, long-time senator from the credit-card and corporate-shell state of Delaware, and opportunistic California
prosecutor Kamala Harris, with a hopey-changey grab bag alternative in smooth-talking small-town Rorschach blot candidate Pete Buttigieg.
These easy victims are presented as "electable" in full knowledge that they will fail against Trump.
Trump meanwhile has done most everything the Democratic Donor Class wants: He has cut taxes on the wealthy, cut social spending
for the population at large, backed Quantitative Easing to inflate the stock and bond markets, and pursued Cold War 2.0. Best of
all, his abrasive style has enabled Democrats to blame the Republicans for the giveaway to the rich, as if they would have followed
a different policy.
The Democratic Party's role is to protect Republicans from attack from the left, steadily following the Republican march rightward.
Claiming that this is at least in the direction of being "centrist," the Democrats present themselves as the lesser evil (which is
still evil, of course), simply as pragmatic in not letting hopes for "the perfect" (meaning moderate social democracy) block the
spirit of compromise with what is attainable, "getting things done" by cooperating across the aisle and winning Republican support.
That is what Joe Biden promises.
The effect has been to make America into a one-party state. Republicans act as the most blatant lobbyists for the Donor Class.
But people can vote for a representative of the One Percent and the military-industrial complex in either the Republican or Democratic
column. That is why most Americans owe allegiance to no party.
The Democratic National Committee worries that voters may disturb this alliance by nominating a left-wing reform candidate. The
DNC easily solved this problem in 2016: When Bernie Sanders intruded into its space, it the threw the election. It scheduled the
party's early defining primaries in Republican states whose voters leaned right, and packed the nominating convention with Donor
Class super-delegates.
After the dust settled, having given many party members political asthma, the DNC pretended that it was all an unfortunate political
error. But of course it was not a mistake at all. The DNC preferred to lose with Hillary than win with Bernie, whom springtime polls
showed would be the easy winner over Trump. Potential voters who didn't buy into the program either stayed home or voted green.
No votes will be cast for months, so I don't know how Mr. Hudson can say that Sanders is "clearly the voters choice." He would
be 79 on election day, well above the age when most men die, which is something that voters should seriously consider. Whoever
his VP is will probably be president before the end of Old Bernie's first term, so I hope he chooses his VP wisely.
In any case I laugh at how the media always reports that Biden, who has obviously lost more than a few brain cells, has such
a commanding lead over this field of second-raters. The voters, having much better things to do, haven't even started to pay attention
yet.
And, how could anyone seriously believe in these polls anyway? Only older people have land lines today. If calling people is
the methodology pollsters are using, then the results would be heavily skewed towards former VP Biden, whose name everyone knows.
I lost all faith in polls when the media was saying, with certainty, that Hillary was a lock to win against the insurgent Trump.
Tulsi Gabbard is the only candidate beside Trump with charisma today. With her cool demeanor, she is certainly the least unlikeable.
She would be Trump's most formidable opponent. But the democrats, like their counterparts, are owned by Wall Street and the Military
Industrial Complex. Sadly, most democrats still believe that the party is working in their best interests, while the republicans
are the party of the rich.
If you watch the debates tonight, which I will not be, you will notice that Tulsi Gabbard won't be on stage. That is by design.
She is a leper. At least the republicans allowed Trump to be onstage in 2016, which makes them more democratic than the democrats.
Plus they didn't have Super Delegates to prevent Trump from achieving the nomination he had rightfully won. Something to think
about since the DNC, not the voters, annointed Hillary last time.
If the YouTube Oligarchs still allow it, I plan on watching the post-debate analysis with characters like Richard Spencer and
Eric Striker. Those guys are most entertaining, and have insights that are not permitted to be uttered in the controlled, mind-numbing
farce of the mainstream media.
Elizabeth Warren seems a more likely nominee than Sanders.
Elizabeth Warren is phony as phuck(PAP). Just like forked tongued Obama she's really just a tool for the neo-liberal establishment,
which does make her more likely.
Here is another question. Can the DNC or RNC really change institutionally fast enough?
I'm just curious about how much longer this log-jam situation can persist before real political realignment takes place.
Bernie Sander is ultimately a relic not a representative of new political vigor running through the party, like Trump he would
be largely be on his own without much congressional support from his own party.
As the 2016 election and Brexit have illuminated, globalisation is a religion for the upper middle classes. Many of
them may be progressives but they refuse to understand the very non-progressive consequences of mass immigration (Or, one should
say over-immigration) or globalisation more generally. The increasing defection of such individuals to the Liberal Democrats in
Britain is a fascinating example. They just refuse to understand that political solidarity, key to any such policies is permanently
damaged by immigration.
It is interesting to see the see-saw effect of UKip and now the Brexit party in the UK (Well, in England). With them first
drawing working class voters from Labour without increasing Conservative performance, bringing about a massive conservative majority
and now threatening to siphon voters from the Tories with the opposite effect.
But UKip and later the Brexit party almost exist through the indispensable leadership of Nigel Farage and a very specific motivating
goal of leaving the EU. I can't see a third party rising to put pressure on the mainstream parties.
If you make people chose between their ethnicity being displaced and class conflict, they'll pick the preservation of their
ethnicity and it's territory every time. I f the centre left refuses to understand this (Something that wouldn't have been
hard for them to understand when they still drew candidates from the working classes) they will continue their slide into oblivion
as they have done across the Western world. (Excluding 2 party systems and Denmark where they do understand this)
My prediction: The elites in the US won't give way, people will simply become demoralised and the Trump/Sanders moment
will pass with significant damage done to the legitimacy of American democracy and media but with progressives unable to deal
with immigration (Much like the right can't deal with global warming) they will fail to get much done. The general population
has become too atomised and detached, beaten-down bystanders to their own politics and society to mount a popular political movement.
Immigrants, recent descendants of immigrants and the upper middle classes will continue to instinctually understand globalisation
is how they loot America and will not vote for 'extreme' candidates that threaten this. The upper middle class will continue to
dominate the overton window and use it to inject utter economic lies to the public.
The novel internet mass media outlets that allowed such unpoliced political discussion to reach mass audiences will be pacified
by whatever means and America will slide into an Italian style trans-generational malaise at a national level for some time.
Here is another question. Can the DNC or RNC really change institutionally fast enough?
Trump is trying to change the RNC away from Globalist elites and towards Christian Populist beliefs and Main Street America.
I am some what hopeful, as the U.S. is not alone in this trajectory. There is a global tail wind that should help the GOP change
quickly enough.
The true test will be the 2024 GOP nomination. A bold choice will have to break through to keep the RNC from backsliding into
the clutches of Globalist failure.
I think Sanders could have beat Trump in 2016. This time around it is not that clear because so many of his supporters in 2016
feel burnt.
Badly burnt. Or Bernt. He threw his support for Hillary, even if it was tepid, and then got a bad case of Russiagateitis which
his base on the left really hated. His left base never bought Russiagate for a minute. We knew it was an internal leak, probably
by Seth Rich, who provided all the information to Assange. He still seems to be a strong Israel supporter even if has stood up
to Netanyahu.
And while it may seem odd, many of his base on the left have grown weary of the global climate change agenda.
He has not advocated nuclear power and there is a growing movement for that on the left, especially by those who think renewables
will not generate the power we need.
But since Sanders does seem to attract the rural and suburban vote more than any other Democrat, Sanders has a chance to chip
away at Trumps' base and win the Electoral College. Another horrible loss to rural and suburban America by the Democrats will
cost them the EC again by a substantial margin, even if they manage to pull off another popular vote win.
the republican party is as globalist as you can find,and I'm sure you will be the first one to inform us when the global
elite including those in America throw in the towel,
Some elite Globalist NeverTrumpers, such as George Will and Bill Kristol, have thrown in the towel on the GOP. This allows
their "neocon" followers to return to their roots in the war mongering Democrat Party. So it *IS* happening.
The real questions are:
-- Can it happen fast enough?
-- Can it be sustained after Donald Trump term limits out?
I'm not bold enough to say it is inevitable. All I will say is, "There are reasons to be at least mildly hopeful."
Has everyone forgot the last time the DNC openly cheated Sanders he said nothing publicly, but then endorsed Clinton? Sanders
knows he is not allowed to become president, his role to prevent the formation of a third party, and to keep the Green Party small.
Otherwise he would jump to the Green Party right now and may beat the DNC and Trump.
Sanders treats progressives like Charlie Brown. Once again, inviting them to run a kick the football, only to pull it away
and watch them fall. He recently backed off his opposition to the open borders crazies, rarely mentions cuts to military spending
to fund things, and has even joined the stupid fake russiagate bandwagon.
Note that he dismisses the third party idea as unworkable, when he already knows the DNC is unworkable. Why not give the Green
party a chance? Cause he don't want to win knowing he'd be killed or impeached for some reason.
@Carlton Meyer The
Stalinist DNC openly cheated Tulsi Gabbard when they left her off the debate stage last night. When asked about it on 'The View'
recently, Sanders said nothing in her defense, or that she deserved to be on the stage. Nice way to stab her in the back for leaving
her DNC position to support you last time, Bernie. Socialist Sanders wants to be president, yet is afraid of the DNC. Nice!
Those polls were rigged against Tulsi, and everyone who is paying attention knows it. But, far from hurting her candidacy by
not making the DNC's arbitrary cut, her exclusion may wind up helping her. Kim Iverson, Michael Tracey, and comedian Jimmy Dore,
anti-war progressive YouTubers with large, loyal followings, have lambasted the out-of touch DNC for its actions. Tucker Carlson
on the anti-war right has also done so.
One hopes that the DNC's stupidity in censoring her message may wind up being the best thing ever for Tulsi's insurgent candidacy.
We shall see. OTOH, who can trust the polls to tell us the truth of where her popularity stands.
@RadicalCenter Do you
forget about Trump's declaration that he wants the largest amount of immigration ever, as long as they come in legally? There
are no good guys in our two sclerotic monopoly parties when it comes to immigration. Since both are terrible on that topic, at
least Tulsi seems to have the anti-war principles that Trump does not.
"... The "report" was his work. Mueller never looked for anything, never found anything and never wrote anything. ..."
"... The entire charade was part of the "resistance" to straight jacket Trump until the mid term elections, a strategy put in motion by Comey and Brennan, which achieved the desired result: Republicans lost the House. ..."
"... Of course there was "little Russia in Russiagate." The narrative was all disinformation set loose by Crowdstrike and Fusion GPS, paid for by Hillary and the DNC with the blessing of President Obama. Welcome to the tin foil hat brigade as contributor. ..."
Officially, at least in the FBI's version, its operation "Crossfire Hurricane," the
counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign that began in mid-2016 was due to
suspicious remarks made to visitors by a young and lowly Trump aide, George Papadopoulos. This
too is not believable, as I pointed out previously .
Most of those visitors themselves had ties to Western intelligence agencies. That is, the young
Trump aide was being enticed, possibly entrapped, as part of a larger intelligence operation
against Trump. (Papadopoulos wasn't the only Trump associate targeted, Carter Page being
another.)
But the question remains: Why did Western intelligence agencies, prompted, it seems clear,
by US ones, seek to undermine Trump's presidential campaign? A reflexive answer might be
because candidate Trump promised to "cooperate with Russia," to pursue a pro-détente
foreign policy, but this was hardly a startling, still less subversive, advocacy by a would-be
Republican president. All of the major pro-détente episodes in the 20th century had been
initiated by Republican presidents: Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan.
So, again, what was it about Trump that so spooked the spooks so far off their rightful
reservation and so intrusively into American presidential politics? Investigations being
overseen by Attorney General William Barr may provide answers -- or not.
... ... ...
It is true, of course, that Barr and Durham, as Trump appointees, are not the ideal
investigators of Intel misdeeds in the Russiagate saga. Much better would be a truly
bipartisan, independent investigation based in the Senate, as was the Church Committee of the
mid-1970s, which exposed and reformed (it thought at the time) serious abuses by US
intelligence agencies. That would require, however, a sizable core of nonpartisan, honorable,
and courageous senators of both parties, who thus far seem to be lacking.
There are also, however, the ongoing and upcoming Democratic presidential debates. First and
foremost, Russiagate is about the present and future of the American political system, not
about Russia. (Indeed, as I have repeatedly argued, there is very little, if any, Russia in
Russiagate.) At every "debate" or comparable forum, all of the Democratic candidates should be
asked about this grave threat to American democracy -- what they think about what happened and
would do about it if elected president. Consider it health care for our democracy.
"former special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of "collusion."
Let me unpack that for you, esteemed professor: RM was "special counsel" in name only. The
real boss was Andrew Weissman. The "report" was his work. Mueller never looked for
anything, never found anything and never wrote anything.
The entire charade was part of the "resistance" to straight jacket Trump until the mid
term elections, a strategy put in motion by Comey and Brennan, which achieved the desired
result: Republicans lost the House.
Of course there was "little Russia in Russiagate." The narrative was all disinformation
set loose by Crowdstrike and Fusion GPS, paid for by Hillary and the DNC with the blessing of
President Obama. Welcome to the tin foil hat brigade as contributor.
Here are just some of the twists and turns in the case, which has gone on for more than
three years.
Flynn's trip to Russia in 2015, where it was claimed Flynn went without the knowledge or
approval of the DIA or anyone in Washington,
was proven not to be true .
Flynn was suspected of being compromised by a supposed Russian agent, Cambridge academic
Svetlana Lokhova, based on allegations from Western intelligence asset Stefan Halper.
This was also proven to be not true.
The very strange post-dated FD-302 form on the FBI's January 2017 interview of Flynn that
wasn't filled out until August 2017, almost seven months afterward, is
revealed in a court filing by Flynn's defense team .
FBI agent Pientka became the
"DOJ's Invisible Man," despite the fact that Congress has repeatedly called for him to
testify. Pientka has remained out of sight and out of mind more than a year and a half since
his name first surfaced in connection with the Flynn case.
Now, it's not that far-fetched of an idea that the Mueller special counsel prosecutors would
hide exculpatory evidence from the Flynn defense team, since they've just admitted to having
done exactly that in another case their
office has been prosecuting .
The defense team for Internet Research Agency/Concord, more popularly known as "the Russian
troll farm case," hasn't been smooth going for the Mueller prosecutors.
Then, in a
filing submitted to the court on Aug. 30, the IRA/Concord defense team alerted Judge
Friedrich that the prosecutors just got around to handing them key evidence the prosecutors had
for the past 18 months. The prosecution gave no explanation whatsoever as to why they hid this
key evidence for more than a year.
It's hard to see at this point how the entire IRA/Concord case isn't tossed out.
What would it mean for Flynn's prosecutors to have been caught hiding exculpatory evidence
from him and his lawyers, even after the presiding judge explicitly ordered them in February to
hand over everything they had?
It would mean that the Flynn case is tossed out, since the prosecution team was caught
engaging in gross misconduct.
Now you can see why Flynn refused to withdraw his guilty plea when Judge Sullivan gave him
the opportunity to do so in late December 2018.
A withdrawal of the guilty plea or a pardon would let the Mueller prosecution team off the
hook.
And they're not getting off the hook.
Flynn hired the best lawyer he possibly could have when it comes to exposing prosecutorial
misconduct. Nobody knows the crafty, corrupt, and dishonest tricks federal prosecutors use
better than Powell, who actually wrote a compelling book about such matters, entitled "
License to Lie: Exposing
Corruption in the Department of Justice ."
Everything this Mueller prosecution team did in withholding exculpatory evidence from
Flynn's defense team -- and continued to withhold even after Judge Sullivan specifically issued
an order about it -- is going to be fully exposed.
Defying a federal judge's Brady order is a one-way ticket to not only getting fired, it's a
serious enough offense to warrant disbarment and prosecution.
If it turns out Mueller special counsel prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence -- not
only in the IRA/Concord case, but also in the cases against Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael
Cohen, Rick Gates, Roger Stone, and others -- that will have a huge impact.
If they are willing to withhold exculpatory evidence in one case, why wouldn't they do the
same thing in other cases they were prosecuting? Haven't they have already demonstrated they
are willing to break the rules? Tags
We have become a third-world country. Even throwing Mueller and his entire prosecutors'
team in jail would not be enough to restore confidence in our legal system. But it would be a
start.
On or about December 28, 2016, the Russian Ambassador contacted FLYNN.
c. On or about December 29, 2016, FLYNN called a senior official of the Presidential
Transition Team ("PTT official"), who was with other senior ·members of the
Presidential Transition Team at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss
what, if anything, to communicate to the Russian Ambassador about the U.S. Sanctions. On that
call, FLYNN and 2 Case 1:17-cr-00232-RC Document 4 Filed 12/01/17 Page 2 of 6 the PTT
official discussed the U.S. Sanctions, including the potential impact of those sanctions on
the incoming administration's foreign policy goals. The PIT official and FLYNN also discussed
that the members of the Presidential Transition Team at Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to
escalate the situation. d. Immediately after his phone call with the PTT official, FLYNN
called the Russian Ambassador and requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only
respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner. e. Shortly after his phone call with
the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with the PTT official to report on the substance of his
call with the Russian Ambassador, including their discussion of the U.S. Sanctions. f. On or
about December 30, 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin released a statement indicating
that Russia would not take retaliatory measures in response to the U.S. Sanctions at that
time. g. On or about December 31, 2016, the Russian Ambassador called FLYNN and informed him
that Russia had chosen not to retaliate in response to FL YNN's request. h. After his phone
call with the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with senior members of the Presidential
Transition Team about FL YNN's conversations with the Russian Ambassador regarding the U.S.
Sanctions and Russia's decision not to escalate the situation.
The coup plot between the international intelligence community (which includes our
FBI-CIA-etc) and their unregistered foreign agents in the multinational corporate media is
slowly being revealed.
Here’s another possibility... elites in the US Gov set on running a soft coup
against a duly elected president and his team made up a whole pile of **** and passed it off
as truth.
The Manafort thing has me totally riled since HRC's "Password" guy and his brother were
PARTNERS with manafort, did the same damn things, and were NOT investigated.
Donald Trump is many things to many people, but is not his social personna to be patient.
He is being VERY patient to let this unfold, to "give a man enough rope" or political party
and its owner, as it may be....
Donna Brazile's book is under-rated: it holds they keys as to who ran the DNC and why
after Obie bailed.
Our local community rag (Vermont) had an opinion piece last week about "The slide towards
Facism", where the author breathlessly stated that she had learned from a MSNBC expose by
Rachel Maddow that the administration was firing researchers at NASA and EPA as well as
cutting back funding for LGBTQ support groups. Oh the horror. The author conveniently forgot
that the same dyke had lied for 2 years about Russia,Russia,Russia but it's still OK to
believe any **** that drops out of her mouth.
This is the level of insanity happening around here. Of course it is Bernie's turf.
People who are so stupid and gullible deserve everything they are gonna get.
Poor Flynn. Rail-roaded by ZOG and Obama and Hillary and Co. I hope beyond hope that the
truth is revealed and that he can sue the **** out of the seditionists/(((seditionists))) who
put him into this mess such that his great-great-grandchildren will never have to work.
I also blame Trump for throwing Flynn under the bus.
If they are willing to withhold exculpatory evidence in one case, why wouldn’t they
do the same thing in other cases they were prosecuting? Haven’t they have already
demonstrated they are willing to break the rules?
Duh! Because it's easy and the media never covers it and AG Barr and FBI director Wray
will cover it all up. America no longer operates under rule of law, and now we all know it.
Never cooperate with them!
flynn didn't rape children, to buzy trying to fight liberators of iraq and afganistan from
invasion... that's his major crime.
I guess, kelly, mattis, mcmaster neither are on the child rape trend. but what can they
do? when the entire cia and doj and fbi are full on controlled and run by the pedos? it's
like when all the cardinals and the pope are pedos, what a bishop to do...
Why would CIA Rothschild'd up puppet Trump pick only the best William Barr?
Who told Acosta to cut no prosecution deal with Epstein? George Bush? Robert Mukasey? or
Bob Mueller?
Trump, Barr, Bush, Mueller all on the same no rule of law national no government
pys op , for Epstein & 9/11 clean op team Poppa Bush, Clinton, &
Mossad.
Barr: CIA operative
It is a sobering fact that American presidents (many of whom have been corrupt) have gone
out of their way to hire fixers to be their attorney generals.
Consider recent history: Loretta Lynch (2015-2017), Eric Holder (2009-2015), Michael
Mukasey (2007-2009), Alberto Gonzales (2005-2007), John Ashcroft (2001-2005),Janet Reno
(1993-2001), **** Thornburgh (1988-1991), Ed Meese (1985-1988), etc.
Barr was a full-time CIA operative, recruited by Langley out of high school, starting
in 1971. Barr’s youth career goal was to head the CIA.
CIA operative assigned to the China directorate, where he became close to powerful CIA
operative George H.W. Bush, whose accomplishments already included the CIA/Cuba Bay of
Pigs, Asia CIA operations (Vietnam War, Golden Triangle narcotics), Nixon foreign policy
(Henry Kissinger), and the Watergate operation.
When George H.W. Bush became CIA Director in 1976, Barr joined the CIA’s
“legal office” and Bush’s inner circle, and worked alongside Bush’s
longtime CIA enforcers Theodore “Ted” Shackley, Felix Rodriguez, Thomas Clines,
and others, several of whom were likely involved with the Bay of Pigs/John F. Kennedy
assassination, and numerous southeast Asian operations, from the Phoenix Program to Golden
Triangle narco-trafficking.
Barr stonewalled and destroyed the Church Committee investigations into CIA
abuses.
Barr stonewalled and stopped inquiries in the CIA bombing assassination of Chilean
opposition leader Orlando Letelier.
Barr joined George H.W. Bush’s legal/intelligence team during Bush’s vice
presidency (under President Ronald Reagan) Rose from assistant attorney general to Chief
Legal Counsel to attorney general (1991) during the Bush 41 presidency.
Barr was a key player in the Iran-Contra operation, if not the most important member of
the apparatus, simultaneously managing the operation while also “fixing” the
legal end, ensuring that all of the operatives could do their jobs without fear of exposure
or arrest.
In his attorney general confirmation, Barr vowed to “attack criminal
organizations”, drug smugglers and money launderers. It was all hot air: as AG, Barr
would preserve, protect, cover up, and nurture the apparatus that he helped create, and use
Justice Department power to escape punishment.
Barr stonewalled and stopped investigations into all Bush/Clinton and CIA crimes,
including BCCI and BNL CIA drug banking, the theft of Inslaw/PROMIS software, and all
crimes of state committed by Bush
Barr provided legal cover for Bush’s illegal foreign policy and war crimes
Barr left Washington, and went through the “rotating door” to the corporate
world, where he took on numerous directorships and counsel positions for major companies.
In 2007 and again from 2017, Barr was counsel for politically-connected international law
firm Kirkland
& Ellis . Among its other notable attorneys and alumni are Kenneth Starr, John
Bolton, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and numerous Trump administration attorneys.
K&E’s clients include sex trafficker/pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and Mitt
Romney’s Bain Capital.
A strong case can be made that William Barr was as powerful and important a figure in the
Bush apparatus as any other, besides Poppy Bush himself.
there is a war on america, and the DoD and men like flynn are too arrogant, dumb, and
proud to admit they have been fucked and conned deeply by men way smarter than them...
we don't need ******* brains, but killers to wage this revolution against the american
pedostate.
and that, what they master, they don't want to do.
if they want money, they should have learned to trade and not kill...
"... "Who will watch the watchers?" Well, if Barr and company are not going to indict these characters, the answer is NOBODY! ..."
"... If you read the long litany of articles on SST by David Habakkuk and Larry Johnson, the pattern of a soft coup conspiracy against the possibility of HC's defeat is quite clear. ..."
"Federal prosecutors have been weighing for well over a year whether to charge McCabe, after the Justice Department's inspector
general alleged that McCabe had misled investigators several times about a media disclosure regarding the investigation into Hillary
Clinton's family foundation.
By the inspector general's telling, McCabe approved the disclosure and later -- when asked about the matter by investigators
with the FBI's inspection division and inspector general's office -- denied having done so. McCabe's attorney has said previously
that his statements "are more properly understood as the result of misunderstanding, miscommunication, and honest failures of
recollection based on the swirl of events around him." Lying to investigators is a federal crime."
Washpost
-------------
This whole thing has the odor of something by Dostoevsky, C&P maybe?
"Who will watch the watchers?" Well, if Barr and company are not going to indict these characters, the answer is NOBODY!
If you read the long litany of articles on SST by David Habakkuk and Larry Johnson, the pattern of a soft coup conspiracy against
the possibility of HC's defeat is quite clear.
And then following her loss, largely brought on IMO, by her unwillingness to cultivate the Deplorables, the semi-Deplorables and
the Irredeemable Deplorables, this disdain on her part for ordinary people was further displayed in her offhand dismissal of coal
miners as future wards of the state.
Once she had lost, the plot rolled on in an effort to make the ultimate Deplorable a failure in office.
It is de rigeur to write that both parties should feel equally wounded by the plot but they do not. pl
PRC90
We have to make it clear that fidelity to the constitution is not a pretense. IMO HRC and Obama are at the heart of this matter,
but better to scourge them and let them go.
"... Let me cut to the chase--Felix Sater was an FBI informant since 1998. He was originally signed on as a "cooperator" in December 1998 by Robert Mueller's number two guy, Andrew Weissman. Robert Mueller and his team used Felix Sater as a "lure" or "bait" to tempt Trump and his team, Michael Cohen in particular, to work with Russia. Trump did not bite. ..."
"... Sater, as we now know, played a central role in the FBI plot to destroy Donald Trump by proposing a Trump Tower in Moscow. ..."
"... One of the very first reports provided by Christopher Steele insists that the Russians were working overtime to get Trump in bed with them on "lucrative real estate deals." The Steele report dated 20 June 2016 makes the following claims: ..."
"... Steele's claim that the "Kremlin," as part of a broader scheme to recruit Trump as a Russian asset, was "offering him various lucrative real development" deals in Russia, is refuted by the article by Newsweek's Bill Powell and by Robert Mueller's report ..."
"... Felix Sater was the ones telling Trump to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Sater, according to Newsweek's Powell, was not a close confidant of Trump: ..."
"... Powell's account is consistent with the information present by Robert Mueller in the Charging Indictment of Michael Cohen. While the Steele Dossier makes the claim that the Russian Government was offering up "lucrative projects" to the Trump organization, Michael Cohen never made such a claim. The details in the charging document show otherwise; i.e., that Felix Sater was pushing the projects : ..."
"... Notwithstanding these communications, the Moscow project was terminated in June 2016. And it was Felix Sater aka "Individual 2", not the Russians, pushing for going to Russia and making a deal. No evidence of Russians offering up "lucrative deals." ..."
"... If the Steele Dossier was true, Trump should have had multiple project going on in Russia, especially Moscow. Steele paints a picture of Putin's people feeding Trump information and opportunity. So where is the evidence of such activity? There is none. ..."
I am revisiting a story I did nine months ago about Felix Sater and the Steele Dossier (
you can read it here ). Let me cut to the chase--Felix Sater was an FBI informant since
1998. He was originally signed on as a "cooperator" in December 1998 by Robert Mueller's number
two guy, Andrew Weissman. Robert Mueller and his team used Felix Sater as a "lure" or "bait" to
tempt Trump and his team, Michael Cohen in particular, to work with Russia. Trump did not
bite.
Robert Mueller did not disclose that Sater was an FBI Informant. Mueller did not disclose
that Sater was deliberately used starting in September 2015 to entrap Donald Trump. I am
revisiting this issue because a Sater's work for the Feds was unsealed last Friday by Judge
Glasser in New York. According to the
Wall Street Journal:
Felix Sater, a former business associate of President Trump, began working with the Federal
Bureau of Investigation in 1998, after he was caught in a stock-fraud scheme. As he pleaded
guilty, Mr. Sater turned on his co-conspirators, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn wrote in an
Aug. 27,
2009, letter , unsealed Friday, to U.S. District Judge I. Leo Glasser, who was overseeing
the case. He had gone on to assist various agencies in different areas of law enforcement for
years, they wrote.
"Sater went above and beyond what is expected of most cooperators and placed himself in
great jeopardy in doing so," the prosecutors wrote in pushing for him to get a lighter
sentence. On the strength of his continuing cooperation, they had put off his sentencing for
more than a decade, an unusually long period for such arrangements.
As I tried to unpeel the
onion that is the layered life of Felix Sater, I came across an excellent article by Newsweek
reporter Bill Powell, Donald Trump Associate Felix Sater Is
Linked to the Mob and the CIA -- What's His Role in the Russia Investigation? . It is worth
your time. One of the surprising revelations from Powell is that Felix Sater was a childhood
friend of Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer. Let that sink in for a moment. The FBI informant,
Felix Sater, was a long time friend of Cohen. This now provides another explanation for how
Michael Cohen became part of the Trump orbit. Did Felix Sater, while an active FBI informant,
introduce Cohen to Trump? (Sater and his company, Bayrock, started working with Trump in 2003
while Cohen did not start working for Trump until 2006).
Sater, as we now know, played a central role in the FBI plot to destroy Donald Trump by
proposing a Trump Tower in Moscow. Trump did not take the bait. No Trump Tower in Moscow deal
was ever done. Sater also provides, unwittingly, direct evidence that part of the Christopher
Steele Dossier is a fraud and a fabrication.
One of the very first reports provided by Christopher Steele insists that the Russians were
working overtime to get Trump in bed with them on "lucrative real estate deals." The Steele
report dated 20 June 2016 makes the following claims:
Speaking to a trusted compatriot in June 2016 sources A and B, a senior Russian Foreign
Ministry figure and a former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the
Kremlin respectively, the Russian authorities had been cultivating and supporting US Republican
presidential candidate, Donald TRUMP for at least 5 years. . . .
In terms of specifics, Source A confided that the Kremlin had been feeding TRUMP and his
team valuable intelligence on his opponents, including Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary CLINTON, for several years (see more below). . . .
The Kremlin's cultivation operation on TRUMP also had comprised offering him various
lucrative real estate development business deals in Russia , especially in relation to the
ongoing 2018 World Cup soccer tournament. How ever, so far, for reasons unknown, TRUMP had not
taken up any of these.
Steele's claim that the "Kremlin," as part of a broader scheme to recruit Trump as a Russian asset, was "offering him
various lucrative real development" deals in Russia, is refuted by the article by Newsweek's Bill Powell and by Robert Mueller's
report
Bill Powell reported the following in Newsweek:
[Felix Sater] and his childhood friend, Michael Cohen -- then a lawyer and dealmaker for the
Trump Organization -- had been working for more than a decade, on and off, to build a Trump
Tower in Moscow . The New York real estate mogul had long wanted to see his name on a glitzy
building in the Russian capital, but the project had never materialized.
Where are all of those "lucrative deals" the Kremlin was supposedly offering up? Nowhere. It
was a lie.
Felix Sater was the ones telling Trump to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Sater, according to
Newsweek's Powell, was not a close confidant of Trump:
In [2003], Sater says he met Trump, thanks to his work for Bayrock, the real estate company.
. . Sater raised money for Bayrock from, among others, a wealthy businessman from the former
Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, and he persuaded people in Trump's orbit -- including Cohen, his
old friend -- to bring his deals before the boss. Two of the ideas worked out. Sater and the
New York real estate mogul eventually worked on the Trump SoHo in Manhattan and a hotel and
condo project in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which failed after the 2008 economic crisis. He and
Trump, Sater claims, were friendly but not particularly close.
Powell does not report the Russians offering up any "lucrative" real estate deal.
Powell's account is consistent with the information present by Robert Mueller in the Charging
Indictment of Michael Cohen. While the Steele Dossier makes the claim that the Russian
Government was offering up "lucrative projects" to the Trump organization, Michael Cohen never
made such a claim. The details in the charging document show otherwise; i.e., that Felix
Sater was pushing the projects :
The Moscow Project was discussed multiple times within the Company and did not end in
January 2016. Instead, as late as approximately June 2016, COHEN and Individual 2 discussed
efforts to obtain Russian governmental approval for the Moscow Project.
Why does the Trump organization need to "obtain Russian governmental approval" if, per the
Steele Dossier, the Russians are offering up a slew of "lucrative" deals?
The charging document provides further detail on Cohen and Sater's interaction with Russian
officials. In early January 2016, Michael Cohen sent an email to Vladimir Putin's Press
Secretary. The Secretary responded:
On or about January 14, 2016, COHEN emailed Russian Official 1's office asking for
assistance in connection with the Moscow Project.
On or about January 20, 2016, COHEN received an email from the personal assistant to Russian
Official 1 ("Assistant 1"), stating that she had been trying to reach COHEN and requesting that
he call her using a Moscow-based phone number she provided.
Shortly after receiving the email, COHEN called Assistant 1 and spoke to her for
approximately 20 minutes. On that call, COHEN described his position at the Company and
outlined the proposed Moscow Project, including the Russian development company with which the
Company had partnered. COHEN requested assistance in moving the project forward, both in
securing land to build the proposed tower and financing the construction. Assistant 1 asked
detailed questions and took notes, stating that she would follow up with others in Russia.
Notwithstanding these communications, the Moscow project was terminated in June 2016. And it
was Felix Sater aka "Individual 2", not the Russians, pushing for going to Russia and making a
deal. No evidence of Russians offering up "lucrative deals."
From on or about June 9 to June 14, 2016, Individual 2 sent numerous messages to COHEN about
the travel, including forms for COHEN to complete. However, on or about June 14, 2016, COHEN
met Individual 2 in the lobby of the Company's headquarters to inform Individual 2 he would not
be traveling at that time.
If the Steele Dossier was true, Trump should have had multiple project going on in Russia,
especially Moscow. Steele paints a picture of Putin's people feeding Trump information and
opportunity. So where is the evidence of such activity? There is none.
The Mueller report reinforces the fact that Felix Sater was the one proposing doing the deal
in Moscow and talking to the Russians. THE PROPOSED TRUMP TOWER PROJECT IN MOSCOW,
according to Mueller's report, originated with an FBI Informant--Felix Sater. Here's what the
Mueller Report states:
In the late summer of 2015, the Trump Organization received a new inquiry about pursuing a
Trump Tower project in Moscow. In approximately September 2015, Felix Sater . . . contacted
Cohen (i.e., Michael Cohen) on behalf of I.C. Expert Investment Company (I.C. Expert), a
Russian real-estate development corporation controlled by Andrei Vladimirovich Rozov. Sater had
known Rozov since approximately 2007 and, in 2014, had served as an agent on behalf of Rozov
during Rozov's purchase of a building in New York City. Sater later contacted Rozov and
proposed that I.C. Expert pursue a Trump Tower Moscow project in which I.C. Expert would
license the name and brand from the Trump Organization but construct the building on its own.
Sater worked on the deal with Rozov and another employee of I.C. Expert. (see page 69 of the
Mueller Report).
Mueller,
as I have noted previously , is downright dishonest in failing to identify Sater as an FBI
informant. Sater was not just a private entrepreneur looking to make some coin. We now know
without a doubt that Sater was a fully signed up FBI informant. Sater's status as an FBI snitch
was first exposed in 2012 (you can read the letter confirming Sater's status as an FBI snitch
here ).
Another inconvenient fact excluded from the Mueller report is that one of Mueller's Chief
Prosecutors, Andrew
Weissman, signed the deal with Felix Sater in December 1998 that put Sater into the FBI
Informant business .
All suggestions for meeting with the Russian Government, including Putin, originated with
Felix Sater. The use of Sater on this particular project started in September 2015.
All of this raises very troubling issues about FBI misconduct. Under what authority did The
FBI initiate the "Moscow Tower" play in September 2015. We are supposed to believe that the FBI
counter intelligence investigation, aka Crossfire Hurricane, only began the end of July 2016
because of an alarming report from an Australian diplomat. We now know that is a lie.
The revelations about Sater add to the urgency to expose the FBI's criminality and
malevolence.
Mr.Johnson has done good work on these issues throughout the whole time this initiative has
gone on. It reveals the level of rot in the structure of the secret police operation carried
on by the US government and shows that it probably cannot be reformed from within but that
the only solution which might work is the dissolution of the existing institutions and some
form of starting over, something which is, of course, highly unlikely to be achieved.
Something just doesn't add up for me when Trump who was the target of these spying and
information operations doesn't use the power and authority of POTUS to expose all the
communications and actions of these people. Why? What is he hiding or what is he afraid of?
It is very simple. Trump is relying on the judicial process out of fear that if he did
unilaterally release this info he could be accused of "obstructing justice."
Trump announced his candidacy June 16, 2015. SO, by September the FBI had begun its operation
against him. It seems like a fairly quick mobilization.
Were Obama and Clinton so insecure that they felt they needed to resort to this, or are
they both so corrupt that this was business as usual?
Christopher Steele, Felix Sater, Josef Mifsud, Stephan Halper, Alexander Downer -- so far
there are at least 5 known to have connections to the IC who tried to entrap Trump. We need a
summary with an index since there's so much corruption to keep straight -- Hillary's Vast
Left-wing Conspiracy.
Images removed. See the original for full version.
Much more plausible explanation of Russiagate then Mueller report that cost probably 1000 times less. Mueller and his team should
commit hara-kiri in shame.
It contains more valuable information about Russiagate and color revolution against Trump initiatesd by Obama and Brennan. And
what is important it is much shorter and up to the point. In other words, Jeff Carlson beat the whole Mueller team to the
punch.
An excellent reporting by Jeff Carlson !!! Bravo!!!
Notable quotes:
"... Horowitz continued to push Congress for oversight access and encouraged passage of the Inspector General Empowerment Act . Horowitz would ultimately win his battle, but only as President Barack Obama was leaving office. On Dec. 16, 2016, Obama finally signed the Inspector General Empowerment Act into law. ..."
"... The IGs' memo included an assessment that Clinton's email account contained hundreds of classified emails, despite Clinton's claims that there was no classified information present on her server. ..."
"... On July 30, 2015, within weeks of the FBI's opening of the Clinton investigation, McCabe was suddenly promoted to the No. 3 position in the FBI. With his new title of associate deputy director, McCabe was transferred to FBI headquarters from the Washington Field Office, and his direct involvement in the Clinton investigation began. ..."
"... Strzok was one of the agents selected, and in late August 2015, he was assigned to the Mid-Year Exam team and transferred to FBI headquarters. Strzok, in his comments to lawmakers, acknowledged that the newly formed investigative team was largely made up of hand-picked personnel from the Washington Field Office and FBI headquarters. ..."
"... On Jan. 29, 2016, Comey appointed McCabe as FBI deputy director, replacing the retiring Giuliano, and McCabe assumed the No. 2 position in the FBI, after having held the No. 3 position for just six months. ..."
"... By early 2016, the three participants in the infamous "insurance policy" meeting -- McCabe, Strzok, and Page -- were now in place at the FBI. ..."
"... Priestap, who testified that he was unaware of the frequency of meetings between McCabe, Strzok, and Lisa Page, seems to have been kept in the dark regarding many of the actions taken by Strzok, who appeared to be exercising significant investigative control. ..."
"... It sounds like Peter Strzok was kind of driving the train here. Would you agree with that?" ..."
"... Peter and Jon, yeah." ..."
"... Do you know if Mr. McCabe was aware that some of his agent executives were concerned that they were being bypassed on information on what, by all accounts, was a sensitive, critical investigation?" ..."
"... My understanding was that he was aware." ..."
"... Notably, Comey had been convinced to remove the term "gross negligence" to describe Clinton's actions from his prepared statement by, among others, Page, Strzok, Anderson, and Moffa. ..."
"... While GCHQ was gathering intelligence, low-level Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos appears to have been targeted, after a series of highly coincidental meetings. Most of these meetings with Papadopoulos -- whose own background and reasons for joining the Trump campaign remain suspicious -- occurred in the first half of 2016. Maltese professor Josef Mifsud, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, FBI informant Stefan Halper, and officials from the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) all crossed paths with Papadopoulos -- some repeatedly so. ..."
"... As this foreign intelligence -- unofficial in nature and outside of any traditional channels -- was gathered, Brennan began a process of feeding his gathered intelligence to the FBI. Repeated transfers of foreign intelligence from the CIA director pushed the FBI toward the establishment of a formal counterintelligence investigation. ..."
"... The last major segment of Brennan's efforts involved a series of three reports. The first, titled the "Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security ," was released on Oct. 7, 2016. The second report, "GRIZZLY STEPPE -- Russian Malicious Cyber Activity ," was released on Dec. 29, 2016. The third report, "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections " -- also known as the intelligence community assessment (ICA) -- was released on Jan. 6, 2017. ..."
"... On July 5, 2016, Gaeta traveled to London and met with Steele at the offices of Steele's firm, Orbis. At some point in early July, Steele passed his initial report to Nuland and the State Department. Nuland later said these documents were passed on at some point to both the FBI and then-Secretary of State John Kerry. ..."
"... Prior to joining Fusion GPS, Nellie had worked as an independent contractor for an internal open-source division of the CIA, Open Source Works, from 2008 to at least June 2010; it appears likely she remained in that role into 2014. ..."
"... Additionally, email communications between her and Bruce Ohr show that she routinely sent her husband at the DOJ articles on Russia -- most carrying a similar negative slant. The emails continued through the duration of Nellie's employment with Fusion GPS and usually contained a brief, often one-line comment from Nellie. ..."
"... In her testimony, Nellie described her work as online open-source efforts that utilized "Russian sources, media, social media, government, you know, business registers, legal databases, all kinds of things." Ohr said that she would "write occasional reports based on the open-source research that I described about Donald Trump's relationships with various people in Russia." ..."
"... Steele had produced eight reports from June 20, 2016, through the end of August 2016 (there also is one undated report included in the dossier). No further reports were generated by Steele until Sept. 14, when he suddenly wrote three separate memos in one day. One of the memos referenced a Russian bank named Alfa Bank, misspelled as "Alpha" in his memo. Steele's sudden burst of productivity was likely done in preparation for his Sept. 19 meeting in Rome with the FBI. ..."
"... The impact of Brennan's potential knowledge of the dossier in August 2016 should not be underestimated. As Brennan testified to Congress, his briefing to the Gang of Eight was done in consultation with the Obama administration: ..."
"... Halper, who has been outed as an FBI informant, stayed in contact with Carter Page for the next 14 months, severing ties exactly as the final FISA warrant on Page expired. ..."
"... Following the publication of the Isikoff article, the Hillary for America campaign released a statement on the same day that touted Isikoff's "bombshell report," with the full article attached. ..."
"... Winer had received a separate dossier , very similar to Steele's, from longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. This "second dossier" had been compiled by another longtime Clinton operative, former journalist Cody Shearer, and echoed claims made in the Steele dossier. Winer gave Steele a copy of the "second dossier." Steele then shared this second dossier with the FBI, which may have used it as a means to corroborate Steele's own dossier. ..."
"... Steele also met with U.S. media during his visit to Washington, doing so "at Fusion's instruction." According to UK Court documents , Steele testified that he "briefed" The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo News, The New Yorker, and CNN at the end of September 2016. Steele would engage in a second round of media contact in mid-October 2016, meeting again with The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Yahoo News. Steele testified that all these meetings were "conducted verbally in person." ..."
"... Sometime in late 2016, his wife, Nellie Ohr, provided him with a memory stick containing all of her research that she had compiled while employed at Fusion GPS. Bruce Ohr testified he gave the memory stick to Pientka. Nellie Ohr had left Fusion in September 2016. Through Pientka, Strzok now had all of Nellie Ohr's Fusion research in his possession. ..."
"... Flynn's 2015 dinner in Moscow was initially used to implicate the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. It was then used as a means to cast doubts on Flynn's ability as Trump's national security adviser. Following Flynn's resignation, it was then used as a means to pursue the ongoing collusion narrative that gained full strength in the early days of the Trump administration. ..."
"... On April 18, 2016, Rogers moved aggressively in response to the disclosures. He abruptly shut down all FBI outside-contractor access. At this point, both the FBI and the DOJ's NSD became aware of Rogers's compliance review. They may have known earlier, but they were certainly aware after outside-contractor access was halted. ..."
"... Carlin filed the government's proposed 2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26, 2016. Carlin knew the general status of the compliance review by Rogers. The NSD was part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7, 2016, report by the NSA inspector general and associated FISA abuse to the FISA court in his 2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose Rogers's ongoing Section 702-compliance review. ..."
Efforts by high-ranking officials in the CIA ,
FBI , Department of Justice (
DOJ ), and State Department to portray President
Donald Trump as having colluded with Russia were the culmination
of years of bias and politicization under the Obama administration.
The weaponization of the intelligence community and other government agencies created an environment that allowed for obstruction
in the investigation into Hillary Clinton and the relentless pursuit of a manufactured collusion narrative against Trump.
A willing and complicit media spread unsubstantiated leaks as facts in an effort to promote the Russia-collusion narrative.
The Spygate scandal also raises a bigger question: Was the 2016 election a one-time aberration, or was it symptomatic of decades
of institutional political corruption?
This article builds on dozens of congressional testimonies, court documents, and other research to provide an inside look at the
actions of Obama administration officials in the scandal that's become known as Spygate.
To understand this abuse of power, it helps to go back to July 2011, when DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz was appointed.
From the very start, Horowitz found his duties throttled by Attorney General Eric Holder, who placed limitations on the inspector
general's right to have unobstructed access to information. Holder
used
this tactic to delay Horowitz's investigation of the failed sting operation known as Operation Fast and Furious.
"We got access to information up to 2010 in all of these categories. No law changed in 2010. No policy changed. It was simply
a decision by the General Counsel's Office in 2010 that they viewed, now, the law differently. And as a result, they weren't going
to give us that information," Horowitz told
members of Congress in February 2015.
On Aug. 5, 2014, Horowitz and other inspectors general had sent a
letter to Congress asking for unimpeded access to all records. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates responded on July 20, 2015,
with a 58-page memorandum, titled "
Memorandum
for Sally Quillian Yates Deputy Attorney General ," written by Karl R. Thompson, the principal deputy assistant attorney general
of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).
The July 20, 2015, opinion was
widely criticized . But it accomplished what it was intended to do. The opinion limited IG Horowitz's oversight from extending
to any information collected under Title III -- including intercepted communications and national security letters. (Notably, The
New York Times
disclosed that national security letters were used in the surveillance of the Trump 2016 presidential campaign.)
In response, on Aug. 3, 2015, IG Horowitz sent a
blistering letter to Congress. The letter was signed not only by Horowitz but by all other acting inspectors general as well:
"The OLC opinion's restrictive reading of the IG Act represents a potentially serious challenge to the authority of every Inspector
General and our collective ability to conduct our work thoroughly, independently, and in a timely manner. Our concern is that, as
a result of the OLC opinion, agencies other than DOJ may likewise withhold crucial records from their Inspectors General, adversely
impacting their work.
Horowitz continued to push Congress for oversight access and encouraged passage of the
Inspector General Empowerment
Act . Horowitz would ultimately win his battle, but only as President
Barack Obama was leaving office. On Dec. 16, 2016,
Obama finally signed the Inspector General Empowerment Act into law.
It is against this backdrop of minimal oversight that Spygate took place.
Ironically, the Clinton email server investigation, known as the "Mid-Year Exam," originated from a disclosure contained in a
June 29, 2015, memo sent by the inspectors general for both the State Department and the Intelligence Community to Patrick F. Kennedy,
then-undersecretary of state for management.
The IGs' memo included an assessment that Clinton's email account contained hundreds of classified emails, despite Clinton's claims
that there was no classified information present on her server.
On July 6, 2015, the IG for the Intelligence Community made a
referral
to the FBI, which resulted in the official opening of an investigation into the Clinton email server by FBI officials Randall Coleman
and Charles Kable on July 10, 2015.
At this time, Peter Strzok was an assistant special agent in charge at the FBI's Washington Field Office. The assistant director
in charge at the Washington Field Office during this period was Andrew McCabe, a position he
assumed on Sept.
14, 2014.
On July 30, 2015, within weeks of the FBI's opening of the Clinton investigation, McCabe was suddenly
promoted to the No. 3 position in the FBI. With his new title of associate deputy director, McCabe was transferred to FBI headquarters
from the Washington Field Office, and his direct involvement in the Clinton investigation began.
Strzok would follow shortly. Less than a month after McCabe was transferred, FBI headquarters reached out to the Washington Field
Office, saying it needed greater staffing and resources "based on what they were looking at, based on some of the investigative steps
that were under consideration," Strzok told congressional investigators in a closed-door hearing on June 27, 2018.
Strzok was one of the agents selected, and in late August 2015, he was assigned to the Mid-Year Exam team and transferred to FBI
headquarters. Strzok, in his comments to lawmakers, acknowledged that the newly formed investigative team was largely made up of
hand-picked personnel from the Washington Field Office and FBI headquarters.
Starting in October 2015 and continuing into early 2016, FBI Director
James Comey made a series of high-profile reassignments
that resulted in the complete turnover of the upper-echelon of the FBI team working on the Clinton email investigation:
Oct. 12, 2015: Louis Bladel was moved to the New York Field Office.
Dec. 1, 2015: Randall Coleman, assistant director of Counterintelligence, was named as executive assistant director of the
Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, and was replaced by Bill Priestap.
Dec. 9, 2015: Charles "Sandy" Kable was moved to the Washington Field Office.
Feb. 1, 2016: Mark Giuliano retired as FBI deputy director and was replaced by Andrew McCabe.
Feb. 11, 2016: John Giacalone retired as executive assistant director and was replaced by Michael Steinbach.
March 2, 2016: Gerald Roberts, Jr. was moved to the Washington Field Office.
Comey is the only known senior FBI leadership official who remained involved throughout the entire Clinton email investigation.
McCabe had the second-longest tenure.
On Jan. 29, 2016, Comey
appointed
McCabe as FBI deputy director, replacing the retiring Giuliano, and McCabe assumed the No. 2 position in the FBI, after having
held the No. 3 position for just six months.
It was at this point that FBI lawyer Lisa Page was assigned to McCabe as his special counsel. This was not the first time that
Page worked directly for McCabe. James Baker, the FBI's former general counsel, told congressional investigators that Page had worked
for McCabe at various times during McCabe's career, going back as far as 2013.
By early 2016, the three participants in the infamous "insurance policy" meeting -- McCabe, Strzok, and Page -- were now in place
at the FBI.
In January 2016, Bill Priestap was named as head of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, replacing Coleman and inheriting the
Clinton email investigation in the process.
According to Priestap, Coleman had "set up a reporting mechanism that leaders of that team would report directly to him, not through
the customary other chain of command" in the Clinton email investigation. Priestap, who said he didn't know why Coleman had "set
it up," kept the chain of command in place when he assumed Coleman's position in January 2016.
This new structure resulted in some unusual reporting lines that went outside normal chains of command. Strzok, who would not
normally fall under Priestap's oversight, was now reporting directly to him.
As Priestap described it, the team involved in the Clinton investigation comprised three different but intertwined elements: the
primary team, the filter team, and the senior leadership team.
The primary team was small, consisting only of Strzok, FBI analyst Jonathan Moffa, and, to varying degrees, filter team leader
Rick Mains and FBI lawyer Sally Moyer. Mains reported to Strzok and Moffa, who in turn, along with Moyer, provided briefings to Priestap.
Below Strzok and Moffa was the day-to-day investigative "filter" team of approximately 15 FBI agents and analysts that was overseen
by Mains, a supervisory special agent.
The senior leadership team was more fluid, consisting of higher-level FBI officials who provided briefings and updates to Comey
and/or McCabe. In addition to Priestap, Strzok, and Moffa, frequent attendees included Moyer, Page, Deputy General Counsel Trisha
Anderson, chief of staff Jim Rybicki, and General Counsel James Baker.
While the elements of the day-to-day investigative team differed for the Clinton email investigation and the Trump–Russia investigation,
the primary team remained the same throughout both cases -- as did the lines of communication between the FBI and the DOJ. According
to testimony by Page, John Carlin, who ran the DOJ's National Security Division (NSD), was receiving briefings on both investigations
directly from McCabe.
Priestap Left in the Dark
Priestap, who testified that he was unaware of the frequency of meetings between McCabe, Strzok, and Lisa Page, seems to have
been kept in the dark regarding many of the actions taken by Strzok, who appeared to be exercising significant investigative control. Priestap was asked about this by congressional investigators during a June 5, 2018, testimony:
Rep. Meadows: " It sounds like Peter Strzok was kind of driving the train here. Would you agree with that?"
Additionally, Page often circumvented the established chain of command, not only with McCabe, for whom she reportedly served as
a conduit for Strzok, but also with Baker. Additionally, there were concerns that Page bypassed both the executive assistant director
for the National Security Branch -- first Giacalone, then Steinbach -- and Priestap, the head of counterintelligence. Anderson, the
No. 2 lawyer, admitted in her testimony to congressional investigators that she had been aware of these concerns, saying, "Neither
of them personally complained to me, but I was aware of their concerns."
A report published by IG Horowitz in June 2018, which reviewed the FBI's investigation of the Clinton email case, included the
notable statement that several witnesses had informed the IG that Page "circumvented the official chain of command, and that Strzok
communicated important Midyear case information to her, and thus to McCabe, without Priestap's or Steinbach's knowledge." Steinbach,
who was the executive assistant director and Priestap's direct supervisor,
left the FBI in early 2017.
According to Anderson, McCabe was aware of the ongoing concerns regarding Page's circumventions, but it appears that nothing was
done to address them:
Mr. Baker: " Do you know if Mr. McCabe was aware that some of his agent executives were concerned that they were being bypassed
on information on what, by all accounts, was a sensitive, critical investigation?"
Ms. Anderson: " My understanding was that he was aware."
DOJ Prevents 'Gross Negligence' Charges
By the spring of 2016, the Clinton email investigation was already winding down. This was due in large part to the fact that the
DOJ, under Attorney General Loretta Lynch , had decided
to set an unusually high threshold for the prosecution of Clinton, effectively ensuring from the outset that she would not be charged.
In order for Clinton to be prosecuted, the DOJ required the FBI to establish evidence of intent -- even though the gross negligence
statute explicitly does not require this.
This meant that the FBI would have needed to find a smoking gun, such as an email or an admission made during FBI questioning,
revealing that Clinton or her aides knowingly set up the private email server to send classified information.
According to Page, the DOJ played a far larger role in the Clinton investigation than previously had been known:
"Everybody talks about this as if this was the FBI investigation, and the truth of the matter is there was not a single step,
other than the July 5th statement, there was not a single investigative step that we did not do in consultation with or at the direction
of the Justice Department," Page told congressional investigators on July 13, 2018.
Comey also had hinted at the influence exerted by the DOJ over the Clinton investigation, at a July 5, 2016,
press conference , in which he
recommended that Clinton not be charged, stating that "there are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially
regarding intent."
Notably, Comey had been convinced to remove the term "gross negligence" to describe Clinton's actions from his prepared statement
by, among others, Page, Strzok, Anderson, and Moffa.
CIA Director Instigates Trump Investigation
As the Clinton investigation wound down, interest from the intelligence community in the Trump campaign was ramping up. Sometime
in 2015, it appears former CIA Director John Brennan established himself as the point man to push for an investigation into the Trump
campaign. Using a combination of unofficial foreign intelligence compiled by contacts, colleagues, and associates --
primarily from the UK , but also from other Five Eyes members, such as Australia -- Brennan then fed this information to the
FBI. Brennan stated this fact repeatedly during a May 23, 2017,
congressional testimony :
"I made sure that anything that was involving U.S. persons, including anything involving the individuals involved in the Trump
campaign, was shared with the [FBI]."
Brennan also admitted that it was his intelligence that helped
establish the FBI investigation:
"I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in
my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and
it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred."
In late 2015, Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was involved in collecting information regarding then-candidate
Trump and transmitting it to the United States. The GCHQ is the UK equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
While GCHQ was gathering intelligence, low-level Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos appears to have been
targeted, after a series of highly coincidental meetings. Most of these meetings with Papadopoulos -- whose own background and reasons for joining the Trump campaign remain suspicious
-- occurred in the first half of 2016. Maltese professor Josef Mifsud, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, FBI informant Stefan Halper, and officials from the UK's
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) all crossed paths with Papadopoulos -- some repeatedly so.
Mifsud, who introduced Papadopoulos to a series of Russian contacts, appears to have more connections with Western intelligence
than with Russian intelligence.
Downer, then Australia's high commissioner to the UK, met with Papadopoulos in May 2016, in a meeting
established through a chain
of two intermediaries.
Information allegedly relayed by Papadopoulos during the Downer meeting -- that the Russians had damaging information on Clinton
-- appears nearly identical to claims later contained in the first memo from former MI6 spy and dossier author Christopher Steele
that the FBI obtained in early July 2016.
Downer's conversation with Papadopoulos was reportedly disclosed to the FBI on July 22, 2016, through Australian government channels,
although it may have come directly from Downer himself.
Details from the conversation between Downer and Papadopoulos were then used by the FBI to open its counterintelligence investigation
on July 31, 2016.
In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, the head of the UK's GCHQ, traveled to Washington to
meet with Brennan
regarding alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Around the same time, Brennan
formed an inter-agency task force comprising an estimated
six agencies and/or government departments. The FBI, Treasury, and DOJ handled the domestic inquiry into Trump and possible Russia
connections. The CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the NSA handled foreign and intelligence aspects.
During this time, Brennan appeared to have employed the use of
reverse targeting , which refers to the targeting of a foreign individual with the intent of capturing data on a U.S. citizen.
Mr. Brennan:
" We call it incidental collection in terms of CIA's foreign intelligence collection authorities. Any time we
would incidentally collect information on a U.S. person, we would hand that over to the FBI because they have the legal authority
to do it. We would not pursue that type of investigative, you know, sort of leads. We would give it to the FBI. So, we were picking
things up that was of great relevance to the FBI, and we wanted to make sure that they were there -- so they could piece it together
with whatever they were collecting domestically here."
As this foreign intelligence -- unofficial in nature and outside of any traditional channels -- was gathered, Brennan began a
process of feeding his gathered intelligence to the FBI. Repeated transfers of foreign intelligence from the CIA director pushed
the FBI toward the establishment of a formal counterintelligence investigation.
This final report was used to continue pushing the Russia-collusion narrative following the election of President Donald Trump.
Notably, Adm. Mike Rogers of the NSA publicly dissented from the findings of the ICA, assigning it only a moderate confidence level.
Fusion GPS and the Steele Dossier
Meanwhile, another less official effort began. Information paid for by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton
campaign targeting Trump made its way to the highest levels of the FBI and the State Department, with a sophisticated strategy relying
on the personal connections of hired operatives.
At the center of the multi-pronged strategy to disseminate the information were Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and former
British spy Steele.
In early March 2016, Fusion GPS approached Perkins Coie -- the law firm used by the Clinton campaign and the DNC -- expressing
interest in an "engagement," according to an Oct. 24, 2017,
response
letter by Perkins Coie. The firm hired Fusion GPS in April 2016 to "perform a variety of research services during the 2016 election
cycle."
Steele's firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, was retained by Fusion GPS during the period between June and November 2016. During
this time, Steele produced 16 memos, with the last memo dated Oct. 20, 2016. There is one final memo that Steele wrote on Dec. 13
at the request of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Steele provided Fusion GPS with something that Simpson's firm was lacking: access to individuals within the FBI and the State
Department. These contacts could be traced back to at least 2010, when Steele had provided assistance in the FBI's investigation
into FIFA over concerns that Russia might have been engaging in bribery to host the 2018 World Cup.
Sometime in the latter half of 2014, Steele began to informally
provide reports
he had prepared for a private client to the State Department. One of the recipients of the reports was Victoria Nuland, the assistant
secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.
After Steele's company was hired by Fusion GPS in June 2016, he began to reach out to the FBI through Michael Gaeta, an FBI agent
and assistant legal attaché at the
U.S. Embassy in Rome who Steele had worked with on the FIFA case. Gaeta also headed up the FBI's Eurasian Organized Crime unit, which
specializes in investigating criminal groups from Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine.
Gaeta was later identified as Steele's FBI handler, in a July 16, 2018, congressional testimony before the House Judiciary and
Oversight committees by Page.
On July 5, 2016, Gaeta traveled to London and met with Steele at the offices of Steele's firm, Orbis. At some point in early July,
Steele passed his initial report to Nuland and the State Department. Nuland later said these documents were passed on at some point
to both the FBI and then-Secretary of State John Kerry.
Exactly what happened with the reports that Gaeta brought back from London, and precisely who he gave them to within the FBI,
remains unknown, although some media reports have indicated they might have been sent to the FBI's New York Field Office. During
the period following Steele's initial contact with the FBI, there appears to have been no further FBI interaction or contact with
Steele.
Former CIA Contractor Worked for Fusion GPS
Notably, eight months before Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele, Simpson had hired Nellie Ohr, the wife of then-Associate Deputy
Attorney General Bruce Ohr, to work for his firm as a researcher in October 2015. It was at this time that Fusion GPS was retained
by the Washington Free Beacon to engage in research on the Trump campaign.
Prior to joining Fusion GPS, Nellie had worked as an independent contractor for an internal open-source division of the CIA, Open
Source Works, from 2008 to at least June 2010; it appears likely she remained in that role into 2014.
Nellie told congressional investigators, in her Oct. 19, 2018, closed-door testimony, that part of her work for Fusion GPS was
to research the Trump 2016 presidential campaign, including campaign associate Carter Page, early campaign supporter Lt. Gen. Michael
Flynn, and campaign manager Paul Manafort, as well as Trump's family members, including some of his children.
Additionally, email communications between her and Bruce Ohr show that she routinely sent her husband at the DOJ articles on Russia
-- most carrying a similar negative slant. The emails continued through the duration of Nellie's employment with Fusion GPS and usually
contained a brief, often one-line comment from Nellie.
In her testimony, Nellie described her work as online open-source efforts that utilized "Russian sources, media, social media,
government, you know, business registers, legal databases, all kinds of things." Ohr said that she would "write occasional reports
based on the open-source research that I described about Donald Trump's relationships with various people in Russia."
The work Nellie conducted for Fusion GPS matches the same skill set used when she worked for Open Source Works, which is a division
within the CIA that uses open-source information to produce intelligence products.
When asked how she came to be hired by Fusion GPS and who had approached her, Nellie responded, "Nobody approached me," telling
investigators that it was she who had initiated contact and approached Fusion GPS after reading an article on Simpson.
Nellie would continue to work for Fusion GPS until September 2016. By this time, Simpson and Steele already had started working
on pushing the Steele dossier into the FBI.
Following the end of her employment with Fusion GPS, Nellie provided Bruce with a memory stick that contained all of the research
she had compiled during her time at the firm. Bruce then gave the memory stick to the FBI, through his handler, Joe Pientka.
Bruce Ohr Becomes a Conduit
Nearly a month after Gaeta brought back the reports that Steele provided in London, Simpson and Steele decided to pursue a new
channel into the FBI through Bruce Ohr. Bruce had known Steele since at least 2007, when they met during an "official meeting" while
Steele was still employed by the British government as an MI6 agent. Steele had already been in contact with Bruce via email in early
2016. Notably, most of these prior communications appeared to discuss Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and his ongoing efforts to
obtain a U.S. visa.
On July 29, 2016, Steele
wrote to Bruce, saying that he would "be in DC at short notice on business," and asked to meet with both Bruce and his wife.
On July 30, 2016, the Ohrs met Steele for breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel. Also present at the breakfast meeting was a fourth individual,
described by Bruce as "an associate of Mr. Steele's, another gentleman, younger fellow. I didn't catch his name." Nellie testified
that Steele's associate had a British accent.
The timing of the July 30 breakfast meeting is of particular note, as the FBI's counterintelligence investigation, "Crossfire
Hurricane," was formally opened the following day, on July 31, 2016, by FBI agent Peter Strzok.
According to a transcript of Bruce's testimony before Congress, Steele
relayed information from his dossier at this meeting and claimed that "a former head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service,
the SVR, had stated to someone that they had Donald Trump over a barrel."
Steele also referenced Deripaska's business dealings with Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and foreign policy adviser Carter
Page's meetings in Moscow.
Lastly, Bruce noted that Steele told him he had been in contact with the FBI but now had additional reports. "Chris Steele had
provided some reports to the FBI, I think two, but that Glenn Simpson had more," he said.
Immediately following the Ohrs' breakfast meeting with Steele, Bruce Ohr reached out to FBI Deputy Director McCabe and the two
met in McCabe's office -- sometime between July 30 and the first days of August. Also present at this meeting was FBI lawyer Page,
who had previously worked for Bruce Ohr at the DOJ, where he was her direct supervisor for five to six years.
Bruce Ohr would later testify that during the July/August meeting, he told McCabe that his wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion, noting,
"I wanted the FBI to be aware of any possible bias." FBI General Counsel Baker, who reviewed a portion of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) application to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page -- which relied in part on the information from
Steele -- told congressional investigators that he was never told of Ohr's concerns regarding possible bias and conflicts of interest.
On Aug. 15, 2016, a week or two following Bruce Ohr's meeting with McCabe, Strzok would send the now-infamous "insurance policy"
text referencing McCabe to Lisa Page:
"I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office – that there's no way he gets elected – but I'm afraid
we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40."
On Aug. 22, Bruce Ohr had a meeting with Simpson. Ohr would later discuss that meeting during his testimony:
"I don't know exactly what Chris Steele was thinking, of course, but I knew that Chris Steele was working for Glenn Simpson, and
that Glenn might have additional information that Chris either didn't have or was not authorized to prevent [present], give me, or
whatever."
It was at this meeting that Simpson first mentioned Belarusan-American businessman Sergei Millian and former Trump attorney Michael
Cohen.
During this same period in late August 2016, Brennan began briefing members of the Gang of Eight on the FBI's counterintelligence
investigation, through a series of meetings in August and September 2016. Notably, each Gang of Eight member was briefed separately,
calling into question whether each of the members received the same information. Efforts by Democrats to
block the release of transcripts from each meeting are ongoing. Comey, however, did not notify Congress of the FBI investigation
until early March 2017, and it's entirely possible he was unaware of Brennan's private briefings during the summer of 2016.
During her testimony, FBI lawyer Lisa Page was questioned by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) in relation to an Aug. 25, 2016, text
message that read, "What are you doing after the CH brief?" CH almost certainly referred to Crossfire Hurricane.
Lisa Page then was asked about an event that took place on the same day as the "CH brief" -- a briefing provided by Brennan to
then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid:
"You give a brief on August the 25th. Director Brennan is giving a brief. It's not a Gang of Eight brief. It is a one-on-one,
from what we can tell, a one-on-one briefing with Harry Reid at that point."
According to Meadows, Brennan briefed Reid on the Steele dossier:
"We have documents that would suggest that in that briefing the dossier was mentioned to Harry Reid and then obviously we're going
to have to have conversations. Does that surprise you that Director Brennan would be aware [of the dossier]?"
Lisa Page appeared genuinely surprised that Brennan would have been aware of the dossier's existence at this early point, telling
Meadows: "The FBI got this information from our source. If the CIA had another source of that information, I am neither aware of
that nor did the CIA provide it to us if they did."
She elaborated further: "As of August of 2016, I don't know who Christopher Steele is. I don't know that he's an FBI source. I
don't know what he does. I have never heard of him in all of my life."
This claim by Page seems incongruous when viewed against Bruce Ohr's testimony that he met with Page and McCabe in the first days
of August following his July 30, 2016, breakfast with Steele:
"My initial meeting was with Mr. McCabe and with Lisa Page.
"I was telling them about what I was hearing from Chris Steele."
Meanwhile, Brennan's briefing prompted Reid to write not one but two letters to Comey. Both demanded that Comey commence an investigation,
with the details to be made public.
Reid's first letter
, which touched on Carter Page, was sent on Aug. 27, 2016. Reid's
second letter
, far angrier and declaring Comey to be in possession of material information, was sent on Oct. 30, 2016.
There had been
reports that Comey had been considering closing the FBI investigation of Trump, something Brennan strongly opposed. Now, with
Reid's letters sent, that avenue was effectively closed. The termination of the FBI's Trump–Russia investigation would be all but
impossible in the face of Reid's public demands.
Perhaps it was in response to Reid's Aug. 27 letter that the FBI suddenly reached out to Steele in September 2016, asking him
for all the information in his possession. The team working on Crossfire Hurricane received documents and a briefing from Steele
in mid-September, reportedly
at a meeting in Rome, where Gaeta also was present.
During Lisa Page's testimony, she appeared to corroborate this account, noting that the team received the "reports that are known
as the dossier from an FBI agent who is Christopher Steele's handler in September of 2016." She would later clarify the timing, noting
"we received the reporting from Steele in mid-September." A
text sent to her by FBI agent Peter
Strzok on Oct. 12, 2016, may provide us with the actual date:
"We got the reporting on Sept 19. Looks like [redacted] got it early August."
Steele had produced eight reports from June 20, 2016, through the end of August 2016 (there also is one undated report included
in the dossier). No further reports were generated by Steele until Sept. 14, when he suddenly wrote three separate memos in one day.
One of the memos referenced a Russian bank named Alfa Bank, misspelled as "Alpha" in his memo. Steele's sudden burst of productivity
was likely done in preparation for his Sept. 19 meeting in Rome with the FBI.
The impact of Brennan's potential knowledge of the dossier in August 2016 should not be underestimated. As Brennan
testified to Congress, his briefing to the Gang of Eight
was done in consultation with the Obama administration:
"Through the so-called Gang-of-Eight process we kept Congress apprised of these issues as we identified them. Again, in consultation
with the White House, I personally briefed the full details of our understanding of Russian attempts to interfere in the election
to congressional leadership.
"Given the highly sensitive nature of what was an active counter-intelligence case, involving an ongoing Russian effort, to interfere
in our presidential election, the full details of what we knew at the time were shared only with those members of Congress."
As the dossier was making its way into the FBI, the agency began its preparations to obtain a FISA warrant on Trump campaign adviser
Carter Page, who was surveilled under Title I of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
According to Baker's testimony, it appears that the FBI began to set its sights on Carter Page in the summer of 2016. When asked
how he had first gained knowledge of the FBI's intention to pursue a FISA warrant on Carter Page, Baker testified that it came through
his familiarity with the FBI's investigation:
Mr. Baker: " I learned of -- so I was aware when the FBI first started to focus on Carter Page, I was aware of that because
it was part of the broader investigation that we were conducting. So I was aware that we were investigating him. And then at some
point in time –"
Rep. Meadows: "But that was many years ago. That was in 2014. Or are you talking about 2016?"
Mr. Baker: " I am talking about 2016 in the summer."
Rep. Meadows: "Okay."
Mr. Baker: " Yeah. And so I was aware of the investigation, and then at some point in time, as part of the regular briefings
on the case, the briefers mentioned that they were going to pursue a FISA."
It appears the FBI, and possibly the CIA, began to focus on Carter Page earlier than Baker was aware. Carter Page had been invited
some months prior to a July 2016 symposium held at Cambridge regarding the upcoming election. The speaker list was notable:
Madeleine Albright (former U.S. secretary of state)
Vin Weber (Republican Party strategist and former congressman)
Peter Ammon (German ambassador to the UK)
Sir Richard Dearlove (former head of MI6 and Steele's former boss)
Bridget Kendall (BBC diplomatic correspondent and the next master of Peterhouse College)
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (former defense and foreign secretary)
Carter Page attended the event just four days after his July 2016 Moscow trip, and it was during this time in the UK that he first
encountered Stefan Halper. Page's Moscow trip would later figure prominently in the Steele dossier.
Halper, who has been outed as an FBI informant, stayed in contact with Carter Page for the next 14 months, severing ties exactly
as the final FISA warrant on Page expired.
Trisha Anderson, the principal deputy general counsel for the FBI and head of the bureau's National Security and Cyber Law Branch,
approved the application for a warrant to spy on Carter Page before it went to FBI Director James Comey.
According to Anderson, pre-approvals for the Carter Page FISA warrant were provided by both McCabe and Deputy Attorney General
Sally Yates, before the FISA application was ever presented to Anderson for review.
"[M]y boss and my boss' boss had already reviewed and approved this application. And, in fact, the Deputy Attorney General, who
had the authority to sign the application, to be the substantive approver on the FISA application itself, had approved the application.
And that typically would not have been the case before I did that," said Anderson.
The unusual preliminary reviews and approvals from both McCabe and Yates appear to have had a substantial impact on the normal
review process, leading other individuals like Anderson to believe that the warrant application was more vetted than it really was.
Anderson also testified that she had not read the Carter Page FISA application prior to signing off on it and passing it along
to Comey for the final FBI signature. According to FBI lawyer Sally Moyer, the underlying Woods file (a document that provides facts
supporting the allegations made in a FISA application) was only read by the originating agent and the supervisory special agent in
the field. Moyer also noted that the Woods file relating to the Page FISA had not been reviewed or audited by anyone.
The Carter Page FISA application was largely reliant on the Steele dossier, which was unverified at the time of its submission
to the FISA court and remains unverified by the FBI to this day. Circular reporting, provided by Steele himself, was used as corroboration
of the dossier. Additionally, Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, whose conversation with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer
was used to open the FBI's July 31, 2016, counterintelligence investigation, is referenced in the FISA, yet there "is no evidence
of any cooperation or conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos," according to a House Intelligence Committee memo.
Moyer testified that without the Steele dossier, the Carter Page application would have had a "50/50" chance of achieving the
probable cause standard before the FISA court. Notably, the Steele dossier is generally considered to have been largely discredited.
On Sept. 19, shortly after Steele completed his latest three memos, FBI General Counsel James Baker met with Perkins Coie partner
Michael Sussmann, the lawyer the DNC turned to on April 28, 2016, after discovering the alleged hacking of their servers.
Sussman, who sought out the meeting, presented Baker with documents that Baker described as "a stack of material I don't know
maybe a quarter inch half inch thick something like that clipped together, and then I believe there was some type of electronic media,
as well, a disk or something."
The information that Sussmann gave to Baker was related to what Baker described as "a surreptitious channel of communications"
between the Trump Organization and "a Russian organization associated with the Russian Government."
Baker was describing alleged communications between Alfa Bank and a server in the Trump Tower. The allegations, which were investigated
by the FBI and proven to be false, were widely covered in the media.
Just four days earlier, on Sept. 14, Steele mentioned Alfa Bank (misspelled as Alpha bank) in one of his memos.
According to Baker's testimony, there appears to have been at least three meetings with Sussmann -- the first in person and at
least two subsequent meetings by phone. In either the second or third conversation, Baker came to understand The New York Times was
also in possession of Sussmann's information. As would become clear later, other members of the media also had this same information.
As Baker was meeting with Sussmann, Steele was back in Washington for a series of meetings that included his DOJ contact, Bruce
Ohr.
On Sept. 23, 2016, Bruce Ohr again met with Steele for breakfast, telling lawmakers during testimony, "Steele was in Washington,
D.C., again, and he reached out to me, and, again, we met for breakfast, and he provided some additional information." Ohr said this
meeting concerned similar topics that were discussed at the July 30, 2016, meeting but did not provide further details.
Bruce Ohr would also meet either that same month or in early October with FBI agent Peter Strzok, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and DOJ
career officials from the criminal division, Bruce Swartz, Zainab Ahmad, and Andrew Weissman (Ohr testified that he was unsure whether
Weismann was at this or a later meeting). Both Weissman and Ahmad would later become part of the team assembled by special counsel
Robert Mueller.
Steele's Meetings With the Media
On the same day that Bruce Ohr met with Christopher Steele for breakfast, on Sept. 23, 2016, Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff
published an article about Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. The article, headlined "
U.S. Intel Officials Probe Ties Between Trump Adviser and Kremlin ," was based on an interview with Steele. Isikoff's article
would later be used by the FBI in the FISA spy warrant application on Carter Page as corroborating information.
Following the publication of the Isikoff article, the Hillary for America campaign released a
statement on the same day that touted
Isikoff's "bombshell report," with the full article attached.
A second lengthy article was published on Sept. 23, by Politico: "
Who Is Carter
Page? The Mystery of Trump's Man in Moscow ," by Julia Ioffe. This article was particularly interesting as it appeared to highlight
media efforts by Fusion GPS:
"As I started looking into Page, I began getting calls from two separate 'corporate investigators' digging into what they claim
are all kinds of shady connections Page has to all kinds of shady Russians. One is working on behalf of various unnamed Democratic
donors; the other won't say who turned him on to Page's scent. Both claimed to me that the FBI was investigating Page for allegedly
meeting with Igor Sechin and Sergei Ivanov, who was until recently Putin's chief of staff -- both of whom are on the sanctions list
-- when Page was in Moscow in July for that speech."
Ioffe noted that "seemingly everyone I talked to had also talked to the Washington Post, and then there were these corporate investigators
who drew a dark and complex web of Page's connections."
Her article also mentioned rumors regarding Alfa Bank:
"In the interest of due diligence, I also tried to run down the rumors being handed me by the corporate investigators: that Russia's
Alfa Bank paid for the trip as a favor to the Kremlin; that Page met with Sechin and Ivanov in Moscow; that he is now being investigated
by the FBI for those meetings because Sechin and Ivanov were both sanctioned for Russia's invasion of Ukraine."
It was probably during this same trip to Washington that Steele
met with Jonathan Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement and former special envoy
for Libya, whom Steele had known since at least 2010.
Winer had received a
separate dossier , very similar to Steele's, from longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. This "second dossier" had been
compiled by another longtime Clinton operative, former journalist Cody Shearer, and echoed claims made in the Steele dossier. Winer
gave Steele a copy of the "second dossier." Steele then
shared this second dossier with the FBI, which may have used it as a means to corroborate Steele's own dossier.
Steele also met with U.S. media during his visit to Washington, doing so "at Fusion's instruction." According to
UK Court documents , Steele testified
that he "briefed" The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo News, The New Yorker, and CNN at the end of September 2016. Steele
would engage in a second round of media contact in mid-October 2016, meeting again with The New York Times, The Washington Post,
and Yahoo News. Steele testified that all these meetings were "conducted verbally in person."
As Steele's media meetings were going on, FBI General Counsel James Baker learned that Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann was
also speaking with reporters from The New York Times regarding the Alfa Bank information that Sussmann had provided to the FBI. After
some internal discussion, the FBI approached both Sussmann and The New York Times, asking that any story be held until the FBI had
time to complete an investigation into the documents provided by Sussmann. It appears that an agreement was reached, and the FBI
began to look into the claims regarding Alfa Bank and the server at Trump Tower.
But Sussman wasn't the only one that Baker, currently the subject of an ongoing criminal leak investigation, was speaking with.
According to congressional investigators, beginning sometime in September 2016 -- before the presidential election -- Baker began
having conversations with his old friend and journalist, David Corn of Mother Jones.
According to Baker, these conversations were in relation to ongoing FBI matters:
Rep. Jordan: " Did you talk to Mr. Corn prior to the election about anything, anything related to FBI matters? Not -- so we're
not going to ask about the Steele dossier. Anything about FBI business, FBI matters?"
Mr. Baker: " Yes."
Rep. Jordan: " Yes. And do you know -- can you give me some dates or the number of times that you talked to Mr. Corn about
FBI matters leading up to the 2016 Presidential election?"
Mr. Baker: " I don't remember, Congressman."
By Oct. 31, 2016, the FBI had apparently wrapped up their investigation into the Alfa Bank allegations, finding no evidence of
anything untoward in the process. It was on this day that three separate articles on Alfa Bank would be published.
The first, " Investigating
Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia " by The New York Times, appeared to be an updated version of the article they
had intended to publish before the FBI asked them to delay their reporting. It stated the following:
"In classified sessions in August and September, intelligence officials also briefed congressional leaders on the possibility
of financial ties between Russians and people connected to Mr. Trump. They focused particular attention on what cyberexperts said
appeared to be a mysterious computer back channel between the Trump Organization and the Alfa Bank, which is one of Russia's biggest
banks and whose owners have longstanding ties to Mr. Putin."
The reference to "classified sessions in August and September" is likely in relation to the series of Gang of Eight briefings
that former CIA Director John Brennan engaged in at that time -- including his briefing to then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.
The article continued:
"F.B.I. officials spent weeks examining computer data showing an odd stream of activity to a Trump Organization server and Alfa
Bank. Computer logs obtained by The New York Times show that two servers at Alfa Bank sent more than 2,700 'look-up' messages --
a first step for one system's computers to talk to another -- to a Trump-connected server beginning in the spring. But the F.B.I.
ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts."
The second article,
"Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?" by Slate Magazine, was solely focused on the allegations regarding a server in
the Trump Tower that had allegedly been communicating with a server at Alfa Bank in Russia.
Immediately following the publication of the Slate article, Clinton
posted a tweet that included a statement
from Jake Sullivan, a senior policy adviser:
"Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank."
Sullivan's statement referenced the Slate article and included the following:
"This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow. Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert
server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.
"This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump's ties to Russia. It certainly seems the Trump Organization
felt it had something to hide, given that it apparently took steps to conceal the link when it was discovered by journalists."
The Alfa Bank story took off -- despite the same-day story from The New York Times that specifically noted the FBI had investigated
that matter and found nothing untoward.
"In recent weeks, reporters in Washington have pursued anonymous
online reports that a computer server related
to the Trump Organization engaged in a high level of activity with servers connected to Alfa Bank, the largest private bank in Russia.
On Monday, a Slate
investigation
detailed the pattern of unusual server activity but concluded, 'We don't yet know what this [Trump] server was
for, but it deserves further explanation.' In an email to Mother Jones, Hope Hicks, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, maintains, 'The
Trump Organization is not sending or receiving any communications from this email server. The Trump Organization has no communication
or relationship with this entity or any Russian entity.'"
More notably, Corn's article also provided the first public reporting on the existence of the Steele dossier:
"A former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence tells Mother Jones
that in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian
government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump -- and that the FBI requested more information from him."
As it turns out, Corn had detailed, first-hand knowledge of the dossier. According to testimony from Baker, Corn had been provided
with parts of the dossier by Fusion GPS head Glenn Simpson. Baker knew of this fact, because within a week of publishing his article,
Corn passed these dossier parts on to Baker personally:
Rep. Jordan: " Prior to the election Mr. Corn had a copy of the dossier and was talking to you about giving that to you so
the FBI would have it. Is that all right? I mean all accurate."
Mr. Baker: " My recollection is that he had part of the dossier, that we had other parts already, and that we got still other
parts from other people, and that -- and nevertheless some of the parts that David Corn gave us were parts that we did not have from
another source?"
Steele had written four memos after the FBI team received his information in mid-September. All of the memos were written in October
-- on the 12th, 18th, 19th, and the 20th. It is possible that these were the memos passed along to Baker by Corn.
Baker testified that he received elements of the dossier from Corn that were not in the FBI's possession at the time. He said
that he immediately turned this information over to leadership within the FBI, noting, "I think it was Bill Priestap," the head of
the FBI's Counterintelligence Division.
The use of personal relationships as a mechanism to transmit outside information to the FBI was actually noted by Baker, who said
of Corn: "Even though he was my friend, I was also an FBI official. He knew that. And so he wanted to somehow get that into the hands
of the FBI."
Bruce Ohr's FBI Handler
Christopher Steele was terminated as a source by the FBI on Nov. 1, 2016, for communicating with the media. Despite this, DOJ
official Bruce Ohr and Steele communicated regularly for another full year, until November 2017.
On Nov. 21, 2016, Ohr had a meeting with FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and was introduced to FBI agent Joe
Pientka, who became Ohr's FBI handler. Pientka was also present with Strzok during the Jan. 24, 2017, interview of
Trump's national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn .
The next day, Nov. 22, 2016, Ohr met alone with Pientka. Ohr would continue to relay his communications with Steele to the FBI
through Pientka, who then recorded them in FD-302 forms. What Ohr didn't know was that Pientka was transmitting all the information
directly to Strzok.
Ohr, in his testimony, detailed his interactions with Steele and Glenn Simpson, as well as his communications with officials at
the FBI and DOJ. Notably, Ohr repeatedly stated that he never vetted any of the information provided by either Steele or Simpson.
He simply turned it over or relayed it to the FBI -- usually to Pientka -- but Ohr also testified that "at least on two occasions
I was handed onto a new agent."
Sometime in late 2016, his wife, Nellie Ohr, provided him with a memory stick containing all of her research that she had compiled
while employed at Fusion GPS. Bruce Ohr testified he gave the memory stick to Pientka. Nellie Ohr had left Fusion in September 2016.
Through Pientka, Strzok now had all of Nellie Ohr's Fusion research in his possession.
On Dec. 10, 2016, Bruce Ohr met with Simpson, who gave him a memory stick that Ohr believed contained a copy of the Steele dossier.
Ohr also passed this second memory stick along to Pientka.
On Jan. 20, 2017, Ohr had one final communication with Simpson, a phone call that took place on the same day as Trump's inauguration.
Ohr testified that Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson was concerned that one of Steele's sources was about to be exposed through
the pending publication of an article:
Mr. Ohr: " He says something along the lines of, I -- there's going to be some reporting in the next few days that's going
to -- could expose the source, and the source could be in personal danger."
Rep. Meadows: " And why was he concerned about that source being exposed?"
Mr. Ohr: " I think he was aware of some kind of article that was likely to come out in the next, you know, few days or something."
Apparently, Simpson's information was at least partly accurate. On Jan. 24, 2017, The Wall Street Journal
reported that Sergei Millian, a Belarusan-American businessman and onetime Russian government translator, was both "Source D"
and "Source E" in the dossier. It remains unknown exactly how Simpson knew in advance that Millian would be outed as a source.
But there are some questions as to the accuracy of the Journal's reporting. The dossier appears to conflict with the newspaper's
article in at least one aspect. According to the dossier, Source E was used as confirmation for Source D -- meaning they can't be
the same person.
McCain, the Dossier, and a UK Connection
Simpson and Steele were carefully thorough in their dissemination efforts. The dossier was fed into U.S. channels through several
different sources.
One such source was Sir Andrew Wood, the former
British ambassador to Russia, who had been briefed about the dossier by Steele. Wood may have previously
worked on behalf of Steele's company, Orbis Business Intelligence; he was referenced in a
UK court filing as an associate of
Orbis. Wood was also referred to as an adviser to Orbis in a deposition by an associate of late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), David
Kramer.
Kramer knew Wood previously from their mutual expertise on Russia. Kramer said in his deposition, which was part of a defamation
lawsuit against BuzzFeed News, that Wood told him that "he was aware of information that he thought I should be aware of and that
Senator McCain might be interested in."
McCain, Wood, and Kramer would meet later that afternoon, on Nov. 19, 2016, in a private meeting room at the Halifax International
Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Wood told both Kramer and McCain that "he was aware of this information that had been gathered that raised the possibility of
collusion and compromising material on the president-elect. And he explained that he knew the person who gathered the information
and felt that the person was of the utmost credibility," Kramer said.
Kramer ascribed the word "collusion" three times to Wood in his deposition. He also said that Wood mentioned the possible existence
of a video "of a sexual nature" that might have "shown the president-elect in a compromising situation." According to Kramer, Wood
said that "if it existed, that it was from a hotel in Moscow when president-elect, before he was president-elect, had been in Moscow."
No such video was ever uncovered or given to Kramer.
Kramer testified that following the description of the video, "the senator turned to me and asked if I would go to London to meet
with what turned out to be Mr. Steele."
Kramer traveled to London to meet with Steele on Nov. 28, 2016. Kramer reviewed all the memos during his meeting with Steele but
wasn't provided with a physical copy of the dossier.
When Kramer returned to Washington, he was provided with a copy of the dossier -- which, at that point, consisted of 16 memos
-- during a meeting with Simpson on Nov. 29, 2016. Kramer also testified that there was another individual, "a male," present at
the meeting.
Interestingly, Kramer testified that Simpson gave him two copies of the dossier, noting that Simpson told him that "one had more
things blacked out than the other." Kramer said, "It wasn't entirely clear to me why there were two versions of this, so but I took
both versions."
Kramer noted that Simpson, who was aware the dossier was being given to McCain, said the dossier "was a very sensitive document
and needed to be handled very carefully."
Despite that warning, Kramer showed the dossier to a number of journalists and had discussions with at least 14 members of the
media, along with some individuals in the U.S. government.
Kramer testified that he gave a physical copy of the dossier to reporters Peter Stone and Greg Gordon of McClatchy; to Fred Hiatt,
the editor of the Washington Post editorial page; Alan Cullison of The Wall Street Journal; Bob Little at NPR; Carl Bernstein at
CNN; and Ken Bensinger at BuzzFeed. It's possible that Kramer gave copies to other reporters as well.
Kramer said that Simpson and Steele were aware of most of these contacts, but that Kramer hadn't told either of them that he gave
the dossier to NPR. He also noted that Steele had been in contact with Bernstein at CNN and that the CNN and BuzzFeed meetings occurred
at Steele's request. Steele told Kramer that he and Bensinger "had been in touch during the FIFA investigation; they got to know
each other that way."
According to Kramer, he didn't believe that Fusion GPS and Simpson were aware of these two meetings with CNN and BuzzFeed.
Kramer testified that he, McCain, and McCain's chief of staff, Christopher Brose, met to review the dossier on Nov. 30, 2016.
Kramer suggested that McCain "provide a copy of [the dossier] to the director of the FBI and the director of the CIA." McCain later
passed a copy of the dossier to James Comey on Dec. 9, 2016. It isn't known whether McCain also provided a copy to then-CIA Director
John Brennan. Notably, Brennan did attach a two-page summary of the dossier to the intelligence community assessment that he delivered
to outgoing President Barack Obama on Jan. 5, 2017.
Kramer said that he wasn't aware of the content of McCain's Dec. 9 discussion with Comey, noting that he "did not get any readout
from the senator on the meeting, but just that it had happened."
Kramer did, however, provide updates to both Steele and Simpson regarding the status of McCain's meeting with Comey, in subsequent
discussions with Simpson and Steele:
"It was mostly just to inform him about whether or not the senator had transfer -- transmitted the document to the FBI. Both he
and Mr. Steele were -- I kept them apprised of whether the senator was -- where the senator was in terms of his contact with the
FBI."
The implications of this statement are significant. Kramer, a private citizen, was providing updates to a former British spy as
to what a sitting senator, and chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, was saying to the director of the FBI.
Other members of the media also had advance knowledge of McCain's intention to meet with Comey. Kramer testified that both Mother
Jones reporter David Corn and Guardian reporter Julian Borger came to meet with him. According to Kramer, "They were mostly interested
in Senator McCain and his, whether he had given it to Director Comey or not."
Several days after McCain, Brose, and Kramer met to discuss the dossier, Kramer said that McCain instructed him to meet with Victoria
Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian Affairs, and Celeste Wallander, the senior director for Russia and
Central Asia on the National Security Council.
The purpose of the meeting was to verify whether the dossier "was being taken seriously." Both Nuland and Wallander were previously
aware of the dossier's existence, and both officials previously knew Steele, whom "they believed to be credible." Kramer said he
didn't physically share the dossier with them at this point, but met again with Wallander "around New Years" and "gave her a copy
of the document"
Nuland had actually
received a copy of the earlier Steele memos back in July 2016.
Steele produced a final memo dated Dec. 13, 2016. According to
UK court documents , Kramer, on behalf
of McCain, had asked Steele to provide any further intelligence that he had gathered relating to "alleged Russian interference in
the US presidential election." Notably, it appears it was this request from McCain that led Steele to produce his Dec. 13 memo.
Although Kramer didn't provide a date, he said he received the final Steele memo sometime after "Senator McCain had provided the
copy to Director Comey." We know that Kramer received the final memo prior to Dec. 29 -- when Kramer met with BuzzFeed's Bensinger.
Kramer testified that Bensinger "said he wanted to read them, he asked me if he could take photos of them on his -- I assume it
was an iPhone. I asked him not to. He said he was a slow reader, he wanted to read it. And so I said, you know, I got a phone call
to make, and I had to go to the bathroom " Kramer said that he "left him to read it for 20, 30 minutes."
Kramer also testified that besides the reporters, he gave a final copy of the dossier to two other people in early January 2017:
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Il.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan's chief of staff, Jonathan Burks.
James Clapper Leaks Details of Obama–Trump Briefings
The ICA on alleged Russian hacking was released
internally on Jan. 5, 2017. On this same day, outgoing president Obama held an undisclosed White House meeting to discuss the assessment
-- and the attached summation of the dossier -- with national security adviser Susan Rice, FBI Director James Comey, and Deputy Attorney
General Sally Yates. Rice would later send herself an
email documenting the meeting.
The following day, CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and Comey attached a written summary
of the Steele dossier to the classified briefing they gave Obama. Comey then met with President-elect Trump to inform him of the
dossier. This meeting took place just hours after Comey, Brennan, and Clapper formally briefed Obama on both the ICA and the Steele
dossier.
Comey would only inform Trump of the "salacious" details contained within the dossier. He later
explained on CNN in an April 2018 interview
that he had done so at the request of Clapper and Brennan, "because that was the part that the leaders of the intelligence community
agreed he needed to be told about."
Shortly after Comey's meeting with Trump, both the Trump–Comey meeting and the existence of the dossier were leaked to CNN. The
significance of the meeting was material, as Comey
noted in
a Jan. 7 memo :
"Media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that
the FBI has the material."
The media had widely dismissed the dossier as unsubstantiated and, therefore, unreportable. It was only after learning that Comey
briefed Trump on it that
CNN reported
on the dossier. The House Intelligence Committee report on Russian election interference confirmed that Clapper personally leaked
confirmation of the dossier, along with Comey's meeting with Trump, to CNN:
"The Committee's investigation revealed that President-elect Trump was indeed briefed on the contents of the Steele dossier and
when questioned by the Committee, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted that he confirmed the existence
of the dossier to the media."
Additionally, the House intelligence report shows Clapper appears to have been the direct source for CNN's Jake Tapper and his
Jan. 10 story that disclosed the existence of the dossier:
"When initially asked about leaks related to the ICA in July 2017, former DNI Clapper flatly denied 'discuss[ing] the dossier
[compiled by Steele] or any other intelligence related to Russia hacking of the 2016 election with journalists.' Clapper subsequently
acknowledged discussing the 'dossier with CNN journalist Jake Tapper,' and admitted that he might have spoken with other journalists
about the same topic.
"Clapper's discussion with Tapper took place in early January 2017, around the time IC leaders briefed President Obama and President-elect
Trump, on 'the Christopher Steele information,' a two-page summary of which was 'enclosed in' the highly-classified version of the
ICA."
The allegations within the dossier were made public, and with reporting of the briefings by intelligence community leaders, instant
credibility was given to the dossier's assertions.
Immediately following the CNN story,
BuzzFeed published the Steele dossier, and the Trump–Russia conspiracy was pushed into the mainstream.
David Kramer was asked about his reaction when CNN broke the story on the dossier. According to his deposition, Kramer stated,
"I believe my words were 'Holy [expletive].'"
Kramer, who was actually meeting with The Guardian's Julian Borger when CNN reported on the dossier, said that he quickly spoke
with Steele, who "was shocked."
On the following day, Jan. 11, 2017, Clapper issued a statement condemning the leaks -- without revealing the fact that he was
the source of the leak.
On Nov. 17, 2016, Clapper submitted his resignation as director of national intelligence; his resignation became effective on
Jan. 20, 2017. Later that year, CNN hired Clapper as its national security analyst.
The Effort to Remove General Flynn
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, then-national security adviser to President Donald Trump, was
interviewed on Jan. 24, 2017, by FBI agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka about two December 2016 conversations that Flynn had
had with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
Details of the phone conversation had leaked to the media. Flynn ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI regarding
his conversations with Kislyak. It remains unknown to this day who leaked Flynn's classified call -- a far more serious felony violation.
The Washington Post reported in January 2017 that the FBI had found
no evidence of wrongdoing in Flynn's actual call with the Russian ambassador. The call, and the matters discussed in it, broke
no laws.
Flynn has been portrayed in the media as being suspiciously close to Russia; a dinner in Moscow that occurred in late 2015 is
frequently cited as evidence of this.
On Dec. 10, 2015, Flynn attended an event in Moscow to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Russian television network RT. Flynn,
who was seated next to Russian President Vladimir Putin for the culminating dinner, was also interviewed on national security matters
by an RT correspondent. Flynn's speaker's bureau, Leading Authorities Inc., was paid $45,000 for the event and Flynn received $33,000
of the total amount.
Seated at the same table with Flynn was Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate in the 2016 election. By all accounts, including
Stein's , Flynn and Putin didn't engage in any real conversation. At the time, Flynn's trip didn't garner significant attention.
But it would later be used by the media and the Clinton campaign to push the Russia-collusion narrative.
Notably, as stated
by lawyer Robert Kelner, Flynn disclosed his Moscow trip to the Defense Intelligence Agency before he traveled there and provided
a full briefing upon his return:
"As has previously been reported, General Flynn briefed the Defense Intelligence Agency, a component agency of the DoD, extensively
regarding the RT speaking event trip both before and after the trip, and he answered any questions that were posed by the DIA concerning
the trip during those briefings."
Flynn's trip to Russia was first brought to broader attention on July 18, 2016, during a
live interview at
the Republican National Convention with Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff.
The Isikoff interview took place on July 18, 2016. Unknown at the time, the matter had also captured the attention of Christopher
Steele, who had begun publishing his dossier memos on June 20, 2016.
Contained within an Aug. 10, 2016,
memo was this initial
reference to Flynn:
"Kremlin engaging with several high profile US players, including STEIN, PAGE and (former DIA Director Michael Flynn) and funding
their recent visits to Moscow."
In addition to the obvious questions raised by the timing of Flynn's name appearing in Steele's Aug. 10 memo, is the manner in
which Flynn is denoted. All other names are capitalized, in the manner of intelligence briefings. Flynn's name isn't capitalized
and, in one case, appears within parentheses.
Steele met with Yahoo News' Isikoff in September 2016 and gave him information from the dossier. The resulting Sept. 23, 2016,
article from Isikoff was then cited by the FBI as validating Steele's claims and was featured in the original
FISA application , and its three subsequent
renewals , for a warrant to spy on Trump campaign
foreign policy adviser Carter Page.
Steele wasn't the only person Isikoff was working with. On April 26, 2016, Isikoff
published a story
on Yahoo News about Paul Manafort's business dealings with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. It was later learned from a Democratic
National Committee (DNC) email leaked by Wikileaks that
Isikoff had been working with Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American operative who was doing consulting work for the DNC. Chalupa
met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose alleged ties between Trump, Manafort, and
Russia.
The obvious question remains: How did the information on Flynn make its way into the dossier at the time it did, and who provided
the information to Steele?
Flynn's 2015 dinner in Moscow was initially used to implicate the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. It was then
used as a means to cast doubts on Flynn's ability as Trump's national security adviser. Following Flynn's resignation, it was
then used as a means to pursue the ongoing collusion narrative that gained full strength in the early days of the Trump administration.
"In an extraordinary report released last week, the agencies
bluntly accused
the Russian government of having worked to undermine American democracy and promote the candidacy of Mr. Trump.
The report is likely to renew questions about Mr. Flynn's avowed eagerness to work with Russia, and his dismissal of concerns about
President Vladimir V. Putin."
Flynn would resign from his position as national security adviser in February 2017. The sequence of events leading to his resignation
were both coordinated and orchestrated, with acting Attorney General Sally Yates playing a leading role.
On Jan. 12, 2017, Flynn's Dec. 29, 2016, call with Kislyak was
leaked to The Washington Post. The article portrayed Flynn as undermining Obama's Russia sanctions that had been imposed on the
same day as Flynn's call with the Russian ambassador.
On Jan. 15, five days before Trump's inauguration, Vice President Mike Pence
appeared
on "Face the Nation" to defend Flynn's calls.
A few days later, on Jan. 19, Obama officials -- Yates, Clapper, Brennan and Comey -- met to discuss Flynn's situation. The concern
they
reportedly discussed was that Flynn might have misled Trump administration officials regarding the nature of his call with Kislyak.
Yates, Clapper, and Brennan supported informing the Trump administration of their concerns. Comey took a dissenting view. On Jan
23, Yates again pressured Comey, telling the FBI director that she believed Flynn could be vulnerable to blackmail. At this point,
according to media reports, Comey relented, despite the FBI finding nothing unlawful in the content of Flynn's calls.
Strzok and Pientka, at the instruction of McCabe, interviewed Flynn the following day. According to court documents, McCabe and
other FBI officials "decided the agents would not warn Flynn that it was a crime to lie during an FBI interview because they wanted
Flynn to be relaxed." It was during this interview that Flynn reportedly lied to the FBI.
The DOJ was provided with a detailed briefing of the Flynn interview on the following day. On Jan. 26, Yates contacted White House
counsel Don McGahn, who agreed to meet to discuss the matter. Yates arrived at McGahn's office, bringing Mary McCord, John Carlin's
acting replacement as head of the DOJ's National Security Division.
Yates later testified before Congress that the meeting
surrounded Flynn's phone calls and his FBI interview. She also testified that Flynn's call and subsequent interview "was a topic
of a whole lot of discussion in DOJ and with other members of the intel community." McGahn reportedly asked Yates, "Why does it matter
to the DOJ if one White House official lies to another official?"
McGahn called Yates the following day and asked her to return for a second meeting. Yates returned to the White House without
McCord. McGahn asked to examine the FBI's evidence on Flynn. Yates said she would respond by the following Monday.
Yates failed to provide McGahn with the FBI's evidence on Flynn. From that point, the pressure on Flynn and the Trump administration
escalated -- with help from media reporting.
Flynn resigned on Feb. 13, after it was reported that he had misled Pence about phone conversations he'd had with Kislyak.
The following day, The
New York
Times reported that "phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and
other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according
to four current and former American officials."
With Flynn gone and the Russian narrative firmly established, the conspirators then turned their attention to Trump's newly confirmed
attorney general, Jeff Sessions . On March 1, 2017, The
Washington Post
reported that Sessions had twice had contact with the Russian ambassador, Kislyak. The following day, March 2, Sessions recused
himself from the Russia investigation.
On the same day that Sessions recused himself, Evelyn Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense, detailed efforts
at hampering the newly installed Trump administration, during a March 2, 2017,
interview with MSNBC , in which she described how the Obama
administration gathered and disseminated intelligence on the Trump team:
"I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill 'Get as much information as you can. Get as much
intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration.'
"The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff's dealing with Russians, [they] would try to
compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. That's why you have the leaking."
Note that Farkas said "how we knew," not just "what we knew."
Obama Officials Used Unmasking to Target the Trump Campaign
On Tuesday, March 21, 2017, the chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), met
a classified source who showed him "dozens" of intelligence reports. Contained within these reports was evidence of surveillance
on the Trump campaign. Nunes held a
press conference on March 22 highlighting what he had found:
"I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions, the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens
involved in the Trump transition. Details about persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little apparent
foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting."
In a series of rapid-fire questions and answers, Nunes attempted to elaborate on what he had been shown:
"From what I know right now, it looks like incidental collection. We don't know exactly how that was picked up but we're trying
to get to the bottom of it I think the NSA's going to comply. I am concerned – we don't know whether or not the FBI is going to comply.
I have placed a call, I'm waiting to talk to Director Comey, hopefully later today.
"I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show the President-elect and his team were at least monitored and disseminated
out in intelligence, in what appears to be raw -- well I shouldn't say raw -- but intelligence reporting channels.
"It looks to me like it was all legally collected, but it was essentially a lot of information on the President-elect and his
transition team and what they were doing."
The documents Nunes had been shown highlighted the unmasking activities of the FBI, the Obama administration, and CIA Director
Brennan in relation to the Trump campaign. Although March 2017 would prove chaotic, the Trump administration had survived the first
crucial months, and would now begin to slowly assert its administrative authority.
Comey Testifies No Obstruction by Trump Administration
On May 3, 2017, James Comey
testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Under oath, Comey stated that his agency -- and the FBI's investigation -- had
not been pressured by the Trump administration:
Sen. Hirono: " So if the attorney general or senior officials at the Department of Justice opposes a specific investigation,
can they halt that FBI investigation?"
Mr. Comey: " In theory, yes."
Sen. Hirono: " Has it happened?"
Mr. Comey: " Not in my experience. Because it would be a big deal to tell the FBI to stop doing something that – without an
appropriate purpose. I mean where oftentimes they give us opinions that we don't see a case there and so you ought to stop investing
resources in it. But I'm talking about a situation where we were told to stop something for a political reason. That would be a very
big deal. It's not happened in my experience."
Less than a week later, on May 9, Trump fired Comey based on a May 8 recommendation by Deputy Attorney General
Rod Rosenstein .
Rosenstein would later
tell members of Congress: "In one of my first meetings with then-Sen. Jeff Sessions last winter, we discussed the need for new
leadership at the FBI. Among the concerns that I recall were to restore the credibility of the FBI, respect the established authority
of the Department of Justice, limit public statements and eliminate leaks."
Regarding the recommendation, Rosenstein said: "I wrote it. I believe it. I stand by it."
McCabe's FBI Reaches Out Again to Steele
Within days of Trump's firing of Comey, the FBI, now under the leadership of acting-FBI Director Andrew McCabe, suddenly decided
to reestablish direct contact with Christopher Steele through DOJ official Bruce Ohr.
The re-engagement attempt came six months after Steele had been formally terminated by the FBI on Nov. 1, 2016.
The FBI's re-engagement of Ohr was highlighted during a congressional review of some text messages between Ohr and Steele:
Mr. Ohr: " The FBI had asked me a few days before, when I reported to them my latest conversation with Chris Steele,
they had had would he -- next time you talk with him, could you ask him if he would be willing to meet again."
Rep. Jordan: " So this is the re-engagement?"
Mr. Ohr: " Yes."
The texts being referenced were sent on May 15, 2017, and refer to a request that Ohr received from the FBI to ask Steele to re-engage
with the FBI in the days after Comey had been fired on May 9.
This was the only time the FBI used Ohr to reach out to Steele.
The Battle Between McCabe and Rosenstein
Two days after Comey was fired, on May 11, 2017, McCabe
testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. While the hearing's original intent had been to focus on national security
threats, Trump's firing of Comey completely altered the topic of the hearing.
McCabe, who
agreed that he would notify the committee "of any effort to interfere with the FBI's ongoing investigation into links between
Russia and the Trump campaign," told members of Congress that there had been "no effort to impede our investigation to date." In
other words, McCabe testified that he was unaware of any evidence of obstruction from Trump or his administration. Notably, Comey's
May 3 testimony may have left McCabe with little choice other than to confirm there had been no obstruction.
McCabe, however, failed to inform the committee that he was actively considering opening an obstruction-of-justice probe of Trump
-- a path he would initiate in a meeting with Rosenstein just five days later.
On the morning of May 16, 2017, Rosenstein allegedly
suggested
to McCabe that he could secretly record Trump. It was at this
meeting that McCabe was "pushing for the Justice Department to open an investigation into the president," according to witness
accounts reported by The Washington Post.
In addition to McCabe, Rosenstein, and McCabe's special counsel, Lisa Page, there were one or two others present, including Rosenstein's
chief of staff , James Crowley, and possibly Scott Schools, the senior-most career attorney at the DOJ and a top aide to Rosenstein.
An unnamed participant at the meeting, in comments to The Washington Post,
framed the conversation between McCabe and Rosenstein in an entirely different light, noting that Rosenstein had responded with
angry sarcasm to McCabe, saying, "What do you want to do, Andy, wire the president?"
This was just five days after McCabe had publicly testified that there was no obstruction on the part of the Trump administration.
Sometime later that same day, both Rosenstein and Trump met with former FBI Director Robert Mueller in the Oval Office. The meeting
was reported as being for the FBI director position, but the idea that Mueller would be considered for the FBI director role seems
highly unlikely.
Mueller had previously served as the FBI director from 2001 to 2013 -- two years beyond the normal 10-year tenure for an FBI director.
In 2011, Obama requested that Mueller stay on as FBI director for an additional two years, which required
special congressional approval .
Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel the following day, on May 17, 2017, and in doing so, Rosenstein removed control
of the Trump–Russia investigation from McCabe and put it in the hands of Mueller.
This was confirmed in a recent statement by a DOJ spokesperson, who said, "The deputy attorney general in fact appointed special
counsel Robert Mueller, and directed that Mr. McCabe be removed from any participation in that investigation."
Following the appointment of Mueller as special counsel, it also appears the FBI's efforts to re-engage with Steele abruptly ended.
'There's No Big There There'
We know the FBI hadn't found any evidence of collusion in the May 2017 timeframe. While McCabe was attempting to open an obstruction
investigation, Peter Strzok -- who played a key role in the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign -- texted Lisa
Page about lacking evidence of collusion:
"You and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely, I'd be there, no question. I hesitate, in part, because
of my gut sense and concern there's no big there there."
Page, who was asked about this text during her July 2018 testimony, said, "So I think this represents that even as far as May
of 2017, we still couldn't answer the question."
James Baker, who was questioned about the Strzok text, was then asked if he'd seen any evidence to the contrary. He stumbled a
bit in his reply:
Rep. Meadows: " Do you have any evidence to the contrary that you observed personally in your official capacity?"
Mr. Baker: " So the difficulty I'm having with your question is, what does 'collusion' mean, and what does 'prove' mean? And
so I don't know how to respond to that."
FBI Leadership Speculates on New Trump–Russia Collusion Narrative
In his testimony, Baker disclosed the actual substance of discussions taking place at the upper echelons of the FBI immediately
following Comey's firing -- that Vladimir Putin had ordered Trump to fire Comey:
Mr. Baker: " We discussed, so to the best of my recollection, with the same people I described earlier: Mr. McCabe, possibly
Mr. Gattis [Carl Ghattas, executive assistant director of the National Security Branch], Mr. Priestap, possibly Lisa Page, possibly
Pete Strzok. I don't remember that specifically."
Rep. Ratcliffe: " So there was -- there was a discussion between those folks, possibly all of the folks that you've identified,
about whether or not President Trump had been ordered to fire Jim Comey by the Russian Government?"
Mr. Baker: " I wouldn't say ordered. I guess I would say the words I sort of used earlier, acting at the behest of and somehow
following directions, somehow executing their will, whether -- and so literally an order or not, I don't know. But -- "
Rep. Ratcliffe: " And so -- "
Mr. Baker: " As a -- it was discussed as a theoretical possibility."
Rep. Ratcliffe: " When was it discussed?"
Mr. Baker: "After the firing, like in the aftermath of the firing."
The FBI, with no actual evidence of collusion after 10 months of investigating, began discussing a complete hypothetical at the
highest levels of leadership as a means to possibly open an obstruction-of-justice investigation of the president of the United States.
During his testimony, Baker told lawmakers: "I had a jaundiced eye about everything, yes. I had skepticism about all this stuff.
I was concerned about all of this. This whole situation was horrible, and it was novel and we were trying to figure out what to do,
and it was highly unusual."
McCabe was later fired for lying to the DOJ inspector general and is currently the subject of a criminal grand jury investigation.
The Fixer
Despite the ongoing assault from the intelligence community and holdovers from the Obama administration, Trump was not entirely
without allies.
Dana Boente, one of the nation's highest-profile federal prosecutors, served in a series of critical shifting roles within the
Trump administration. Boente, who remained the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia until early 2018, concurrently
became the acting attorney general following the firing of Sally Yates. Boente, who was specifically appointed by Trump, was not
directly in the line of succession that had been previously laid out under an unusual executive order from the Obama administration.
Upon the confirmation of Sessions as attorney general, Boente next served as acting deputy attorney general until the confirmation
of Rod Rosenstein as deputy attorney general on April 25, 2017. Boente then
became the acting head of the DOJ's National Security Division on April 28, 2017, following the sudden resignation of Mary McCord.
Boente was appointed as FBI general counsel on Jan. 23, 2018, replacing Baker, who was demoted and reassigned. Baker is currently
the subject of a criminal leak investigation. Boente remains in his position as FBI general counsel.
On March 31, 2017, the Trump administration asked for the resignations all 46 holdover U.S. attorneys from the Obama administration.
Trump refused to accept the resignations of just three of them -- Boente, Rosenstein, and John Huber.
As Sessions noted in a
March 29, 2018, letter
to congressional chairmen Chuck Grassley, Bob Goodlatte, and Trey Gowdy, Huber was assigned by Sessions to lead a prosecution
team and is currently working with DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz:
"I already have directed senior federal prosecutors to evaluate certain issues previously raised by the Committee. Specifically,
I asked United States Attorney John W. Huber to lead this effort."
The Carter Page FISA application has been the subject of significant media attention, but there's another element to the story
that, although largely ignored, is equally important. It involved what amounted to a surreptitious race between then-NSA Director
Adm. Mike Rogers and DOJ National Security Division (NSD) head John Carlin.
Following a March 9, 2016, discovery that outside contractors for the FBI had been accessing raw FISA data since at least 2015,
Rogers directed the NSA's Office of Compliance to conduct a "fundamental baseline review of compliance associated with 702" at some
point in early April 2016 (
Senate testimony &
pages
83–84 of court ruling).
On April 18, 2016, Rogers moved aggressively in response to the disclosures. He abruptly shut down all FBI outside-contractor
access. At this point, both the FBI and the DOJ's NSD became aware of Rogers's compliance review. They may have known earlier, but
they were certainly aware after outside-contractor access was halted.
The DOJ's NSD maintains oversight of the intelligence agencies' use of Section 702 authority. The NSD and the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence (ODNI) jointly conduct reviews of the intelligence agencies' Section 702 activities every 60 days. The NSD
-- with notice to the ODNI -- is required to report any incidents of agency noncompliance or misconduct to the FISA court.
Instead of issuing individual court orders, the attorney general and the director of national intelligence (DNI) are required
by Section
702 to provide the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) with annual certifications that specify categories of foreign
intelligence information the government is authorized to acquire, pursuant to Section 702.
The attorney general and the DNI also must certify that Intelligence Community agencies will follow targeting procedures and
minimization
procedures that are approved by the FISC as part of the certification.
Carlin filed the government's proposed
2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26, 2016. Carlin knew the general status of the compliance review by Rogers. The NSD
was part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7, 2016,
report by the NSA inspector
general and associated FISA abuse to the FISA court in his 2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose Rogers's ongoing
Section 702-compliance review.
On Sept. 27, 2016, the day after he filed the annual certifications, Carlin announced his
resignation , which would become effective on Oct. 15, 2016.
On Oct. 4, 2016, a standard follow-up court hearing was held (
Page 19
), with Carlin present. Again, he made no disclosure of FISA abuse or other related issues. This lack of disclosure would be
noted by the court later in the April 2017 ruling:
"The government's failure to disclose those IG and OCO reviews at the October 4, 2016 hearing [was ascribed] to an institutional
'lack of candor.'"
On Oct. 15, 2016, Carlin formally left the NSD.
On Oct. 20, 2016, Rogers was briefed by the NSA compliance officer on findings from the 702 NSA compliance audit. The audit had
uncovered a large number of issues, including numerous "about query" violations (
Senate testimony ).
Rogers shut down all "about query" activity on Oct. 21, 2016. "About queries" are particularly worrisome, since they occur when
the target is neither the sender nor the recipient of the collected communication; rather, the target's "query," such as an email
address, is being passed between two other communicants.
On the same day, the DOJ and FBI sought and received a Title I FISA warrant on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. At this point,
the FISA court still was unaware of the Section 702 violations.
On Oct. 24, 2016, Rogers verbally informed the FISA court of his findings:
"On October 24, 2016, the government orally apprised the Court of significant non-compliance with the NSA's minimization procedures
involving queries of data acquired under Section 702 using U.S. person identifiers. The full scope of non-compliant querying practices
had not been previously disclosed to the Court."
Rogers appeared formally before the FISA court on Oct. 26, 2016, and presented the written findings of his audit:
"Two days later, on the day the Court otherwise would have had to complete its review of the certifications and procedures, the government
made a written submission regarding those compliance problems and the Court held a hearing to address them.
"The government reported that the NSA IG and OCO were conducting other reviews covering different time periods, with preliminary
results suggesting that the problem was widespread during all periods under review."
The FISA court was unaware of the FISA "query" violations until they were presented to the court by then-NSA Director Rogers.
Carlin didn't disclose his knowledge of FISA abuse in the annual Section 702 certifications, apparently in order to avoid raising
suspicions at the FISA court ahead of receiving the Carter Page FISA warrant.
The FBI and the NSD were literally racing against Rogers's investigation in order to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page. FISA
Abuse & the FISC
Rogers presented his findings directly to the FISA court's presiding judge, Rosemary Collyer. Collyer and Rogers would work together
for the next six months, addressing the issues that Rogers had uncovered.
It was Collyer who wrote the
April 26, 2017,
FISA court ruling on the entire episode. It also was Collyer who signed the original FISA warrant on Carter Page on Oct. 21,
2016, before being apprised of the many issues by Rogers.
The litany of abuses described in the April 26, 2017, ruling was shocking and detailed the use of private contractors by the FBI
in relation to Section 702 data. Collyer referred to it as "a very serious Fourth Amendment issue." The FBI was specifically singled
out by the court numerous times in the ruling:
"The improper access previously afforded the contractors has been discontinued. The Court is nonetheless concerned about the FBI's
apparent disregard of minimization rules and whether the FBI may be engaging in similar disclosures of raw Section 702 information
that have not been reported."
Rogers informed Collyer of the ongoing FISA abuses by the FBI and NSD just three days after she personally signed the Carter Page
FISA warrant.
Virtually every FBI and NSD official with material involvement in the original Carter Page FISA application would later be removed
-- either through firing or resignation.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated the wrong month for Christopher Steele's 2016 meeting with the FBI in
Rome. The meeting took place in September 2016.
They are afraid to admin that a color revolution was launched to depose Trump after the
elections of 2016. Essentially a coup d'état by intelligence agencies and Clinton wing of
Democratic Party.
Notable quotes:
"... The 53 House Intel interviews. House Intelligence interviewed many key players in the Russia probe and asked the DNI to declassify those interviews nearly a year ago, after sending the transcripts for review last November. There are several big reveals, I'm told, including the first evidence that a lawyer tied to the Democratic National Committee had Russia-related contacts at the CIA. ..."
"... The Stefan Halper documents. It has been widely reported that European-based American academic Stefan Halper and a young assistant, Azra Turk, worked as FBI sources . ..."
"... Page/Papadopoulos exculpatory statements. Another of Nunes' five buckets, these documents purport to show what the two Trump aides were recorded telling undercover assets or captured in intercepts insisting on their innocence. Papadopoulos told me he told an FBI undercover source in September 2016 that the Trump campaign was not trying to obtain hacked Clinton documents from Russia and considered doing so to be treason. ..."
"... The 'Gang of Eight' briefing materials. These were a series of classified briefings and briefing books the FBI and DOJ provided key leaders in Congress in the summer of 2018 that identify shortcomings in the Russia collusion narrative. ..."
"... The Steele spreadsheet. I wrote recently that the FBI kept a spreadsheet on the accuracy and reliability of every claim in the Steele dossier. According to my sources, it showed as much as 90 percent of the claims could not be corroborated, were debunked or turned out to be open-source internet rumors. ..."
"... The Steele interview. It has been reported, and confirmed, that the DOJ's inspector general (IG) interviewed the former British intelligence operative for as long as 16 hours about his contacts with the FBI while working with Clinton's opposition research firm, Fusion GPS. It is clear from documents already forced into the public view by lawsuits that Steele admitted in the fall of 2016 that he was desperate to defeat Trump ..."
"... The redacted sections of the third FISA renewal application. This was the last of four FISA warrants targeting the Trump campaign; it was renewed in June 2017 after special counsel Robert Mueller 's probe had started, and signed by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein . It is the one FISA application that House Republicans have repeatedly asked to be released, and I'm told the big reveal in the currently redacted sections of the application is that it contained both misleading information and evidence of intrusive tactics used by the U.S. government to infiltrate Trump's orbit. ..."
"... Records of allies' assistance. Multiple sources have said a handful of U.S. allies overseas – possibly Great Britain, Australia and Italy – were asked to assist FBI efforts to check on Trump connections to Russia. ..."
"... Attorney General Bill Barr's recent comments that "the use of foreign intelligence capabilities and counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign, to me, is unprecedented and it's a serious red line that's been crossed." ..."
As the Russiagate circus attempts to quietly disappear over the horizon, with Democrats
preferring to shift the anti-Trump narrative back to "racist", "white supremacist",
"xenophobe", and the mainstream media ready to squawk "recession"; the Trump administration may
have a few more cards up its sleeve before anyone claims the higher ground in this farce we
call an election campaign.
As
The Hill's John Solomon details, in September 2018 that President Trump told my Hill.TV
colleague Buck Sexton and me that he would order the release of all classified documents
showing what the FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other U.S. intelligence agencies may
have done wrong in the Russia probe.
And while it's been almost a year since then, of feet-dragging and cajoling and
deep-state-fighting, we wonder, given Solomon's revelations below, if the president is getting
ready to play his 'Trump' card.
Here are the documents that
Solomon believes have the greatest chance of rocking Washington, if declassified:
1.) Christopher
Steele 's confidential human source reports at the FBI. These documents, known in bureau
parlance as 1023 reports, show exactly what transpired each time Steele and his FBI handlers
met in the summer and fall of 2016 to discuss his anti-Trump dossier. The big reveal, my
sources say, could be the first evidence that the FBI shared sensitive information with
Steele, such as the existence of the classified
Crossfire Hurricane operation targeting the Trump campaign. It would be a huge discovery
if the FBI fed Trump-Russia intel to Steele in the midst of an election, especially when his
ultimate opposition-research client was Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National
Committee (DNC). The FBI has released only one or two of these reports under FOIA lawsuits
and they were 100 percent redacted. The American public deserves better.
2.) The 53 House Intel interviews. House Intelligence interviewed many key players in
the Russia probe and asked the DNI to declassify those interviews nearly a year ago, after
sending the transcripts for review last November. There are several big reveals, I'm told,
including the first evidence that a lawyer tied to the Democratic National Committee had
Russia-related contacts at the CIA.
3.) The Stefan Halper documents. It has been widely reported that European-based
American academic Stefan Halper and a young assistant, Azra Turk,
worked as FBI sources . We know for sure that one or both had contact with targeted
Trump aides like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos at the end of the
election. My sources tell me there may be other documents showing Halper continued working
his way to the top of Trump's transition and administration, eventually reaching senior
advisers like Peter Navarro inside the White House in summer 2017. These documents would show
what intelligence agencies worked with Halper, who directed his activity, how much he was
paid and how long his contacts with Trump officials were directed by the U.S. government's
Russia probe.
4.) The October 2016 FBI email chain. This is a key document identified by Rep. Nunes and
his investigators. My sources say it will show exactly what concerns the FBI knew about and
discussed with DOJ about using Steele's dossier and other evidence to support a Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant targeting the Trump campaign in October 2016. If
those concerns weren't shared with FISA judges who approved the warrant, there could be major
repercussions.
5.) Page/Papadopoulos exculpatory statements. Another of Nunes' five buckets, these
documents purport to show what the two Trump aides were recorded telling undercover assets or
captured in intercepts insisting on their innocence. Papadopoulos told me he told an FBI
undercover source in September 2016 that the Trump campaign was not trying to obtain hacked
Clinton documents from Russia and considered doing so to be treason. If he made that
statement with the FBI monitoring, and it was not disclosed to the FISA court, it could be
another case of FBI or DOJ misconduct.
6.) The 'Gang of Eight' briefing materials. These were a series of classified
briefings and briefing books the FBI and DOJ provided key leaders in Congress in the summer
of 2018 that identify shortcomings in the Russia collusion narrative. Of all the
documents congressional leaders were shown, this is most frequently cited to me in private as
having changed the minds of lawmakers who weren't initially convinced of FISA abuses or FBI
irregularities.
7.) The Steele spreadsheet. I
wrote recently that the FBI kept a spreadsheet on the accuracy and reliability of every
claim in the Steele dossier. According to my sources, it showed as much as 90 percent of the
claims could not be corroborated, were debunked or turned out to be open-source internet
rumors. Given Steele's own effort to leak intel in his dossier to the media before
Election Day, the public deserves to see the FBI's final analysis of his credibility. A
document
I reviewed recently showed the FBI described Steele's information as only "minimally
corroborated" and the bureau's confidence in him as "medium."
9.) The redacted sections of the third FISA renewal application. This was the last of
four FISA warrants targeting the Trump campaign; it was renewed in June 2017 after special
counsel Robert
Mueller 's probe had started, and signed by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein . It is the one
FISA application that House Republicans have repeatedly asked to be released, and I'm told
the big reveal in the currently redacted sections of the application is that it contained
both misleading information and evidence of intrusive tactics used by the U.S. government to
infiltrate Trump's orbit.
10.) Records of allies' assistance. Multiple sources have said a handful of U.S.
allies overseas – possibly Great Britain, Australia and Italy – were asked to
assist FBI efforts to check on Trump connections to Russia. Members of Congress have
searched recently for some key contact documents with British intelligence . My sources
say these documents might help explain Attorney General Bill Barr's
recent comments that "the use of foreign intelligence capabilities and
counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign, to me, is
unprecedented and it's a serious red line that's been crossed."
These documents, when declassified, would show more completely how a routine
counterintelligence probe was hijacked to turn the most awesome spy powers in America against a
presidential nominee in what was essentially a political dirty trick orchestrated by
Democrats.
I disagree with Solomon. Nothing will "doom" the swamp unless the righteous few are
willing to indict, prosecute and carry out sentencing for the guilty. Exposing the guilty
accomplishes nothing, because anyone paying attention already knows of their crimes. Those
who want to believe lies will still believe them after the truth comes out.
It's ALL A WASTE OF TIME unless we follow through.
Does anyone see a pattern here after the 2009 Tea Party movement began?
2009 - Republicans: "If we win back the House, we can accomplish our agenda."
2011 - Republicans: "If we win back the Senate, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
After winning back the House)
2012 - Republicans: "If we win back the Senate, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE: 2
YEARS After winning back the House)
2013 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
1 YEAR after winning back the House and the Senate)
2014 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
2 YEARS after winning back the House and the Senate)
2015 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
3 YEARS after winning back the House and the Senate)
2016 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
4 YEARS after winning back the House and the Senate)
2017 - Republicans: "Now that we've won back the Presidency, we can accomplish our
agenda." (NOTE: After winning back the House 6 YEARS AGO and the Senate 4 YEARS AGO)
2018 - Republicans: "Now that we've won back the Presidency, we can accomplish our
agenda." (NOTE: After winning back the House 7 YEARS AGO and the Senate 5 YEARS AGO)
2019 - John Solomon - "If Trump Declassifies These 10 Documents, Democrats Are Doomed"
I hate to say it, but I DON'T BELIEVE YOU, JOHN.
ALL WE HAVE HEARD OVER THE COURSE OF THIS DECADE IS "IF THIS HAPPENS...THEN THEY ARE
DOOMED / WE CAN ACCOMPLISH OUR AGENDA / YADDA YADDA YADDA.
WHEN THE FOLLOWING ARE FOUND GUILTY OF TREASON, THEN AND ONLY THEN WILL I BELIEVE YOU:
CLINTONS
OBAMA
BIDEN
KERRY
BRENNAN
CLAPPER
COMEY
MCCABE
MUELLER
WEISSMAN
STRZOK
RICE
POWERS
LYNCH
YATES
ET AL
WHY ARE THESE TREASONOUS, VILE, CORRUPT CRIMINALS NOT INDICTED FOR TREASON?
As if there's any major philosophical difference between the Librtads and Zionist
Cocksuckvatives.
Both sides use the .gov agencies to subvert and ignore the Constitution whenever possible.
Best example is WikiLeaks and how each party wished Assange would just go away when he
revealed damaging information about both sides on multiple occasions.
"... Gabbard calls out the betrayers; Dems try to forget their heroes Mueller and Biden are among them. ..."
"... The gains of war in Iraq remain elusive, especially considering that the justifications for invasion -- weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein's connection to al-Qaeda, the ambition to create a Western-style democracy at gunpoint -- remain "murky at best." That's a quote from the 9/11 Commission's conclusion on the so-called evidence linking Iraq to Osama bin Laden's group, which actually did carry out the worst terrorist attack in American history. ..."
"... As far as stupid and barbarous decisions are concerned, it is difficult to top the war in Iraq. It is also difficult to match its price tag, which, according to a recent Brown University study, amounts to $1.1 trillion. ..."
"... Gore Vidal once christened his country the "United States of Amnesia," explaining that Americans live in a perpetual state of a hangover: "Every morning we wake up having forgotten what happened the night before." ..."
"... The war in Iraq ended only nine years ago, but it might as well have never taken place, given the curious lack of acknowledgement in our press and political debates. As families mourn their children, babies are born with irreversible deformities, and veterans dread trying to sleep through the night, America's political class, many of whom sold the war to the public, have moved on. When they address Iraq at all, they act as though they have committed a minor error, as though large-scale death and destruction are the equivalent of a poor shot in golf when the course rules allow for mulligans. ..."
"... As the Robert Mueller fiasco smolders out, it is damning that the Democratic Party, in its zest and zeal to welcome any critical assessment of Trump's unethical behavior, has barely mentioned that Mueller, in his previous role as director of the FBI, played a small but significant role in convincing the country to go to war in Iraq. ..."
"... Mueller testified to Congress that "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program poses a clear threat to our national security." He also warned that Saddam could "supply terrorists with radiological material" for the purposes of devising a nuclear bomb. Leaving aside any speculation about Mueller's intentions and assuming he had only the best of motives, it is quite bizarre, even dangerous, to treat as oracular someone who was wrong on such a life-or-death question. ..."
"... The former vice president now claims that his "only mistake was trusting the Bush administration," implying he was tricked into supporting the war. This line is not as persuasive as he imagines. First, it raises the question -- can't we nominate someone who wasn't tricked? Second, its logic crumbles in the face of Biden's recent decision to hire Nicholas Burns, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, as his campaign's foreign policy advisor. Burns was also a vociferous supporter of the war. An enterprising reporter should ask Biden whether Burns was also tricked. Is the Biden campaign an assembly of rubes? ..."
"... Instead, the press is likelier to interrogate Biden over his holding hands and giving hugs to women at public events. Criticism of Biden's "inappropriate touching" has become so strident that the candidate had to record a video to explain his behavior. The moral standards of America's political culture seem to rate kissing a woman on the back of the head as a graver offense than catastrophic war. ..."
Gabbard calls out the betrayers; Dems try to forget their heroes Mueller and Biden are among them.
Estimates of the number of civilians who died during the war in Iraq range from 151,000 to 655,000. An additional 4,491 American
military personnel perished in the war. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, toxicologist at the University of Michigan, has organized several
research expeditions to Iraq to measure the contamination and pollution still poisoning the air and water supply from the tons of
munitions dropped during the war. It does not require any expertise to assume what the studies confirm: disease is still widespread
and birth defects are gruesomely common. Back home, it is difficult to measure just how many struggle with critical injuries and
post-traumatic stress disorder.
The gains of war in Iraq remain elusive, especially considering that the justifications for invasion -- weapons of mass destruction,
Saddam Hussein's connection to al-Qaeda, the ambition to create a Western-style democracy at gunpoint -- remain "murky at best."
That's a quote from the 9/11 Commission's conclusion on the so-called evidence linking Iraq to Osama bin Laden's group, which actually
did carry out the worst terrorist attack in American history.
As far as stupid and barbarous decisions are concerned, it is difficult to top the war in Iraq. It is also difficult to match
its price tag, which, according to a recent Brown University study, amounts to $1.1 trillion.
Gore Vidal once christened his country the "United States of Amnesia," explaining that Americans live in a perpetual state
of a hangover: "Every morning we wake up having forgotten what happened the night before."
The war in Iraq ended only nine years ago, but it might as well have never taken place, given the curious lack of acknowledgement
in our press and political debates. As families mourn their children, babies are born with irreversible deformities, and veterans
dread trying to sleep through the night, America's political class, many of whom sold the war to the public, have moved on. When
they address Iraq at all, they act as though they have committed a minor error, as though large-scale death and destruction are the
equivalent of a poor shot in golf when the course rules allow for mulligans.
As the Robert Mueller fiasco smolders out, it is damning that the Democratic Party, in its zest and zeal to welcome any critical
assessment of Trump's unethical behavior, has barely mentioned that Mueller, in his previous role as director of the FBI, played
a small but significant role in convincing the country to go to war in Iraq.
Mueller testified to Congress that "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program poses a clear threat to our national security."
He also warned that Saddam could "supply terrorists with radiological material" for the purposes of devising a nuclear bomb. Leaving
aside any speculation about Mueller's intentions and assuming he had only the best of motives, it is quite bizarre, even dangerous,
to treat as oracular someone who was wrong on such a life-or-death question.
Far worse than the worship of Mueller is the refusal to scrutinize the abysmal foreign policy record of Joe Biden, currently the
frontrunner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Of the Democrats in the Senate at that time, Biden was the most
enthusiastic of the cheerleaders for war, waving his pompoms and cartwheeling in rhythm to Dick Cheney's music. Biden said repeatedly
that America had "no choice but to eliminate the threat" posed by Saddam Hussein. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
his blustering was uniquely influential.
The former vice president now claims that his "only mistake was trusting the Bush administration," implying he was tricked
into supporting the war. This line is not as persuasive as he imagines. First, it raises the question -- can't we nominate someone
who wasn't tricked? Second, its logic crumbles in the face of Biden's recent decision to hire Nicholas Burns, former U.S. ambassador
to NATO, as his campaign's foreign policy advisor. Burns was also a vociferous supporter of the war. An enterprising reporter should
ask Biden whether Burns was also tricked. Is the Biden campaign an assembly of rubes?
Instead, the press is likelier to interrogate Biden over his holding hands and giving hugs to women at public events. Criticism
of Biden's "inappropriate touching" has become so strident that the candidate had to record a video to explain his behavior. The
moral standards of America's political culture seem to rate kissing a woman on the back of the head as a graver offense than catastrophic
war.
Polling well below Biden in the race is the congresswoman from Hawaii, Tulsi Gabbard. She alone on the Democratic stage has made
criticism of American militarism central to her candidacy. A veteran of the Iraq war and a highly decorated major in the Hawaii Army
National Guard, Gabbard offers an intelligent and humane perspective on foreign affairs. She's called the regime change philosophy
"disastrous," advocated for negotiation with hostile foreign powers, and backed a reduction in drone strikes. She pledges if she
becomes president to end American involvement in Afghanistan.
When Chris Matthews asked Gabbard about Biden's support for the Iraq war, she said, "It was the wrong vote. People like myself,
who enlisted after 9/11 because of the terrorist attacks, were lied to. We were betrayed."
Her moral clarity is rare in the political fog of the presidential circus. She cautions against accepting the "guise of humanitarian
justification for war," and notes that rarely does the American government bomb and invade a country to actually advance freedom
or protect human rights.
Gabbard's positions are vastly superior to that of the other young veteran in the race, Pete Buttigieg. The mayor of South Bend
recently told New York that one of his favorite novels is The Quiet American , saying that its author, Graham Greene,
"points out the dangers of well-intentioned interventions."
Buttigieg's chances of winning the nomination seem low, and his prospects of becoming a literary critic appear even lower.
The Quiet American does much more than raise questions about interventions: it is a merciless condemnation of American exceptionalism
and its attendant indifference to Vietnamese suffering.
Americans hoping for peace won't find much comfort in the current White House either. President Trump has made the world more
dangerous by trashing the Iran nuclear deal, and his appointment of John Bolton, a man who makes Donald Rumsfeld look like Mahatma
Gandhi, as national security advisor is certainly alarming.
America's willful ignorance when it comes to the use of its own military exposes the moral bankruptcy at the heart of its political
culture. Even worse, it makes future wars all but inevitable.
If no one can remember a war that ended merely nine years ago, and there's little room for Tulsi Gabbard in the Democratic primary,
how will the country react the next time a president, and the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declare that they
have no choice but to remove a threat?
Norman Solomon, journalist and founder of the Institute for Public Accuracy, knows the answer to that question. He provides it
in the title of his book on how the media treats American foreign policy decisions: War Made Easy .
Where ae the people who told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? Should they be tried for lying to the American public?
4500 troops killed and over $1.1 TRILLION wasted with no good results .With hundreds of thousands of Iraq's killed. .
Where are they, indeed? They are still running US foreign policy; that's where they are. They are pundits in all the major media;
that's where they are.
I cannot even imagine what historians will say about the uncanny persistence of these charlatans' influence in this era after
a consistent record of disastrous, abysmal misadventures.
You don't have to look too hard to find them. Bolton, Pompeo, and other neocons are hiding in plain sight. The Military Industrial
Complex is embedded in our foreign policy like a tick on a dog.
Because you'd be knocking out a storm trooper instead of the emperor, at least as far as Bush goes. Same for why the focus is
on Bolton rather than simply Trump.
I CAN see an argument that Trump/Bush knew what they were doing when they brought those people in though. f you feel that way
and see it more of an owner of a hostile attack dog then yeah, you'd want to include those two too.
Here stands Tulsi. A woman, who, unlike their conventional troupe, can win this election. They reject her because... what? Moar
war? She's not the member of the Cult? Or it's simply some sort of collective political death wish?
They reject her because she had the temerity to speak truth to power and supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 race. She stepped
down from her position as Vice Chair of the DNC to endorse Sanders. She has real courage, and earned their wrath. She's not perfect
but she's braver and stronger than almost the entire field. Only Bernie is on par.
And Bernie is the one they also hate, maybe a little bit less openly. Thus they reject those who can win the election. It's either
a self-destructiveness or they think that it's better to keep on losing than to rebuild the party into what it needs to be.
Democrats and the Republican establishment, both, love war. It wasn't a coincidence that Hillary Clinton chose Madeleine Albright
to be a keynote speaker at "her" party convention ("we think the deaths of a half million children are worth it"). Liberals know
that there isn't really any "free" free, and that taxing the rich won't match their dreams -- it is the blood and bones of innocent
foreigners that must pay for their lust. Establishment Republicans are more straightforward: they simply profit off the death
and destruction.
This is why Trump is being destroyed, and why Tulsi is attacked. If only "she" (the one who gloated over Khameni's murder)
had been elected, we'd be in a proxy war with Russia now! A real war with Iran! This is what the American people want, and what
they'll likely get when they vote another chicken-hawk in come 2020.
Tulsi, like Sanders is a 'danger' to everything Israel wants.
So, all...all the main 'news' networks and online sites don't like them and give more coverage to the same old Dem bull peddlers
like ignorant Booker and the lousy opportunist low IQ Kamala Harris and Gillibrand.
Manafort and his ilk can be tried and convicted for their lies. I guess if the lie is big enough we grant a pass on any need for
prosecution. Justice for all? I don't think so.
Max Blumenthal posted a powerful piece at Consortium News (7/31/2019) about Biden's central and south American mis-adventures.
Biden still extols his own policies however disastrous. The hubris of the man is worse than nauseating.
Whether one thinks Gabbard has a shot at the nomination or not, it's important to keep her on the stage in the next round of debates.
Go to Tulsi2020.com
and give her just one dollar (or more if you can)
so she has enough unique contributors to make the next round. And if you get polled,early on give her your vote.
The total US costs related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are expected to be considerably larger than $1.1 trillion, according
to this study:
https://www.hks.harvard.edu...
Try $4-$6 trillion, according to the author of the study.
Long after I, Andrew Bacevitch and Hillary Clinton have gone to our reward, there will still be thousands of wounded warriors
from these US Middle East adventures dependent on VA benefits for their survival and competing with civilian seniors for government
handouts. A war with Iran would make the US fiscal situation that much worse.
The religious folks who were so anxious to protect family values only a few years ago seem to have their heads in the sand
when it comes to the financial future of today's young Americans.
A few weeks ago, I made a token contribution to Tulsi Gabbard's campaign to help her qualify for the July Democratic debates.
She will need more new contributors to qualify for the next round of debates.
Tulsi hasn't a chance of the nomination, but she's exposing things and maybe more people will get a clue about what's really going
on with American lives and taxes being squandered for the profit of the few who benefit from these atrocities and wars abroad,
done in the name of all Americans.
Being a supporter of Tulsi Gabbard for the very reasons that the author writes, has me agreeing with everything he has promoted
in his piece.
However, to answer his own question as to why Americans are lured into commenting on such innocuous and foolish things in such
an important election such as Biden's touching of women, is answered by the author's own prose.
He states that Americans are only provided such nonsense from the press that is monitoring the election process. What else
can people talk about? And even if many Americans are clearheaded enough to understand the charade of the current Democratic debates,
what or who will actually provide legitimate coverage with the exception of online sites as the American Conservative, among others?
If most Americans were actually thinking individuals, Tulsi Gabbard would be a shoo-in for the presidency in 2020. However,
given the two factors of a highly corrupted mainstream press and too many Americans not studying enough civics to understand what
is going on around them, it is highly unlikely that Tulsi Gabbard will even get close to the possibility of being nominated...
Cheney, mentioned in the article, was pure evil. I voted for GB2 for two reasons. 1) He was a very good Texas governor. He actually
got anti-tax Texas to raise taxes dedicated to support education, in return for stricter standards for teachers. A good trade
since Texas public schools were awful. 2) Dick Cheney. I thought he was the adult in the room that would provide steady and reliable
guidance for Bush.
Boy was I wrong about Cheney. "Deficits don't matter". Just watch the movie Vice. Christian Bale does an incredible job portraying
the pure evil of Cheney and the Military Industrial Complex. The movie is chilling to watch. And it is basically true. Politifact
does a good job of scoring the accuracy of Cheney's role in the Bush administration as portrayed in the movie.
I believe that the full and proper name of the psychiatric disorder in question is
Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome [PTDS].
Symptoms include:
Eager and uncritical ingestion and social-media regurgitation of even the most patently
absurd MSM propaganda. For example, the meme that releasing factual information about actual
election-meddling (as Wikileaks did about the Dem-establishment's rigging of its own
nomination process in 2016) is a grave threat to American Democracy™;
Recent-onset veneration of the intelligence agencies, whose stock in trade is spying on
and lying to the American people, spreading disinformation, election rigging, torture and
assassination and its agents, such as liar and perjurer Clapper and torturer Brennan;
Rehabilitation of horrid unindicted GOP war criminals like G.W. Bush as alleged examples
of "norms-respecting Republican patriots";
Smearing of anyone who dares question the MSM-stoked hysteria as an America-hating
Russian stooge.
Former Ukrainian presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko trace to Steele dossier is a real shocker.
Notable quotes:
"... On December 5, 2016, Bruce Ohr emailed himself an Excel spreadsheet, seemingly from his wife Nellie Ohr, titled " WhosWho19Sept2016 ." The spreadsheet purports to show relationship descriptions and "linkages" between Donald Trump, his family and criminal figures, many of whom were Russians. ..."
"... If you want to have more fun, search the pdf using the term "BAYROCK." You will discover that Nellie Ohr, like a female Don Quixote, is searching desperately to link Trump and Sater to dirty Russian money. What she does not suspect is that Sater was being used, via his company Bayrock, to try to gain access to Russians who were potential targets of the FBI. ..."
"... What is not emphasized in the piece, and it is something I want to direct you to, is that the idea or impetus to launch the investigation of Butina came courtesy of Christopher Steele, who was relaying rumor and conjecture to Bruce Ohr. ..."
"... FBI Director Christopher Wray reminds me of one of the workers in the bowels of the Titanic who was furiously shoveling coal into the doomed boilers of the sinking ship. The FBI, like the Titanic, is in trouble. ..."
"... It also gave immunity to all of the people on Hillary's team that participated in obstruction of justice. On that same day, Jim Comey signed off on a separate memo that decided not to prosecute Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... Larry..Fusion GPS has always refused to Reveal who where its Financial support came from... ..."
"... So..the Timeline Indicates Fusion GPS was hired by The "Washington Free Beacon" around October 2015 to background checks and Profiles of The Republican Candidates for President.and that Fusion GPS continued to do so until May 2016..when it became clear that Donald Trump clinched the Nomination.. ..."
"... I wonder why AG Barr isn't forcing the FBI to comply sooner with Judge Boasberg's ruling to hand over unredacted Comey Memos and Archey Declarations? ..."
"... So what did Barack Obama know, and when did he know it? ..."
"... Nellie Ohr was working for a privately-owned firm that had employed her to make false accusations about Trump's alleged connections to Russians in order to sabotage his presidency and lay the groundwork for his impeachment. ..."
"... They also hired foreign agent, Chris Steele to concoct a thoroughly-debunked dossier for the same purpose. ..."
"... Can these people be charged with a crime or have we entered a new world of 'dirty tricks'??? ..."
"... Examination of the Nellie Ohr documents given to the FBI shows some of her source material also came from former Ukrainian presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko and a lawsuit she filed against Manafort. ..."
"... So, Bruce Ohr became a conduit of information not only for intelligence from Clinton's British opposition-researcher but also from his wife's curation of evidence from a Clinton foreign ally and Manafort enemy inside Ukraine. Talk about foreign influence in a U.S. election! ..."
"... The lines between government officials and informants, unverified political dirt and real intelligence, personal interest and law enforcement, became too blurred for the Justice Department's own good. ..."
There are many moving pieces in the drama surrounding the Deep State attempt to kill the Trump Presidency. God Bless Judicial
Watch. I think most of the key evidence that has surfaced came courtesy of Tom Fitton, Chris Farrell and their team of tireless workers.
I want to bring you back to
Mr. Felix Sater . He was part of Bayrock, which worked closely with Donald Trump's organization and, most importantly of all,
was an FBI Confidential Human Source since December of 1998.
Thanks to Judicial Watch we have a new dump of Bruce Ohr emails, which include several from his wife, Nellie. There are 330 pages
to wade thru (you can
see
them here ). There
is one item in particular I encourage you to look at:
On December 5, 2016, Bruce Ohr emailed himself an Excel spreadsheet, seemingly from his wife Nellie Ohr, titled "
WhosWho19Sept2016
." The spreadsheet purports to show relationship descriptions and "linkages" between Donald Trump, his family and criminal figures,
many of whom were Russians. This list of individuals allegedly "linked to Trump" include: a Russian involved in a "gangland
killing;" an Uzbek mafia don; a former KGB officer suspected in the murder of Paul Tatum; a Russian who reportedly "buys up banks
and pumps them dry"; a Russian money launderer for Sergei Magnitsky; a Turk accused of shipping oil for ISIS; a couple who lent their
name to the Trump Institute, promoting its "get-rich-quick schemes"; a man who poured him a drink; and others.
The spreadsheet starts on page 301. If you search the document for the name Felix Sater, he will pop up. Now here is the curious
and, I suppose, reassuring thing about this document--Nellie Ohr did not have a clue that Felix Sater was an active FBI informant.
We can at least give the FBI credit for protecting Sater's identity from Nellie Ohr and, more importantly, her husband, DOJ official
Bruce Ohr.
If you want to have more fun, search the pdf using the term "BAYROCK." You will discover that Nellie Ohr, like a female Don
Quixote, is searching desperately to link Trump and Sater to dirty Russian money. What she does not suspect is that Sater was being
used, via his company Bayrock, to try to gain access to Russians who were potential targets of the FBI.
One point is clear--she uncovered no evidence implicating Trump working with the Russians, either thru Felix Sater or one of the
other "suspects" she exhaustively listed.
Shifting gears, there are two very important pieces recently posted at The Conservative Tree House that I encourage you to read:
What is not emphasized in the piece, and it is something I want to direct you to, is that the idea or impetus to launch the
investigation of Butina came courtesy of Christopher Steele, who was relaying rumor and conjecture to Bruce Ohr.
You can find this information in the
Bruce
Ohr 302s that Judicial Watch also secured. Marina Butina was unfairly and unjustly portrayed and prosecuted as a Russian intelligence
agent. It was a damn lie.
I do not ever want to hear another American complaining about an American State Department or CIA employee who is entrapped and
unfairly prosecuted in Russia.
We have done the same damn thing that we have accused the Soviets of doing. The same thing. It is shameful.
The
second piece is the ultimate feel good piece. Kudos to its author, Sundance.
He details how a Federal Judge, infuriated by the FBIs stupidity and mendacity, tells the Bureau to go pound sand. The FBI is
frantically trying to prevent the Archey Declarations from being revealed thanks to a lawsuit brought by CNN (finally, CNN did something
right).
The Archey Declarations provide a detailed description of the memos written and illegally removed from FBI Headquarters by that
sanctimonious twit, Jim Comey. More shoes will be dropping in the coming days.
It appears that Inspector General Horowitz is going to present at least one report on Jim Comey and one report on the FISA abuse
by the FBI.
FBI Director Christopher Wray reminds me of one of the workers in the bowels of the Titanic who was furiously shoveling coal
into the doomed boilers of the sinking ship. The FBI, like the Titanic, is in trouble.
Finally, Gateway Pundit's Joe Hoft put up an important piece today (
see here ). Here is the bottomline, and keep this in mind as you read the piece, on June 20, 2016 the FBI signed off on a deal
with Hillary Clinton's attorney's that gave Hillary's team the right to destroy computers and emails.
It also gave immunity to all of the people on Hillary's team that participated in obstruction of justice. On that same day,
Jim Comey signed off on a separate memo that decided not to prosecute Hillary Clinton.
The fix was in more than a month before Jim Comey appeared on camera to try to explain why he was not recommending prosecution
of Hillary for putting Top Secret information on her unclassified server.
Jim Comey lied when he declared that could not prove "intent."
I am sure that those of you who have never held a clearance and handled Top Secret material probably believed that lie.
But anyone who knows how the TS system is set up knows that the ONLY WAY, I repeat, the ONLY WAY to put TS material on an unclassified
server is to do so intentionally. There is no way to do this mistakenly.
Jim Ticehurst said in reply to Jim Ticehurst... ,
Larry..Fusion GPS has always refused to Reveal who where its Financial support came from...
So..the Timeline Indicates
Fusion GPS was hired by The "Washington Free Beacon" around October 2015 to background checks and Profiles of The Republican Candidates
for President.and that Fusion GPS continued to do so until May 2016..when it became clear that Donald Trump clinched the Nomination..
creating Phase 2..Operations..
"The Washington Free Beacon ".Has an Editor in Chief ..who is William Kristols Son In Law..And William Kristols ..Father....Irving
Kristol..is Called..."the God Father of Neo Conservatism". William Kristol..was a John McCain supporter..
Thus Fusion GPS..retained Nellie Ohr..(strangly..NO Wiki Profile) who apparently had to Use her husbnd Bruce Ohrs Clearances,,to
continue Her Collaberation with Fusion GPS..
By June 2016 the Strategy was to bring in Christopher Steele..who was know to Bruce Ohr back to 2006.. Strange.. NO early life
BIOS for Bruce or Nellie Ohr..
I wonder why AG Barr isn't forcing the FBI to comply sooner with Judge Boasberg's ruling to hand over unredacted Comey Memos
and Archey Declarations?
The Gateway Pundit item about the ridiculously unfair and unethical deals made in Hillary Clinton's email scandal investigation
is just further proof of how the Clinton taint infected the FBI. "Crooked" is a very apt epithet, that's for sure. I'd love to
know how much Bill and Hill raked in during her Sec'y. of State racketeering.
You say: "One point is clear--she uncovered no evidence implicating Trump working with the Russians, either thru Felix Sater or
one of the other "suspects" she exhaustively listed."
This is true, but it is also true that Nellie Ohr was working for a privately-owned firm that had employed her to make
false accusations about Trump's alleged connections to Russians in order to sabotage his presidency and lay the groundwork for
his impeachment.
They also hired foreign agent, Chris Steele to concoct a thoroughly-debunked dossier for the same purpose.
Can these people be charged with a crime or have we entered a new world of 'dirty tricks'???
... Examination of the Nellie Ohr documents given to the FBI shows some of her source material also came from former Ukrainian
presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko and a lawsuit she filed against Manafort.
Why is that significant? Tymoshenko and Hillary Clinton had a simpatico relationship after the former secretary of State
went out of her way in January 2013 to advocate for Tymoshenko's release from prison on corruption charges.
So, Bruce Ohr became a conduit of information not only for intelligence from Clinton's British opposition-researcher
but also from his wife's curation of evidence from a Clinton foreign ally and Manafort enemy inside Ukraine. Talk about foreign
influence in a U.S. election!
...
The tales of Bruce and Nellie Ohr, Christopher Steele, Yulia Tymoshenko, and those DEA and TSA agents raise a stark warning:
The lines between government officials and informants, unverified political dirt and real intelligence, personal interest
and law enforcement,
became too blurred for the Justice Department's own good.
The person responsible for securing the release of Yulia Tymoshenko was Chancellor Merkel. Further, that USA opposed Tymoshenko.
quote
As for one of the leaders of the war party in Kiev, Merkel has privately and publicly endorsed every claim of Yulia Tymoshenko,
promoting her release from prison and protecting her campaigns for war against Russia, even though – according to the high-level
German source – “they [Chancellery, Foreign Ministry] have known for years that [Tymoshenko] was a crook.”
endquote
There is a lot more detail Tymoshenko's corruption and Merkel's rescue here:
STEPHEN COHEN: I'm not aware that Russia attacked Georgia. The European Commission, if you're talking about the 2008 war,
the European Commission, investigating what happened, found that Georgia, which was backed by the United States, fighting with an
American-built army under the control of the, shall we say, slightly unpredictable Georgian president then, Saakashvili, that he
began the war by firing on Russian enclaves. And the Kremlin, which by the way was not occupied by Putin, but by Michael McFaul and
Obama's best friend and reset partner then-president Dmitry Medvedev, did what any Kremlin leader, what any leader in any country
would have had to do: it reacted. It sent troops across the border through the tunnel, and drove the Georgian forces out of what
essentially were kind of Russian protectorate areas of Georgia.
So that- Russia didn't begin that war. And it didn't begin the one in Ukraine, either. We did that by [continents], the overthrow
of the Ukrainian president in [20]14 after President Obama told Putin that he would not permit that to happen. And I think it happened
within 36 hours. The Russians, like them or not, feel that they have been lied to and betrayed. They use this word, predatl'stvo,
betrayal, about American policy toward Russia ever since 1991, when it wasn't just President George Bush, all the documents have
been published by the National Security Archive in Washington, all the leaders of the main Western powers promised the Soviet Union
that under Gorbachev, if Gorbachev would allow a reunited Germany to be NATO, NATO would not, in the famous expression, move two
inches to the east.
Now NATO is sitting on Russia's borders from the Baltic to Ukraine. So Russians aren't fools, and they're good-hearted, but they
become resentful. They're worried about being attacked by the United States. In fact, you read and hear in the Russian media daily,
we are under attack by the United States. And this is a lot more real and meaningful than this crap that is being put out that Russia
somehow attacked us in 2016. I must have been sleeping. I didn't see Pearl Harbor or 9/11 and 2016. This is reckless, dangerous,
warmongering talk. It needs to stop. Russia has a better case for saying they've been attacked by us since 1991. We put our military
alliance on the front door. Maybe it's not an attack, but it looks like one, feels like one. Could be one.
Real politik. Don't bring a knife to a gun fight. Don't start fights in the first place. The idea that American leadership
is any better than mid-Victorian imperialism, is laughable.
AARON MATE: We hear, often, talk of Putin possibly being the richest person in the world as a result of his entanglement
with the very corruption of Russia you're speaking about
Few appear to be aware that Bill Browder is single-handedly responsible for starting, and spreading, the rumor that Putin's
net worth is $200 billion (for those who are unfamiliar with Browder, I highly recommend watching Andrei Nekrasov's documentary
titled " The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes "). Browder
appears to have first
started this rumor early in 2015 , and has repeated it ad nauseam since then, including in
his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017 . While Browder has always framed the $200 billion figure as his own
estimate, that subtle qualifier has had little effect on the media's willingness to accept it as fact.
Interestingly, during the press conference at the Helsinki Summit, Putin claimed Browder sent $400 million of ill-gotten gains
to the Clinton campaign. Putin
retracted the statement and claimed to have misspoke a week or so later, however by that time the $400 million figure had
been cited by numerous media outlets around the world. I think it is at least possible that Putin purposely exaggerated the amount
of money in question as a kind of tit-for-tat response to Browder having started the rumor about his net worth being $200 billion.
The stories I saw said there was a mistranslation -- but that the figure should have $400 thousand and not $400 million. Maybe
Putin misspoke, but the $400,000 number is still significant, albeit far more reasonable.
Putin never was on the Forbes list of billionaires, btw, and his campaign finance statement comes to far less. It never seems
to occur to rabid capitalists or crooks that not everyone is like them, placing such importance on vast fortunes, or want to be
dishonest, greedy, or power hungry. Putin is only 'well off' and that seems to satisfy him just fine as he gets on with other
interests, values, and goals.
Yes, $400,000 is the revised/correct figure. My having written that "Putin retracted the statement" was not the best choice
of phrase. Also, the figure was corrected the day after it was made, not "a week or so later" as I wrote in my previous comment.
From the Russia Insider link:
Browder's criminal group used many tax evasion methods, including offshore companies. They siphoned shares and funds from
Russia worth over 1.5 billion dollars. By the way, $400,000 was transferred to the US Democratic Party's accounts from these
funds. The Russian president asked us to correct his statement from yesterday. During the briefing, he said it was $400,000,000,
not $400,000. Either way, it's still a significant amount of money.
There's something weird about the anti-Putin hysteria. Somehow, many, many people have come to believe they must demonstrate
their membership in the tribe by accepting completely unsupported assertions that go against common sense.
In a sane world we the people would be furious with the Clinton campaign, especially the D party but the R's as well, our media
(again), and our intel/police State (again). Holding them all accountable while making sure this tsunami of deception and lies
never happens again.
It's amazing even in time of the internetz those of us who really dig can only come up with a few sane voices. It's much worse
now in terms of the numbers of sane voices than it was in the run up to Iraq 2.
Regardless of broad access to far more information in the digital age, never under estimate the self-preservation instinct
of American exceptionalist mythology. There is an inverse relationship between the decline of US global primacy and increasingly
desperate quest for adventurism. Like any case of addiction, looking outward for blame/salvation is imperative in order to prevent
the mirror of self-reflection/realization from turning back onto ourselves.
we're not to believe we're not supposed to believe we're supposed to believe
Believe whatever you want, however your comment gives the impression that you came to this article because you felt the need
to push back against anything that does not conform to the liberal international order's narrative on Putin and Russia, rather
than "with an eagerness to counterbalance the media's portrayal of Putin". WRT to whataboutism, I like
Greenwald's definition of the term :
"Whataboutism": the term used to bar inquiry into whether someone adheres to the moral and behavioral standards they seek
to impose on everyone else. That's its functional definition.
aye. I've never seen it used by anyone aside from the worst Hill Trolls.
Indeed, when it was first thrown at me, I endeavored to look it up, and found that all references to it were from Hillaryites
attempting to diss apostates and heretics.
The degree of consistency and or lack of hypocrisy based on words and actions separates US from Russia to an astonishing level.
That is Russia's largest threat to US, our deceivers. The propaganda tables have turned and we are deceiving ourselves to points
of collective insanity and warmongering with a great nuclear power while we are at it. Warmongering is who we are and what we
do.
Does Russia have a GITMO, torture Chelsea Manning, openly say they want to kill Snowden and Assange? Is Russia building up
arsenals on our borders while maintaining hundreds of foreign bases and conducting several wars at any given moment while constantly
threatening to foment more wars? Is Russia dropping another trillion on nuclear arsenals? Is Russia forcing us to maintain such
an anti democratic system and an even worse, an entirely hackable electronic voting system?
You ready to destroy the world, including your own, rather than look in the mirror?
You're talking about extending Russian military power into Europe when the military spending of NATO Europe alone exceeds Russia's
by almost 5-1 (more like 12-1 when one includes the US and Canada), have about triple the number of soldiers than Russia has,
and when the Russian ground forces are numerically smaller than they have been in at least 200 years?
" to put their self-interests above those of their constituents and employees, why can't we apply this same lens to Putin and
his oligarchs?"
The oligarchs got their start under Yeltsin and his FreeMarketDemocraticReformers, whose policies were so catastrophic that
deaths were exceeding births by almost a million a year by the late '90s, with no end in sight. Central to Yeltsin's governance
was the corrupt privatization, by which means the Seven Bankers came to control the Russian economy and Russian politics.
Central to Putin's popularity are the measures he took to curb oligarchic predation in 2003-2005. Because of this, Russia's
debt:GDP ratio went from 1.0 to about 0.2, and Russia's demographic recovery began while Western analysis were still predicting
the death of Russia.
So Putin is the anti-oligarch in Russian domestic politics.
I know of many people who sacrifice their own interests for those of their children (over whom they have virtually absolute
power), family member and friends. I know of others who dedicate their lives to justice, peace, the well being of their nation,
the world, and other people -- people who find far greater meaning and satisfaction in this than in accumulating power or money.
Other people have their own goals, such as producing art, inventing interesting things, reading and learning, and don't care two
hoots about power or money as long as their immediate needs are met.
I'm cynical enough about humans without thinking the worst of everyone and every group or culture. Not everyone thinks only
of nails and wants to be hammers, or are sociopaths. There are times when people are more or less forced into taking power, or
getting more money, even if they don't want it, because they want to change things for the better or need to defend themselves.
There are people who get guns and learn how to use them only because they feel a need for defending themselves and family but
who don't like guns and don't want to shoot anyone or anything.
There are many people who do not want to be controlled and bossed around, but neither want to boss around anyone else. The
world is full of such people. If they are threatened and attacked, however, expect defensive reactions. Same as for most animals
which are not predators, and even predators will generally not attack other animals if they are not hungry or threatened -- but
that does not mean they are not competent or can be dangerous.
Capitalism is not only inherently predatory, but is inherently expansive without limits, with unlimited ambition for profits
and control. It's intrinsically very competitive and imperialist. Capitalism is also a thing which was exported to Russia, starting
soon after the Russian Revolution, which was immediately attacked and invaded by the West, and especially after the fall of the
Soviet Union. Soviet Russia had it's own problems, which it met with varying degrees of success, but were quite different from
the aggressive capitalism and imperialism of the US and Europe.
The pro-Putin propaganda is pretty interesting to witness, and of course not everything Cohen says is skewed pro-Putin – that's
what provides credibility. But "Putin kills everybody" is something NOBODY says (except Cohen, twice in one interview) – Putin
is actually pretty selective of those he decides to have killed. But of course, he doesn't kill anyone, personally – therefore
he's an innocent lamb, accidentally running Russia as a dictator.
The most recent dictator in Russian history was Boris Yeltsin, who turned tanks on his legislature while it was in the legal
and constitutional process of impeaching him, and whose policies were so catastrophic for Russians (who were dying off at the
rate of 900k/yr) that he had to steal his re-election because he had a 5% approval rating.
But he did as the US gvt told him, so I guess that makes him a Democrat.
Under Putin Russia recovered from being helpless, bankrupt & dying, but Russia has an independent foreign policy, so that makes
Putin a dictator.
"Does any sane person believe that there will ever be a Putin-signed contract provided as evidence? Does any sane person believe
that Putin actually needs to "approve" a contract rather than signaling to his oligarch/mafia hierarchy that he's unhappy about
a newspaper or journalist's reporting?"
Why do you think Putin even needs, or feels a need, to have journalists killed in the first place? I see no evidence to support
this basic assumption.
The idea of Russia poised to attack Europe is interesting, in light of the fact that they've cut their military spending by
20%. And even before that the budgets of France, Germany, and the UK combined well exceeded that of Russia, to say nothing of
the rest of NATO or the US.
Putin's record speaks for itself. This again points to the absurdity of claiming he's had reporters killed: he doesn't need
to. He has a vast amount of genuine public support because he's salvaged the country and pieced it back together after the pillaging
of the Yeltsin years. That he himself is a corrupt oligarch I have no particular doubt of. But if he just wanted to enrich himself,
he's had a very funny way of going about it. Pray tell, what are these 'other interpretations'?
"The US foreign policy has been disastrous for millions of people since world war 2. But Cohen's arguments that Russia isn't
as bad as the US is just a bunch of whattaboutism."
What countries has the Russian Federation destroyed?
Here is a fascinating essay ["Are We Reading Russia Right?"] by Nicolai N. Petro who currently holds the Silvia-Chandley Professorship
of Peace Studies and Nonviolence at the University of Rhode Island. His books include, Ukraine
in Crisis (Routledge, 2017), Crafting Democracy (Cornell, 2004), The Rebirth of Russian Democracy (Harvard, 1995), and Russian
Foreign Policy, co-authored with Alvin Z. Rubinstein (Longman, 1997). A graduate of the University of Virginia, he is the recipient
of Fulbright awards to Russia and to Ukraine, as well as fellowships from the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the National
Council for Eurasian and East European Research, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington,
D.C., and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. As a Council on Foreign Relations Fellow, he served as special assistant
for policy toward the Soviet Union in the U.S. Department of State from 1989 to 1990. In addition to scholarly publications
on Russia and Ukraine, he has written for Asia Times, American Interest, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian
(UK), The Nation, New York Times, and Wilson Quarterly. His writings have appeared frequently on the web sites of the Carnegie
Council for Ethics in International Affairs and The National Interest.
Thanks for so much for this. Great stuff. Cohen says the emperor has no clothes so naturally the empire doesn't want him on
television. I believe he has been on CNN one or two times and I saw him once on the PBS Newshour where the interviewer asked skeptical
questions with a pained and skeptical look. He seems to be the only prominent person willing to stand up and call bs on the Russia
hate. There are plenty of pundits and commentators who do that but not many Princeton professors.
It has been said in recent years that the greatest failure of American foreign policy was the invasion of Iraq. I think that
they are wrong. The greatest failure, in my opinion, is to push both China and Russia together into a semi-official pact against
American ambitions. In the same way that the US was able to split China from the USSR back in the seventies, the best option was
for America to split Russia from China and help incorporate them into the western system. The waters for that idea have been so
fouled by the Russia hysteria, if not dementia, that that is no longer a possibility. I just wish that the US would stop sowing
dragon's teeth – it never ends well.
The best option, but the "American exceptionalists" went nuts. Also, the usual play book of stoking fears of the "yellow menace"
would have been too on the nose. Americans might not buy it, and there was a whole cottage industry of "the rising China threat"
except the potential consumer market place and slave labor factories stopped that from happening.
Bringing Russia into the West effectively means Europe, and I think that creates a similar dynamic to a Russian/Chinese pact.
The basic problem with the EU is its led by a relatively weak but very German power which makes the EU relatively weak or controllable
as long as the German electorate is relatively sedate. I think they still need the international structures run by the U.S. to
maintain their dominance. What Russia and the pre-Erdogan Turkey (which was never going to be admitted to the EU) presented was
significant upsets to the existing EU order with major balances to Germany which I always believed would make the EU potentially
more dynamic. Every decision wouldn't require a pilgrimage to Berlin. The British were always disinterested. The French had made
arrangements with Germany, and Italy is still Italy. Putting Russia or Turkey (pre-Erdogan) would have disrupted this arrangement.
The Crimea voted to be annexed by Russia by a clear majority. The US overran Hawaii with total disregard for the wishes of
the native population. Your comparison is invalid.
"Putin's finger prints are all over the Balkan fiasco".How is that with Putin only becoming president in 2000 and the Nato
bombing started way beforehand. It's ridiculous to think that Putin had any major influence at that time as govenor or director
of the domestic intelligence service on what was going during the bombing of NATO on Belgrad. Even Gerhard Schroeder, then chancellor
of the Federal Republic of Germany, admitted in an interview in 2014 with a major German Newspaper (Die Zeit) that this invasion
of Nato was a fault and against international law!
Can you concrete what you mean by "fingerprints" or is this just another platitudes?
I believe that the full and proper name of the psychiatric disorder in question is Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome [PTDS].
Symptoms include:
o Eager and uncritical ingestion and social-media regurgitation of even the most patently absurd MSM propaganda. For example,
the meme that releasing factual information about actual election-meddling (as Wikileaks did about the Dem-establishment's rigging
of its own nomination process in 2016) is a grave threat to American Democracy™;
o Recent-onset veneration of the intelligence agencies, whose stock in trade is spying on and lying to the American people,
spreading disinformation, election rigging, torture and assassination and its agents, such as liar and perjurer Clapper and torturer
Brennan;
o Rehabilitation of horrid unindicted GOP war criminals like G.W. Bush as alleged examples of "norms-respecting Republican
patriots";
o Smearing of anyone who dares question the MSM-stoked hysteria as an America-hating Russian stooge.
" (the) factional struggle evident in the rise of Trump "
Thank you.
One of the many purposes of Russiagate was to misdirect people away from the fact that
Trump's election represents (among other things) a huge split in the ruling class, which can
roughly be described as one between extractive industries (energy, agriculture, mining, etc.)
and finance, media and tech. A map of the 2016 election results strongly supports this
analysis. Thus, Comcast was more than happy to give free reign to Rachel Maddow's two+ years
of disinfotainment
This split in the ruling class would provide an immense opportunity if the US had a real
functioning Left, rather than lumpen bourgeois and childish virtue signalling about open
borders and reparations.
Douglas Adams
famously suggested that the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42. In the world of
the political elite, the answer is Russiagate. What has caused the electorate to turn on the
political elite, to defeat Hillary
That suggest that FBI actions were influenced by Obama administration and CIA to much greater
expent thatn we assuned.
Notable quotes:
"... It may be that much of the dossier was created out of whole cloth by Nellie Ohr who was tasked to create a narrative that jibed with Simpson's political objectives. ..."
"... The ukraine is probably behind a great deal of the "info" the democrats and fib used.. ..."
In reviewing these 302s there are some salient points I want to bring to your attention.
First, Christopher Steele was terminated as an FBI Confidential Human Source at the end of
September 2016 for leaking to the press. That should have put an end to the relationship.
Instead, the FBI starts using Bruce Ohr, the number four guy at the Department of Justice, as a
cutout. Absolutely no justification for this kind of behavior by the FBI. It is, at a minimum,
unethical and creates a real problem if any of the info collected from Ohr was to be used in a
court proceeding. Something known as the "fruit of the poisonous tree" would kick in and the
so-called evidence proffered by Ohr would be inadmissible or unusable because of Steele's
previous lies to the FBI.
Second, Glenn Simpson played a huge role in helping spread anti-Trump propaganda generated
by Steele. In fact, it was Simpson's insistence on Steele speaking with the press that got
Steele terminated as an FBI source.
Third, the FBI knew by mid-December 2016 that Bruce Ohr's wife, Nellie, was working with
Simpson and Steele. This too should have set off alarm bells about the potential conflicts of
interest and unethical conduct.
Fourth, evidence used ultimately against Paul Manafort came from Nellie Ohr. If this was not
disclosed to Manafort's attorney's there is a likely Brady violation, which bolster's
Manafort's prospects for an appeal.
Fifth, Steele and Simpson made several claims of fact about Russia ties to the Trump
campaign that were later proven to be false. For example, stating that Michael Cohen was in
Prague meeting the Russians. Important to note that Christopher Steele produced the final
report of the so-called dossier bearing his name on 13 December 2016 yet this information was
"passed" to Ohr one day prior to the date on the report.
Sixth, the "debriefing" of Ohr on 12 December 2016 also provided the foundation for going
after Marina Butina. (See Sara Carter's excellent update on this case
here ). The false information from Steele/Simpson via Bruce Ohr became the pretext for
launching an investigation of Butina, who was working for a wealthy Russian banker, Alexander
Torshin. This too turns out to have been a fabrication. I believe this provides Butina's
attorneys more ammunition for arguing prosecutorial misconduct and failure to provide critical
Brady material.
Seventh, Ohr's report that Simpson and Steele were communicating with the State Department,
including Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland and Kathleen Kavalec makes it clear that State
Department was used as a front to pass on info from the questionable Steele Dossier. This
information was used in the FISA warrant and provided a seemingly reliable justification for
spying on Carter Page (see the Page FISA warrant here
.)
And finally, Fusion GPS, which was hired on behalf of the Clinton Campaign, was regularly
communicating and coordinating with Obama's Department of Justice and Department of State. This
was a complete abuse of power.
Now, here is the summary of the 302s:
11/22/2016 (entered on 12/19/2006)
Ohr met with Steele in 2007 (not sure of date) at a conference.
July 30, 2016 Steele met Ohr for breakfast. Steele claimed Carter Page had met with Russian
Sechin at a conference.
States that Glenn Simpson hired Steele and Ohr's wife to dig up dirt on Trump's connections
to Russia.
Noted that reporting was going to the Clinton Campaign, Jonathan Winer and the FBI.
Ohr met with Steele in late September and was told about Alfa Bank ties to Trump and the
Sergei Millian organization.
Noted that Steele was desperate to stop Trump and to thwart the Kremlin.
Ohr knew that Glenn Simpson and "others" were meeting with Victoria Nuland.
12/05/2016 (entered on 12/19/2016) (drafted on 12/12/2016)
Glenn Simpson directed Christopher Steele to speak to the press, including David Corn at
Mother Jones.
Ohr provided FBI info on Manafort Chronology prepared by his wife.
12/12/2016 (entered on 12/19/2016) (Drafted on 12/14/2016)
Ohr states, per Simpson, that Cohen replaced Manafort and Page as the contact with the
Russians.
Says that Cohen met with Russians in Prague.
Claims that Torshin is a Russian mobster and is trying to infiltrate the NRA and was pushing
money to Trump.
Simpson opined that Sergei Millian was an SVR officer and a link to Trump.
12/20/2016 (entered on 12/27/2016)
Thumb drive with Nelly Ohr's research passed to FBI.
1/23/2017 (entered on 1/31/2017) (drafted on 1/25/2017)
Simpson tells Ohr a source will be outed in the coming days.
Steele claims he met with a McCain staffer prior to October 2016
1/25/017 (entered on 1/27/2017)
Ohr spoke with Steele on 25 January 2017.
1/27/2017 (entered on 1/27/2017)
Steele told Ohr he wanted to keep lines of communication open.
02/06/2017 (entered on 02/08/2017)
Ohr contacted by Steele via What'sApp on 31 January 2017. Was reacting to firing of Sally
Yates. Worried that if Ohr got fired he would have no one to talk to.
"Interviewing agents asked Ohr to ask Steele if he would be comfortable getting the name of
an FBI agent."
Ohr reminded agents that Steele had spoken several times prior to 2016 Presidential election
with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec. Ohr identified one of the sources
for Steele's report as a Ukranian.
02/14/2017 (entered on 02/15/2017)
Ohr tells FBI about Steele's concerns about his business. Identifies other lawyer (name
blacked out) he is working with. Steele is preparing a proposal to re-establish his business
releationship with the FBI.
05/08/2017 (entered on 05/10/2017)
Steele tells Ohr that he is worried about Comey's upcoming testimony. Ohr tells Steele what
Comey will say and Steele is "happy."
Ohr said that Glenn Simpson would be visiting Steele soon.
As an aside, note the similarities between Steele and Downer. Both carried some imprimatur of
credibility based on prior government service, and popped up from no where and returned to
relative obscurity after producing a document that was able to be immediately misused by
others for the same purpose.
I'd wondered why anyone would want to involve Downer in these events, the man is a moron.
However, one of his greatest strengths is producing wonderful well written reports, and to
that extent would appear to have been chosen well.
It is, however despicable the whole story is, suggesting - and in its own way entertaining -
that apparently the experienced gutter lady "Eff the EU" Nuland was also involved, probably
bringing in her ... regime change experience aquired in the Ukraine.
I wonder, did she ever say "Eff the Orange Man too"? Alas. Either way, more interesting to
me is whether she also handed out cookies to Steel and/or Ohr?
As far as financial price of the Ohr & Steel operation goes, compared to the 5+
billion that were according to Nuland proudly poured into Ukraine to get Maidan and backstab
Janukowytsch, hiring Steel to backstab somebody else - Trump - was probably way cheaper -
i.e. 'however illegal, it was more economic'.
That said, I detested Nuland well before this story for her Maidan stuntery and the "Eff
the EU" arrogance, but then, she really made it easy even for an at time even more benevolent
observer.
But the big question that I would be interested to get opinions on is this:
when is all this stuff going to be revealed in a way that not even the readers of the WaPo
NYT et al can deny thet the entire Russia collusion/interference story is false from
beginning to end?
The longer the Russia-interfered-in-our-election-and-everybody-else's lie is perpetrated,
the closer we all get to nuclear annihilation. So it's a matter of some importance.
Any ideas?
One that occurs to me is that nothing will happen -- it will all dribble out over such a long
time that nothing will ever be ever dramatic and simple enough to make an effect.
My other thought is that Trump & Co wants the big explosive revelations to hit the
street next Mar/Apr so as to destroy the Dems in 2020.
But many of us have known the general outline of the conspiracy for a couple of years, but
nothing big ever hits the street and the lies get dug in a little deeper every day that
they're not exploded.
So, state department honchos--Victoria Nuland, Kavalec and Sally Yates (DOJ)--all had some
knowledge of what was going on, right? And so did national security advisor Susan Rice.
Doesn't that prove that Obama must have been in the loop?
I think it does.
Second, how much of Nellie Ohr's russia research actually ended up in the steele dossier?
I think that it is very unlikely that Chris Steele maintained his sketchy connections in
Russia after the seismic political changes in the early 2000s. It may be that much of the
dossier was created out of whole cloth by Nellie Ohr who was tasked to create a narrative
that jibed with Simpson's political objectives.
"... Like the Wolfowitz explanation of the Iraq War, Russiagate is the idea around which varied interests can be organized. Cold Warriors like to hate on Russia. It justifies arms spending and their own importance. Clintonistas need an excuse to distract from her being a loser. The DNC needs an excuse for manipulating the candidate selection in favor of donor interests. "Moderates" need a distraction from their ongoing refusal to address the interests of voters. ..."
Like the Wolfowitz explanation of the Iraq War, Russiagate is the idea around which
varied interests can be organized. Cold Warriors like to hate on Russia. It justifies arms
spending and their own importance. Clintonistas need an excuse to distract from her being a
loser. The DNC needs an excuse for manipulating the candidate selection in favor of donor
interests. "Moderates" need a distraction from their ongoing refusal to address the interests
of voters.
"... That epithet has a sordid history in the annals of U.S. intelligence. Legendary CIA Director Allen Dulles used the "brand-them-conspiracy-theorists" ploy following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy when many objected -- understandably -- to letting him pretty much run the Warren Commission, even though the CIA was suspected of having played a role in the murder. The "conspiracy theorist" tactic worked like a charm then, and now. Well, up until just now. ..."
"... U.S. Courts apply far tougher standards to evidence than do the intelligence community and the pundits who loll around lazily, feeding from the intelligence PR trough. This (hardly surprising) reality was underscored when a Dallas financial adviser named Ed Butowsky sued National Public Radio and others for defaming him about the role he played in controversial stories relating to Rich. On August 7, NPR suffered a setback, when U.S. District Court Judge Amos Mazzant affirmed a lower court decision to allow Butowsky's defamation lawsuit to proceed. ..."
"... NPR gave Isikoff 37 minutes on its popular Fresh Air program to spin his yarn about how the Seth Rich story got started. You guessed it; the Russians started it . No, we are not making this up. ..."
"... It is far from clear that Isikoff can be much help to NPR in the libel case against it. Isikoff's own writings on Russiagate are notably lacking in "verifiable statements of fact" -- information that cannot be verified. ..."
"... In any case, The Washington Post , had already debunked Isikoff's claim (which later in his article he switched to being only "purported") by pointing out that Americans had already tweeted the theory of Rich's murder days before the alleged Russian intervention. ..."
"... Butowsky's libel lawsuit can now proceed to discovery, which will include demands for documents and depositions that are likely to shed light on whatever role Rich may have played in leaking to WikiLeaks . If the government obstructs or tries to slow-roll the case, we shall have to wait and see, for example, if the court will acquiesce to the familiar government objection that information regarding Rich's murder must be withheld as a state secret? Hmmm. What would that tell us? ..."
"... During discovery in a separate court case, the government was unable to produce a final forensic report on the "hacking" of the Democratic National Committee. The DNC-hired cyber firm, CrowdStrike, failed to complete such a report, and that was apparently okay with then FBI Director James Comey, who did not require one. ..."
"... The thorny question of "persuasive sourcing," came up even more starkly on July 1, when federal Judge Dabney Friedrich ordered Robert Mueller to stop pretending he had proof that the Russian government was behind the Internet Research Agency's supposed attempt to interfere via social media in the 2016 election. Middle school-level arithmetic can prove the case that the IRA's use of social media to support Trump is ludicrous on its face. ..."
"... As journalist Patrick Lawrence put it recently: "Three years after the narrative we call Russiagate was framed and incessantly promoted, it crumbles into rubble as we speak." ..."
"... In a long interview with Lauria a few months ago in New Zealand aired this month on CN Live! , Kim Dotcom provided a wealth of detail, based on what he described as first-hand knowledge, regarding how Democratic National Committee documents were leaked to WikiLeaks in 2016. ..."
"... The major takeaway: the evidence presented by Dotcom about Seth Rich can be verified or disproven if President Trump summons the courage to order the director of NSA to dig out the relevant data, including the conversations Dotcom says he had with Rich and Rich may have had with WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. ..."
"... Dotcom said he put Rich in touch with a middleman to transfer the DNC files to WikiLeaks . ..."
"... Mark Twain is said to have warned, "How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again!" After three years of "Russia-Russia-Russia" in the corporate -- and even in some "progressive" -- media, this conditioning will not be easy to reverse. ..."
Simply letting the name "Seth Rich" pass your lips can condemn you to the leper colony built
by the Washington Establishment for "conspiracy theorists," (the term regularly applied to
someone determined to seek tangible evidence, and who is open to alternatives to
"Russia-did-it.")
Rich was a young DNC employee who was murdered on a street in Washington, DC, on July 10,
2016. Many, including me, suspect that Rich played some role in the leaking of DNC emails to
WikiLeaks . There is considerable circumstantial evidence that this may have been the
case. Those who voice such suspicions, however, are, ipso facto , branded "conspiracy
theorists."
That epithet has a sordid history in the annals of U.S. intelligence. Legendary CIA Director
Allen Dulles used the "brand-them-conspiracy-theorists" ploy following the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy when many objected -- understandably -- to letting him pretty much
run the Warren Commission, even though the CIA was suspected of having played a role in the
murder. The "conspiracy theorist" tactic worked like a charm then, and now. Well, up until just
now.
Rich Hovers Above the Courts
U.S. Courts apply far tougher standards to evidence than do the intelligence community and
the pundits who loll around lazily, feeding from the intelligence PR trough. This (hardly
surprising) reality was underscored when a Dallas financial adviser named Ed Butowsky sued
National Public Radio and others for defaming him about the role he played in controversial
stories relating to Rich. On August 7, NPR suffered a setback, when U.S. District Court Judge
Amos Mazzant affirmed a lower court decision to allow Butowsky's defamation lawsuit to
proceed.
Judge Mazzant ruled that NPR had stated as "verifiable statements of fact" information that
could not be
verified , and that the plaintiff had been, in effect, accused of being engaged in
wrongdoing without persuasive sourcing language.
Isikoff: Russians started it. (Wikipedia)
Imagine! -- "persuasive sourcing" required to separate fact from opinion and axes to grind!
An interesting precedent to apply to the ins and outs of Russiagate. In the courts, at least,
this is now beginning to happen. And NPR and others in similarly vulnerable positions are
scurrying around for allies.??The day after Judge Mazzant's decision, NPR enlisted help from
discredited Yahoo! News pundit Michael Isikoff (author, with David Corn, of the
fiction-posing-as-fact novel Russian Roulette ). NPR gave Isikoff 37 minutes on its
popular Fresh Air program to spin his yarn about how the Seth Rich story got started.
You guessed it; the Russians started it . No, we are not making this up.
It is far from clear that Isikoff can be much help to NPR in the libel case against it.
Isikoff's own writings on Russiagate are notably lacking in "verifiable statements of fact" --
information that cannot be verified. Watch, for example, his recent interview with Consortium
News Editor Joe Lauria on CN Live!
Isikoff admitted to Lauria that he never saw the classified Russian intelligence document
reportedly indicating that three days after Rich's murder the Russian SVR foreign intelligence
service planted a story about Rich having been the leaker and was killed for it. This Russian
intelligence "bulletin," as Isikoff called it, was supposedly placed on a bizarre website that
Isikoff admitted was an unlikely place for Russia to spread disinformation. He acknowledged
that he only took the word of the former prosecutor in the Rich case about the existence of
this classified Russian document.
In any case, The Washington Post , had already
debunked Isikoff's claim (which later in his article he switched to being only "purported")
by pointing out that Americans had already tweeted the theory of Rich's murder days before the
alleged Russian intervention.
' Persuasive Sourcing' & Discovery ??
Butowsky's libel lawsuit can now proceed to discovery, which will include demands for
documents and depositions that are likely to shed light on whatever role Rich may have played
in leaking to WikiLeaks . If the government obstructs or tries to slow-roll the case, we
shall have to wait and see, for example, if the court will acquiesce to the familiar government
objection that information regarding Rich's murder must be withheld as a state secret? Hmmm.
What would that tell us?
Butowsky: Suit could reveal critical information. (Flickr)
During discovery in a separate court case, the government was unable to produce a final
forensic report on the "hacking" of the Democratic National Committee. The DNC-hired cyber
firm, CrowdStrike, failed to complete such a report, and that was apparently
okay with then FBI Director James Comey, who did not require one.
The incomplete, redacted, draft, second-hand "forensics" that Comey settled for from
CrowdStrike does not qualify as credible evidence -- much less "persuasive sourcing" to support
the claim that the Russians "hacked" into the DNC. Moreover, CrowdStrike has a dubious
reputation for professionalism and a well known anti-Russia bias.
The thorny question of "persuasive sourcing," came up even more starkly on July 1, when
federal Judge Dabney Friedrich ordered Robert Mueller to stop pretending he had proof that the
Russian government was behind the Internet Research Agency's supposed attempt to interfere via
social media in the 2016 election. Middle school-level arithmetic can
prove the case that the IRA's use of social media to support Trump is ludicrous on its
face.
Russia-gate Rubble
As journalist Patrick Lawrence put
it recently: "Three years after the narrative we call Russiagate was framed and incessantly promoted, it crumbles into
rubble as we speak." Falling syllogism! Step nimbly to one side.
The "conspiracy theorist" epithet is not likely to much longer block attention to the role,
if any, played by Rich -- the more so since some players who say they were directly involved
with Rich are coming forward.
In a long interview with Lauria a few
months ago in New Zealand aired this month on CN Live! , Kim Dotcom provided a
wealth of detail, based on what he described as first-hand knowledge, regarding how Democratic
National Committee documents were leaked to WikiLeaks in 2016.
The major takeaway: the evidence presented by Dotcom about Seth Rich can be verified or
disproven if President Trump summons the courage to order the director of NSA to dig out the
relevant data, including the conversations Dotcom says he had with Rich and Rich may have had with
WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
Dotcom said he put Rich in touch with a middleman to
transfer the DNC files to WikiLeaks . Sadly, Trump has flinched more than once rather
than confront the Deep State -- and this time there are a bunch of very well connected, senior
Deep State practitioners who could face
prosecution .
Another sign that Rich's story is likely to draw new focus is the virulent character
assassination indulged in by former investigative journalist James Risen.
Not Risen to the Challenge
Risen: Called Binney a "conspiracy theorist." (Flickr)
On August 5, in an interview on The Hill's "Rising,"
Risen chose to call former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney -- you guessed it -- a
"conspiracy theorist" on Russia-gate, with no demurral, much less pushback, from the hosts.
The having-done-good-work-in-the-past-and-now-not-so-much Risen can be considered a paradigm
for what has happened to so many Kool-Aid drinking journalists. Jim's transition from
investigative journalist to stenographer is, nonetheless unsettling. Contributing causes? It
appears that the traditional sources within the intelligence agencies, whom Risen was able to
cultivate discreetly in the past, are too
fearful now to even talk to him, lest they get caught by one or two of the myriad
surveillance systems in play.
Those at the top of the relevant agencies, however, are only too happy to provide grist.
Journalists have to make a living, after all. Topic A, of course, is Russian "interference" in
the 2016 election. And, of course, "There can be little doubt" the Russians did it.
"Big Jim" Risen, as he is known, jumped on the bandwagon as soon as he joined The
Intercept , with a fulsome article
on February 17, 2018 titled " Is Donald Trump a Traitor? " Here's an excerpt:
"The evidence that Russia intervened in the election to help Trump win is already
compelling, and it grows stronger by the day.
"There can be little doubt now that Russian intelligence officials were behind an effort
to hack the DNC's computers and steal emails and other information from aides to Hillary
Clinton as a means of damaging her presidential campaign. Russian intelligence also used fake
social media accounts and other tools to create a global echo chamber both for stories about
the emails and for anti-Clinton lies dressed up to look like news.
"To their disgrace, editors and reporters at American news organizations greatly enhanced
the Russian echo chamber, eagerly writing stories about Clinton and the Democratic Party
based on the emails, while showing almost no interest during the presidential campaign in
exactly how those emails came to be disclosed and distributed." (sic)
Poor Jim. He shows himself just as susceptible as virtually all of his fellow corporate
journalists to the epidemic-scale HWHW virus (Hillary Would Have Won) that set in during Nov.
2016 and for which the truth seems to be no cure. From his perch at The Intercept ,
Risen will continue to try to shape the issues. Russiagaters major ally, of course, is the
corporate media which has most Americans pretty much under their thumb.
Incidentally, neither The New York Times, The Washington Post , nor The Wall
Street Journal has printed or posted a word about Judge Mazzant's ruling on the Butowsky
suit.
Mark Twain is said to have warned, "How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how]
hard it is to undo that work again!" After three years of "Russia-Russia-Russia" in the
corporate -- and even in some "progressive" -- media, this conditioning will not be easy to
reverse.
Here's how one astute observer with a sense of humor described the situation last week, in a
comment under one of my recent pieces on Consortium News:
" One can write the most thought-out and well documented academic-like essays, articles
and reports and the true believers in Russiagate will dismiss it all with a mere flick of
their wrist. The mockery and scorn directed towards those of us who knew the score from day
one won't relent. They could die and go to heaven and ask god what really happened during
the 2016 election. God would reply to them in no uncertain terms that Putin and the Russians
had absolutely nothing to do with anything in '16, and they'd all throw up their hands and
say, 'aha! So, God's in on this too!' It's the great lie that won't die."
I'm not so sure. It is likely to be a while though before this is over.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. Ray was a CIA analyst for 27 years; in retirement he
co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
"... "I can report absolutely that the Durham investigators have now obtained an audiotape deposition of Joseph Mifsud, where he describes his work, why he targeted George Papadopoulos , who directed him to do that, what directions he was given, and why he set that entire process of introducing Papadopoulos to Russia in motion in March of 2016, which is really the flashpoint the starting point of this whole Russia collusion narrative," Solomon told Fox News' Sean Hannity. ..."
"... You can't save the Russian collusion narrative, if you can't find any real Russians anywhere in the story. The FBI under James Comey will then be seen as having engaged in an operation to entrap people, and "Russian agents" turn out to be fakes working for the FBI and who were making fake offers of Russian help to the Trump campaign. ..."
"... Mifsud turning out to be a fake Russian agent working for the FBI ..."
"... To have to admit that the story was actually right, while they themselves were still peddling the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, would be a most bitter pill for many of these 'legitimate' news outlets to swallow. ..."
"... And yet when it comes to recent developments about Mifsud, a key player in this Trump-Russia collusion narrative, many mainstream reporters appear indifferent at best, or outrightly hostile at worst to these latest developments. ..."
"... While many of these mainstream media reporters have been desperately trying to find some way to save the Trump/Russian collusion narrative, the last thing they want to have to report is that the supposed key Russian agent that started this whole Spygate thing wasn't really a Russian agent, but was instead an FBI asset pretending to be a Russian agent. ..."
While many mainstream media journalists have been
spinning fantasies for more than two years, based on Russian collusion stories being handed to
them by anonymous sources, crack reporter John Solomon of The Hill has been pursuing real leads
and uncovering actual evidence.
Now, Solomon is reporting that an audiotape
containing professor Joseph Mifsud's deposition has been given to both U.S. Attorney John
Durham's investigators and to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"I can report absolutely that the Durham investigators have now obtained an audiotape
deposition of Joseph Mifsud, where he describes his work, why he targeted George Papadopoulos , who
directed him to do that, what directions he was given, and why he set that entire process of
introducing Papadopoulos to Russia in motion in March of 2016, which is really the flashpoint
the starting point of this whole Russia collusion narrative," Solomon told
Fox News' Sean Hannity.
"I can also confirm that the Senate Judiciary Committee has also obtained the same
deposition," he said.
So I'm wondering why Solomon appears to be the only mainstream reporter pursuing this Mifsud
story.
I suspect it's because many DNC Media outlets, after having fallen deeply and passionately
in love with the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, are reluctant to call attention to something that
would be the final nail in its coffin.
The last thing the mainstream media wants right now would be for Mifsud to go on the record
with both Durham's investigative team and with Congress to say he was working for the FBI and
was only pretending to be a Russian agent.
If Mifsud was an FBI asset sent to entrap Papadopoulos, then there are no real Russian
agents anywhere in this entire Trump-Russia collusion story.
Foreign policy advisor to US President Donald Trump's election campaign, George
Papadopoulos goes through security at the US District Court for his sentencing in Washington,
DC on Sept. 7, 2018. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)
Ponder what that means for a minute.
You can't save the Russian collusion narrative, if you can't find any real Russians
anywhere in the story. The FBI under James Comey will then be seen as having engaged in an
operation to entrap people, and "Russian agents" turn out to be fakes working for the FBI and
who were making fake offers of Russian help to the Trump campaign.
Some of these news media outlets are still - at this late date - claiming there's some life
left in the Russian collusion narrative. Mifsud is literally the last dying hope for these
people that somewhere in all of this there is a real Russian asset and real collusion. They
literally need Mifsud to be a real asset of the Putin government. And if Mifsud goes on the
record to officially affirm he was working for the FBI, then the media's last dying hope is
gone forever.
To hear the mainstream media tell it, Mifsud turning out to be a fake Russian agent
working for the FBI is a "conspiracy theory" created by "right-wing zealots" such as Reps.
Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
To have to admit that the story was actually right, while they themselves were still
peddling the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, would be a most bitter pill for many of these
'legitimate' news outlets to swallow.
Which likely explains why Solomon appears to be just about the only mainstream reporter
pursuing the Mifsud story. If there are any other major news outlet reporters out there avidly
pursuing the facts about Mifsud and his reported contacts and testimony to Justice Department
investigators, they're being pretty quiet about it.
What are the mainstream news reporters who are ignoring the Mifsud story telling themselves,
anyway?
"I can't pursue this new information on Mifsud, because it's taking the story where I
don't want it to go!"?
That's a thought process that happens only to a political activist disguised as a reporter.
No real reporter would ever think that way.
And yet when it comes to recent developments about Mifsud, a key player in this
Trump-Russia collusion narrative, many mainstream reporters appear indifferent at best, or
outrightly hostile at worst to these latest developments.
While many of these mainstream media reporters have been desperately trying to find some
way to save the Trump/Russian collusion narrative, the last thing they want to have to report
is that the supposed key Russian agent that started this whole Spygate thing wasn't really a
Russian agent, but was instead an FBI asset pretending to be a Russian agent.
These selfsame media reporters have spent more than two years mocking the idea that Mifsud
is an FBI asset as something straight out of the right-wing fever swamp of convoluted nonsense
conspiracy theories. This is why so many political activists masquerading as journalists are
desperately hoping that somehow the Mifsud story will just go away and die on its own.
My instinct says they're going to be massively disappointed soon.
The only one's ever colluding with the Russians was Hillary the "******* Rotten" Clinton,
Obongo "the One" and the usual suspects (Comey,Clapper,Brennan,Lynch,) et.al .. FBI/DOJ/CIA Rats, British UN-intelligence,Australian &
Ukraine interference. The DNC server was never hacked by Russians but copied, the
Steele/Fusion GPS dossier was a work of worn out fiction that was originally put together in
2007 and used against McCain.
Russian agent Mifsud working with Papadopoulos to get Hillary emails claimed by
DNC/Crowdstrike/Perkins Coie hacked by Russians before destroyed by Hillary under subpoena,
just a FBI paid actor to keep the narrative going and covering up illegal spying on Trump,
NSA 702 "about" querries by private contractors ang gov. violating FISA which happened much
earlier.
Conservative treehouse does a better job than just about anywhere else I've seen of tying
that all together. But, if they are correct about this, as they've been correct about a lot
of things, it won't change anything or matter at all. None of these people will ever be
indicted, much less spend a single day in jail. Sad, but true. In a year and a half trump
will most likely be gone, and all of this will be memory holed.
Most Democrats still adhere to the Trump - Russia collusion narrative. And they wonder why
some Leftists like Roseanne Barr admit 'Democrats have gone insane.' An opinion shared by
most of the rest of the country. And yet public speeches by Trump are enthusiastically
attended by thousands - a story very much minimized by these same "news" outlets.
Those Democrats exist within a media bubble (95% of press outlets - online, too) working
for the Deep State (99% are Democrats) that misinforms them. Perhaps they are intentionally
self-duped. Though it remains shocking how deeply deluded they are.
They adhere to the hoax because they knew it was a hoax to begin with.
The dems have never been sincere calling people racist, sexist, Hitler, then Russian or
Assad stooges, etc.
Their Saul Alinsky tactic is to shriek incessantly, always accuse, never take the
defensive because your position is indefensible. You can't argue why offering open borders
and free health care to 7 billion people is rational.
That is why the violence is so important to them, and so important to keep concealing the
deep state/democratic crime syndicate.
The main stream media is the mouth piece of the intelligence community.
The main stream media is [ currently ] the mouth piece of the [ criminal Deep
State ] intelligence community.
There; fify. The "Intelligence Community" in its entirety is hardly any monolith of
pure evil. There are cadres and factions within every agency, including Old-School
Patriot.
MUST be said now and then lest others lose perspective. And that is all. 0{:-\o[
The progressives will happily embrace the worst criminal behavior by our government as
JUSTIFIED to depose the devil incarnate Trump.
There is only one principle...winning. The law is THEIR weapon devised to punish their
enemies and control their minions. All means are justifiable to the ends, and the vast
majority of those "serving" in government have no hesitancy in abusing their power to fulfill
the larger agenda.
They will have proof and undeniable facts...to no avail because those charged with the
prosecution of their own, will NOT.
More sensationalism... how many articles are you going to post saying the spygate
situation is about to blow up? I would love for it to happen but unlike the libtards hanging
on Rachel Maddow's every word... when I hear the walls are closing in for over 2 or 3 months
straight... I start to call ********... Give up the sensationalism Tyler... it's straight up
MSM flavor ********.
Barr now has goods to jail major conspirators for life. It is unlikely happened but we can hope.
Notable quotes:
"... "Turns out it was Britain that was the foreign country interfering in American affairs," former MP George Galloway told RT, speaking about the new revelations published by the Guardian about early British involvement in the 'Russiagate' investigation. ..."
"... The Guardian reported on texts between former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and Jeremy Fleming, his then counterpart at MI5, who now heads GCHQ. The two men met in 2016 to discuss "our strange situation" – an apparent reference to Russia's alleged interference in US domestic politics. ..."
"... British intelligence "appears to have played a key role in the early stages," the report said. ..."
"... Galloway said the revelation was not surprising because people "already knew" that British intelligence had played a part in the Russia-related investigations in the US. He recalled that it was former British spy Christopher Steele who drew up the now-infamous Steele dossier, which made multiple unverifiable and salacious claims about Trump and has since been largely discredited. Britain is "up to its neck in the whole Russiagate affair," he said. ..."
"... Asked what the UK stood to gain by trying to implicate Russia in a US election scandal at a time when then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson was dismissing baseless claims of Russian interference in the Brexit campaign, Galloway noted that Johnson's comments on Russia have appeared to strangely sway between friendly and antagonistic. ..."
"... In June 2016, the FBI opened a covert investigation codenamed 'Crossfire Hurricane' into Trump's now disproven collusion with Moscow, which was later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller. ..."
While hysteria raged about possible Russian "interference" in the 2016 US election, British
intelligence officials were secretly playing a "key role" in helping instigate investigations
into Donald Trump, secret texts have shown. "Turns out it was Britain that was the foreign
country interfering in American affairs," former MP George Galloway told RT, speaking about
the new revelations published by the Guardian about early British involvement in the
'Russiagate' investigation.
The Guardian reported on texts between former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and Jeremy
Fleming, his then counterpart at MI5, who now heads GCHQ. The two men met in 2016 to discuss
"our strange situation" – an apparent reference to Russia's alleged interference
in US domestic politics.
British intelligence "appears to have played a key role in the early stages," the
report said.
Galloway said the revelation was not surprising because people "already knew" that
British intelligence had played a part in the Russia-related investigations in the US. He
recalled that it was former British spy Christopher Steele who drew up the now-infamous Steele
dossier, which made multiple unverifiable and salacious claims about Trump and has since been
largely discredited. Britain is "up to its neck in the whole Russiagate affair," he
said.
The texts also reveal that the Brexit vote was viewed by some in the FBI as something that
had been influenced by Russia.
Asked what the UK stood to gain by trying to implicate Russia in a US election scandal at a
time when then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson was dismissing baseless claims of Russian
interference in the Brexit campaign, Galloway noted that Johnson's comments on Russia have
appeared to strangely sway between friendly and antagonistic.
Johnson is like "a sofa that bears the impression of the last person to sit upon
him," the former MP quipped. What happens next will depend on who is leading the tango,
"the orange man in Washington or the blonde mop-head in London."
In June 2016, the FBI opened a covert investigation codenamed 'Crossfire Hurricane' into
Trump's now disproven collusion with Moscow, which was later taken over by special counsel
Robert Mueller.
Ultimately, the two-year-long probe that followed came up short, producing no evidence to prove a conspiracy or collusion
between Trump campaign officials and Russia
"... "The Russians did it" is the article of faith for the political elite who cannot understand why the electorate rejected the triangulated "consensus" the elite constructed and sold to us , where the filthy rich get ever richer and the rest of us have falling incomes, low employment rights and scanty welfare benefits. You don't like that system? You have been hypnotised and misled by evil Russian trolls and hackers. ..."
"... Except virtually none of this is true. Mueller's inability to defend in person his deeply flawed report took a certain amount of steam out of the blame Russia campaign. But what should have killed off "Russiagate" forever is the judgement of Judge John G Koetl of the Federal District Court of New York. ..."
"... Judge Koetl's subsequent dismissal of the Russiagate nonsense is a problem for the mainstream media and their favourite narrative. They have largely chosen to pretend it never happened, but when obliged to mention it have attempted to misrepresent this as the judge confirming that the Russians hacked the DNC. It very definitely and specifically is not that; the judge was obliged to rule on the procedural motion to dismiss on the basis of assuming the allegation to be true. Legal distinctions, even very plain ones like this, are perhaps difficult for the average cut and paste mainstream media stenographer to understand. But the widespread failure to report the meaning of Koetl's judgement fairly is inexcusable. ..."
"... Judge Koetl goes further and asserts that Wikileaks, as a news organisation, had every right to obtain and publish the emails in exercise of a fundamental First Amendment right. The judge also specifically notes that no evidence has been put forward by the DNC that shows any relationship between Russia and Wikileaks. Wikileaks, accepting the DNC's version of events, merely contacted the website that first leaked some of the emails, in order to ask to publish them. ..."
"... Judge Koetl also notes firmly that while various contacts are alleged by the DNC between individuals from Trump's campaign and individuals allegedly linked to the Russian government, no evidence at all has been put forward to show that the content of any of those meetings had anything to do with either Wikileaks or the DNC's emails. ..."
"... So there we have it. Russiagate as a theory is as completely exploded as the appalling Guardian front page lie published by Kath Viner and Luke Harding fabricating the "secret meetings" between Paul Manafort and Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy. But the political class and the mainstream media, both in the service of billionaires, have moved on to a stage where truth is irrelevant, and I do not doubt that Russiagate stories will thus persist. They are so useful for the finances of the armaments and security industries, and in keeping the population in fear and jingoist politicians in power. ..."
"... the worse the better. The Russians lost their last illusions that having the Americans as supposedly friends, the Russians lived the worst, for example, if we take the time of the rule of Boris Yeltsin, who called Bill Clinton a friend. And Clinton called him Boris. ..."
"... It was the British government that tried to rig the American presidential election and then overthrow the duly-elected American president. ..."
Douglas Adams famously suggested that the answer to life, the universe and everything is
42.
In the world of the political elite, the answer is Russiagate.
What has caused the electorate to turn on the political elite, to defeat Hillary and to
rush to Brexit? Why, the evil Russians, of course, are behind it all.
It was the Russians who hacked the DNC and published Hillary's emails, thus causing her to
lose the election because the Russians, dammit, who cares what was in the emails? It was the
Russians.
It is the Russians who are behind Wikileaks,and Julian Assange is a Putin agent (as is
that evil Craig Murray).
It was the Russians who swayed the 1,300,000,000 dollar Presidential election campaign
result with 100,000 dollars worth of Facebook advertising.
It was the evil Russians who once did a dodgy trade deal with Aaron Banks then did
something improbable with Cambridge Analytica that hypnotised people en masse via Facebook
into supporting Brexit.
All of this is known to be true by every Blairite, every Clintonite, by the BBC, by CNN, by
the Guardian, the New York Times and the Washington Post. "The Russians did it" is the
article of faith for the political elite who cannot understand why the electorate rejected the
triangulated "consensus" the elite constructed and sold to us , where the filthy rich get ever
richer and the rest of us have falling incomes, low employment rights and scanty welfare
benefits. You don't like that system? You have been hypnotised and misled by evil Russian
trolls and hackers.
Except virtually none of this is true. Mueller's
inability to defend in person his deeply flawed report took a certain amount of steam out
of the blame Russia campaign. But what should have killed off "Russiagate" forever is the
judgement of Judge John G Koetl of the Federal District Court of New York.
In a lawsuit brought by the Democratic National Committee against Russia and against
Wikileaks, and against inter alia Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and Julian
Assange, for the first time the claims of collusion between Trump and Russia were subjected to
actual scrutiny in a court of law. And Judge Koetl concluded that, quite simply, the claims
made as the basis of Russiagate are insufficient to even warrant a hearing.
The judgement is 81 pages long, but if you want to understand the truth about the entire
"Russiagate" spin it is well worth
reading it in full. Otherwise let me walk you through it.
This is the crucial point about Koetl's judgement. In considering dismissing a case at the
outset in response to a motion to dismiss from the defence, the judge is obliged to give the
plaintiff every benefit and to take the alleged facts described by the DNC as true. The stage
of challenging and testing those facts has not been reached. The question Koetl is answering is
this. Accepting for the moment the DNC's facts as true, on the face of it, even if everything
that the Democratic National Committee alleged happened, did indeed happen, is there the basis
for a case? And his answer is a comprehensive no. Even the facts alleged to comprise the
Russiagate narrative do not mount up to a plausible case.
The consequence of this procedure is of course that in this judgement Koetl is accepting the
DNC's "facts". The judgement is therefore written entirely on the assumption that the Russians
did hack the DNC computers as alleged by the plaintiff (the Democratic National Committee), and
that meetings and correspondence took place as the DNC alleged and their content was also what
the DNC alleged. It is vital to understand in reading the document that Koetl is not stating
that he finds these "facts" to be true. Doubtless had the trial proceeded many of them would
have been challenged by the defendants and their evidentiary basis tested in court. It is
simply at this stage the only question Koetl is answering is whether, assuming the facts
alleged all to be true, there are grounds for trial.
Judge Koetl's subsequent dismissal of the Russiagate nonsense is a problem for the
mainstream media and their favourite narrative. They have largely chosen to pretend it never
happened, but when obliged to mention it have attempted to misrepresent this as the judge
confirming that the Russians hacked the DNC. It very definitely and specifically is not that;
the judge was obliged to rule on the procedural motion to dismiss on the basis of assuming the
allegation to be true. Legal distinctions, even very plain ones like this, are perhaps
difficult for the average cut and paste mainstream media stenographer to understand. But the
widespread failure to report the meaning of Koetl's judgement fairly is inexcusable.
The key finding is this. Even accepting the DNC's evidence at face value, the judge ruled
that it provides no evidence of collusion between Russia, Wikileaks or any of the named parties
to hack the DNC's computers. It is best expressed here in this dismissal of the charge that a
property violation was committed, but in fact the same ruling by the judge that no evidence has
been presented of any collusion for an illegal purpose, runs through the dismissal of each and
every one of the varied charges put forward by the DNC as grounds for their suit.
Judge Koetl goes further and asserts that Wikileaks, as a news organisation, had every
right to obtain and publish the emails in exercise of a fundamental First Amendment right. The
judge also specifically notes that no evidence has been put forward by the DNC that shows any
relationship between Russia and Wikileaks. Wikileaks, accepting the DNC's version of events,
merely contacted the website that first leaked some of the emails, in order to ask to publish
them.
Judge Koetl also notes firmly that while various contacts are alleged by the DNC between
individuals from Trump's campaign and individuals allegedly linked to the Russian government,
no evidence at all has been put forward to show that the content of any of those meetings had
anything to do with either Wikileaks or the DNC's emails.
In short, Koetl dismissed the case entirely because simply no evidence has been produced of
the existence of any collusion between Wikileaks, the Trump campaign and Russia. That does not
mean that the evidence has been seen and is judged unconvincing. In a situation where the judge
is duty bound to give credence to the plaintiff's evidence and not judge its probability, there
simply was no evidence of collusion to which he could give credence. The entire
Russia-Wikileaks-Trump fabrication is a total nonsense. But I don't suppose that fact will kill
it off.
The major implication for the Assange extradition case of the Koetl judgement is his robust
and unequivocal statement of the obvious truth that Wikileaks is a news organisation and its
right to publish documents, specifically including stolen documents, is protected by the First
Amendment when those documents touch on the public interest.
... ... ...
And in conclusion, I should state emphatically that while Judge Koetl was obliged to accept
for the time being the allegation that the Russians had hacked the DNC as alleged, in fact this
never happened. The emails came from a leak not a hack. The Mueller Inquiry's refusal to take
evidence from the actual publisher of the leaks, Julian Assange, in itself discredits his
report. Mueller should also have taken crucial evidence from Bill Binney, former Technical
Director of the NSA, who has explained in detail why an outside hack was technically impossible
based on the forensic evidence provided.
The other key point that proves Mueller's Inquiry was never a serious search for truth is
that at no stage was any independent forensic independence taken from the DNC's servers,
instead the word of the DNC's own security consultants was simply accepted as true. Finally no
progress has been made – or is intended to be made – on the question of who killed
Seth Rich, while the pretend police investigation has "lost" his laptop.
Though why anybody would believe Robert Mueller about anything is completely beyond me.
So there we have it. Russiagate as a theory is as completely exploded as the appalling
Guardian front page lie published by Kath Viner and Luke Harding fabricating the "secret
meetings" between Paul Manafort and Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy. But the political
class and the mainstream media, both in the service of billionaires, have moved on to a stage
where truth is irrelevant, and I do not doubt that Russiagate stories will thus persist. They
are so useful for the finances of the armaments and security industries, and in keeping the
population in fear and jingoist politicians in power.
* * *
Unlike his adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat,
the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, Craig's blog has
no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on
voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the
every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate. Subscriptions
to keep Craig's blog going are gratefully received .
One of the things we often forget is that many Americans don't really know very much about
Russia or the Russian people and most of what they have been told has been filtered through a
national security apparatus so entrenched in a cold war mindset they appear paranoid. It is
clear the warmongering faction residing within Washington has declared Russia a major threat
and sparked massive media coverage to convince us it is true.
The myth of Russia's strength has been amplified by journalists seeking to routinely curry
favor with government sources and others by falsely hyping the official point of view . The
fact is Russia's economy is rather small and while over the years they produce and export a
lot of weapons their military is not well funded. More on Russia today in the article
below.
You are not supposed to know anything. Do not disappoint the army of whores, sycophants,
trolls, thugs, and megalomaniacs depending upon you in this regard.
Translation into English. I am the most evil Russian Troll. Your Trump, this orange idiot,
has imposed so many sanctions against Russia that even the calmest Russian Troll begins to
think that Hilary would be a better option compared to him. Although the worse the better. The Russians lost their last
illusions that having the Americans as supposedly friends, the Russians lived the worst, for example, if we take the time of
the rule of Boris Yeltsin, who called Bill Clinton a friend. And Clinton called him Boris. And the most beautiful
times, this is the time of the Cold War. Long live the confrontation!
They've been doing this for over thirty years. If we don't replace them soon you can
forget political solutions to anything. Their track record is what it is. They suck.
Republicans are feckless impotent eunuchs who are only concerned about when the next check
from the donor class will arrive or what their masters at AIPAC have to say. At least the
Dems have the stones to stab you in the front. If Trumps first two years didn't wake up the
GOP masses, nothing will.
"American Conservatism is finished, and its remaining adherents are, whether they know it
or not, merely ghosts wandering, mazed, in the daylight." -- Revilo P Oliver
Lieu: "The reason again that you did not indict Donald Trump is because of OLC opinion
stating you cannot indict a sitting president, correct?"
Mueller: "That is correct."
This has gone way beyond long enough. It is past time to impeach trump, and anyone who
disagrees should be pushed out of control and then their office.
Please stop promoting Russiagate hoax/witch hunt. Parteigenosse Mueller is a corrupt tool of
the neoliberal/neocon establishment and proved to be senile apparatchik who was not in
control of his own investigation.
His words mean nothing but his embarrassment that he was not able to accomplish assigned
to him hit job. He actually belongs to the jail himself for his role in Iraq war.
I think everybody who facilitated Iraq war should be jailed first. Preferably before Trump
is jailed...
Actually the whole neoliberal elite is corrupt, so this does not solve the problems facing
the USA and fist of all the collapse of neoliberalism, but justice should be served.
Biden was one of the architects and as such he should be allowed to hold any elected
position in the USA or elsewhere. Pushing this semi-senile neoliberal and war criminal as a
candidate is the best way neoliberal Dems can commit a suicide.
kurt is playing games with words again collusion is not a legally defined term. Criminal
conspiracy is. And Mueller did not find enough evidence to support criminal conspiracy by
Trump or by his entourage.
Can kurt please dispense with his constant regurgitating BS? I doubt it. Spewing nonsense
only helps convince Trump supporters that they are right.
Maybe once kurt gets mad enough with Pelosi for not impeaching, maybe he'll finally wake
up and have an epiphany that the Democratic leadership is a big part of the problem on a
whole range of issues.
I wonder where you got that I thought deplorables are traitors. I think they are fake
patriots since they think only some of us citizens are full citizens, but traitors?
Of course there would be no conviction in the Senate, that is not the point.
The point is that people will become familiar with the actual crimes this president has
committed. And that will create the main reason to vote Dem in 2020.
This will not hurt the GOP with their voters. Nothing can do that. The whole goal is to
get Dem voters to the polls.
"... In 2017, The Guardian reported that Britain's spy agencies had played a key role in alerting their American counterparts of communications between members of the Trump campaign and "suspected Russian agents," which was passed along to the US in what was characterized as a "routine exchange of information." ..."
"... "For over a year, people have asked me to declassify. What I've done is declassified everything," said Trump, adding "He can look and I hope he looks at the UK and I hope he looks at Australia and I hope he looks at Ukraine ." ..."
"... "It's the greatest hoax probably in the history of our country and somebody has to get to the bottom of it. We'll see. For a long period of time, they wanted me to declassify and I did." ..."
"... in May, Fox News reported that the discredited "Steele Dossier" - assembled by former MI6 spy Christopher Steele - was referred to as "crown material" in an email exchange suggesting that former FBI Director James Comey insisted that CIA Director John Brennan pushed for the inclusion of the dossier in the intelligence community assessment (ICA) on Russian interference. ..."
"... Moreover, much of "Operation Crossfire Hurricane" - the FBI's official investigation into the Trump campaign - occurred on UK soil , which is perhaps why the New York Times reported last September that the UK begged Trump not to declassify 'Russiagate' documents 'without redaction.' ..."
"... Maltese professor and self-described Clinton foundation member Joseph Mifsud fed him the rumor that Russia had damaging information on Hillary Clinton. It was later at a London bar that Papadopoulos would drunkenly pass the rumor to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer. ..."
Newly surfaced text messages between Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and his counterpart at MI-5, the UK's domestic security
service, have cast new light on Britain's role in the FBI's 2016 'Russiagate' investigation, according to
The Guardian .
Two of the most senior intelligence officials in the US and UK privately shared concerns about " our strange situation " as
the FBI launched its 2016 investigation into whether Donald Trump's campaign was colluding with
Russia , the Guardian has learned.
Text messages between Andrew McCabe, the deputy director of the FBI at the time, and Jeremy Fleming , his then counterpart
at MI5, now the head of GCHQ , also reveal their mutual surprise
at the result of the EU referendum, which some US officials regarded as a "wake-up call", according to a person familiar with
the matter. -
The Guardian
McCabe and Flemming's texts were "infrequent and cryptic," but "occurred with some regularity" after the June 2016 Brexit referendum.
In his text message about the August 2016 meeting, Fleming appeared to be making a reference to
Peter Strzok ,
a senior FBI official who travelled to London that month to meet the Australian diplomat
Alexander Downer . Downer had agreed to speak with the FBI about a Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, who had told
him that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee in the race. -
The Guardian
In 2017, The Guardian reported that Britain's spy agencies had played a key role in alerting their American counterparts of communications
between members of the Trump campaign and "suspected Russian agents," which was passed along to the US in what was characterized
as a "routine exchange of information."
UK begged Trump not to declassify
In May, President Trump issued a sweeping declassification order on materials related to the DOJ/FBI Russia investigation - leaving
it in the hands of Attorney General William Barr to determine exactly what happened to Trump and his campaign before and after the
2016 US election.
"For over a year, people have asked me to declassify. What I've done is declassified everything," said Trump, adding "He can look
and I hope he looks at the UK and I hope he looks at Australia and I hope he looks at Ukraine ."
"It's the greatest hoax probably in the history of our country and somebody has to get to the bottom of it. We'll see. For a long
period of time, they wanted me to declassify and I did."
Meanwhile, also in May,
Fox News reported that the discredited "Steele Dossier" - assembled by former MI6 spy Christopher Steele - was referred to as
"crown material" in an email exchange suggesting that former FBI Director James Comey insisted that CIA Director John
Brennan pushed for the inclusion of the dossier in the intelligence community assessment (ICA) on Russian interference.
Moreover, much of "Operation Crossfire Hurricane" - the FBI's official investigation into the Trump campaign - occurred on UK
soil , which is perhaps why the
New York Times reported last September that the UK begged Trump not to declassify 'Russiagate' documents 'without redaction.'
Let's also not forget that shortly after Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos announced his intention to work for the campaign,
he was lured to London in March, 2016, where Maltese professor and self-described
Clinton foundation member Joseph Mifsud fed him the rumor that Russia had damaging information on Hillary Clinton. It was later
at a London bar that Papadopoulos would drunkenly pass the rumor to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer.
We wonder what else McCabe's texts with his MI-5 counterpart will reveal?
"... That was while Robert Mueller ran the Bureau, which means everything about Epstein's blackmail and kompromat operation has been tucked safely away out of sight in FBI files for at least a decade. Much longer, new evidence shows. ..."
"... *CIA Acknowledged in 2003, It Knew that Ghislaine Maxwell's Late Father was a Major Foreign Intelligence Agent Operating Inside the U.S. ..."
"... That Robert Maxwell was a ruthless, corrupt, tax-dodging international businessman who served as an Israeli agent is highly probable. ..."
"... For the first time, Maxwell had failed to get his own way. He started to threaten and bluster. He then demanded that, for past services, he should receive immediately a quick fix of £400million to bale him out of his financial difficulties. ..."
"... Instead of providing the money, a small group of Mossad officers set about planning his murder. They feared that he was going to publicly expose all Mossad had done in the time he worked for them. They knew that he was gradually becoming mentally unstable and paranoid. He was taking a cocktail of drugs - Halcion and Zanax - which had serious side effects. ..."
"... Then Maxwell was contacted. He was told to fly to Gibraltar, go aboard the Lady Ghislaine and sail to the Canary Islands. There at sea he would receive his £400million quick fix in the form of a banker's draft. Maxwell did as he was told. ..."
"... As Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad agent told us: "On that cold night Mossad's problems with Robert Maxwell were over." ..."
"... The incontrovertible facts about his murder are contained in a previously-unseen autopsy report by Britain's then-leading forensic pathologist Dr Iain West and Israel State Pathologist Dr Yehuda Hiss. Of all the documents in our possession, these reports confirm the truth about Maxwell's death. ..."
"... Boy that Mueller has had a busy career hasn't he? Didn't he start out in Chicago where he gave Whitey Bulgar cover for being a mob boss? Then there's his cover up before and after 9/11. The weapons of mass destruction that he said Saddam had. The anthrax prosecution, Epstein's pedophilia cover up, HSBC and now he is trying to cover Hillary's buttocks. And maybe Obama's? I'm sure I've missed a few things that he did or didn't do. ..."
"... Acosta was told to stand down by someone at the top of the food chain. Mueller. Ugh what a slimy piece of work he is. But not to the Russia Gaters. Oh no. "He is a highly decorated marine who takes no guff from anyone. ..."
"... In that time, he had free access to Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street, to Ronald Reagan's White House, to the Kremlin and to the corridors of power throughout Europe. ..."
"... Inquiring minds want to know did Maxwell have access to Margaret and Ron because they liked him or because he had something on them? ..."
"... Epstein is the destruction of the Deep State. ..."
"... That pedophelia and politics scandal, better known as the Franklin Coverup, made the papers for a few months, too, before it was made to go away. Similarly, a couple of the operators served some time on reduced charges after that one. ..."
"... The two main suspects in the Bush, Sr. White House child ring were Craig Spence and Lawrence E. King Jr. King sang the National anthem at two GOP national conventions. He served time in jail for bank fraud. Spence was a Republican lobbyist before he committed suicide. Several of his partners went to jail for being involved in the adult part of the homosexual prostitution ring. ..."
"... Mueller's scrupulous avoidance of the CIA link in his prosecution of Manuel Noriega and his diversion of the PanAm 103 bombing and framing of two Libyans. Bobby Mueller has been a real go to guy when the security establishment needs a phony investigation. ..."
"... Bobby Mueller has been a real go to guy when the security establishment needs a phony investigation. ..."
"... The anthrax investigation is the most serious of his crimes. Mueller is being sued by his lead investigator in that case. ..."
"... Every now and then, here and there the curtain lifts for a moment and the political elite of a country, the business elite, the spy services, the military, and organized crime are revealed to be all working together, indeed practically joined at the hip ..."
"... partnership started during the early Cold War with US intelligence officers facilitating the drug trade out of Turkey and Burma through Europe. That soon spread to the Americas and globally. Covert operations such as Gladio, Condor, and the Safari Club, and associated banks (Franklin National Bank, BCCI, Riggs Bank, HSBC, etc.) produced massive human rights violations, transnational terrorism and governmental corruption. The CIA's secret wars provided funds and official cover for private-public sector alliance of criminals, bankers and spooks around the world. ..."
"... The CIA, MI6 and Mossad ran overlapping coordinated operations using privateers, paramilitaries and organized crime networks that consumed vast amounts of cash generated by money laundering mechanisms. Enriched by the looting of the former Soviet Union, along with the infusion of Arab oil money (the Saudi Yamamah slush fund), the "Octopus" became the instrument of Oligarchs that have thoroughly corrupted western governments and secret services. ..."
"... The Snowden release included a number of documents that illustrate the on-line entrapment and political disruption activities run by the two main communications intelligence agencies. ..."
"... Epstein recruits young girls, throws parties where he invites potential hedge fund clients, lets nature take its course and films the proceedings, extracts blackmail in the form of investments to his (largely fake) hedge fund, which actually just buys an index fund (no actual fund management required). He takes a percentage from the coerced investments. Nobody talks because they have too much to lose. No suspicious payments to raise eyebrows at the IRS. ..."
"... Epstein brought in the clients. The CIA/MI-6/Mossad provided necessary cover from the FBI and local cops - then, three or four agencies shared the intelligence take, as they had for decades from Robert Maxwell's operations. ..."
"... For Ghislaine, it was simply carrying on the family business for fun and profit. For the spooks, it was business as usual going back to the Green House, the Berlin bordello founded in the the 1870s by Wilhelm Steiber, a Prussian Police section chief, to provide useful intelligence to Bismarck's Military Intelligence, which he reorganized. ..."
"... Epstein is also well acquainted with University President Lawrence H. Summers. The two serve together on the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, two elite international relations organizations. ..."
"... Epstein's relationships within the academy are remarkable since the tycoon, who has amassed his fortune by managing the wealth of billionaires from his private Caribbean island, does not hold a bachelor's degree. ..."
"... There's a rocky road ahead for Larry Summers. Summers introduces Epstein into the Harvard fold, but becomes reckless with his newly-refined Neoliberalism and his opinions concerning "lady scholars." ..."
That was while Robert Mueller ran the Bureau, which means everything about Epstein's blackmail and kompromat operation
has been tucked safely away out of sight in FBI files for at least a decade. Much longer, new evidence shows.
The real question is, why did the FBI wait for more than a decade to bust Epstein and Maxwell?
Epstein and Maxwell came to the attention of the FBI in 1996, when, curiously, the Bureau never acted on an accusation that
they had together sexually abused a 15 year old girl in a bedroom inside Epstein's Manhattan townhouse. Documents in a recent
law suit filed by an alleged victim, Maria Farmer, show that the FBI had been aware of Epstein and Maxwell's child abuse activities
in New York for at least a dozen years before Epstein was finally charged in 2008 with much-reduced Florida state offenses.
https://www.yourtango.com/2019323698/who-maria-farmer-latest-woman-accus...
Farmer claims she reported her sexual assault to New York police and the FBI in 1996. "To my knowledge, I was the first
person to report Maxwell and Epstein to the FBI," she wrote in her affidavit."
*CIA Acknowledged in 2003, It Knew that Ghislaine Maxwell's Late Father was a Major Foreign Intelligence Agent Operating
Inside the U.S.
Previously, Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine's father, had for many years been known to have been involved in high-level espionage
in the United States, as detailed in a 2003 publication of the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, The Intelligence Officer's
Bookshelf . Therein, the CIA reviewer of a biography by British author Gordon Thomas acknowledged about Maxwell:
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-pub...
That Robert Maxwell was a ruthless, corrupt, tax-dodging international businessman who served as an Israeli agent is
highly probable.
For the deeper background to the Epstein-Maxwell multinational blackmail, coverup and kompromat operation, we have to
look at the events that led up to the 1991 death of Robert Maxwell. A summary of the Maxwell bio by its authors recounts:
British Publisher Robert Maxwell
Was Mossad Spy
By Gordon Thomas And Martin Dillon
The Mirror - UK
12-6-2002
[ . . .]
Eleven years after former Daily Mirror owner Robert Maxwell plunged from his luxury yacht to a watery grave, his death still
arouses intense interest.
Many different theories have circulated about what really happened on board the Lady Ghislaine that night in May 1991.
[ . . . ]
The Jewish millionaire and former Labour MP [born Ludvik Hoch
in Czechoslovakia] died the way he had lived - threatening.
He had threatened his wife. Threatened his children. Threatened the staff of this newspaper.
But finally he issued one threat too many - he threatened Mossad.
He told them that unless they gave him £400million to save his crumbling empire, he would expose all he had done for them.
In that time, he had free access to Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street, to Ronald Reagan's White House, to the Kremlin and
to the corridors of power throughout Europe.
On top of that he had built himself a position of power within the crime families of eastern Europe, teaching them how to
funnel their vast wealth from drugs, arms smuggling and prostitution to banks in safe havens around the globe.
Maxwell passed on all the secrets he learned to Mossad in Tel Aviv. In turn, they tolerated his excesses, vanities and insatiable
appetite for a luxurious lifestyle and women.
He told his controllers who they should target and how they should do it. He appointed himself as Israel's unofficial ambassador
to the Soviet Bloc. Mossad saw the advantage in that.
[ . . . ]
The more successful Maxwell became the more risks he took and the more dangerous he was to Mossad. At the same time, the
very public side of Maxwell, who then owned 400 companies, began to unwind.
He spent lavishly and lost money on deals. The more he lost, the more he tried to claw money from the banks. Then he saw
a way out of his problems.
He was approached by Vladimir Kryuchkov, head of the KGB. Spymaster and tycoon met in the utmost secrecy in the Kremlin.
Kryuchkov had an extraordinary proposal. He wanted Maxwell to help orchestrate the overthrow of Mikhail Gorbachev, the reformist
Soviet leader. That would bring to an end a fledgling democracy and a return to the Cold War days.
In return, Maxwell's massive debts would be wiped out by a grateful Kryuchkov, who planned to replace Gorbachev. The KGB
chief wanted Maxwell to use the Lady Ghislaine, named after Maxwell's daughter, as a meeting place between the Russian plotters,
Mossad chiefs and Israel's top politicians.
The plan was for the Israelis to go to Washington and say that democracy could not work in Russia and that it was better
to allow the country to return to a modified form of communism, which America could help to control. In return, Kryuchkov would
guarantee to free hundreds of thousands of Jews and dissidents in the Soviet republics.
Kryuchkov told Maxwell that he would be seen as a saviour of all those Jews. It was a proposal he could not refuse. But
when he put it to his Mossad controllers they were horrified. They said Israel would have no part in such a madcap plan.
For the first time, Maxwell had failed to get his own way. He started to threaten and bluster. He then demanded that,
for past services, he should receive immediately a quick fix of £400million to bale him out of his financial difficulties.
Instead of providing the money, a small group of Mossad officers set about planning his murder. They feared that he
was going to publicly expose all Mossad had done in the time he worked for them. They knew that he was gradually becoming mentally
unstable and paranoid. He was taking a cocktail of drugs - Halcion and Zanax - which had serious side effects.
The group of Mossad plotters sensed, like Solomon, he could bring their temple tumbling down and cause incalculable harm
to Israel. The plan to kill him was prepared in the utmost secrecy. A four-man squad was briefed.
Then Maxwell was contacted. He was told to fly to Gibraltar, go aboard the Lady Ghislaine and sail to the Canary Islands.
There at sea he would receive his £400million quick fix in the form of a banker's draft. Maxwell did as he was told.
On the night of November 4, 1991, the Lady Ghislaine, one of the world's biggest yachts, was at sea.
[ . . . ]
As Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad agent told us: "On that cold night Mossad's problems with Robert Maxwell were over."
The incontrovertible facts about his murder are contained in a previously-unseen autopsy report by Britain's then-leading
forensic pathologist Dr Iain West and Israel State Pathologist Dr Yehuda Hiss. Of all the documents in our possession, these
reports confirm the truth about Maxwell's death.
Gordon Thomas & Martin Dillon are authors of The Assassination of Robert Maxwell: Israel's Super Spy, published by Robson
Books.
The obvious question, why did the U.S. government let these intelligence crimes continue for decades, isn't being asked. The
answer is almost self-evident. Information and leverage obtained by Maxwell-Epstein and Co. was far too valuable to its several
operators to let it all end too soon.
leap out at me as suggesting how Epstein connects to much bigger subjects. First is the assertion that Maxwell was
... teaching them how to funnel their vast wealth from drugs, arms smuggling and prostitution to banks in safe havens around
the globe.
This area of trafficking and money laundering directly connects to Mueller and his essential exoneration of
HSBC .
The other quotation that suggests the importance of money laundering is here:
The plan was for the Israelis to go to Washington and say that democracy could not work in Russia and that it was better
to allow the country to return to a modified form of communism, which America could help to control.
The life's work of
Antony Sutton at Stanford's Hoover Institution shows that American industry was ALWAYS controlling communism as well as Soviet
industrial development, and that a trend toward social democracy, represented by Gorbachev, would have put an end to that control.
@Linda Wood his money laundering and blackmailing activities. While the review confirms that Robert Maxwell was for decades
a major Mossad agent actively setting up operations and cover in the United States and the UK, I can only surmise that the spreading
political influence of Eastern European organized crime networks and child honey traps are things that the Agency didn't want
to discuss publicly in 2003.
As for Mueller, let's not forget that he was FBI Director and before that the head of the Criminal Division at Main Justice
at the time that global "black finance" grew along with the catastrophic spread of multinational crime and terrorism. BCCI, Iran-Contra,
9/11, and the rise of transnational Oligarchs happened on his watch. As the Chief Law Enforcement Officer in the United States
at the time, it is hard to imagine anyone more responsibility for the ultimate consequences than Robert Mueller. There is perhaps
someone who bears ultimate responsibility, the President who appointed Mueller: George Herbert Walker Bush and his lesser son,
Shrub, who promoted him.
... wouldn't you assume that this entire affair is an ongoing Mossad operation, which may or may not have concluded? The US
IC is just another operative inside the envelope, but Mossad owns the assets and the intellectual property. I think we could assume
that some of this is automated and Mossad has ongoing leverage still in play.
The obvious question, why did the U.S. government let these intelligence crimes continue for decades, isn't being asked.
The answer is almost self-evident. Information and leverage obtained by Maxwell-Epstein and Co. was far too valuable to its
several operators to let it all end too soon.
.
Mossad's legendary blackmail traps ensnared even high-level deep state authorities and made them pliable. The recent history
of United States foreign policy is an enigma that can only be solved when that assumption is inserted. Once the assumption is
in place, it opens like a Pandora's box. Don't you find that to be the case?
In a recent investigation I presented the case that British banking and financial giant HSBC conspired with banking institutions
with documented links to terrorist financing, including those responsible for helping bankroll the 9/11 attacks.
SUNDAY, JULY 29, 2012
Black Dossier: HSBC & Terrorist Finance
Moral equivalencies abound. After all, when American secret state agencies manage drug flows or direct terrorist proxies
to attack official enemies it's not quite the same as battling terror or crime.
Pounding home that point, a new report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations accused HSBC of exposing "the
U.S. financial system to a wide array of money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing risks due to poor anti-money
laundering (AML) controls."
That 335-page report, "U.S. Vulnerabilities to Money Laundering, Drugs, and Terrorist Financing: HSBC Case History," (large
pdf file available
here ) was issued after a year-long Senate investigation zeroed-in on the bank's U.S. affiliate, HSBC Bank USA, N.A., better
known as HBUS.
Drilling down, we learned that amongst the "services" offered by HSBC subsidiaries and correspondent banks were sweet deals
with financial entities with terrorist ties; the transportation of billions of dollars in cash by plane and armored car through
their London Banknotes division; the clearing of sequentially-numbered travelers checks through dodgy Cayman Islands accounts
for Mexican drug lords and Russian mafiosi.
From richly-appointed suites at Canary Wharf, London, the bank's "smartest guys in the room" handed some of the most violent
gangsters on earth the financial wherewithal to organize their respective industries: global crime.
A case in point. In 2008 alone the Senate revealed that the bank's Cayman Islands branch handled some 50,000 client accounts
(all without benefit of offices or staff on Grand Cayman, mind you), yet still managed to ship some $7 billion (£10.9bn) in
cash from Mexico into the U.S. Now that's creative accounting!...
@Linda Wood HSBC, huh--there must be some clever name for it, which deserves no research.
what an eloquent article you presented. Brief but right on target. It isn't just sex, drugs and rock and roll. Now it is drugs
- money -sexual perversion--and perhaps worse? Rumors are flying about what video on the Weiner laptop showed. It is strictly
heresay, but a core of folks seem to believe the suspicions are possible.
snoopydawg on Thu, 07/11/2019 - 8:48pm
Boy that Mueller has had a busy career
hasn't he? Didn't he start out in Chicago where he gave Whitey Bulgar cover for being a mob boss? Then there's his
cover up before and after 9/11. The weapons of mass destruction that he said Saddam had. The anthrax prosecution, Epstein's pedophilia
cover up, HSBC and now he is trying to cover Hillary's buttocks. And maybe Obama's? I'm sure I've missed a few things that he
did or didn't do.
Acosta is saying that if he hadn't made the plea deal then Epstein would never have served any time in
prison. Well he actually only slept there since he got to leave every day for work and then there's the massages he got after
his busy day at work. But there were more than 80 pages that the Feds wrote on his escapades so I think that story he told congress
is true. Acosta was told to stand down by someone at the top of the food chain. Mueller. Ugh what a slimy piece of work he
is. But not to the Russia Gaters. Oh no. "He is a highly decorated marine who takes no guff from anyone.
In that time, he had free access to Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street, to Ronald Reagan's White House, to the Kremlin
and to the corridors of power throughout Europe.
Inquiring minds want to know did Maxwell have access to Margaret and Ron because they liked him or because he had something
on them?
Great information! The more I learn the more I need a shower.
is how I've been feeling all week from reading about this, just more and more demoralized when I think about the depravation
of our so-called "leadership." What is it that we're supposed to think of as the new normal after this behavior?
That pedophelia and politics scandal, better known as the Franklin Coverup, made the papers for a few months, too, before
it was made to go away. Similarly, a couple of the operators served some time on reduced charges after that one.
The two main suspects in the Bush, Sr. White House child ring were Craig Spence and Lawrence E. King Jr. King sang the
National anthem at two GOP national conventions. He served time in jail for bank fraud. Spence was a Republican lobbyist before
he committed suicide. Several of his partners went to jail for being involved in the adult part of the homosexual prostitution
ring.
Mueller's scrupulous avoidance of the CIA link in his prosecution of Manuel Noriega and his diversion of the PanAm 103
bombing and framing of two Libyans. Bobby Mueller has been a real go to guy when the security establishment needs a phony investigation.
Bobby Mueller has been a real go to guy when the security establishment needs a phony investigation.
The anthrax investigation is the most serious of his crimes. Mueller is being
sued by his lead investigator in that case.
Because researchers in our biological weapons labs went public with what they were doing, and where such research was being
done in the U.S., we learned the CIA was one of several outfits doing biological weapons research.
But Mueller exonerated all of them, including the CIA, with no explanation and only focused on a lone vaccine researcher at
the Army lab when journalists began to ask why no one had been indicted after seven years of investigation, at which point the
FBI attempted to harass the suspect into committing suicide.
Every now and then, here and there the curtain lifts for a moment and the political elite of a country, the business elite,
the spy services, the military, and organized crime are revealed to be all working together, indeed practically joined at the
hip.
partnership started during the early Cold War with US intelligence officers facilitating the drug trade out of Turkey and
Burma through Europe. That soon spread to the Americas and globally. Covert operations such as Gladio, Condor, and the Safari
Club, and associated banks (Franklin National Bank, BCCI, Riggs Bank, HSBC, etc.) produced massive human rights violations, transnational
terrorism and governmental corruption. The CIA's secret wars provided funds and official cover for private-public sector alliance
of criminals, bankers and spooks around the world.
This "dark alliance" assumed a political and economic life of its own beyond its original intent to counter communist movements.
By the Vietnam War, Agency operators were running most of the heroin trade in the world through proprietary airlines, banks and
logistics companies. In the mid-1970s, CIA Director Bush expanded privatization with Saudi funding in his Safari Club deal that
eventually morphed into Al Qaeda and ISIS.
The CIA, MI6 and Mossad ran overlapping coordinated operations using privateers, paramilitaries and organized crime networks
that consumed vast amounts of cash generated by money laundering mechanisms. Enriched by the looting of the former Soviet Union,
along with the infusion of Arab oil money (the Saudi Yamamah slush fund), the "Octopus" became the instrument of Oligarchs
that have thoroughly corrupted western governments and secret services.
Multinational honey trap operations such as Maxwell-Epstein & Co. are an inevitable and continuing part of this privatization
and criminalization of intelligence that stretches back to the days of Tom Braden and Cord Meyer handing out stacks of greenbacks
to Mafiosi on the Corsican Docks.
The Snowden release included a number of documents that illustrate the on-line entrapment and political disruption activities
run by the two main communications intelligence agencies.
"Honey-trap; a great option. Very successful, when it works" (GCHQ, UK training program slide)
Without quoting the whole thing (which is worth a read):
Epstein recruits young girls, throws parties where he invites potential hedge fund clients, lets nature take its course
and films the proceedings, extracts blackmail in the form of investments to his (largely fake) hedge fund, which actually just
buys an index fund (no actual fund management required). He takes a percentage from the coerced investments. Nobody talks because
they have too much to lose. No suspicious payments to raise eyebrows at the IRS.
There's no need to invoke the Mafia/Russia/Mossad/CIA/etc, that's just needlessly overfitting.
Except such an operation would be quite attractive to intelligence services. Maybe they were in on the ground floor, maybe
they made Epstein an offer he couldn't refuse once they heard about it.
Epstein brought in the clients. The CIA/MI-6/Mossad provided necessary cover from the FBI and local cops - then,
three or four agencies shared the intelligence take, as they had for decades from Robert Maxwell's operations.
For Ghislaine, it was simply carrying on the family business for fun and profit. For the spooks, it was business as usual
going back to the Green House, the Berlin bordello founded in the the 1870s by Wilhelm Steiber, a Prussian Police section chief,
to provide useful intelligence to Bismarck's Military Intelligence, which he reorganized.
Steiber is considered the father of modern espionage. His methods were vastly influential, and he attracted students from London,
St. Petersburg to Tokyo. Each put their own national spin on the science of sexual blackmail. As for the Japanese, they are among
the most interesting and innovative in their use of a parallel network of privatized intelligence services incorporating underworld
Yakuzi groups alongside conventional military intelligence units. Using compromise, they gained and maintained control over Imperial
Japan and its Colonies: https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2019/03/15/eastern-peril/
To realize these divinely inspired ambitions, Japan needed a modern espionage system. Adopting the German model, Japanese
officials were sent to study under Wilhelm Stieber in the mid-1870s. Over the next decade Japan built up separate army and
naval intelligence services, each with an accompanying branch of secret military police (Kempeitai for the army and Tokeitai
for the navy). These latter organizations also provided an excellent counter-espionage service. However, where the Japanese
were unique was in the use of spies belonging to unofficial secret societies working alongside or independently of the official
intelligence agencies. These shadowy institutions were ultra-nationalist by nature, drawing their membership from a cross-section
of Japanese society, including the military, politics, industry and Yakuza underworld. Under ruthless leadership, their henchmen
would spy on, subvert and corrupt Japan's Far East neighbours.
For more on Steiber and his superior, von Hinckeldey, methods of international counter-insurgency, espionage, and political
policing included deception and a forerunner of today's internet surveillance:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2006/11/29/275653/-
While armies are essential to the maintenance of autocracy, the preservation of dynastic rule and the prevention of democracy
requires an effective secret police. The suppression of its middle-class constitutionalists [during the 1840s] was followed
by the expansion of the Prussian political police under Karl Ludwig Friedrich von Hinckeldey.
Appointed police president of Berlin in late 1848, Hinckeldey was an innovator of many of the features of modern systematic
political policing. Among the tactics that he introduced with his new police system in Berlin was the "Litfass columns". Named
for Ernst Litfass, Frederick William's court printer, he had dozens of these large poles erected in strategic spots around
Berlin. The public posting of political notices was then banned. By application to a state office for a waiver, however, the
columns could be used to display messages. The police dutifully recorded the names of all who had applied. A. Richie, Faust's
Metropolis: A History of Berlin, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1998 at p.134.
LEGACY OF THE LITFASS COLUMNS: A similar ploy was later adopted by the People's Republic of China. In the mid-1980s, the
Communist authorities at first appear to tolerate the operation of a so-called Democracy Wall, where "dissidents" in Beijing
could post political writings, initially, without being arrested. Similar walls then sprung up under the noses of the authorities
in other Chinese cities. For this apparent opening to democracy, the Deng regime much applauded, particularly by some in the
Reagan-Bush Administration, eager to legitimize the regime and its growing commercial ties with U.S. corporations. Eventually,
many of those who had availed themselves of the wall to post political messages were, of course, arrested in the roundup of
hundreds of thousands of democracy supporters that followed the Tienamen Square massacre. The impression of anonymity and "freedom"
conveyed by the Internet, of course, presents a similar opportunity for police to cast a wide net for identifying persons and
organizations who may not hold favor for the regime in power, or may not in the future.
Hinckeldey also founded the Police Union, the first recorded international network of counterrevolutionary police spies
in modern times. Primarily made up of police officers from Prussia and the German states, the Union operated throughout Europe,
Britain and in the United States. The Union was run by his deputy, the notorious police provocateur, Wilhelm Steiber, who would
later reorganize the Okhrana along similar lines. Internationally active from 1851-1866, the Police Union, according to Mathieu
Deflem, was "one of the first formal initiatives in industrial society to establish an organized police system across national
borders."13
I disagree with the Alternet view on this. See, this is the norm. A purely private sexual blackmail ring of any scale would
be the historical exception. It certainly wouldn't survive very long.
...authorities at first appear to tolerate the operation of a so-called Democracy Wall, where "dissidents" in Beijing could
post political writings.... Similar walls then sprung up under the noses of the authorities in other Chinese cities. Eventually,
many of those who had availed themselves of the wall to post political messages were, of course, arrested in the roundup of
hundreds of thousands of democracy supporters....
The impression of anonymity and "freedom" conveyed by the Internet, of course, presents a similar opportunity for police
to cast a wide net for identifying persons and organizations who may not hold favor for the regime in power, or may not in
the future.
But why should one avoid the thought? If the situation looks like the people are going to lose the war for their minds, and
are unwilling to back a publisher like Assange who has given his all to try to empower them, why should anyone put themselves
at risk by expressing their opinions? It's a honeypot of our own making, just as Facebook is where people go to write their own
dossiers for the Authorities.
@Pluto's Republic an enemy of the status quo, you raise the calculated costs of the eventual crackdown, pushing back the
day of reckoning. Keep it up! Visible rebellion is the only defense of the people.
...from which to leverage access to the elite, Harvard University would be a top choice.
Jeffery Epstein actually entered the social salons of the elite through many doors. He was, of course, a member of the Council
on Foreign Relations. One would have to be to rub shoulders with the political elite. From there he matriculated to the Trilateral
Commission becoming friendly with Harvard President, Larry Summers. **
Becoming a surprise mystery philanthropist at Harvard, with Summers help, was a booster rocket for Epstein. In the Havard Crimson , in
June 2003, Epstein's involvement with Harvard was celebrated.
People in the News: Jeffrey E. Epstein
Elusive financier Jeffrey E. Epstein donated $30 million this year to Harvard for the founding of a mathematical biology
and evolutionary dynamics program.
While the mathematics teacher turned magnate remained unknown to most people until he flew President Clinton, Kevin
Spacey and Chris Tucker to Africa to explore the problems of AIDS and economic development facing the region, Epstein
has been a familiar face to many at Harvard for years.
Networking with the University's leading intellectuals, Epstein has spurred research through both discussions with and dollars
contributed to various faculty members.
Lindsley Professor of Psychology Stephen M. Kosslyn, former Dean of the Faculty Henry A. Rosovsky and Frankfurter Professor
of Law Alan M. Dershowitz are among Epstein's bevy of eminent friends that includes princes, presidents and Nobel
Prize winners.
Epstein is also well acquainted with University President Lawrence H. Summers. The two serve together on the Trilateral
Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, two elite international relations organizations.
Epstein's collection of high-profile friends also includes newly-recruited professor Martin A. Nowak, who will run Harvard's
mathematical biology and evolutionary dynamics program.
Like Kosslyn, Rosovsky and Dershowitz, Nowak praises Epstein's numerous relationships within the scientific community.
"I am amazed by the connections he has in the scientific world," Nowak says. "He knows an amazing number of scientists.
He knows everyone you can imagine."
Epstein's relationships within the academy are remarkable since the tycoon, who has amassed his fortune by managing
the wealth of billionaires from his private Caribbean island, does not hold a bachelor's degree.
Yet, friends and beneficiaries say they do not see Epstein merely as a man with deep pockets, but as an intellectual equal.
Dershowitz says Epstein is "brilliant" and Kosslyn calls Epstein "one of the brightest people I've ever known."
Epstein's beneficiaries say they are particularly appreciative of the no-strings-attached approach Epstein takes with his
donations.
"He is one of the most pleasant philanthropists," Nowak says. "Unlike many people who support science, he supports science
without any conditions. There are not any disadvantages to associating with him."
Friends and associates say Harvard stands to benefit from its evolving relationship with Epstein.
"I hope that he will, over time, become one of the leading supporters of science at Harvard," Rosovsky writes in an e-mail.
__________________________________________
** A footnote on Larry Summers seems important here:
Harvard-trained economists have been running the US economy for a very long time, and continue to do so. Summers began his ascent
as a professor of economics at Harvard University, leaving shortly before Bill Clinton won the Presidency. He was clearly the
Neoliberal seed planted for the New American Century.
In 1993, Summers was appointed Undersecretary for International Affairs of the United States Department of the Treasury
under the Clinton Administration. In 1995, he was promoted to Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under his long-time political
mentor Robert Rubin. In 1999, he succeeded Rubin as Secretary of the Treasury.
While working for the Clinton administration Summers played a leading role in the American response to the 1994 economic
crisis in Mexico, the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and the Russian financial crisis. He was also influential in the Harvard
Institute for International Development and American-advised privatization of the economies of the post-Soviet states, and
in the deregulation of the U.S financial system, including the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.
At This Point the Ball is Passed to the Bush Team Republicans, while the Democrats Sit Back and Wait for 2008.
There's now a Treasury surplus to transfer to the wealthy, and the necessary deregulation for Wall Street empowerment is in
place. The Soviet era had ended and Russia is ended forever. The world is finally primed to be seized by the One Exceptional Power.
It's 2001, and we are standing on the threshold of the New American Century . Time to throw a flash-bang of chaos onto the world
stage and trigger the booming War Economy that will carry us directly to global control.
There's a rocky road ahead for Larry Summers. Summers introduces Epstein into the Harvard fold, but becomes reckless with
his newly-refined Neoliberalism and his opinions concerning "lady scholars."
Following the end of Clinton's term, Summers served as the 27th President of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006.
Summers resigned as Harvard's president in the wake of a no-confidence vote by Harvard faculty, which resulted in large part
from Summers's conflict with Cornel West, financial conflict of interest questions regarding his relationship with Andrei Shleifer,
and a 2005 speech in which he suggested that the under-representation of women in science and engineering could be due to a
"different availability of aptitude at the high end", and less to patterns of discrimination and socialization. Remarking upon
political correctness in institutions of higher education, Summers said in 2016:
Summers resigned as Harvard's president in the wake of a no-confidence vote by Harvard faculty, which resulted in large
part from Summers's conflict with Cornel West, financial conflict of interest questions regarding his relationship with
Andrei Shleifer, and a 2005 speech in which he suggested that the under-representation of women in science and engineering
There is a great deal of absurd political correctness. Now, I'm somebody who believes very strongly in diversity, who
resists racism in all of its many incarnations, who thinks that there is a great deal that's unjust in American society
that needs to be combated, but it seems to be that there is a kind of creeping totalitarianism in terms of what kind of
ideas are acceptable and are debatable on college campuses.
After his departure from Harvard, Summers cooled his jets on Wall Street, positioning himself to be called back into the game
when it was Team Democrat's turn in 2008.
Summers worked as a managing partner at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw & Co., and as a freelance speaker at other financial institutions,
including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers. Summers rejoined public service during
the Obama administration, serving as the Director of the White House United States National Economic Council for President
Barack Obama from January 2009 until November 2010, where he emerged as a key economic decision-maker in the Obama administration's
response to the Great Recession.
Jeffery Epstein continued to weave himself into the fabric of government like a good psychopath would. He was by no means the
only one.
"... Former Russiagate special counsel Robert Mueller's appearance before the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on Wednesday was an exercise by the Democrats of trying to extract statements that would keep Russiagate alive and an attempt by the Republicans to finish off the story once and for all. ..."
"... Appearing to be feigning, or actually suffering early signs of senility, the nearly 75-year old Mueller disappointed both parties and the public. He declined to answer 198 questions, according to a count by NBC News. When he did answer he was often barely intelligible and mostly stuck to what was in his final report, though he often had to fumble through pages to find passages he could not recall, eating into committee members' five-minute time limit. ..."
"... Among the inaccuracies about Russiagate that were recycled at the hearing is that the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency spent $1.25 million in the United States to influence the election. That figure belonged to a unit that acted worldwide, not just in the U.S., according to Mueller's indictment . In fact it only spent $100,000 on Facebook ads, half coming after the election, and as even Mueller pointed out, some were anti-Trump. ..."
"... Cambridge Analytica , by contrast, had 5,000 data points on 240 million Americans, some of it bought from Facebook, that gave an enormous advantage for targeted ads to the Trump campaign, which says it put out 5.9 million Facebook ads based on this data. It paid at least $5.9 million to the company co-founded by Trump's campaign strategist Steve Bannon. But we are supposed to believe that a comparatively paltry number of social media messages from the IRA threw the election. ..."
"... Pointing to a CNN headline that had just appeared, "MUELLER: TRUMP WAS NOT EXONERATED," Turner said: "What you know is, that this can't say, 'Mueller exonerated Trump,' because you don't have the power or authority to exonerate Trump. You have no more power to declare him exonerated than you have the power to declare him Anderson Cooper." ..."
"... Turner said: "The statement about exoneration is misleading, and it's meaningless. It colors this investigation -- one word of out the entire portion of your report. And it's a meaningless word that has no legal meaning, and it has colored your entire report." ..."
"... Consortium News ..."
"... Russiagate relies on deep delusion and deep irrational prejudices. It's perhaps comparable to the Dreyfus Affair. ..."
"... Mueller knows he as a supposed attorney officer of the court was completely unprofessional in his words actions and mostly inactions towards obvious fraud and conspiracy of MI5 and the entire DNC. ..."
"... I think it is a profound error to view Russiagate as Democrats v. Republicans. It is Washington insiders versus outsiders, establishment versus non-establishment, Washington bureaucracy against the rest of the country, Deep State versus the will of the voters. The same kind of sham investigation would be occurring if it had been outsider Sanders winning in 2016 as opposed to outsider Trump. ..."
"... I think there is so much networked crime and mutual blackmail in the US government that nothing will ever be done about this ..."
Democrats Blowing on Embers With a Politicized Mueller July 25, 2019 •
123 Comments
Robert Mueller appeared to have difficulty understanding and answering questions during his
day-long hearings on Wednesday but snapped to attention to make political points, says Joe
Lauria.
Former Russiagate special counsel Robert Mueller's appearance before the
Democratic-controlled House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on Wednesday was an exercise
by the Democrats of trying to extract statements that would keep Russiagate alive and an
attempt by the Republicans to finish off the story once and for all.
Appearing to be feigning, or actually suffering early signs of senility, the nearly 75-year
old Mueller disappointed both parties and the public. He declined to answer 198 questions,
according to a count by NBC News. When
he did answer he was often barely intelligible and mostly stuck to what was in his final
report, though he often had to fumble through pages to find passages he could not recall,
eating into committee members' five-minute time limit.
Mueller especially refused to comment on the process of his investigation, such as who he
did or did not interview, what countries his investigators visited and he even dodged
discussing some relevant points of law. It was an abdication of his responsibility to U.S.
taxpayers who footed his roughly $30-million, 22-month probe.
But when it came to making political statements, the former FBI director suddenly
rediscovered his mental acuity. He went way beyond his report to say, without prosecutorial
evidence, that he agreed with the assessment of then CIA Director Mike Pompeo that
WikiLeaks is a "non-state, hostile intelligence agency."
Mueller called "illegal" WikiLeak 's obtaining the Podesta and DNC emails, an act
of journalism. In the 2016 election, the Espionage Act would not apply as the DNC and Podesta
emails were not classified. Nor has WikiLeaks been accused by anyone of stealing the
emails. And yet the foremost law enforcement figure in the U.S. accused WikiLeaks of
breaking the law merely for publishing.
Though Mueller's report makes no mention of The Guardian 's tale that former Trump
campaign manager Paul Manafort visited WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange in the
Ecuadorian embassy, when questioned on this, Mueller refused to refute the story, for which
there isn't a scrap of evidence. That was another purely political and not legal intervention
from the lawman.
Russia, Russia, Russia
Mueller: Came to when he wanted to make a political point. (C-Span screenshot)
While Mueller concluded there was no evidence of a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump
campaign to throw the 2016 election, he has not let up on the most politicized part of his
message: that Russia interfered "massively" in "our democracy" and is still doing it. There was
no waffling from Mueller when it came to this question.
He bases this on his indictment of 12 GRU Russian military intelligence agents whom he
alleges hacked the DNC emails and transmitted them to WikiLeaks . Mueller knows those
agents will never be arrested and brought to a courtroom to have his charges tested. In that
sense the indictment was less a legal than a
political document.
Among the inaccuracies about Russiagate that were recycled at the hearing is that the St.
Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency spent $1.25 million in the United States to influence
the election. That figure belonged to a unit that acted worldwide, not just in the U.S.,
according to Mueller's indictment . In fact it only spent $100,000
on Facebook ads, half coming after the election, and as even Mueller pointed out, some were
anti-Trump.
Cambridge Analytica , by contrast, had 5,000 data points on 240 million Americans, some of
it bought from Facebook, that gave an enormous advantage for targeted ads to the Trump
campaign, which says it put out 5.9 million Facebook ads based on this data. It paid at
least $5.9 million to the company co-founded by Trump's campaign strategist Steve Bannon. But
we are supposed to believe that a comparatively paltry number of social media messages from the
IRA
threw the election.
Mueller implied in his testimony that there was a link between the IRA and the Russian
government despite an order from
a judge for him to stop making that connection. In focusing again on Russia, no member of
Congress from either party raised the content of the leaked emails.
For the Democrats especially, it is all about the source, who is irrelevant, since no one
disputes the accuracy of the emails that exposed Hillary Clinton. (That the source of authentic
documents is irrelevant is demonstrated by The Wall Street Journal and other major
media using anonymous drop boxes pioneered by WikiLeaks. ) Were a foreign power to
spread disinformation about candidates in a U.S. election (something the candidates do to each
other all the time) that would be sabotage. But the leaking and publication of the Clinton
emails was information valuable to American voters. And WikiLeaks would have published
Trump emails, but it never received any, Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson told Consortium New 's webcast
CN Live!
No Power to Exonerate
With "collusion" off the table, the Democrats have been obsessed with Trump allegedly
obstructing an investigation that found no underlying crime. That's something like being
arrested for resisting arrest when you've committed no other infraction.
In his morning testimony, Mueller amplified the misperception that the only reason he didn't
charge Trump with obstruction is because of a Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel policy
that a sitting president can't be indicted.
But then Mueller came back from a break in the hearing to issue a "correction." It was not
true that he had concluded there'd been obstruction but was blocked by the OLC policy, he said.
In fact he never concluded that there had been obstruction at all. "We didn't make a decision
about culpability," Mueller said. "We didn't go down that road."
Instead of leaving it at that, Mueller said in his report and testimony that Trump was not
"exonerated" of an obstruction charge. That led to blaring headlines Wednesday morning while
the hearing was still going on. "Trump was not exonerated by my report, Robert Mueller tells
Congress," said the BBC. "Mueller Report Did Not Exonerate Trump, Mueller Says," blared the
HuffPost .
But in what may have been the most embarrassing moment for Mueller, Republican Congressman
Michael Turner (R-OH) pointed out that a prosecutor does not have the power to exonerate
anyone. A prosecutor prosecutes.
Rep. Michael Turner
"Mr. Mueller, does the Attorney General have the power or authority to exonerate?" Turner
asked the witness. "What I'm putting up here is the United States code. This is where the
Attorney General gets his power. And the constitution .
"Mr. Mueller, nowhere in these [documents] is there a process or description on 'exonerate.'
There's no office of exoneration at the Attorney General's office. Mr. Mueller, would you agree
with me that the Attorney General does not have the power to exonerate?"
"I'm going to pass on that," Mueller replied.
"Why?" Turner asked.
"Because it embroils us in a legal discussion, and I'm not prepared to do a legal discussion
in that arena," Mueller said.
Pointing to a CNN headline that had just appeared, "MUELLER: TRUMP WAS NOT EXONERATED,"
Turner said: "What you know is, that this can't say, 'Mueller exonerated Trump,' because you
don't have the power or authority to exonerate Trump. You have no more power to declare him
exonerated than you have the power to declare him Anderson Cooper."
Turner said: "The statement about exoneration is misleading, and it's meaningless. It colors
this investigation -- one word of out the entire portion of your report. And it's a meaningless
word that has no legal meaning, and it has colored your entire report."
Who is a Spy for Whom?
Mueller also took a pass every time the Steele dossier was raised, which it first was by
Rep. David Nunes (R-CA):
"Despite acknowledging dossier allegations as being salacious and unverified, former FBI
Director James Comey briefed those allegations to President Obama and President-elect Trump.
Those briefings conveniently leaked to the press, resulting in the publication of the dossier
and launching thousands of false press stories based on the word of a foreign ex-spy, one who
admitted he was desperate that Trump lose the election and who was eventually fired as an FBI
source for leaking to the press.
"And the entire investigation was open based not on Five Eyes intelligence, but on a tip
from a foreign politician about a conversation involving Joseph Mifsud. He's a Maltese
diplomat who's widely portrayed as a Russian agent, but seems to have for more connections
with Western governments, including our own FBI and our own State Department, than with
Russia."
Mueller admitted that though Mifsud lied to the FBI he never charged him as he had others.
When Nunes pointed out to Mueller that Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort business associate, whom
Mueller's report identifies as having ties to Russian intelligence, was actually a U.S. State
Department
asset , Mueller refused to comment saying he was "loath" to get into it.
This Schiff Has Sailed
The chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff (D-CA) used the word "lies" 19 times
in his opening statement, which contained at least that many.
The central one was this:
"Your investigation determined that the Trump campaign, including Donald Trump himself,
knew that a foreign power was intervening in our election and welcomed it, built Russian
meddling into their strategy and used it.
Disloyalty to country. Those are strong words, but how else are we to describe a
presidential campaign which did not inform the authorities of a foreign offer of dirt on
their opponent, which did not publicly shun it or turn it away, but which instead invited it,
encouraged it and made full use of it?"
Schiff reluctantly admitted that no Trump conspiracy with Russia was uncovered, but said the
"crime" of disloyalty was even worse.
"Disloyalty to country violates the very oath of citizenship, our devotion to a core
principle on which our nation was founded that we, the people and not some foreign power that
wishes us ill, we decide who governs us," said Schiff. It was pure fantasy.
Mueller should have taken a pass on that one too.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent
forThe Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe,Sunday Timesof London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at[email protected]and followed on Twitter@unjoe.
Zhu , July 26, 2019 at 21:43
Cratulus, it's Deep State faction vs Deep State faction. Why? Power, moner, sex, like
Genghis Khan's wars.
Zhu , July 26, 2019 at 21:36
Russiagate relies on deep delusion and deep irrational prejudices. It's perhaps comparable
to the Dreyfus Affair.
Brad Smith , July 26, 2019 at 14:42
"Exoneration Law and Legal Definition. Exoneration refers to a court order that discharges
a person from liability. In criminal context the term exonerate refers to a state where a
person convicted of a crime is later proved to be innocent. The term exoneration is also
referred in the context of surety bail bonds."
Exoneration Law and Legal Definition | USLegal, Inc.
You must first be convicted, then you may be exonerated. Conversely there is no need to be
exonerated from a non-conviction. A non-conviction is simply "The state of innocence" which
is what everyone is always assumed to be in.
You literally can not be exonerated in any legal sense of the term, until after you have
been convicted. That is simply a fact. It is 100% impossible to legally exonerate anyone
until after they have been convicted.
(Don't any of these talking heads on TV or congress own a legal dictionary?)
Trump who is not a lawyer used the term in it's colloquial form. ie; I was exonerated in
the eyes of the public. Mueller and everyone else is conflating the colloquial with the legal
and you can't tell me that this is done on accident or out of ignorance of the law.
There is in fact a legal definition for Exoneration and even a process by which it takes
place, so why doesn't anyone actually use the legal definition or talk about what actually
takes place when an exoneration happens? If they did it would certainly clear up any
misunderstanding rather quickly, right?
Sadly, the answer is simple; they choose to obfuscate instead of clearing this up.
Conflating the legal with the colloquial allows them to keep many aspects of this hoax alive
or at least to cover up what a complete failure it was. It keeps a cloud over Trump as well,
etc. etc. so there is plenty of motive to keep people confused about this issue.
So one more time; A legal exoneration is what happens when exculpatory evidence leads to
the overturning of a conviction. There is no such thing as a legal exoneration in any
criminal proceeding in America that takes place before a conviction.
It is in fact a legal impossibility for Mueller to exonerate Trump and Mueller could have
cleared this up by simply reading from any Law Dictionary.
Cratylus , July 26, 2019 at 13:42
P.S. Now that the dust has settled, one must ask why the Deep State wanted Trump gone. Why
does the Establishment hate him so much? Certainly it is partly a question of "style" or
proper upper middle class behavior. But Bush II was also "guilty" of that and did not inspire
nearly the intensity of blind hatred that has targeted Trump from on high.
Trump committed an unforgivable sin in suggesting we "get along with Russia." That was to
be the beginning of a different foreign policy. Those who cannot genuinely admit this that
Trump was heading the US in a better direction at least in this one area are also extremely
afflicted by TDS. And I notice that the malady continues to afflict many of those who have
integrity to see through Russiagate. It is time to wake up to this fact and make the measure
of Trump his actions which are different in different areas.
Mueller did seem to be senile which leads one to the conclusion that he could not have
been genuinely in charge of the investigation. So the Hillaryite lawyers surrounding him must
have been manipulating him, or "operating" him to use an FBI term.
But if one wished to ascribe extreme deviousness to Mueller and company, perhaps he was
feigning senility to get off the hook when and if Barr uncovers the entire plot, for
conspiracy there surely was given the giant two+ year fizzle this has turned out to be.
Either way Barr has a big job on his hands.
Truth , July 26, 2019 at 12:10
Mueller the deep stater, as Clinton Kerry Obama Comey Rosenstein Podesta Schumer Pelosi
Feinstein, Romney, Dole, bush, families and all the rest since 1904 Rockefeller Plan for
America was published, as prequel to Rhodes "new world order" 1898, are being revealed in the
same media that they have used since American communist party creation of Hollywood. Of
course it was only done during lowest viewing time of the month to minimize the majority of
those who still stupidly watch tv and then vote based on it.
Mueller knows he as a supposed attorney officer of the court was completely
unprofessional in his words actions and mostly inactions towards obvious fraud and conspiracy
of MI5 and the entire DNC. Which makes him an accessory during the facts. His statements
against the unexplained "TRUMP CAMPAIGN" had no legal basis . Were only trigger words for the
intentionally ignorant TV viewers.
I think it is a profound error to view Russiagate as Democrats v. Republicans. It is
Washington insiders versus outsiders, establishment versus non-establishment, Washington
bureaucracy against the rest of the country, Deep State versus the will of the voters. The
same kind of sham investigation would be occurring if it had been outsider Sanders winning in
2016 as opposed to outsider Trump.
Linda Doucett , July 25, 2019 at 11:17
Yes, we can all agree that Trump is not fit. That fact does not legitimize the other
actors in this farce. The destruction of the Republic began a long time ago and will not end
until the global playing field has been leveled. As for who put Trump in office? only the
purposely obtuse believe it eas Russia. Every move Trump has made in office has been to
appease his Zionist masters.
Sam F , July 25, 2019 at 20:42
There is an interesting lead, that the Republic cannot be restored "until the global
playing field has been leveled." Curious what modes or means of leveling you may have
considered?
Brennan is a criminal .who lied and tortured and mass murdered people
JDD , July 25, 2019 at 10:40
The bumbling, stumbling testimony by a supposedly top prosecutor was an embarrassment to
any unbiased observor. The fact that Mueller was ignorant of the basic facts of his own
report, even stating that he was unfamiliar with Fusion GPS, makes clear that the
investigation and report bearing his name was actualy the work product of the Trump-hating
fanatics of his handpicked legal team, led by Andrew Weissman. That the investigation and its
product was never anything but a witch hunt, as the president has stated, was clear from the
series of lies, ommissions and frameups which characterized the entire investition, which
Mueller could not substantiate or even simply articulate. However, the irreparable damage
done to the president's promise of cooperation with Russia was in no small part due to the
cowardice showed by Republican acceptance of the big lie of "sweeping and systematic Russian
interference" on which they doubled down in yesterday's drama. The actual collusion, which
was between British intelligence and the Clinton Campaign/ Obama administration, to frame
Trump as a Russian agent-of-influence and to overturn the results of the 2016 election, was
not exposed and the opportunity missed to to further the process of dismantling that
treasonous apparatus, often erroneously referred to as "the deep state."
LJ , July 25, 2019 at 10:38
Quite a few people couldn't help but notice that the country was shifting into a
dis-informational mode several years ago. So much for the Information Age, the Internet and
hand held ( communication ) devices to increase awareness. It was noticed by some folks even
here at CN that tendencies had come ito play that were reminiscent of Orwell's dystopian yet
fictional accounts in the novel 1984. This entire Russiagate episode could just as easily
have come from 1984's Ministry of Information as our own Intelligence Services and might have
been just as boring if it had . Meanwhile us , prols, just go with the flow and don't really
care. Are things that much different than they have ever been? I rem,ember the Waterdate
hearings and the Iran-Contra Hearings, Ken Starr's Investigation. I'm a little to young to
remember the Warren Commission or Senator Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare but I do remember
the 9/11 Commission and WMGs in Iraq.. I remember wrote a paper on Propaganda films in WW II.
Is this episode really all that different?
Eric32 , July 25, 2019 at 10:38
The Russia interference hoax has been extremely successful.
It has dangerously damaged US-Russian relations, and it has done the same to internal
American politics.
But it has successfully diverted attention and investigation of Hillary Clinton's
incompetence and corruption.
There's a pool of international and domestic corruption involving the phony Clinton
foundation, paid "speeches", "contributions", money flowing to the Clintons that took them
from being deep in debt, to having a net worth of a couple hundred million dollars.
I think there is so much networked crime and mutual blackmail in the US government
that nothing will ever be done about this .
"... His investigation was about protecting the actual miscreants in the collusion hoax. ..."
"... It's now clear it was equally about protecting the actual miscreants behind the Russia-collusion hoax. ..."
"... The most notable aspect of the Mueller report was always what it omitted: the origins of this mess. Christopher Steele's dossier was central to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's probe, the basis of many of the claims of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. Yet the Mueller authors studiously wrote around the dossier, mentioning it only in perfunctory terms. ..."
"... The report ignored Mr. Steele's paymaster, Fusion GPS, and its own ties to Russians. It also ignored Fusion's paymaster, the Clinton campaign, and the ugly politics behind the dossier hit job ..."
"... Mr. Mueller's testimony this week put to rest any doubt that this sheltering was deliberate. ..."
"... Mr. Mueller claimed he couldn't answer questions about the dossier because it "predated" his tenure and is the subject of a Justice Department investigation. These excuses are disingenuous. Nearly everything Mr. Mueller investigated predated his tenure, and there's no reason the Justice Department probe bars Mr. Mueller from providing a straightforward, factual account of his team's handling of the dossier. ..."
"... If anything, Mr. Mueller had an obligation to answer those questions, since they go to the central failing of his own probe. As Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz asked Mr. Mueller, how could a special-counsel investigation into "Russia's interference" have any credibility if it failed to look into whether the Steele dossier was itself disinformation from Moscow? ..."
"... Mr. Gaetz asked: "Did Russians really tell that to Christopher Steele, or did he just make it up and was he lying to the FBI?" ..."
"... Republicans asked basic questions about the report's conclusions or analysis, and Mr. Mueller dodged and weaved and refused to avoid answering questions about the FBI's legwork, the dossier's role and Fusion's involvement. ..."
"... California Rep. Devin Nunes asked several questions about one of the men at the epicenter of the "collusion" conspiracy -- academic Joseph Mifsud, whom former FBI Director Jim Comey has tried to paint as a Russian agent. Mr. Mueller: "I am not going to speak to the series of happenings as you articulated them." ..."
"... The Mueller team, rather than question the FBI's actions, went out of its way to build on them. That's how we ended up with tortured plea agreements for process crimes from figures like former Trump aide George Papadopoulos and former national security adviser Michael Flynn. They were peripheral figures in an overhyped drama, who nonetheless had to be scalped to legitimize the early actions of Mr. Comey & Co. Mr. Mueller inherited the taint, and his own efforts were further tarnished. That accounts for Mr. Mueller's stonewalling. ..."
"... That's been the story all along. Mr. Comey hid his actions from Congress; the Justice Department and FBI worked overtime to obstruct Republican-led congressional probes; and Mr. Mueller and his team are clearly playing their own important role in hiding the truth. The Mueller testimony only highlights how important it is that Attorney General William Barr is finally pursuing accountability. ..."
His investigation was about protecting the actual miscreants in the collusion hoax.
Special counsel
Robert Mueller testified before two House committees Wednesday, and his performance requires us
to look at his investigation and report in a new light. We've been told it was solely about
Russian electoral interference and obstruction of justice. It's now clear it was equally about
protecting the actual miscreants behind the Russia-collusion hoax.
The most notable aspect of
the Mueller report was always what it omitted: the origins of this mess. Christopher Steele's
dossier was central to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's probe, the basis of many of the
claims of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. Yet the Mueller authors studiously
wrote around the dossier, mentioning it only in perfunctory terms.
The report ignored Mr.
Steele's paymaster, Fusion GPS, and its own ties to Russians. It also ignored Fusion's
paymaster, the Clinton campaign, and the ugly politics behind the dossier hit job.
Mr. Mueller's testimony this week put to rest any doubt that this sheltering was deliberate.
In his opening statement he declared that he would not "address questions about the opening of
the FBI's Russia investigation, which occurred months before my appointment, or matters related
to the so-called Steele Dossier." The purpose of those omissions was obvious, as those two
areas go to the heart of why the nation has been forced to endure years of collusion
fantasy.
Mr. Mueller claimed he couldn't answer questions about the dossier because it "predated" his
tenure and is the subject of a Justice Department investigation. These excuses are
disingenuous. Nearly everything Mr. Mueller investigated predated his tenure, and there's no
reason the Justice Department probe bars Mr. Mueller from providing a straightforward, factual
account of his team's handling of the dossier.
If anything, Mr. Mueller had an obligation to answer those questions, since they go to the
central failing of his own probe. As Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz asked Mr. Mueller, how could a
special-counsel investigation into "Russia's interference" have any credibility if it failed to
look into whether the Steele dossier was itself disinformation from Moscow? Mr. Steele
acknowledges that senior Russian officials were the source of his dossier's claims of an
"extensive conspiracy." Given that no such conspiracy actually existed, Mr. Gaetz asked: "Did
Russians really tell that to Christopher Steele, or did he just make it up and was he lying to
the FBI?"
Mr. Mueller surreally responded: "As I said earlier, with regard to Steele, that is beyond
my purview."
So it went throughout the whole long day. Republicans asked basic questions about the
report's conclusions or analysis, and Mr. Mueller dodged and weaved and refused to avoid
answering questions about the FBI's legwork, the dossier's role and Fusion's involvement. Ohio
Rep. Steve Chabot asked how the report could have neglected to mention Fusion's ties to a
Russian company and lawyer. Mr. Mueller: "Outside my purview." California Rep. Devin Nunes
asked several questions about one of the men at the epicenter of the "collusion" conspiracy --
academic Joseph Mifsud, whom former FBI Director Jim Comey has tried to paint as a Russian
agent. Mr. Mueller: "I am not going to speak to the series of happenings as you articulated
them."
Then again, how could he? The Mueller team, rather than question the FBI's actions, went out
of its way to build on them. That's how we ended up with tortured plea agreements for process
crimes from figures like former Trump aide George Papadopoulos and former national security
adviser Michael Flynn. They were peripheral figures in an overhyped drama, who nonetheless had
to be scalped to legitimize the early actions of Mr. Comey & Co. Mr. Mueller inherited the
taint, and his own efforts were further tarnished. That accounts for Mr. Mueller's
stonewalling.
The special counsel's often befuddled testimony has predictably raised questions about how
in control he was of the 22-month investigation or the writing of the report. Yet in some ways
it matters little whether it was Mr. Mueller calling the shots, or "pit bull" Andrew Weissmann,
or Mr. Mueller's congressional minder, Aaron Zebley. All three spent years in the Justice
Department-FBI hierarchy, as did many of the other prosecutors and agents on the probe. That
institutional crew early on made the calculated decision to shelter the FBI, the Justice
Department, outside private actors, and leading Democrats from any scrutiny of their own
potential involvement with 2016 Russian election interference.
That's been the story all along. Mr. Comey hid his actions from Congress; the Justice
Department and FBI worked overtime to obstruct Republican-led congressional probes; and Mr.
Mueller and his team are clearly playing their own important role in hiding the truth. The
Mueller testimony only highlights how important it is that Attorney General William Barr is
finally pursuing accountability.
On one hand Mueller supported and promoted the witch hunt which is the Russiagate. On the other water suddenly became a little bit
hot for him and his henchmen as there is a slight chance that Barr is not joking.
Mueller is the first prosecutor in the history of Justice Department who claimed that he does not exonerate the falsely accused
of Russian connections President. Which is 100% pure McCartuism-style witch hunt. Of course as he supported Iraw WDM and presided over
Anthrax investigation (or cover up to be more correct) this is easy for him to be legal innovator in this area.
Notable quotes:
"... the report was clear that members of Trump's team had been encouraged to lie to investigators, and this had been widely reported throughout the media and in several books. ..."
"... On many important questions, Mueller stated that he could not comment because those matters were under investigation by other departments, or they were not "in my purview." That was his response to questions about the Steele report and the FISA warrant used to spy on the Trump campaign, which are under investigation by the Department of Justice. But he also responded this way to questions on the Russia investigation. How can the special prosecutor charged with investigating whether Russia interfered with our elections decline comment on the topic? ..."
"... Well that proves it, I guess. After all, did Mueller testify to Congress as to the extent of Iraq's much-vaunted WMD program, and lo! there it was(n't)! ..."
"... Or for that matter, Mueller claimed that Concord Management had ties to the Russian government. Turns out that he had no evidence for his claim. ..."
"... Mueller is the god that failed. The Democrats considered him their savior. It was "wait til the Mueller report". "Soon it will be Mueller time". "Just wait on Mueller, you'll see." ..."
"... Then, in the Mueller hearing they quoted scripture from the book of Mueller, asking their savior to provide more divine wisdom on the scripture. But he was no god. He was a human whose mental faculties had declined due to the aging process all of us mortals must endure. And it became abundantly clear that he had been just a figurehead in a witch hunt by radical major Democratic party donor prosecutors. Mueller was shamelessly used by morally bankrupt Democrat apparatchiks. ..."
"... To all the Mueller supporters, he couldn't even answer simple questions like "when did you and your team conclude there was no collusion/conspiracy with Russia?" ..."
"... That question 1) fell under his purview, 2) arose from the four corners of his report, 3) not in anyway prohibited by the DoJ directive and 4) not about something that would be easy to forget. ..."
"... Yet he refused to answer. Some stand up guy he is. ..."
That answer appears to directly contradict page 180 of the report which states, "As defined in legal dictionaries, collusion is
largely synonymous with conspiracy as that crime is set forth in the general federal conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. 371," Collins
pointed out.
"Are you sitting here today testifying something different than what your report states?"
Mueller stuttered and appeared confused, flipped to the relevant page of the report, and said that he would defer to the report.
Throughout the hearing, Democratic members would read the definition of corruption or obstruction and then try to get Mueller
to explain how various actions did not qualify or why the report did not reach a finding. Each time, Mueller declined to comment.
To say that watching his testimony was painful is an understatement.
In an exchange with Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) that exemplifies the entire hearing, the Pennsylvania Republican asked, "You
made a decision not to prosecute, right?"
"No, we made a decision not to decide whether to prosecute or not."
In the afternoon intelligence committee hearing, Rep. John Ratcliffe asked Mueller to clear up confusion regarding his morning
testimony, where he appeared to contradict the report on the question of whether he had whiffed on an indictment because the Office
of Legal Counsel said it was not possible to indict a sitting president.
"What I wanted to say [in the morning] is that we did not make any determination with regard to culpability, in any way. We did
not start that process, down the road," said Mueller.
But in his morning testimony before the House Judiciary committee, he said: "The president was not exculpated for the acts that
he allegedly committed."
See if you can make sense of this exchange:
Democratic Rep. Andre Carson: "Would you agree that these acts demonstrated a betrayal of the democratic values our country rests
on?"
Mueller: "I can't agree with that. Not that it's not true, but I cannot agree with it."
This was typical of Mueller's bizarre testimony throughout the day.
Democrats used the hearing to read huge portions of the report, as well as Donald Trump's tweets and campaign utterances, as if
somehow they were covering new ground. In one such exchange, a member asked: "Trump and his campaign welcomed and encouraged Russian
interference?"
Mueller: "Yes."
Question: "And then Trump and his campaign lied about it to cover it up?"
Mueller: "Yes."
Anyone who has followed news coverage of the Mueller report knows that line of questioning is not breaking new ground, as
the report was clear that members of Trump's team had been encouraged to lie to investigators, and this had been widely reported
throughout the media
and in several books.
Even so, Democrats persisted in reading publicly available Trump statements aloud. During his portion of time, Rep. Mike Quigley
chose to read Trump's
campaign trail
statements about Wikileaks .
"I love Wikileaks."
"This Wikileaks is like a treasure trove."
"Boy, I love reading those Wikileaks."
He then asked Mueller to react to Trump's statements. "Problematic is an understatement, in terms of giving some hope or some
boost to what is and should be illegal activity," Mueller said. Did we really need Mueller's opinion on Trump's statements uttered
on the stump, all of which were made before he was elected president? How is this type of commentary valuable?
On many important questions, Mueller stated that he could not comment because those matters were under investigation by other
departments, or they were not "in my purview." That was his response to questions about the Steele report and the FISA warrant used
to spy on the Trump campaign, which are under investigation by the Department of Justice. But he also responded this way to questions
on the Russia investigation. How can the special prosecutor charged with investigating whether Russia interfered with our elections
decline comment on the topic?
Congressional hearings aren't like a court room. There's no judge that can order an uncooperative witness to answer. That's one
of the many reasons that highly politicized Congressional hearings often quickly descend into kangaroo-court style bludgeoning of
the witness.
Yet today, because the confused witness appeared flummoxed by rapid-fire questions and by the contents of his own report, his
evasions and memory lapses instead undermined the credibility of the report itself, and had people questioning
whether Mueller had really led the investigation or not.
Barbara Boland is 's foreign policy and national security reporter. Follow her on Twitter
@BBatDC.
In reference to Russia meddling in the 2016 election, he specifically said that Russia had meddled in the past, Russia was meddling
as of right now, and Russia would continue to meddle in the future.
I guess that qualifies as having nothing to say about Russia meddling if you want to believe that he had nothing to say about
Russia meddling in our elections.
Well that proves it, I guess. After all, did Mueller testify to Congress as to the extent of Iraq's much-vaunted WMD program,
and lo! there it was(n't)!
Mueller is the god that failed. The Democrats considered him their savior. It was "wait til the Mueller report". "Soon it
will be Mueller time". "Just wait on Mueller, you'll see."
Then, in the Mueller hearing they quoted scripture from the book of Mueller, asking their savior to provide more divine
wisdom on the scripture. But he was no god. He was a human whose mental faculties had declined due to the aging process all of
us mortals must endure. And it became abundantly clear that he had been just a figurehead in a witch hunt by radical major Democratic
party donor prosecutors. Mueller was shamelessly used by morally bankrupt Democrat apparatchiks.
But they will not stop just because their god failed. They will find another god and keep right on investigating.
To all the Mueller supporters, he couldn't even answer simple questions like "when did you and your team conclude there was
no collusion/conspiracy with Russia?"
That question 1) fell under his purview, 2) arose from the four corners of his report, 3) not in anyway prohibited by the
DoJ directive and 4) not about something that would be easy to forget.
Yet he refused to answer. Some stand up guy he is.
Mueller came across as an old man.... muddling.... confused.... He was out of his depth. One would have to conclude that he is
not remotely credible based on his inability to answer questions and apparent ignorance of a report he is supposed to have
authored. Embarrassingly inept!
FFS, I live in the UK and even I have heard the link between Fusion GPS and the dodgy
dossier. Has Mueller been working alone in a cave or something? Has he tried Wikipedia?
le"> The had the lesson taught to them, but I seriously doubt that they learned
anything. I also think that Mueller was largely playing dumb. His job is to continue to raise
doubt, not to bring clarity. He is till doing a great job in that regards. I hope it leads to
jail time.
Mueller's playing dum to cover his own hide and the democraps should be ashamed wasting
tax payers money & that bringing the only work they done in 2 years corrupt sorry
individuals
Well worth watching this just for Tucker's superb commentary alone! With this Mueller
fiasco, a stake has been driven deep into the Deep State's heart.
I wish conservatives would stop understating Fusion GPS. "Fusion GPS is the arm of the
Clinton Campaign that colluded with a foreign agent, Christopher Steele, to work with
Russians to obtain opposition research against Trump"
I think Mueller was laying the groundwork for his upcoming trial. His lawyers will use a
defense claiming he's old possible dementia or alzheimer's disease.
Republicans have known for a long time that Mueller was not competent and even they were
shocked at this hearing. Just think how Democrats must be feeling after building him up for
three years as Captain America....LMFAO!
We learned Mueller never interviewed anyone or wrote his report. Who did? And what did he
do for 2 1/2 years besides drink? Also Volume 2 is all speculation of " sources" aka MSM
propaganda. A FAKE report of a FAKE investigation based on a FAKE dossier! 3 years of FAKE
NEWS ON A FAKE CLAIM!!!
Robert Mueller wasn't in charge of his own investigation. He was told who to hire and then
did zero work. He was a figure head. Someone to give credibility to an attempted coup.
Mueller seemed to be not aware of many details of the investigation done under his name.
He said he knew nothing about GPS, the company hired by the Clinton campaign to contract with MI6 agent Christopher Steele
to fabricate the 'dirty dossier'. There were lots of reports about GPS in the media and Mueller missed all of them?
He refused to answer why he did not indict Joseph Mifsud, a mysterious Maltese professor who planted the claim that 'Russia
has dirt on Hillary Clinton' with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos later repeated that claim. The FBI
then used that fact as the reason to launch its investigation against the Trump campaign. In his report Mueller claimed, without
showing evidence, that Mifsud worked for Russia. That is unlikely and there is actual evidence that he worked with the British
MI6.
Mifsud lied to the Mueller investigation. But unlike others witnesses who lied, Mueller never indicted him for making false
statements. He punted
on questions about this issue with multiple "Can't get into that."
He reacted
similar when he was asked about Christopher Steele, the British agent who created and peddled the fake 'dirty dossier'.
There is still another Justice Department investigation ongoing that will look at the whole Russia affair from a different
viewpoint. Was the FBI investigation into 'Russiagate' an illegal partisan effort to go after Trump? Who really initiate the whole
'Russiagate' campaign that seems to have been run by the British MI6? Was it John Brennan, Obama's CIA director, involved?
Little is known about that second investigation. It will hopefully come up with better evidence and results than the one Robert
Mueller led. the most lasting impact of Russiagate will be on free speech
Brennan no matter how you toss, turn, stretch, fold or slant it.
Brennan (and a small côterie around him) tried a 'lever-grab' when Trump won.
It got out of hand when the MSM ran away with it and Brennan was ex.
The only way to control this narrative was for Brennan remain in charge of it.
Hence his pundit role on CIA Network News.
It ain't rocket science.
Should they proceed with hearings on impeachment, they will divide their party, force their
presidential candidates to cease talking health care and start talking impeachment, and
probably fail.
Impeachment hearings would fire up the Republican base and energize the GOP minority to
prepare for combat in a Judiciary Committee where they are already celebrating having
eviscerated the prosecution's star witness.
If Democrats vote impeachment in committee, they will have to take it to the House floor,
where their moderates, who won in swing districts, will be forced to vote on it, splitting
their own bases in the run-up to the 2020 election.
If Democrats lose the impeachment vote on the House floor, it would be a huge setback. But
if they vote impeachment in the House, the trial takes place in a Senate run by Mitch
McConnell.
Trump would go into the 2020 battle against a Democratic Party that failed to overthrow the
president in a radical coup that it attempted because it was afraid to fight it out with the
president in a free and fair election.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made
and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.
Republicans raised questions about the origins of the investigation, tracing it back to
early 2016 when Maltese intelligence agent Joseph Mifsud leaked to a staffer of the Trump
campaign, George Papadopoulos, that Russia had Clinton's emails. That and subsequent
meetings have all the marks of an intel agency set-up.
That 'intel agency' ... is the CIA.
Repeatedly, Republicans brought up the dossier written by British spy Christopher Steele,
who fed Russian-sourced disinformation to Clinton campaign-financed intel firm, Fusion
GPS, who passed it on to the FBI, which used it as evidence to justify warrants to spy on
Trump's campaign.
Why introduce 'Russians' ... you said yourself, 'British' Spy. I'd be looking at
MI6.
If you read Papadopolous' book or better watch his long 2-part interview with Mark
Steyn, you will also learn the names Stefan Halper (CIA) and Alex Downer (Australia).
The dangerous part of 'Russiagate' is that it did not involve Russia at all. It was a
plot to influence the election (and later try to overturn it), by elements of the previous
US 'regime' in the CIA and FBI.
Whether you hate Trump or not, allowing this to go unpunished means we might as well
give up the last vestige of hope that we have a democracy at all.
"... He demonstrated a thin grasp of his own report's findings, even as he implored lawmakers in both parties to read it. He asked members of Congress to repeat their questions 48 times . ..."
"... That's not to say Mueller did nothing for Democrats. He said President Trump was not "exculpated" by his report. He raised the specter of falsified documents and all but said that he punted on obstruction of justice only because a sitting president cannot be indicted under existing Justice Department guidelines. He gamely testified his investigation was no "witch hunt." And some of his seeming confusion was likely strategic: he was trying to avoid giving partisans easy footage confirming their talking points. ..."
"... While Democrats have not totally given up on "collusion," moving the goalposts away from Hillary Clinton's detailed explanation of how the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to fix the election toward vaguer references to "contacts" and "foreign help," obstruction of justice was the name of the game. Mueller acknowledged that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone in the Trump campaign with collusion-related crimes, even if he stopped short of calling that an exoneration of the president. Paul Manafort, George Papadopolous, Carter Page, Roger Stone -- these were not criminal masterminds. In fact, they were all incredibly sloppy. If they had colluded, they all could easily have been charged. ..."
"... No one who could be indicted was charged with aiding the president in obstructing the investigation either. ..."
"... The real answer Mueller declined to give appears to be that his obstruction allegations would have hinged heavily on Trump's use presidential powers under Article II of the Constitution. The Justice Department under Barr's leadership does not believe this amounted to obstruction in theory or practice. Thus the self-evidently never-fired Mueller was reduced to dropping breadcrumbs and hoping congressional Democrats would find them. ..."
"... Mueller's seeming lack of familiarity with his own investigation lessened the GOP's problem because it helps shift the focus to the "angry Democrats" in the special counsel's office -- people like Andrew Weissman, who attended Hillary's election night party -- rather than Mueller himself. The Democrats are still at square one, trying to dial back Manchurian candidate expectations among the base and shift the impeachment rationale to Trump's passive willingness to benefit from Russian interference without expressing a modicum of outrage. ..."
"... With 95 Democrats willing to impeach Trump over mean tweets, anything is possible. But it's going to take a lot more than Mueller to move House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into that camp. ..."
"... The Steele dossier, whether a truthful compilation or a complete fabrication, is itself an attempt by foreign spies to influence our election. "Collusion" staring us in the face right here. ..."
"... The public spectacle was heart-breaking. It was obvious that Mueller had lost some mental faculties. Surely his special investigative team had to know that, having worked with him for 2+ years, and so the Democrat leadership had to know that as well. And yet they insisted he testify, even though he basically begged to not testify and let him just go off into the twilight of retirement. But no, they threatened to subpoena him. ..."
"... Actually, Trump committed a lot of unforced errors, as well as being generally lazy, stupid and unprepared. ..."
"... With this in mind, to believe the RussiaGate conspiracy theories, one must simultaneously believe that the Russians have abilities that border on psychic mind control superpowers, but at the same time, these same evil geniuses cannot be bothered to plan what to do if their nefarious schemes actually worked out. ..."
"... One can easily accept that Trump is a roaring moron, but one also has to believe that his alleged puppetmaster cannot take the time to consult an attorney or a peruse a copy of the United States Code, available for free on the internet to anyone who bothers to take a peek. And that's just the legal requirements. I won't even go into the clownshow that was Trump's appointments and staffing. ..."
"... The testimony was a complete success because it maintained the status quo. Trump is not going anywhere, both Democrats and Republicans agreed that Russia tampered with the election rendering even more sanctions and increasing cold war tensions, and the only ones indicted were accused of process crimes. Meanwhile, the business of Goldman Sachs gets done in the halls of power. ..."
"... Robert "Saddam has WMD of Mass Destruction" Mueller has been the bag man for the establishment for a long time. Even his dotage, he still managed to perform his job flawlessly. ..."
"... 12 indictments against often former employees of a Russian clickbait farm for spectacularly laughable memes that will never amount to anything because there will never be a trial. One of the parties showed up in court and demanded actual evidence as part of discovery, causing Mueller to desperately ask for a continuance. The judge called Mueller out by denying it. The judge also called Mueller out by showing that he had no evidence that the defendant at issue had any ties tot he Russian government. ..."
"... A paltry $150k was spent for online ads over two years, by Russians, they tell you. They also tell you that about half those ads didn't run until after the election was over and that most of the ads didn't endorse a specific candidate or policy. Yet, you insist this Russian social media blitz altered the outcome of your election somehow. With well north of $3 billion spent on traditional advertising, leave it to MSM to float a turd of such odious girth. ..."
"... Next, Mueller indicts 13 Russian intelligence journeymen and it will never amount to anything. None of them will ever be extradited. There will never be a trial. Never a legal discovery process. No burden of proof that they actually hacked or colluded. No US intelligence agency has ever examined the servers in question. ..."
"... An impeachment is another word for "indictment", and as the saying goes you can indict a ham sandwich. Or impeach a baloney sandwich. If Trump were to wind up in the dock it would be "anything goes", including subpoenas being issued to Madame Hillary. There won't be any impeachment. Too much of a danger of overflowing sewage. ..."
"... Seth Rich could rise up from the dead and show us all, live on CNN, how he leaked the DNC emails, right after DWS confessed on MSNBC to ordering Seth Rich's murder and HRC admitted under oath that she invented russiagate on a bet with Podesta to see whether people really are that stupid and gullible, and CNN, MSNBC and the entire DNC and their cultists would keep pushing the conspiracy theory, never even missing a beat. ..."
"... I'm glad Mr. Mueller finally admitted publicly that he held the President to an Orwellian standard of "probably guilty, which we can't prove, until proven innocent, which we never do" that no American has ever been held to by law enforcement. ..."
Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testifies before the House Intelligence Committee about his report on Russian interference
in the 2016 presidential election in the Rayburn House Office Building July 24, 2019(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) The late Sen.
Arlen Specter ended the drive to impeach Bill Clinton by invoking Scottish law and voting "not proven" in the 42rd president's Senate
trial. Democrats hope to begin the drive to impeach Donald Trump with a finding by special counsel Robert Mueller that the worst
allegations against the 45th president are not proven.
Even this task was made more difficult by the former FBI director and Trump-Russia investigator's unimpressive public congressional
testimony. Mueller had trouble identifying questioners. He demonstrated a thin grasp of his own report's findings, even as he
implored lawmakers in both parties to read it. He asked members of Congress to repeat their questions
48 times .
The uber-competent G-man about whom liberals
sang Christmas carols was not on display Wednesday. "Mueller Time" gave way to Mr. Magoo.
A cursory glance at Politico 's homepage revealed the damage. "'Euphoria': White House, GOP exult after a flat Mueller
performance," blared the top headline. Another reads, "Bob Mueller is struggling." And another: "Impeachment drive slowed by Mueller's
troubles." Even the New York Times could only manage: "Mueller sticks to script but shows flashes of indignation."
"This is delicate to say, but Mueller, whom I deeply respect, has not publicly testified before Congress in at least six years,"
fretted Barack Obama's man David Axelrod. "And he does not appear as sharp as he was then."
That's not to say Mueller did nothing for Democrats. He said President Trump was not "exculpated" by his report. He raised
the specter of falsified documents and all but said that he punted on obstruction of justice only because a sitting president cannot
be indicted under existing Justice Department guidelines. He gamely testified his investigation was no "witch hunt." And some of
his seeming confusion was likely strategic: he was trying to avoid giving partisans easy footage confirming their talking points.
But Democrats wanted much more. Ever since Attorney General William Barr released his summary, they have wanted to challenge his
framing of the report. His testimony, like that 448-page document, contained plenty of damning information. The bottom line -- that
Mueller could not prove a Trump-Russia conspiracy to swing the 2016 presidential election and lacks a convincing explanation for
his obstruction equivocation -- remains unchanged.
While Democrats have not totally given up on "collusion,"
moving the goalposts away
from Hillary Clinton's
detailed explanation
of how the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to fix the election toward vaguer references to "contacts" and "foreign help,"
obstruction of justice was the name of the game. Mueller acknowledged that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone in the
Trump campaign with collusion-related crimes, even if he stopped short of calling that an exoneration of the president. Paul Manafort,
George Papadopolous, Carter Page, Roger Stone -- these were not criminal masterminds. In fact, they were all incredibly sloppy. If
they had colluded, they all could easily have been charged.
If Justice Department regulations on presidential indictments did not prevent a finding of insufficient evidence to charge conspiracy,
why did these guidelines require Congress to make the final determination on obstruction? No one who could be indicted was charged
with aiding the president in obstructing the investigation either.
The real answer Mueller declined to give appears to be that his obstruction allegations would have hinged heavily on Trump's
use presidential powers under Article II of the Constitution. The Justice Department under Barr's leadership does not believe this
amounted to obstruction in theory or practice. Thus the self-evidently never-fired Mueller was reduced to dropping breadcrumbs and
hoping congressional Democrats would find them.
Both parties entered the hearings with a fundamental problem. For Republicans, how do you discredit Mueller for his negative
findings about the president while also affirming his failure to prove an election-related conspiracy as definitive? The Democrats'
dilemma was that they knew Trump had behaved badly in response to Russian election interference and the subsequent investigation,
but hoped Mueller would discover something worse. When he merely supplied color and a reliable narrator for what we largely already
knew, many Democrats wanted to pivot back to impeaching Trump over that unseemly behavior.
Mueller's seeming lack of familiarity with his own investigation lessened the GOP's problem because it helps shift the focus
to the "angry Democrats" in the special counsel's office -- people like Andrew Weissman, who attended Hillary's election night party
-- rather than Mueller himself. The Democrats are still at square one, trying to dial back Manchurian candidate expectations among
the base and shift the impeachment rationale to Trump's passive willingness to benefit from Russian interference without expressing
a modicum of outrage.
You can argue that we should expect more from a president than to simply have refrained from directly conspiring with a hostile
foreign power to reach the White House. Yet that case becomes harder to make when that is precisely what you have conditioned rank-and-file
Democrats to expect from the Mueller report. No dramatic reading of that report, least of all by a 74-year-old clearly no longer
accustomed to congressional testimony, will deliver on those expectations.
With
95 Democrats willing to impeach Trump over mean tweets, anything is possible. But it's going to take a lot more than Mueller
to move House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into that camp.
I would say this is by far the most charitable interpretation of Mueller's testimony I've seen. He didn't want to talk about the
'Steele Dossier' ... the whole basis for the Russiagate farce, and then claimed he didn't know who GPS Fusion was ... the outfit
hired by Clinton to write the dossier in the first place. That this whole pile of rubbish was not laughed out of existence is
a tribute to the ability of the media (who hated Trump), to convince a large number of people of a preposterous fantasy.
He reminds me a little bit of my dad, and a little bit of Cato the Younger. But to his fellow Republicans--he's Mr. Magoo.
The Steele dossier, whether a truthful compilation or a complete fabrication, is itself an attempt by foreign spies to influence
our election. "Collusion" staring us in the face right here.
Why haven't the Democrats been investigated for it?
Maybe because there's a little difference between hiring a private firm to do opposition research, and Russian military intelligence
stealing and releasing tens of thousands of private documents from one political party to help the other win the Presidency?
"You can argue that we should expect more from a president than to simply have refrained from directly conspiring with a hostile
foreign power to reach the White House."
Even after the spectacle, and the grueling two years of media hype, nothing has moved the dial from those who hate Trump, and
those who are Trump supporters. The 2020 election may again come down to the electoral college system. We already know where voters
on the upper east coast and California stand. Major populations.
The public spectacle was heart-breaking. It was obvious that Mueller had lost some mental faculties. Surely his special investigative
team had to know that, having worked with him for 2+ years, and so the Democrat leadership had to know that as well. And yet they
insisted he testify, even though he basically begged to not testify and let him just go off into the twilight of retirement. But
no, they threatened to subpoena him.
By all accounts, Mueller had a long a admirable career. Its disgusting that most people's memory of him and his legacy will
be of this last public embarrassing spectacle.
The Democratic Party has shown its complete lack of moral compass. When it comes to politics, anything goes, including the
destruction of people's lives. They even eat their own when its considered politically expedient. The Anita Hill hearings, Kavannah
hearings, me too movement, show me the man and the people around him, we'll find the crimes mentality. What's next? Murder? It
would not surprise me in the least.
Its clear now that the entire Russian collusion narrative was a set-up by the Democratic party. It was all about entrapment,
perjury traps, and selective media leaking.
The bottom line was, is, and always will be as follows: The Democrat Party expected their candidate to win in a cakewalk over
Trump. If she won we wouldn't have heard one word about these Russians (Oh, and by the way, do these "Russians" have names?).
It was Clinton's election to lose and she promptly went out and lost it! Period! End of story! In their eyes the candidate of
"The Deplorables" won and the Democrats are enraged--so enraged that since Election Day 2016 they have been doing all they can
do to delegitimize the election and Trump's status as POTUS. And all the while-- thanks to BOTH parties--the nation's infrastructure
steadily crumbles and the immigration crisis remains unresolved (to cite just two examples).
"On impeachment: Just imagine that Barak Obama had illegally spent $120,000 of his campaign cash for hush money to his prostitute.
What would happen?"--interguru
Democrats would rise in unison and begin shouting "It's only about sex!" And that time, they'd be correct.
Admit it, interguru, all the covering for Clinton that the Democrats conducted in order to yank his lying-under-oath balls
out of the fire rendered impotent their usual tactics of denigrate and defame.
Fine, but that has nothing to do with the russiagate conspiracy theory.
In fact, if Trump were really a puppet of Russia, they'd never let him commit an unforced error that pointless. Some money
could be funneled from any of a million sources, and nobody would be any the wiser.
Actually, Trump committed a lot of unforced errors, as well as being generally lazy, stupid and unprepared.
With this in mind, to believe the RussiaGate conspiracy theories, one must simultaneously believe that the Russians have
abilities that border on psychic mind control superpowers, but at the same time, these same evil geniuses cannot be bothered to
plan what to do if their nefarious schemes actually worked out.
Orwell wept.
One can easily accept that Trump is a roaring moron, but one also has to believe that his alleged puppetmaster cannot take
the time to consult an attorney or a peruse a copy of the United States Code, available for free on the internet to anyone who
bothers to take a peek. And that's just the legal requirements. I won't even go into the clownshow that was Trump's appointments
and staffing.
The testimony was a complete success because it maintained the status quo. Trump is not going anywhere, both Democrats and
Republicans agreed that Russia tampered with the election rendering even more sanctions and increasing cold war tensions, and
the only ones indicted were accused of process crimes. Meanwhile, the business of Goldman Sachs gets done in the halls of power.
Robert "Saddam has WMD of Mass Destruction" Mueller has been the bag man for the establishment for a long time. Even his
dotage, he still managed to perform his job flawlessly.
What utter nonsense, unless you believe that "Russia" wrote the DNC emails, or that a clickbait troll farm (see paragraph 95 of
the IRA indictment if you don't believe me) that has no discernable connection tot he Russian government has some amazing influence
over gullible American voters.
12 indictments against often former employees of a Russian clickbait farm for spectacularly laughable memes that will never
amount to anything because there will never be a trial. One of the parties showed up in court and demanded actual evidence as
part of discovery, causing Mueller to desperately ask for a continuance. The judge called Mueller out by denying it. The judge
also called Mueller out by showing that he had no evidence that the defendant at issue had any ties tot he Russian government.
A paltry $150k was spent for online ads over two years, by Russians, they tell you. They also tell you that about half
those ads didn't run until after the election was over and that most of the ads didn't endorse a specific candidate or policy.
Yet, you insist this Russian social media blitz altered the outcome of your election somehow. With well north of $3 billion spent
on traditional advertising, leave it to MSM to float a turd of such odious girth.
Next, Mueller indicts 13 Russian intelligence journeymen and it will never amount to anything. None of them will ever be
extradited. There will never be a trial. Never a legal discovery process. No burden of proof that they actually hacked or colluded.
No US intelligence agency has ever examined the servers in question.
Russians didn't write the emails and Julian Assange is emphatic that Russia had nothing to do with them. Yet, no one in our
vast and vaunted intelligence community has bothered to interview him. As they say, a smart lawyer never asks a question if he
might not want to hear the answer.
Everything, all of it, is based on intel supplied by a cyber security firm on the DNC payroll. You can't make this shit up.
The other indictments are thoroughly unrelated to hacking or collusion by anybody, much less Russia.
Sen Specter did NOT "end the drive to impeach Bill Clinton", as the opening sentence of this article declares. The drive to impeach
Bill Clinton ended when the House passed articles of impeachment. That's right: Bill Clinton was actually impeached. No, he wasn't
"convicted" in his senate trial (thanks to Specter) and so wasn't removed from office. But he was, actually, impeached.
Good question for trivia buffs: Only one of these presidents was impeached: Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. Which one was it?
(Hint: Nixon resigned before the House impeached him.)
An impeachment is another word for "indictment", and as the saying goes you can indict a ham sandwich. Or impeach a baloney
sandwich. If Trump were to wind up in the dock it would be "anything goes", including subpoenas being issued to Madame Hillary.
There won't be any impeachment. Too much of a danger of overflowing sewage.
Seth Rich could rise up from the dead and show us all, live on CNN, how he leaked the DNC emails, right after DWS confessed
on MSNBC to ordering Seth Rich's murder and HRC admitted under oath that she invented russiagate on a bet with Podesta to see
whether people really are that stupid and gullible, and CNN, MSNBC and the entire DNC and their cultists would keep pushing the
conspiracy theory, never even missing a beat.
I'm thinking the Democrats just wanted Mueller to give them the go ahead on impeachment... that way they could always blame it
on him if the ploy failed... Too bad they are such cowards that none of the want to sign their name to impeachment proceedings...
I'm glad Mr. Mueller finally admitted publicly that he held the President to an Orwellian standard of "probably guilty, which
we can't prove, until proven innocent, which we never do" that no American has ever been held to by law enforcement.
I'll illustrate:
"If we had had confidence the President clearly committed a crime, we would have said so. We did not make a determination
as to whether the President did commit a crime."
"If we had had confidence the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not make a determination
as to whether the President did commit a crime."
Can anybody tell me the legal difference between those two statements? I really don't see any. Also, what was fascinating about
Mr. Mueller's press conference was when he said this:
"These indictments contain allegations and we are not commenting on the guilt or the innocence of any specific defendant.
Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty."
He actually paid indicted Russian nationals who will never stand trial in this country more constitutional lip service than
Trump. Absolutely gorgeous...
If the Democrats were using Mueller as their smoking gun to nail Trump it failed miserably. If they still want to impeach go ahead.
It guarantees Trump's reelection.
Mueller's investigation ended after all the subpoenas had been served, all the witnesses had been deposed, and all the evidence
analyzed. If, after that, he could not determine that the president had committed a crime, then, according to established jurisprudential
practice, the decision is that he is not guilty. It is singular that the 2 accusations, collusion and obstruction, were evaluated
differently.
In the case of conspiracy ("collusion") the final report says, "The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump
campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." In the case of obstruction
of justice, the final report says, "If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly
did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable
to reach that judgment."
So, in the case of conspiracy, the prosecutor had to prove that the President was guilty ("did not establish" conspiracy);
in the case of obstruction, they had to prove that he was innocent ("did not commit obstruction"). Why did different standards
apply to the two accusations?
Mueller said he didn't recommend that the grand jury indict the President for obstruction because one cannot indict a sitting
President. But the President either obstructed justice or he didn't. If he did, why didn't Mueller say so? He didn't have to recommend
as indictment in order to state a conclusion based on facts revealed in the investigation. What he appears to be saying is that
because he couldn't prove that the President did not commit obstruction, he would recommend that congress play impeachment politics
with the issue.
So, instead of a resolution of this matter, Mueller decided to bequeath to the nation a festering sore that, with that aid
of congressional Democrats, would continue to undermine the President's administration.
Evidence accumulates that Obama was the real leader of this color revolution against Trump with Brannan as his chief lieutenant
and Comey as a willing accomplice.
Now that the dust has settled, one must ask why the Deep State wanted Trump gone. Why does the Obama-Clinton mafia hates him so
much? Is this due to Trump committed an unforgivable sin in suggesting we “get along with Russia” and thus potentially cut the
revenues of military-industrial complex ? This is not true -- Trump inflated the Pentagon budget to astronomical height. Then
why ?
Notable quotes:
"... The full details of the plot to take out Donald Trump remain to be revealed. But there should now be no doubt that his effort was not the work of a few rogue intelligence and law enforcement officials acting on their own. This was a full blown covert action undertaken with the full knowledge and blessing of Barack Obama. ..."
"... Operation Crossfire Hurricane was launched the end of July 2016. CIA Director John Brennan briefed key Democrat members of Congress in early August on allegations that Donald Trump was colluding with Vladimir Putin. And Peter Strzok traveled to London in early August 2016 to meet with the CIA and with Alexander Downer, who was claiming that George Papadopolous was talking up the Russians. Following that trip Strozk texted the following to his mistress, Lisa Page : ..."
"... We also know that Senior Obama Administration officials, such as NSC Director Susan Rice and UN Ambassdor Samantha Power, were pushing to "unmask" Trump campaign officials who were named in US intelligence documents. ..."
"... Let us look at this from another angle. If the Russians were actually trying to interfere in the 2016 election, then it was known to both US intelligence and law enforcement. Hell, we are told in the Mueller report that the FBI detected the Russians trying to hack the DNC way back in 2015. If there really was intelligence on Russian efforts to meddle why did the Obama Administration do nothing other than sanction FBI's Crossfire Hurricane? ..."
"... On what basis did Barack Obama insist it was impossible to rig the US Presidential election? This is a critical anomaly. Why was the Obama team asleep at the switch, especially on the intel front, it the Russians actually were engaged in rigging the election to install Donald Trump? ..."
"... Obama seemed to have got a taste for spying on his domestic political opponents from monitoring Israeli attempts to block the Iran nuclear deal. I think the lock her up stuff really scared the Obama people, who had much to hide. ..."
The full details of the plot to take out Donald Trump remain to be revealed. But there should now be no doubt that his effort was
not the work of a few rogue intelligence and law enforcement officials acting on their own. This was a full blown covert action undertaken
with the full knowledge and blessing of Barack Obama.
As
I have written previously , the claim that Russia tried to hijack our election is a damn lie. But you do not have to take my
word for it. Just listen to Barack Obama speaking in October 2016 in response to Donald Trump's expressed concerns about
election meddling :
"There is no serious person out there who would suggest that you could even rig America's elections, in part because they are
so decentralized. There is no evidence that that has happened in the past, or that there are instances that that could happen this
time," the president said to the future president in October 2016.
"Democracy survives because we recognize that there is something more important than any individual campaign, and that is making
sure the integrity and trust in our institutions sustains itself. Becasue Democracy works by consent, not by force," Obama said.
"I have never seen in my lifetime or in modern political history, any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections
and the election process before votes have even taken place. It is unprecedented. It happens to be based on no fact. Every expert
regardless of political party... who has ever examined these issues in a serious way will tell you that instances of significant
voter fraud are not to be found. Keep in mind elections are run by state and local officials."
It is important to remember what had transpired in the Trump/Russia collusion case by this point. Operation Crossfire Hurricane
was launched the end of July 2016. CIA Director John Brennan briefed key Democrat members of Congress in early August on allegations
that Donald Trump was colluding with Vladimir Putin. And Peter Strzok traveled to London in early August 2016 to meet with the CIA
and with Alexander Downer, who was claiming that George Papadopolous was talking up the Russians. Following that trip
Strozk texted
the following to his mistress, Lisa Page :
Strzok: And hi. Went well, best we could have expected. Other than [REDACTED] quote: " the White House is running this. " My answer,
"well, maybe for you they are." And of course, I was planning on telling this guy, thanks for coming, we've got an hour, but with
Bill [Priestap] there, I've got no control .
Page: Yeah, whatever (re the WH comment). We've got the emails that say otherwise.
The White House clearly knew. But Strzok's text is not the only evidence. We also know that Senior Obama Administration officials,
such as NSC Director Susan Rice and UN Ambassdor Samantha Power, were pushing to "unmask" Trump campaign officials who were named
in US intelligence documents.
There are only two possibilities:
Obama was being briefed by Susan Rice and DNI James Clapper and CIA Director about the project
to take out Trump, or
Obama was kept in the dark.
Let us look at this from another angle. If the Russians were actually trying to interfere in the 2016 election, then it was known
to both US intelligence and law enforcement. Hell, we are told in the Mueller report that the FBI detected the Russians trying to
hack the DNC way back in 2015. If there really was intelligence on Russian efforts to meddle why did the Obama Administration do
nothing other than sanction FBI's Crossfire Hurricane?
On what basis did Barack Obama insist it was impossible to rig the US Presidential election? This is a critical anomaly. Why was
the Obama team asleep at the switch, especially on the intel front, it the Russians actually were engaged in rigging the election
to install Donald Trump?
My wife was for many years an election official in Virginia. IMO Obama was right in saying that a US presidential election
is impossible to "rig." The US Constitution requires that federal elections be run by the states WITHOUT federal supervision.
As a result the methods and equipment in the states and the various parts of the states vary widely and the state systems are
not tied together with a national electronic network as, for example, the system is in France where the result of a national election
is reported on TeeVee immediately when the polls close.
Asking the question, "Can you cite one specific case where a single vote was definitively changed by Russian meddling?"
causes panic in a person who is declaiming about the evils of Russian meddling in our elections.
When you ask that question, the invariable retort is that the Russians are so clever that you wouldn't know that you were being
gulled; or, when I say that I have never seen a Russian produced facebook ad, the rejoinder is that the Russians concentrated
on Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio and, of course, I would have been privy to the bot-sent emails and facebook ads generated by
the Internet Research Agency.
You've maintained all along that the Russians interfered in the election, yet I believe it is your position that the Russians
did not change a single vote. Is that correct or do you believe the Russians changed the votes before tabulation?
What did the Russians do that the Trump and Hillary campaigns did not do? Did they also turnout the tens of thousands who showed
up for Trump rallies that Hillary could never muster? Are they still turning out thousands at recent Trump rallies? I'm curious
how come Brennan and Clapper could not turn out thousands to Hillary's rallies when according to our German friend "b", the omnipotent
US Intel services just turned out a quarter of the population of Hong Kong to protest CCP authoritarianism?
Did the Israeli, Saudi and Chinese governments interfere in the election? How would you compare what they did to what you believe
the Russians did?
uieter about it. All that is very different from the absolute covert nature of the Russian IO in the 2016 election. I have
no idea what China did or is doing.
You have no evidence for the so-called Russian IO. It is a fabrication. The lies on this are enormous. If the FBI really had detected
GRU hacking of the DNC in 2015, which is claimed in the fabricated meme, then you would expect the FBI and the other counter intel
elements of the USG to take action. THEY DID NOTHING.
The issue of Russian hacking only emerged when Hillary and the DNC learned that DNC emails were going to be put out by WIKILEAKS.
Again, not one shred of actual evidence that the Russians did it, but blaming the Russians became a convenient excuse in a bid
to divert attention from the real story--i.e,. Hillary and the DNC colluded to defeat Bernie Sanders.
The only real solid evidence of colluding with foreigners, in this case the Ukraine, comes courtesy of Hillary and her campaign.
Hiring a foreign intel officer (ie. Steele) who then takes info from Russians of questionable background and spread it around
as "truth". That was not a Russian IO. Pure Clinton IO.
"What the Russians did was insert misattributed information and disinformation into the election cycle...That is what separates
the Russian IO from anything Clinton, Trump or any of their supporters did."
I believe supporters of both candidates did exactly what you say the Russians did - insert misattributed information & disinformation
into the media stream. If you watch MSNBC or Fox on any given day there is much assertion & opinion masquerading as news. And
the Twitter & Facebook and blog universe are teeming with stories and innuendo that are more fiction than fact all from anonymous
accounts.
The Russia Collusion hysteria is replete with examples of "misattributed information and disinformation". It seems that yellow
journalism is as American as apple pie.
The whole opaque PAC structure with names like "Americans for Democracy" funded by chain structures hiding the real financiers
and calling up down is something that we see growing in every election cycle and is already of significant scale both in terms
of financing and dubiousness.
It is also rather common that "experts" who are called upon to opine on issues routinely never disclose their conflicts of
interest. Jeffrey Sachs and so many others on the payroll of CCP entities never disclose those payments as they extoll the virtues
of offshoring our industrial base to China and are apologists for CCP espionage.
Blue peacock, supporters of Clinton and Trump did not put out misattributed info. They both put out truth, innuendo, exaggerations,
misleading info and even outright lies, but they put it out as themselves. They didn't represent themselves as someone other than
who they were. The PAC structure comes close to skirting this requirement for truthful attribution, but a quick internet search
blows away the facades of these PACs. What the Russians did was pure black propaganda.
You mean the kindly grandmother, Loretta Lynch, Attorney General of the United States, did not inform President Obama that
the FBI had obtained a FISA warrant to surveil the Republican candidate for the presidency and members of his staff becasue he
was working with Russians? Or do you mean that James Comey failed to tell his boss, Loretta Lynch; or do you mean John Brennan
failed to tell Obama about that Steele dossier from Fusion GPS that Mueller know anything about; or do you mean that James Clapper
failed to tell Jeh Johnson about that too? The Russians made them do all those things as part of an interference campaign, right?
It couldn't have been they were corrupt and incompetant.
"Instead, Obama...." made an "If you like your doctor, you can keep you doctor" statement that he knew was completely false.
Trump didn't win, Russians influenced Americans to vote for Trump, just ask the losers of the election, their paid sources and
their colleagues in Congress. In fact Americans love Hilary so much she's just where in the polls right now?
I continue to be astounded by the outrage at "Russian meddling". So some Russians used the internet to post true or false information
on candidates in a election.... so what?...millions of American partisan trolls were doing the same thing for or against a candidate.
We had tons of fake info written by American bloggers and posters all over the net, Facebook, twitter etc..
Its not like Putin came to the US and gave a speech to congress in favor of Trump ...as Netanyahu did in appearing before the
US congress and urging them to go against President Obama's Syria policy for heaven's sake.
It is so ridiculous I have given up hope of finding enough IQs above that of a cabbage to form a sane government.
Obama seemed to have got a taste for spying on his domestic political opponents from monitoring Israeli attempts to block
the Iran nuclear deal. I think the lock her up stuff really scared the Obama people, who had much to hide.
1. The FBI cannot be trusted to uphold defend and protect our Constitution, as they sought actively
to overturn a duly elected POTUS.; and
2 - Mueller's incompetence is astounding.
Is the only entity of the Defense Department called the U.S. Army the only ones left actually upholding, defending, and protecting
our Constitution and our Constitution processes? I don't see the other entities of the DOD called Navy and Air Force doing their
jobs upholding our Constitution!
Thumbs up to the Army, thumbs down to the Navy and Air Force!
I'm a little more charitable to the FBI. The Trumps lied their asses off to the FBI about their foreign contacts. Which IMO,
wrong or right, left the FBI all but no recourse but to investigate those lies. Even if the lies were simply based in long-seated
personal habits, it takes investigation to prove that is the case.
"You have no evidence for the so-called Russian IO. It is a fabrication." In fact, Putin rejects the claim many times publicly
saying that Russia does not meddle in foreign elections as a matter of policy. Maybe I'm gullible, but I find his disclaimer pretty
convincing....
My question for Larry Johnson requires some speculation on his part: How did the claims of "Russia meddling" which began with
the DNC and Hillary campaign, take root at the FBI, CIA and NSA???
Is there an unseen connection between the Democrat leadership and the Intel agencies??? And --if there is-- does that mean
we are headed for a one-party system???
Larry, sorry to nitpick, but I have such regard for your work that it pains me to see the typographical error in your second sentence,
where you say "his error" shortly after referring to Trump. I'm guessing that you meant to say "this error", but it reads as if
it means "Trump's error".
And while I'm at it, your last sentence has "it" instead of "if".
Keep up your great work for this excellent website.
Sadly naive in that you think the conspirators were actually acting in good faith. You think they were right when they used
the Steele Dossier in applying for a FISA warrant in Colyyer's Star Chamber? Steele was a paid informant for the FBI as was Page.
Looks like Mueller is not currently mentally capable of programming his microwave, never mind to be the primary author of his
eport or supervise the investigation.
Shouldn't James Comey and Rod Rosenstein be sitting there, its obvious to me that Mueller is the patsy here.
Notable quotes:
"... Mueller : What page are you referencing? I can't find it" ..."
"... Rep: "Sir, you have the report upsidedown" ..."
"... Mueller is not currently mentally capable of programming his microwave, never mind author a report or conduct an investigation. ..."
"... I think if Barr digs deep enough he is going to see a foreign country was In control of Hillary during her state department days, and potentially Bubba during his presidency, remember how those secrets got leaked to China during Bill's Presidency? The preceding would also implicate that inner circle assisting Hill Dog, ie Comey, Clapper, MCabe, Brennan and the rest of those rat bastards BTW where is the computer guy that they were all using who got nabbed just before fleeing on a jet out of the country, What about Huma? ..."
"... Mueller was the token 'R'/Marine Vet/Never Trumper hired to give this corruption an air of 'fairness'. He was a tool, and has been for decades. Special place for him somewhere. ..."
"... Unfortunately the DNC clowns have discovered how to use Hillary's projection techniques and they are using them more and more. No matter what they do or what we discover they do they project it back on us. ..."
A DOJ internal review of the Russia investigation is now focusing on transcripts of (not-so)
covertly recorded conversations between former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos and 'at
least one government source' during an overseas conversation in 2016.
In particular, DOJ investigators are focusing on why certain exculpatory (or exonerating)
evidence from the transcripts was not included in subsequent FBI surveillance warrant
applications , according to
Fox News , citing two sources familiar with the review.
"A source told Fox News that the "exculpatory evidence" included in the transcripts is
Papadopoulos denying having any contact with the Russians to obtain the supposed "dirt" on
Clinton," according to the report.
And while Fox doesn't name the 'government source,' it's undoubtedly Australian diplomat and
Clinton ally Alexander Downer, who was "idiotic enough" to spy on Papadopoulos with his phone,
according to the former Trump aide.
But Papadopoulos did not only meet with Mifsud and Downer while overseas. He met with
Cambridge professor and longtime FBI informant Stefan Halper and his female associate, who
went under the alias Azra Turk. Papadopoulos told Fox News that he saw Turk three times in
London: once over drinks, once over dinner and once with Halper. He also told Fox News back
in May that he always suspected he was being recorded . Further, he tweeted during the
Mueller testimony about "recordings" of his meeting with Downer . -
Fox News
"These recordings have exculpatory evidence," one source told Fox , adding " It is
standard tradecraft to record conversations with someone like Papadopoulos -- especially when
they are overseas and there are no restrictions. "
The recordings in question pertain to conversations between government sources and
Papadopoulos, which were memorialized in transcripts. One source told Fox News that Barr and
Durham are reviewing why the material was left out of applications to surveil another former
Trump campaign aide, Carter Page.
" I think it's the smoking gun ," the source said. -
Fox News
Also under review by AG Barr and US Attorney John Durham of Connecticut is the actual start
date of the original FBI investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the
US election.
Former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) first revealed the existence of transcripts documenting the
secretly recorded conversations earlier this year.
"If the bureau's going to send in an informant, the informant's going to be wired, and if
the bureau is monitoring telephone calls, there's going to be a transcript of that," Gowdy said
on Fox News in May.
"Some of us have been fortunate enough to know whether or not those transcripts exist. But
they haven't been made public, and I think one, in particular ... has the potential to actually
persuade people," he continued, adding "Very little in this Russia probe I'm afraid is going to
persuade people who hate Trump or love Trump. But there is some information in these
transcripts that has the potential to be a game-changer if it's ever made public. "
According to the report, the transcripts are currently classified - however President
Trump's May order to approve declassification at AG Barr's discretion means they may see the
light of day. And even if not, the declassification allowed Barr to barge in on DNI Director
Dan Coats' office and demand the files .
A source told Fox News that without the declassification order signed by Trump, Director
of National Intelligence Dan Coats was not going to give anyone access to the files -- over
concerns for protecting sources and methods. But another source told Fox News in May that
Coats, along with CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Chris Wray, are all working
"collaboratively" with Barr and Durham on the review.
Barr and Durham are also trying to pinpoint the actual "start date" of the investigation,
according to a source. -
Fox News
As passionately laid out by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) during this week's Mueller testimony, the
FBI officially opened the Russia investigation after Papadopoulos told Downer about a rumor
(told to him by Clinton Foundation member Joseph Mifsud) that Russia had 'dirt' on Hillary
Clinton.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/QC529hakU6U
That said, some have suggested that the FBI probe began long before Downer's report to
intelligence agencies .
On Wednesday, House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, R-Calif.,
challenged former Special Counsel Mueller over when the investigation started.
"The FBI claims the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign began on July
31, 2016, but in fact, it began before that," Nunes said. "In June 2016, before the
investigation was officially opened, Trump campaign associates Carter Page and Stephen Miller
were invited to attend a symposium at Cambridge University in July 2016. Your office,
however, did not investigate who was responsible for inviting these Trump associates to the
symposium." -
Fox News
"Maybe a better course of action is to figure out how the false accusations started," said
Jordan on Wednesday, adding "Here's the good news -- that's exactly what Bill Barr is doing and
thank goodness for that."
For what it's worth, I think the whole thing started w/Her campaign, in particular:
Podesta (means, motive and opportunity). I think it began as a cheating strategy and
snowballed into a coup; many ppl involved... Trump won (Thank G--!) and they've been trying
to cover their tracks ever since
Mueller is not currently mentally capable of programming his microwave, never mind author
a report or conduct an investigation.
We are seeing a spectacular display of an ill advised poorly thought out conspiracy to
take Trump down...
No one is really looking at why the desperation to get Hillary in, remember Cuntlery
herself stated that if Trump were to be elected "we will all hang"
I think if Barr digs deep enough he is going to see a foreign country was In control of
Hillary during her state department days, and potentially Bubba during his presidency,
remember how those secrets got leaked to China during Bill's Presidency? The preceding would
also implicate that inner circle assisting Hill Dog, ie Comey, Clapper, MCabe, Brennan and
the rest of those rat bastards BTW where is the computer guy that they were all using who got
nabbed just before fleeing on a jet out of the country, What about Huma?
Why the desperation to obliterate the server with bleach bit, and hammer pound the
phones?
Suddenly "enhanced interrogation" makes a whole lot more sense... Lets see how the tough marine remembers his training. As for Mifsud, he will likely instantly remember his past life as a canary the moment he's
shown a fuckin phone book...
Mueller was the token 'R'/Marine Vet/Never Trumper hired to give this corruption an air of
'fairness'. He was a tool, and has been for decades. Special place for him somewhere.
Becoming pretty clear at this point that the ***** that perpetrated this treason have
pretty much already played out every option
Yes that's right Cuntlery...your time is coming Bitch. At what point do they just punt for the good of the country and accept guilt quietly. Nadler and Schiff keep pushing it, will go very badly after Horowitz report
Unfortunately the DNC clowns have discovered how to use Hillary's projection techniques and
they are using them more and more. No matter
what they do or what we discover they do they project it back on us. With unending driveby
complicity it always buys at least a few weeks or gets them to the next news cycle where they
feel safe again. Complex criminality wreaks of the company.
Alexander Downer is a the classic groomed fwit who was given a path to power so he could
be controlled. He was the national leader of the opposition but was such a *** he was unelectable and
dumped. Most cartoonists in Australia depict him in fishnet stockings. The usual *** of his generation who could never come out (like Mcron). Quite effeminate
and in *** terms would be the bottom.
"That said, some have suggested that the FBI probe began long before Downer's report to
intelligence agencies ."
The patriots already know that the entire Russia/Trump probe was just cover for illegal
spying that they were doing WITHOUT FISA approval. The Russia/Trump probe was going to be
their excuse.
it's fortuitous in any case as the great first cause of the last generation of government
malfeasance, 9-11, was investigated by mueller as head of the fbi for the bush
administration. it keeps that more in the public eye and mind. it let's people see that the
deep state is bipartisan: helps republican bush and democrat clinton. just as long as they
both help the likud mossad.
There's a LOT for which to blame Mueller. Whitey Bulger, Ruby Ridge, Pan Am flight 103
come immediately to mind. As for who wanted him so bad, I would hazard a guess it was all the
democrats on his "staff" who needed the cover of a "conservative republican". I know, hard to
say that with a straight face.
I agree wholeheartedly with Tucker Carlson...This whole stupid Russia hysteria propagated
by most of the media made me, an old timer liberal, agree with Tucker. Well played Democratic
Party... well played.
Tucker's question about what should happen to the people who attempted to reverse the will
of the American people? The answer is very straightforward. Those found guilty of sedition
and treason should by law hanged by the neck until dead. This might discourage further
efforts to undermine the will of the American people.
Was is acting as a preemptive defense so that Mueller could use figurehead status as a
defense in the upcoming civil and criminal actions. like a Mafioso acting crazy in court thinking
maybe they'll get a lighter sentence or let go due to insanity.
Notable quotes:
"... Mueller's performance raised questions that reached far beyond one appearance before one committee. It called into doubt the degree to which Mueller was in charge of the entire special counsel investigation ..."
"... When FBI agents ran around doing perjury traps, he was just as surprised as anyone.. Foreign honey traps and domestic wiretaps, no idea who was doing that. And the same judges who signed the arrest warrants on no evidence will certainly see it his way. ..."
"... According to Mueller, it wasn't "within his purview" to look into the meetings of Natalia Veselnitskaya with the Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson immediately before and after the "Trump Tower meeting" (that the media kept yammering about endlessly). Mueller didn't even know what Fusion GPS is (the compiler of the phony Steele dossier). ..."
"... It was the Weissman investigation and the Weissman report. He should be subpoenaed to testify about what they did. ..."
Lead prosecutor Andrew Weissman was with Hillary Clinton on election night and praised
acting AG Sally Yates for not enforcing Trump's travel ban. Aaron Zebley, another Mueller team
member, represented the IT aide that smashed Clinton's Blackberrys while under subpoena.
Zebley was next to Mueller on Wednesday to "advise" him on questions and was clearly more
well versed on the report than Mueller himself was.
Mueller's embarrassing testimony - during which he admitted he wasn't even familiar with
Fusion GPS - is being panned not only by conservatives, but also by Democrats, as we
reported yesterday.
Conservative columnist Byron York wrote yesterday:
"Mueller's performance raised questions that reached far beyond one appearance before one
committee. It called into doubt the degree to which Mueller was in charge of the entire
special counsel investigation ."
Mueller could use figurehead status as a defense in the upcoming civil and criminal
actions. Rather than leaking prosecution information he just watched it happen, powerless to
prevent it.
When FBI agents ran around doing perjury traps, he was just as surprised as
anyone.. Foreign honey traps and domestic wiretaps, no idea who was doing that. And the same
judges who signed the arrest warrants on no evidence will certainly see it his way.
According to Mueller, it wasn't "within his purview" to look into the meetings of Natalia
Veselnitskaya with the Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson immediately before and after the
"Trump Tower meeting" (that the media kept yammering about endlessly). Mueller didn't even
know what Fusion GPS is (the compiler of the phony Steele dossier).
James Clapper has to say Mueller probably didn't conduct the investigation after it became
obvious. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find Clapper had something to do with the Russia
probe!
They've been trying to portray Russia as an enemy to reignite a cold war just to keep the
military industrial complex going! Unfortunately for the deep state, they're living in the
past!
Mueller seemed to be not aware of many details of the investigation done under his name.
He said he knew nothing about GPS, the company hired by the Clinton campaign to contract
with MI6 agent Christopher Steele to fabricate the 'dirty dossier'. There were lots of reports
about GPS in the media and Mueller missed all of them?
He refused to answer why he did not indict Joseph Mifsud, a mysterious Maltese professor who
planted the claim that 'Russia has dirt on Hillary Clinton' with Trump campaign adviser George
Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos later repeated that claim. The FBI then used that fact as the reason
to launch its investigation against the Trump campaign. In his report Mueller claimed, without
showing evidence, that Mifsud worked for Russia. That is unlikely and there is actual evidence
that he worked with the British MI6.
Mifsud lied to the Mueller investigation. But unlike others witnesses who lied, Mueller
never indicted him for making false statements. He punted on
questions about this issue with multiple "Can't get into that."
He reacted
similar when he was asked about Christopher Steele, the British agent who created and
peddled the fake 'dirty dossier'.
There is still another Justice Department investigation ongoing that will look at the whole
Russia affair from a different viewpoint. Was the FBI investigation into 'Russiagate' an
illegal partisan effort to go after Trump? Who really initiate the whole 'Russiagate' campaign
that seems to have been run by the British MI6? Was it John Brennan, Obama's CIA director,
involved?
Little is known about that second investigation. It will hopefully come up with better
evidence and results than the one Robert Mueller led.
Yesterday, the Democratic Congress had their big moment
– the testimony of
Russiagate
probe
figurehead Robert Mueller, whose
448-page
report
detailing the findings of his nearly-two-year-long investigation into alleged
"Trump-Russian collusion" and alleged "Russian interference" in the US 2016 elections.
After no evidence of collusion or interference could be found, the remit was then shifted over
to "possible obstruction of justice. "
And when no evidence of
obstruction
could
be unearthed, the Democrat and Mueller position then became, 'the Mueller Report has
not
cleared
Trump of obstruction,' or the report does not exoneration of the President.
Here they are
trying to prove a negative, something which could be said about about any unproven accusation
leveled against anyone – which makes that spurious declaration meaningless.
Even the most ardent
Never Trump
partisan journalists, like NBC News political director
Chuck Todd,
admitted
that
the former special counsel Robert Mueller's performance in front of the House Judiciary Committee
hearing was a
"disaster"
and did nothing to advance the cause for impeachment.
As the dust subsides from yesterday's debacle, the real issues are finally coming into
focus.
Former US Congressman Dr Ron Paul highlights some of the deeper, fundamental problems with
the Russiagate fiasco.
RT
International
reports...
The Democrats' dream of impeaching President Trump over the Russiagate scandal has
"totally failed," its fate confirmed by special counsel Robert Mueller's disastrous showing in
Congress, former congressman Ron Paul told RT.
The utterly anticlimactic hearing saw the ex-special counsel serving up reheated details of his
two-year probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, reminding both
the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees that there was no proof that members of the Trump
campaign conspired with Russia.
"
Hopefully, this will end it all, because Mueller did not have any evidence
,"
Paul said.
"I think we should never use the word Russiagate again. I think we ought to use
the FBIgate because there was a conspiracy to try to frame Trump
."
https://www.youtube.com/embed/egjbkJ8mTFc
"
If they have impeachment hearings next year, it is going to backfire on them, just
as I think this hearing today backfired on the Democrats
,"
Paul said, suggesting that
lawmakers should instead investigate the origins of the Russia probe – in particular the Steele
dossier, which was partially funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic Party. The
document, produced by Fusion GPS, was full of unsubstantiated tales about Trump and helped to kick
off the FBI probe, yet when pressed on the key role of the opposition research firm, Mueller didn't
even appear to be familiar with the organization.
Both parties have much bigger problems, Paul pointed out,
marveling at how
Democrats and Republicans are "bosom buddies," marching in lockstep on "more debt, more
interference, more involvement overseas, more welfare-ism," yet "they hate each other's guts when
it comes to power."
"The empire's broke, the empire's in trouble, yet [both parties] don't want to talk
about that."
This is the post fact world. Reality and objective facts do
not matter. We keep refering to facts as if it meant something
to the Democrat hoards. It doesn't.
The dead white man principles of innocent until proven
guilty is now "if we don't like you, guilty until proven
innocent" and "If we like you, you can be a customer for a
pedophile pimp".
Smears and lies work to get the votes of people who don't
have an American ideal in them. The Founders and the Globlist
knew that our republic needs a informed and patriotic
electorate, and the Globalist filled us with ignorant stupid
America hating foreigners who hate us and want "Gibs".
The ooobama brain fucked the FBI (FIB??)...fire all executives and
ooobama related FBI political officers and start all over again.
The FBI is the ooobama's personal weaponized political "Just Us"
army. Fire em. Watch em all squeal and out the ooobama.
The FBI is an US federal institution that ignores federal
crimes like mishandling classified information, engages in
crimes like seditious conspiracy to over throw the government,
and spends countless hours trolling social media looking for
folks who think it's all da joozes fault.
Why won't the news streams report on the Bensenson Strategy Groups
"salvage report" that was prepared for John Podesta (WikiLeaks
October dump), which in black and white lists suggestion Create
Russian Red Dawn. Read the report
here
and see if not every unexplainable action cannot be
easily explain, once you have the priv of reading the same Dem
playbook Podesta used for Hillary. Google it if you fear the link
above. Use Podesta WikiLeaks Bensenson Strategy Group Salvage
Report in your search request.... It's all there sports
fans:Russiagate, the rise of Antifa, BLM, Zika virus scare, our
edging towards civil strife/war... All listed cookbook style and
itemized with the pros and cons of each suggestion.
The MSM is
not afraid to expose Fusion GPS, a similar firm, perhaps because
they had to, but BSG who was the Mastermind of both Obama run, and
also worked for Hillary and her foundation seems to be totally off
limits. I am amazed the report is still searchable.
So instead of dragging olMuels up for the slaughter, why not
expose the source. John Podesta, as per BSG, for Hillary created
out of thin air Russiagate. My question is, with so many agency
leaders, politicians, leaders etc all in on this, knowing first
hand this is false, made up, political theater created and
implemented by Hillary and Podesta...why are they continuing to
defend Her? They could be facing treason charges, or have lost
their jobs and legacies...all for Her.
What deathgrip does she still have on these people whom, once
exposed, will be proven to have participated in America's first
presidential coup. Would you risk your life and livelyhood for
anyone besides your family, let alone Hillary. What goo does she
have on these degenerates? Is it Epstein, Pizzagate blackmail, or
a simple fear of being Seth Rich'd if one does not toe her party
line?
BSG Salvage Report
- Perhaps the most important and
enlightening 4 pages you will read this decade. It's your
sunglasses that allow you to see the aliens who have infiltrated
our country's top positions. Don't be a sheep. Get woke too.
Everybody knows that the illegal behavior of the FBI, AG, CIA, and
all the rest, was performed under the order of Barack Obama. It
can't be proven, because the orders went through Valerie Jarrett,
but UNDOUBTEDLY, that filthy disgusting dog Barack Obama was the
one and only person who gave the orders. What scum he is.
Consequently, nobody will ever sit down again with the FBI for an
interview, unless they consult with an attorney first. Nobody
trusts the government. Maybe Donald Trump can get back some of
the trust if he's allowed to serve another term, but public trust
in the government is still in shambles.
The two-year inquisition was run by attorneys Andrew Weissmann and Jeanie Rhee, two arch
Hillary Clinton partisans
(the latter a lawyer for the Clinton Foundation), leading now to
the conclusion that the Mueller Investigation itself was no less a Clinton operation than the
Steele Dossier. I wonder if it will become known whether Mrs. Clinton herself was in regular
communication with Weissmann and Rhee during these years, or who were the intermediaries between
them. Surely federal attorney John Durham has the mojo to seize phone records of the Mueller Team
and find out exactly who was checking in with whom.
I, for one, even doubt that the
lingering assertion of Russian "interference" in the 2016 election -- taken as dictum by too many
dupes -- has any merit at all.
Rather it was just a foggy byproduct of the mighty
gaslighting effort by experienced Intel Community specialists working the zealously biased and
credulous news media into a lather of bad faith. All of the Russians and "Russian agents" lassoed
into narrative appear to have professional connections to either the CIA, the FBI, the US State
department, or Mrs. Clinton's various networks of myrmidons in the DNC, the Obama administration,
and Fusion GPS. These relationships were all sedulously ignored by the Special Counsel's office --
and now they can't be.
Hence, it is easy to imagine that Attorney General Barr and his lead investigator, Mr. Dunham,
must now entertain the unappetizing prospect of
examining the roles of Mrs. Clinton and the
foregoing cast of characters in this melodrama
for the purpose of discovering whether this
was actually the seditious conspiracy that it appears to have been -- with rather horrific possible
consequences of grave charges and severe punishments.
In all this long and excruciating public playing-out of dark schemes, Mr. Trump, first candidate
and now president, seems to have acted as little more than a tackling dummy for the Mueller Team
and its backstage confederates. He tweeted childishly about the deeply partisan composition of the
Mueller Team when he should have mounted a forceful legal opposition to the effrontery of their
selection in the first place.
It's interesting to follow the pronouncements of the bit-players in this spectacle, now that Mr.
Mueller has inadvertently destroyed the basis of the sacred
narrative
.
Rep. Jerold
Nadler turned up yakking with Anderson Cooper on CNN last night, looking every inch like the Mayor
of Munchkin Land, bloviating against the supposed imminent Russian takeover of America (read: by
witches) and the now-receding fool's errand of impeachment, which would only further expose the
criminal culpability of his own Democratic Party in this sordid misadventure.
Mr. Cooper
looked deeply pained by the chore, and yet his own professional credibility is on the line after
two years of allowing himself to be played like a flugelhorn by
the folks who matter
in
this country, and he contested nothing in Mr. Nadler's mendacious pratings.
And now a fretful silence will descend around this colossal goddamned mess as the
momentum of history shifts against the perpetrators of it,
and the true machinery of
American justice is brought to bear upon them. The playing-out of Act Three will probably coincide
with epic global financial disorder in the months ahead, further obscuring what people and nations
can do to arrest the collapse of Modernity and its sidekick Human Progress.
Clearly, this was a DS psyop that worked beautifully against both
sides of the
pathetic
US political divide. We all
bought into it. But it's time to see it for what it is, and move
on. Period.
It has always been assumed -- indeed it's been considered a truth
-- that no way, no how will Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama
faces ANY consequences for their part in this epic scandal.
However ... we are in different times ... times when there's a
real need for the machinery of government to SHOW the populace
that "no one is above the law." Not just repeat the words ... but
SHOW it. While it might be assured that neither will be
CONVICTED, or IF convicted neither will face the sort of legal
punishment that they should (lengthy federal prison sentences, at
a minimum, and possibly execution) ... there's a greater chance
TODAY that they will actually be put on trial.
Is there an
actual legal/constitutional case to be made that as
Commander-in-Chief of the United States military at the time of
certain actions Obama could actually be charged under military law
and face a military court?
Muellers traitorous career included fronting the FBI in the 911
coverup.
, most crucially trashing the Treasury dept
investigation under O'Neill (the Green Quest raids early 2002)
that laid out all the islamic financing etc. All this led straight
to Grover Norquist, Karl Rove, D Scumbag Bushlips '43, and all
your favorite republipigs..... The hamsters have been treated to
paeans of praise for st. Mueller, not so much has the so-called
media exposed the actual factual record....
The oligarch owners of the financial system have governments by
the balls. Powerful leverage in case somebody starts sniffing
around for crimes committed by these folks. Elected and
non-elected government officials will be the fall guys in case
somebody has to go to jail. People like Comey, Brennan, Clapper,
Mueller, Clinton, and Obama take their orders from higher ups.
One of the most damning and incredible things that happened in
the Muller testimony yesterday:
Mueller, when asked why he
didn't investigate Fusion GPS and the Steele dossier said...
"I
didn't investigate it because it happened before I got there."
lol!!
And nobody followed up on that. Nobody. Not one person up
there on that panel.
Think about that for a minute: he was appointed to investigate
Russia influence into our election. ALL of this happened before
he got there!! What is he supposed to investigate?...things that
are
going to happen in the FUTURE??!
What is
this..."pre-crime" and some Tom Cruise movie?
Of course this moron is supposed to investigate what
HAPPENED in the PAST!
If you don't do that, what were you
here for??? YOU CAN'T WAIT FOR THE FUTURE TO INVESTIGATE
SOMETHING! Mueller was appointed Special Prosecutor to
investigate
what happened,
not what may happen later!
Investigators are supposed to investigate what happened, not
things that haven't happened yet!
This whole thing is a set-up and is a sham!
Bottom line:
This was the set up by the
democrats, to run the clock out through the election in 2018, and
hopefully, for them,...2020.
This will go down as the biggest
scandal in the history of this country, right behind Pearl Harbor,
JFK, and 911.
NOW, the IGReport and the Barr Investigation with bulldog
Durham will uncover all the **** they did which is all 100%
treason.
The IGreport is going to be released after Labor
Day. And it may take as long as December. I have heard both.
The IG Report and Barr will be the truth and the facts. It
will be the counter to Mueller's fake investigation, which was
just part of the "insurance policy" and the attempted take down of
Trump which didn't work. Instead, it wiped out all credibility of
the democrats.
"The democrats had nothing when they did the Mueller Report.
And they left with less than nothing after it."
-President Trump
By the way...Volume 1 of the report was about collusion,
which they found him to be not guilty, because they had zero
evidence. Then they illegally switched to "obstruction", in
Volume 2....and had zero evidence of that either. That Volume is
full of nothing but articles in the Washington Times, Post, etc.
that was leaked to them by Comey, Weissmann, etc. , and was then
grabbed promptly by the crooked FBI and used as "evidence" against
Trump!.
And none of these perps were required to testify! Their
"testimony" was in there books, lol!
One of the footnotes in the Mueller Report said that "one
person told another person that somebody said that there was going
to be a chess match in NY City and Trump was going to be there."
lol!!!
That is evidence???
When the IG Report coems out, and especially when Barr
finished the investigation of the investigators, this will all
come out and will blow everyone away. Add to that the Epstein
stuff and it will nail a ton of these corrupt and crooked people
in politics.
WATCH: GOP Lawmaker Presses Mueller Into Admitting He Held
Trump To A Different Standard
Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller admitted on Wednesday
that the determination of his report held President Donald Trump
to a different standard than the Department of Justice holds any
other individual under investigation.
"You said in Volume 1, on the issue of conspiracy, the special
counsel determined that the investigation did not establish that
members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the
Russian government in its election interference activities," Rep.
John Ratcliffe (R-TX) said during the House Judiciary Committee
hearing. "Then in volume 2 the special counsel did not make a
determination on whether there was an obstruction of justice crime
committed by the president."
"The evidence we obtained about the president's actions and
intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively
determining that no criminal conduct occurred," Ratcliffe
continued, reading directly from Mueller's report. "Accordingly,
while this report does not conclude that the president committed a
crime, it also does not exonerate him."
Ratcliffe, a former prosecutor, argued that the findings of the
report violated Department of Justice (DOJ) policies and
principles by abstaining from exonerating Trump after the Special
Counsel failed to conclusively determine that he was innocent of
all accusations.
"Your report, and today, you said that at all times the special
counsel team operated under, was guided by, and followed Justice
Department policies and principles," Ratcliffe said. "So, which
DOJ policy or principle sets forth a legal standard that an
investigated person is not exonerated if their innocence from
criminal conduct is not conclusively determined?"
After repeating the question multiple times, Mueller failed
to provide a clear answer.
"Can you give me an example other than Donald Trump where
the Justice Department determined that an investigated person is
not exonerated because their innocence was not conclusively
determined?" Ratcliffe asked.
Mueller replied that he could not identify another person
who was ever held to the same standard as Trump, but added that
"this is a unique situation."
"You can't," Ratcliffe said. "Time is short, I've got five
minutes, let's just leave it at 'you can't find it' because I'll
tell you why: it doesn't exist."
The Texas congressman slammed Mueller for stepping outside his
purview in trying to conclude if Trump was innocent and if he
should be exonerated.
"The special counsel's job, nowhere does it say that you
were to conclusively determine Donald Trump's innocence or that
the special counsel report should determine whether or not to
exonerate him," Ratcliffe said. "It's not in any of the documents,
it's not in your appointment order, it's not in the special
counsel regulations, it's not in the OLC opinions, it's not in the
justice manual, and it's not in the principles of federal
prosecution."
"Nowhere do those words appear together because respectfully,
respectfully, director, it was not the special counsel's job to
conclusively determine Donald Trump's innocence or to exonerate
him because the bedrock principle of our justice system is a
presumption of innocence," he continued. "It exists for everyone.
Everyone is entitled to it including sitting presidents."
decent article but let's clear up a couple of things:
no one, not barr nor any on his team and certainly not anyone
in the red half of earth is considering the ensuing russiagate-gate
as an 'unappetising prospect.'
this = 'with rather horrific possible consequences of grave
charges and severe punishments' - make us moist.
doesn't the author also want to see justice done?
second, anderson cooper is cia. cnn is a ruler media centre -
you know because they all are. but cooper is pure intelligence, so
again, he's well aware of everything that is going on.
most people still seem to be a bit too naive about this play
we're watching.
Obviously, Mueller was just a puppet. The entire reason they dragged it out for so long
was to keep the collusion narrative going until after the midterms.
Color me crazy, but Mueller had no trouble hearing democrats, but the asked almost every
republican to repeat questions and muddled his lengthy responses as a stalling tactic?
There is no doubt who was in control of The Mueller Special Counsel. It was Andrew
Weissman, a disgraced prosecutor of people convicted in the Enron Scandal. Convictions that
were later thrown out by The Supreme Court.
So Mueller lied when he was asked if he reviewed the entire report & he stands by
report. But during his testimony he couldn't answer or really colaborate/substantiate
anything in the report. WOW??? This is astounding & an embarrassment.
So this is who the liberals have warshipped as a God the last years. What a mess of a man.
He was clearly off his meds and also clearly needed medical help with his dementia. One thing
is clear though. He has never ever read his own report. He has not written a word of whats in
it and he didn't seem to even know what was in in an what it was all was about. Hell he
didn't even know who his own friend were. So why should he be payed for his work? He didn't
actually do anything. The only thing he actually knew was that he hated Trump for some
reason.
Mueller is a complete FRAUD. And if corp media showed the endless footage that they are
now showing, trying to frame this as a win for Democrats, and at the same time showing
Mueller LYING to Congress about IRAQI WMD. Would Democratic voters be so willing to back this
criminal if they knew the Robert Mueller back story. . So completely obvious.
At one point when asked about his investigation and that it was filled with "Clinton
supporters", Mueller started going off by asking never in his blah blah years of doing this
has he ever been asked such a question and that his investigation had INTEGRITY.
W.T.F????
It was OUTRAGEOUS to watch this man feign outrage about how filled with integrity his
investigation was and that it wasn't political!! Talk about Orwellian spin???
This **** show is how fucked up our political 2 party system of FRAUD really is.
Unbelievable.
Why aren't these liars being charged and arrested? I despise Trump but I despise people
using treachery to undermine the office of the Presidency and the government of the United
States even more. They could be guilty of treason. They probably are. I am most definitely
not a MAGA guy. That said, the enemy of my enemy is NOT my friend. These potential
(demonstrable) traitors have done far worse than Trump ever has.
Mike Whitney wrote about the outcome of this being a dud a few months ago: Tit For
Tat? Why Did Mueller Let Trump Off the Hook? . Whitney said that Russiagate was all about
containing Trump's foreign policy agenda, to try to force him to go along with the Blob--and
when Trump started to do that, that is when Mueller "finished" and found "nothing to see here
folks" when he could have dragged it on for years.
Now I am not so sure if the Saudis and Netanyahu were behind it, it could be coming from
the foreign policy establishment, not just Americans but also Russian oligarchs on the outs
with Putin, also oligarchs from the UK and Europe, Ukraine, Georgia, etc. and mostly all
about containing Russia economically and geopolitically. Or I could be right and it is about
the Middle East. My idea was that the impeachment talk by the Dems would end if Trump did
what MbS and Netanyahu want him to do. How do we know which is correct? If Trump starts a war
with Iran and impeachment talk ends, then I was right because the foreign policy
establishment does not want a war with Iran.
We know that because recently various major domos of the establishment and oligarchs like
Soros and Koch have been trying to talk Trump out of a military conflict with Iran.
The hearings made it clear that Mueller did not write the report. His staff did, and he just
rubber-stamped it. His recollection of what was in the report was so defective that I suspect
he hadn't even read the whole thing.
I picked up my used copy of Super Imperialism back in 1978 and have tried to keep
up with Hudson since. When I first began commenting at our bar, I often touched on our
dysfunctional culture as being at the ultimate root of our multiple dilemmas, and that speaks
to your 2nd & 3rd paragraphs. As I've expressed, IMO US and by extension EU society is
coming to a state of Critical Mass but not simultaneously. Much of the former USSR and Soviet
Bloc went through this experience first, but it was of a different sort and parts are now
going through a second phase with Ukraine and Georgia being examples. The EU had Greece and
now France, but they are all disparate although they share commonalities. The anti-union
regions of the USA are all hurting with their $7.25 minimum wage and great lack of basic
services; yet, the wealthier regions aren't doing as well as it may seem at first glance as
exemplified by the many working homeless. Both Trump and Sanders fed off these disaffections
in 2016, and things are worse now than then.
As it stands, we are all students at this bar; none are Masters with answers, although
some try to project that visage. Most interactions are helpful even if not replied to as the
differing POV are the same as a different school of thought, promote reevaluation, further
thinking, and analysis. So, thanks again for your replies, and to all the others that
participate.
The biggest problem about the whole Mueller thing is his own history. A verifiable history of
collusion with the owners of the US. He did their bidding so obviously, so many times, that
whoever has lined themselves up behind this guy - can only be part of a much deeper problem
than meets the eye.
Mueller supported the bombing of Yugoslavia, the Iraq war and the lawlessness of the Bush
regime. He acted, in what can only be called the bi-partisan deception of the American
people, for decades now. This person is under no circumstances to be trusted - with whatever
leaves his vocal chords.
Alan Watts stated once so fittingly "Who polices the police? Who rules the rulers?" and
the answer is neither obvious, nor is it subject of widespread discussion.
The disservice Mueller did to the American people can only be compared by going back in
time and taking a deep look at the Democratic party establishment around the time when
Roosevelt was to be retiring due to health reasons.
The man had a vice president that was not only loved by millions of Americans, he had
massive support by the population in his fight against what he dubbed 'The American Fascist'.
It turned out that the fascist Democratic party establishment sabotaged his nomination - as
much as they would over and over again with anybody rocking their fascist boat.
Mueller is the enemy of the people. He has created an environment of deepest division and
suspicion. Both are antagonistic to a true Democracy. But his paymasters are rubbing their
hands behind luxury curtains. The American people have been successfully neutered and
incapacitated. You might not be a 'Russian stooge' or whatever anymore, but any form of
criticism of the present status quo will render you some sort of tool for whoever.
While it would take a proper crystal ball to predict the outcome of his distraction
campaign, one thing can be easily deducted. The American electorate is at a complete loss in
regards to the real objective here - a bi-partisan objective to never allow the population to
see the truth again.
Re Mueller: What do you expect? What do you expect from ANY if these gangsters,
opportunists and mass murderers? I'm constantly amazed that otherwise rational people
entertain the idea that any of these corrupt time servers can be anything other than what
they are! Creatures of Empire, whose lives are totally bound up with SERVING Empire!
My response to the Mueller "chat" is how incredibly unprepared he seemed to be! The questions
he was to answer were either obvious or ones any dependable lackey should of prepared him
for.
He looked senile and unaware and incompetent! I was really taken back as it seemed to be a
serious "fuck you" to thinking people or incredible laziness on the part of the wannabe
established narrative.
Were the restrictions on what he could talk about a blessing? Seems to me the gotcha
questions were restricted but still I was kinda impressed by the overall questioning.
I always wondered why trump seemed such a wuss on defending himself based upon the evidence
he could of used to support himself!
Could it be that he was preparing for 2020 all along and that an actual long game mentality
might prove the difference in another trump victory?
I could not watch all the time yesterday, but what struck me as soon as Mueller began
speaking about any extemporaneous topics, even some seemingly simple yes/no or prepared
responses, was that he seemed unable to speak smoothly and directly. He appeared to me he was
searching for words, unable to easily put his replies into phrasing or sentences. Not
stuttering, but close to it. At a loss for words, yes.
Was he extremely tired? Showing signs of Alzheimer's or other speech problems which can
show up in old age? Did he have some kind of illness affecting his speech?
Later in the day, he had one reply to a Repub questioner, iirc, where he seemed more like
the Mueller I had previously seen/heard.
thanks b... anything to discredit this pile of innuendo is fine by me - especially if mueller
is being exposed for the gofer he is..
Joseph Mifsud was a key player in the game, but always portrayed as a russian asset..
disobedient media did good work covering mifsuds connections to m16-cia.. no wonder
mueller didn't feel a need to talk with him.. he was one of their assets..
but regardless of the desire to throw the wool over the publics eyes, what is really
shocking is the dismal role of the democrat party in the usa as a party in opposition.. trump
is being given another win by these folks... you find the worst person to lead the country -
trump, and then you get an even worse opposition party - the democrats - and you have another
4 years of trump! but, if you are lucky the democrats will figure out to drop the impeachment
concept when trump gets in for a 2nd term... that is not a sure thing!
@25 bevin.. i used to follow ew... she has driven so far over the cliff, there is no
turning back for her... her comment section now is just plain awful...
It was good to see congress members show some intelligence (and do intelligence work} in
questioning Mueller. Congress, AG Barr, and IG Horowitz now have overwhelming evidence which
could expose a lot of rot and possibly bring criminal charges to the highest ranks of the
intelligence agencies and Obama administration. Question is, are they willing to go that far,
or just serve as "controlled opposition" the way Trey Gowdy was with the Clinton email
crimes. Repubs have been on the same MIC teat as Dems, and that may temper how far they go.
Yesterday's questioning was encouraging though.
As others have said, the most stunning display of ignorance was Mueller's admission of not
knowing who Fusion GPS or Glenn Simpson was. WTF!!?? and what has he been doing for over two
years? With Mueller's obvious showing of ineptitude it's clear what his role has been from
the start, serving as the "esteemed and beyond reproach, non-biased statesman" while the
cabal on the committee set the agenda. NPR in their wisdom yesterday refuted any such idea,
because as you know Mueller is a "Republican".
MSM reporting on this whole affair for the last three years is a joke; I'd put the score
at 98% BS and 2% useful info (the 2% mostly from Fox--Tucker Carlson et al). The most
incisive MSM reporting has come from Dan Bongino; I don't agree with some of his politics but
with Russiagate/Spygate he is spot on. His podcast from yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMKn3lgv6Bc
In July 2017, Weissmann, who has been labeled Mueller's "pit bull" because of aggressive
prosecutorial style, met with attorneys representing Dmitry Firtash, an energy magnate who
was indicted on bribery charges in 2014, reports The Hill.
The story cites sources familiar with Weissmann's offer and defense memos written in
meetings with the prosecutor.
One of the defense memos said that Weissmann claimed he could "resolve the Firtash case"
by withdrawing charges against the oligarch, who has since been ordered extradited to the
U.S. from Austria.
"The complete dropping of the proceedings was doubtless on the table," a Firtash defense
memo reportedly says.
Yes, the hearing was a disaster for Democrats... and Republicans... and Americans... and even
for Trump! But who cares? What is hugely damaging for almost everyone else is, instead,
another lost opportunity to expose the emptiness of the Russian supposed meddling activities
and the senseless Macchartist Russo-phobic climate following it, that has come out reinforced
from the Muller testimony
The Democrats wanted Robert Mueller to testify about his report on their favorite
conspiracy theories, that Russia influenced the U.S. election and that Trump colluded with
Russia in this.
Mueller had made clear that he did not want to testify and that all he had to say was
already in his report. The Democrats insisted. But today's hearing went poorly as even
their partisan followers admit:
Much as I hate to say it, this morning's hearing was a disaster. Far from breathing
life into his damning report, the tired Robert Mueller sucked the life out of it. The
effort to save democracy and the rule of law from this lawless president has been set
back, not advanced.
During the hearing multiple Democrats tried to get Mueller to support an impeachment of
Trump. But Mueller never gave them that gift. The Democrats should thank him for that. An
impeachment process against Trump
is not popular :
A July Post-ABC poll found that 37 percent of Americans support Congress beginning
impeachment proceedings, while 59 percent do not, with a 61 percent majority of Democrats
backing proceedings.
It is high time for the Democrats to finally bury that nonsense and to start talking
about progressive politics.
Mueller seemed to be not aware of many details of the investigation done under his
name.
He said he knew nothing about GPS, the company hired by the Clinton campaign to contract
with MI6 agent Christopher Steele to fabricate the 'dirty dossier'. There were lots of
reports about GPS in the media and Mueller missed all of them?
He refused to answer why he did not indict Joseph Mifsud, a mysterious Maltese professor
who planted the claim that 'Russia has dirt on Hillary Clinton' with Trump campaign adviser
George Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos later repeated that claim. The FBI then used that fact as
the reason to launch its investigation against the Trump campaign. In his report Mueller
claimed, without showing evidence, that Mifsud worked for Russia. That is unlikely and
there is actual evidence that he worked with the British MI6.
Mifsud lied to the Mueller investigation. But unlike others witnesses who lied, Mueller
never indicted him for making false statements. He punted on
questions about this issue with multiple "Can't get into that."
He
reacted similar when he was asked about Christopher Steele, the British agent who
created and peddled the fake 'dirty dossier'.
There is still another Justice Department investigation ongoing that will look at the
whole Russia affair from a different viewpoint. Was the FBI investigation into 'Russiagate'
an illegal partisan effort to go after Trump? Who really initiate the whole 'Russiagate'
campaign that seems to have been run by the British MI6? Was it John Brennan, Obama's CIA
director, involved?
Little is known about that second investigation. It will hopefully come up with better
evidence and results than the one Robert Mueller led. Somehow, I'm reminded of this
article
. They got what they wanted from the Mueller Report (not the Democrats, but the so-called
"Deep State").
Here are some very interesting comments from Vladimir Putin about Russia's role in the 2016
election and how the election was rigged for a Clinton victory:
"The effort to save democracy and the rule of law from this lawless president has been
set back, not advanced."
What idiotic partisan drivel from the aptly named Lawrence Tribe . There's no
real democracy and every president is lawless (as is every other US institution).
"During the hearing multiple Democrats tried to get Mueller to support an impeachment of
Trump."
Maybe they should try getting their own Speaker to support it. It's the only possible
theater they have left.
"It is high time for the Democrats to finally bury that nonsense and to start talking
about progressive politics."
Why would they do that? By any objective or historical measure the Democrats are a
far-right party. Oldest bourgeois political party on Earth.
Laurence Tribe's "lawless president" was Obama, not Trump. In a great many ways, Obama
is/was worse than Trump, which ought to be expected--Obama's CIA, Trump's merely an
Apprentice. Mueller fashioned a cover up and is fortunate to escape. There're still many
crimes to investigate and arrests to be made, but those are mostly on Tribe's side.
Russ #3. You took the words right out of my keypad Russ, starting with your first "quote"
and ending with your last "quote". The only difference is you said it much better and more
succinctly than I.
Brennan no matter how you toss, turn, stretch, fold or slant it.
Brennan (and a small côterie around him) tried a 'lever-grab' when Trump won.
It got out of hand when the MSM ran away with it and Brennan was ex.
The only way to control this narrative was for Brennan remain in charge of it.
Hence his pundit role on CIA Network News.
It ain't rocket science.
Shades of the Sirhan-Sirhan frame-up it would seem. You don't go to a crowded nightclub,
get out on the dance floor and kill yourself; instead, you'd shoot up the club then kill
yourself or allow the cops to do the deed. The Clinton Crime Family strikes again!
The aim is now to get Trump on obstruction of justice. However, it's highly possible that
Obama will get hit with that charge first for obstructing the investigation and charging of
Hillary Clinton for the many crimes she committed. Then there are also Obama's crimes, too.
But does Trump have the balls required? We shall see.
"It is high time for the Democrats to finally bury that nonsense and to start talking about
progressive politics."
Depends. Do you want them to talk about real progressive, as in leftist and
anti-capitalist, politics, or about fake "progressive" politics, as in the SJW pet-peeve of
the day?
"It is high time for the Democrats to finally bury that nonsense and to start talking about
progressive politics."
b, you of all people should know that the Democratic Party is not interested as an
institution in progressive politics. There seems to be a few who hang out with the Dems who
are. They are flogging a dead horse. We need a new party that will really fight for the
working people, and mobilize for change, not just for elections.
The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, recently passed away
and now there are claims that he was actually assassinated by Israel and the US for
refusing to give in to raise new allegations against Iran's nuclear program. It appears
that he was not in the best of health and therefore was planning to step down early, but on
the other hand there appears to be no depth to which the accused parties will not sink.
Anyone who has doubted that the so-called Russia-gate scandal was nothing nothing but a
fraud ginned-up by the Democrats, specifically by the Clinton wing of the party from day
one, must be hopelessly stupid. Donald Trump's election to the Presidency, was in fact, the
product of a gerrymandered House of Representatives, that gave individual congressional
districts to the GOP, which in turn, assured Trump's election by the Electoral College,
regardless of how the popular vote went. That is the reason why Hillary Clinton lost the
2016 presidential election, in addition to her being a lousy and arrogant campaigner.
The gerrymandering of the House of Representatives is deplorable, but it did not affect the
Electoral College vote in 2016. How many votes a state gets in the Electoral College
depends on its population as determined by the census.
I rather doubt he was murdered; his health was in decline; he planned to retire soon;
and he was not at the recent closed-door meeting called by the Outlaw US Empire. As I wrote
yesterday, the two most avid candidates for his replacement are an Argentinian and a
Romanian, whose degree of independence must be questioned as was Amano's initially. As I
cited Zarif as saying, his replacement must be as great an advocate of JCPOA as he was.
Among the incidental damage of this farcical reprise of McCarthyite history was
Emptywheel-Marci Wheeler, who must have known better but evidently believed that the
Democrats would win this one and be distributing spoils galore.
A pity because, in her time, before 2016 Marci did much constructive work, now all wasted
away. Most of the partisan Democrats who have felt obliged to pay lip service to this
nonsense-including Bernie who must have known better- have damaged their credibility
significantly. And they didn't have an abundance of credibility to draw on.
So we can expect the stupidity to continue: too many people have too much political capital
invested in Russiagate not to keep selling this combination of a mirage and Brooklyn Bridge
to the fan club.
I'm beginning to think that Julian Assange won't be extradited for the same reason as the
Internet Research Agency of St Petersburg is not being charged: even the corrupt US court
system cannot completely guarantee that Julian will not say something very interesting
about the matter. And come up with irrefutable proof that it is true.
Yeah, deplorable ain't it? But he hates Obama, who certainly obstructed justice. As I
opined a few days ago, Trump probably told Pelosi that if impeachment proceedings against
him were to go forward then he'd go after Obama, which is why Pelosi again said
impeachment's off the table.
As for what some see as a related topic, to get beyond Epstein, the sealed financial
records must be unsealed cause that's where all the goodies are hidden--follow the money,
don'tcha know!
For those who challenged b's assertion that the Ds would start talking about Progressive
politics, he's correct as they already have/are--attacking Progressive politicians and the
policies they champion.
From yesterday :
"'It's as Bad as It Looks': Pelosi Under Fire for Debt Ceiling Deal That Hands GOP Power
to Kneecap Progressive Agenda
"'It sets up a crisis of the first year of the next president's administration,' said a
former congressional staffer. 'We're letting them light the fuse on another bomb and place
it squarely in the middle of the next president's first year.'"
Quite similar to what Obama did to Trump at the executive.
The whole Russiagate thing started two days after the DNC found out it had lost its emails.
Losing the emails meant the world would know that the primary was rigged, and that the DNC,
with media assistance, intentionally lined Trump up as an easy-to-beat GOP candidate. This
would be very very bad for them all, and for the USA. The future could have been a scene of
the Democrat candidate being hauled away in cuffs mid way through the election campaign.
Fox reporter says Assange told her privately to tell Seth Rich's parents that Seth did
the leak. The timeline fits that Mifsud, and then Alexander Downer, did what they did upon
request, implicating Paps in a Russia scandal all the way on the other side of the pond
(read somewhere that Paps doesn't even recall mentioning the Russian dirt thing to Downer),
so that it wasn't so obvious that the need for the whole Russiagate campaign originated
entirely from the DNC email leak.
I think he was just playing dumb as soon as they asked him anything implicating MI6, the
Clintons or the FBI. His answers for the Dems were pretty short and sweet, anytime he was
asked anything tricky he mumbled and fuddled to obfuscate the truth, if he actually
answered at all.
PCR posits that
Trump needs to go after the crminals, in what he calls,
...the most massive conspiracy in American history, the intent of which was a coup
against the elected president of the United States...
He says that Chavez' fatal mistake was 'moving on' instead of going after the gang
behind the 2002 coup attempt [ie the powerful Venezuelan oligarchy].
Muduro is repeating Chavez's mistake. The CIA puppet who declared himself President of
Venezuela and participated overtly with Washington in a coup attempt against Maduro has
been given a free pass by Maduro, who has "moved on."
Politicians who are so stupid as to allow extreme criminal actions against democracy
to go unpunished destroy democracy and bring about their own overthrow. Will Trump be one
of them?
P.S.- You can add Pelosi and Schumer to that list, and many more, who worship at the feet
of the uber-wealthy, instead of serving the public interest. All these and more, including
DJT, are the real problem..
PCR is wrong about it being "the most massive conspiracy in American history." I would
posit that the attempt to implement the #1 policy goal of Full Spectrum Dominance is
THE most massive conspiracy--historic and ongoing--as it involves almost the entire
Federal government and the armed forces just for starters. Blaming Russia is part of that
policy goal.
To Lysias: Please read or reread a 9th grade high school civics book. Each US House
congressional district is allotted one elector to the Electoral College. Each congressional
district in each state is determined by that states' legislature. If that legislature is
controlled by a particular political party, (Democrat, GOP etc.) then the makeup of that
state's congressional borders will reflect the majority party's wishes on who goes to the
Electoral College as an elector. Thus the gerrymandering. Remember, it is for better or
worse, the Electoral College that actually selects who will be President, not the popular
vote. Usually, most electors will reflect the voters of their district. But there have been
rare exceptions. The US of A is not a pure democracy, but a limited one.
karlof @ 36; Agreed, but, this whole ball of wax is about massive corporate profits, and
those sycophants who enable the process of killing for profits, around the globe...
That's what the 4th Reich does..
"It is high time for the Democrats to finally bury that nonsense and to start
talking about progressive politics."
I completely agree with previous comments making the point that the Democratic Party, as
an establishment institution, derails progressive change.
b supported Sanders in 2016. Apparently, he still hasn't caught on to the ruse.
"Democracy" as we understand that term is dead. Does anyone really believe that the
Hillary vs. Trump choice arose from a 'democratic' process? Is Theresa May and Boris
Johnson's selection to lead Britian 'democratic'? What about two consecutive rounds of
Jewish Presidents and Prime Ministers in Ukraine? Is that a true 'democratic' choice?
Representative democracy has been compromised by money. The best alternative is direct
democracy, which is a key demand of the Yellow Vest protestors .
= Was the FBI investigation into 'Russiagate' an illegal partisan effort to go after
Trump?
No. Russiagate was means for the Deep State to initiate a new McCarthyism. It had
virtually no effect on the 2016 election.
= Who really initiate the whole 'Russiagate' campaign that seems to have been run by
the British MI6? Was it John Brennan, Obama's CIA director, involved?
I think it's pretty clear that CIA uses MI6 for US domestic 'ops'. I doubt MI6 would be
'meddling' in US Presidential elections without CIA approval. And Gina Haspel was in UK
during this time.
Did he order the new McCarthyism (aka "Code Red") which included electing Trump
as President, setting up Wikileaks to be smeared as a foreign agent, and settling scores
with Michael Flynn?
Acting on 'Deep State' approval from the likes of Clinton, McCain, Mueller, Bush Sr.,
et al.
<> <> <> <> <> <>
The public is being led to believe that some bad apples in FBI/CIA were trying to elect
Hillary and then unseat President Trump. That makes no sense for many reasons but chief
among them is that Trump has not been bad for the establishment that pretends to hate
him.
What makes much more sense is that Trump was meant to win. There wouldn't have been a
Russiagate without a Trump win and Kissinger was calling for something like MAGA in 2014 to
meet the challenge from Russia and China. Plus Hillary lost/threw the election by taking
steps that no seasoned politician would have, like alienating key voter groups and refusing
to campaign in the 3 mid-Western states that SHE KNEW would decide the election (her
running mate grew up in the mid-West!)
Mueller's stumbling, fumbling, confused performance serves to discredit his report. Thats a
win for Democrats. Of course he wouldn't support impeachment publicly as he was hired to
cover it up. Nobody does cover ups better than Mueller. Doesn't know who GPS is? LOL. No
indictments for Steele and Mifsud. More LOL
With the author of the report that supposedly absolved Trump discredited, the report is
no longer credible. Impeachment is the only way to get answers. But Dems and the deep State
Media don't want impeachment despite their public rhetoric. Its all fake wrestling. Trumps
the man the elite have chosen. They follow the orders of their masters who wish them to to
make ineffective noises against Trump to serve the illusion we have a 2 party Democracy
So instead of emphasizing how Mueller discredited himself as a justification for
impeachment they muddle the water with articles pointing to their defeat because Mueller
didn't hand them anything on a silver platter (impeachment) besides his own apparent
incompetence, they wave the white flag of defeat. LOL, IQ's are plummeting like a Boeing
737Max. There is nothing people wont believe.
You opine: "Progressive politics is irrelevant." Then you endorse a Progressive
Political Policy Goal: "the public banking initiative".
The Populist Progressive Movement of the late 19th Century championed Public Banks as
opposed to Private Banks and pushed for them to be implemented on a national scale. The all
too numerous business cycle and financial crashes from 1876 to 1912 finally pushed
Conservatives into forming a hybrid they could control which became the Federal Reserve.
Its 106 year history shows that it's extremely imperfect and has caused great harm to the
majority of the US citizenry. IMO, it would be best to terminate the Fed and replace it
with what the Populists originally proposed--a nationwide system of public banks dedicated
to serving the public interest while working with the US Treasury to manage the nation's
coin and currency. Private banks could still exist; but with the Fed's elimination, their
special privileges would disappear and they'd be forced to compete in a fair market with
public banks. Here's the
main national advocate group's website to establish a system of public banks while
allowing the Fed to remain.
John Merryman , Jul 24 2019 22:27 utc |
47karlof1 , Jul 24 2019 22:28 utc |
48
51 Cont'd--
Oops, I see we linked to the same site. What follows is the relevant portion of the
National People's Party
Platform also known as the Omaha Platform adopted in 1892:
"FINANCE. -- We demand a national currency, safe, sound, and flexible, issued by the
general government only, a full legal tender for all debts, public and private, and that
without the use of banking corporations, a just, equitable, and efficient means of
distribution direct to the people, at a tax not to exceed 2 per cent. per annum, to be
provided as set forth in the sub-treasury plan of the Farmers' Alliance, or a better
system; also by payments in discharge of its obligations for public improvements.
"1. We demand free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio
of l6 to 1.
"2. We demand that the amount of circulating medium be speedily increased to not less
than $50 per capita.
"3. We demand a graduated income tax.
"4. We believe that the money of the country should be kept as much as possible in the
hands of the people, and hence we demand that all State and national revenues shall be
limited to the necessary expenses of the government, economically and honestly
administered.
"5. We demand that postal savings banks be established by the government for the safe
deposit of the earnings of the people and to facilitate exchange."
I wonder what a delegate to that Convention would think of today's level of corruption
and the utterly criminal mismanagement of the nation's/People's finances by those entrusted
with that job.
An alternative inquiry might question Julian Assange and Craig Murray. And they really
should question Cody Shearer, Sidney Blumenthal.and of course Christopher Steele. Sergei
Skripal would likely have relevant information (if he could be found), along with his MI6
minder Pablo Miller (and Steele's MI6 mate and business partner)...
I notice that Karlof1 points out the goal of getting Trump on "obstruction of justice".
Testimony indicating that "obstruction of justice" obtains even if no crime is involved
indicates the total destruction of the rule of law under the yankee legal structure. This
view makes the yankee system like a Duerrenmatt novel where they can charge any body who
does not fully cooperate with the authorities with obstruction of justice even if they
cannot charge them with any other crime. That results in a fascist structure that can
imprison any body they choose to on trumped up charges. As for Mueller, his failure reveals
the bankruptcy of the whole Russia theory. It was, however, a success for the power
structure, since, as a result, Flynn, a sceptic on arming terrorists to act on behalf of
the yankee regime, was eliminated as Trump's national security advisor and eventually
replaced with Bolton, a war criminal and a threat to our survival.
Mike Whitney wrote about the outcome of this being a dud a few months ago: Tit For
Tat? Why Did Mueller Let Trump Off the Hook? . Whitney said that Russiagate was all
about containing Trump's foreign policy agenda, to try to force him to go along with the
Blob--and when Trump started to do that, that is when Mueller "finished" and found "nothing
to see here folks" when he could have dragged it on for years.
Now I am not so sure if the Saudis and Netanyahu were behind it, it could be coming from
the foreign policy establishment, not just Americans but also Russian oligarchs on the outs
with Putin, also oligarchs from the UK and Europe, Ukraine, Georgia, etc. and mostly all
about containing Russia economically and geopolitically. Or I could be right and it is
about the Middle East. My idea was that the impeachment talk by the Dems would end if Trump
did what MbS and Netanyahu want him to do. How do we know which is correct? If Trump starts
a war with Iran and impeachment talk ends, then I was right because the foreign policy
establishment does not want a war with Iran.
We know that because recently various major domos of the establishment and oligarchs like
Soros and Koch have been trying to talk Trump out of a military conflict with Iran.
The hearings made it clear that Mueller did not write the report. His staff did, and he
just rubber-stamped it. His recollection of what was in the report was so defective that I
suspect he hadn't even read the whole thing.
That would be like Archibald Cox saying he never heard of Watergate! Does Mueller have Alzheimer's? If he doesn't know that
much, what's the point of even talking to him?
Dems should have adjourned right then, to save further embarrassment.
"frail old man, unable to remember things, stumbling, refusing to answer basic questions...I
said it in 2017 and Mueller confirmed it today," tweeted Moore, adding "All you pundits and
moderates and lame Dems who told the public to put their faith in the esteemed Robert Mueller
-- just STFU from now on."
We're seeing the REAL corruption. Mueller's investigation was completely corrupt which hunt
from day one!!
Mueller looks like a Deer in the Headlights, a confused and scared old man, and definitely
does not know details of his own investigation. He was just a figurehead. Which makes me wonder
who really was in charge of this investigation?!!! Muller is not smart enough to be Special
counsel. He can't even remember what he signed. It was clear that Mueller doesn't know what his
own report says.
Mueller was in on it from the beginning. His whole role was to get President Trump impeached,
but he chicken out at the end and now he looks bad. Did you see the look he gave Nadler? That was
the look of "Help Me, Please".
All members of Mueller team should be disbarred for, at a minimum.
It's obvious that Mueller had very little to do with the report, so Trump's claims a bunch
of crazed partisans conducted a witch hunt certainly seems more plausible.
Richard Kroll51 minutes
ago God Bless you Jim Jordan and the intelligent people of Ohio who elected you. You nailed
Mueller cold. "We can't talk about this... 1000x...we can't talk about this." Why the hell NOT
Mr. Mueller. Don WS4E46 minutes
ago Meuller: "I'm not going to get into anything that makes me looks bad" Blake Alsobrook25 minutes
ago Fuvking amazing. Mifsud is western intelligence. Bring the whole thing down. Nightflight1 hour ago
A costly dog &pony show. Nothing will come out of it.
Look at this old broken down bureaucrat investigator who clearly hates all of this. This
is what a life of lies, deceptions and political games does to an individual. It removes a
persons soul until there is nothing left but an empty shell. Sad
It's honestly amazing how reluctant he is to confirm his own words for a republican
questioner, yet how breezy and carefree he is with rank speculation when team jackass has the
microphone. This guy is the worst kind of criminal.
Hiring practices? How about Weismann's career of prosecutorial abuses as noted by multiple
courts not to mention all those Enron Anderson defendants who were wrongfully imprisioned by
Weismann's withholding exculpatory evidence and eventually released and exonerated by the
judicial system?
"... Without putting too fine a point on it, the Mueller "report" is nothing but a tissue of lies, innuendo, and misinformation tantamount to fraud. ..."
"... What the Mueller "report" is, however, is a relatively crude effort to cover up the efforts of the "deep state" (FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, etc etc) to fix the 2016 election for their preferred candidate - Three Names. And that isn't just highly illegal, it's a violation of the oath that you take to uphold the constitution. They should be in jail and somebody should be investigating Seth Rich's murder. ..."
You have been very consistent Mr. Mate. I applaud you. Let me make a few observations.
There are two things to consider. One is the allegations that resulted in Mueller's so-called
investigation and two is the "investigation" itself.
As for the allegation of (a) Russian interference/"meddling" in the 2016, you have
provided the ammunition that shoots the allegation full of holes. Timing after the election,
minuscule budget compared to actors actually trying to influence the election, advertising
content frequently having nothing to do with the election and, finally, a US district judge
that pointed out that Mueller hadn't shown that the Russian government was behind the
Internet Research Agency and ordered him to cease and desist. Everybody seems to go oh, well,
that's alright at this point but it's not. The United States government seized Russian owned
properties in the United States without compensation, it expelled Russian diplomats and
pressed our vassal states to expel Russian diplomats, it expanded an economic war with Russia
by increasing the sanctions that the US imposed on Russia for their successful resistance to
the US coup in Ukraine as well as barring Russian citizens from obtaining visas to the US. If
the US wants to play law-fare, plausibly the Russians should respond in kind. What we have
done to Russia just for any part of this could easily be a tort in a US court. False claims
that result in damages are actionable.
Then you have (b) the US claim that the dastardly forces of evil and/or wickedness (the
GRU) broke into the DNC computers and stole all these e-mails which demonstrated what a bunch
of b***ards the DNC were and released them to the world so that now everybody knew that the
DNC was a corrupt and evil organization. More sanctions all around for Russia. Wait, what?
Oh, right, the GRU. There were a number of us who were poking holes in the regime's narrative
about the "hack" of DNC and now another federal judge has proof in front of him that, in
fact, the murdered Seth Rich and his brother Aaron were the source of a thumb-drive with the
e-mails. Oops. But the more sanctions all around on Russia are still in place without any
justification. To make matters worse, I read on Reuters that FBI director Wray is claiming
that the Russians are going to interfere in the 2020 elections. Has anybody read the story of
the little boy who cried wolf? They interfered in the 2016 election....ah, no, they
didn't....They were going to interfere in the elections of our European vassals....ah, no,
they didn't.
Without putting too fine a point on it, the Mueller "report" is nothing but a tissue
of lies, innuendo, and misinformation tantamount to fraud. It probably isn't worth the
match to set it on fire (at least with Ken Starr we got something so salacious that we could
skip the Playboy).
What the Mueller "report" is, however, is a relatively crude effort to cover up the
efforts of the "deep state" (FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, etc etc) to fix the 2016 election for their
preferred candidate - Three Names. And that isn't just highly illegal, it's a violation of
the oath that you take to uphold the constitution. They should be in jail and somebody should
be investigating Seth Rich's murder.
Jeffrey Harrison says: July 23, 2019 at 11:46 pm
Oh, and by the way. The US chose to violate the Russian embassy facilities at least as
flagrantly as the Iranian teenagers did in Tehran but without the excuse of youthful
exuberance.
"... 20 Crucial Questions Ahead of Mueller Testimony https://youtu.be/X2WZpm1GJzE ..."
"... I still wonder how Barr forced Mueller to conclude his circus. The officially trotted out letters are not simply enough to stop Mueller; remember, this is the man who arrested Flynn but not Podesta. There must be some good ammunition that Barr has got hold of that terrified Mueller to stop his "investigations" even though he knew this will anger the Deep State. ..."
"... Dirty-cop Mueller Rigged Grand Juries For Decades: https://aim4truth.org/2019/05/01/mueller-rigged-grand-juries-for-decades/ ..."
"... Dirty-Cop Mueller Failed to Provide Evidence That DNC Was Hacked https://youtu.be/lKGn1zSL-OU ..."
"... And to add insult to injury, breaking just a couple of hours ago. John Solomon of The Hill says DOJ met with Misfud attorneys and have told Durham, he was hired by Western Intelligence (FBI, CIA) to approach Popadapolus on their behalf, NOT ON BEHALF OF THE RUSSIANS. ..."
"... In other words... The origins of the investigation is a lie. The Mueller probe should never have even started as there was ZERO probable cause. ..."
"... At this point, the Obama DOJ / FBI / State Dept have broken dozens of laws to cover up the fact that they were spying on EVERYONE, not just the Trump team... The resistance is so great, that they have made themselves into a parody... When everything gets declassified, none of these people will be able to walk the street... ..."
"... 8. Why didn't you interview Veselnitskya, or review all documents related to her expedited approval for entering the country by Lorenta Lynch and your prosecution team member Preet Bhrara ? ..."
"... Those 'Trump officials' were only 'Trump officials' for appearances. Manafort, for instance, was a plant. And Trump knew he was a plant; Manafort was entered into the Trump campaign under a contrived circumstance. ..."
"... Well I don't expect anything to change. The Republicans won't ask the right questions and the Democrats will spend their time spewing immaterial "bad things" about Trump to influence public perception because they have nothing of substance. All they can hope for is to discredit him enough in the court of public opinion. ..."
"On Wednesday, in back-to-back hearings with the former special counsel, that wish
could face its final make-or-break moment."
The very fact that Democrats had to subpoena Mueller in order to create this final moment should
in fact be the final reminder of
what
a mistake it was
for Democrats to have waited on him. If Mueller had incriminating information
yet to share, or had been stymied from doing his work, or if Attorney General William Barr had
somehow misrepresented his findings, then it stands to reason that Mueller would be
welcoming
the opportunity to appear
before Congress, not
resisting
it.
The reality is that Mueller's investigation did not indict a single person for collusion with
Russia, or even for anything related to the 2016 election. Mueller's report found no evidence of a
Trump-Russia conspiracy, and
even
undermined the case for it
.
That said, there are unresolved matters that Mueller's testimony could help clarify. Mueller
claimed to have established that the Russian government conducted "a sweeping and systematic"
interference campaign in order to elect Trump, yet the contents of his report don't support that
allegation. The Mueller report repeatedly excludes countervailing information in order to suggest,
misleadingly, that the Trump campaign had suspect "links" and "ties" to people connected with
Russia. And Mueller and other intelligence officials involved in the Russia probe made questionable
investigative decisions that are worthy of scrutiny. To address these issues, here are some
questions that Mueller could be asked.
I should note that missing from my list is anything related to obstruction. This topic will
surely dominate Democrats' line of questioning, but
I
view it as secondary
and more appropriate for a law school seminar. The core issue of the
Mueller investigation is alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign's
potential coordination with it. The obstruction issue only began to dominate after it was clear
that Mueller had found no such conspiracy. Although the report does show examples of Trump's stated
intent to impede the Mueller investigation, the probe itself was unhindered.
There is also the fact that Mueller himself declined to make a call on obstruction, and even
presented arguments that could be used to refute it. The obstruction section of the report notes
that Trump was not "involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference."
Although not dispositive, Mueller says that "the absence of that evidence affects the analysis of
the President's intent and requires consideration of other possible motives for his conduct." In a
joint
statement with Barr
, Mueller also made clear that "he was not saying that, but for the [Office
of Legal Counsel] opinion, he would have found the President obstructed justice." Accordingly, I
see no reason why Congressional Democrats are so confident that Mueller found otherwise.
1. Why did you suggest that juvenile clickbait from a Russian troll farm was part
of a "sweeping and systematic" Russian government interference effort?
The Mueller report begins by declaring that "[t]he Russian government interfered in the 2016
presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion." A few paragraphs later, Mueller tells us
that Russian interference occurred "principally through two operations." The first of these
operations was "a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and
disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton," carried out by a Russian troll farm known as
the Internet Research Agency (IRA).
The inference here is that the IRA was a part of the Russian government's "sweeping and
systematic" interference campaign. Yet Mueller's team has been forced to admit in court that this
was a false insinuation. Earlier this month,
a
federal judge rebuked Mueller
and the Justice Department for having "improperly suggested a
link" between IRA and the Kremlin. U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich noted that Mueller's
February 2018 indictment of the IRA "
does
not link the [IRA] to the Russian government
" and alleges "only private conduct by private
actors." Jonathan Kravis, a senior prosecutor on the Mueller team, acknowledged that this is the
case. "[T]he report itself does not state anywhere that the Russian government was behind the
Internet Research Agency activity," Kravis told the court.
Kravis is correct. The Mueller report did not state that the Kremlin was behind the social media
campaign; it only disingenuously suggested it. Mueller also goes to great lengths to paint it as a
sophisticated operation that "had the ability to reach millions of U.S. persons." Yet,
as
we
already know
,
most of the Russian social media content was juvenile clickbait that had nothing to do with the
election (only 7 percent of IRA's Facebook posts mentioned either Trump or Clinton). There is also
no evidence that the political content reached a mass audience, and to the extent it reached
anyone, most of it occurred
after
the election.
2. Are you still convinced that the GRU stole Democratic Party emails and
transferred them to Wikileaks?
Between the initial July 2018 indictment of 12 GRU officers for the DNC email theft and
Mueller's March 2019 report, some wiggle room appears. As I wrote this month for
RealClearInvestigations
,
Mueller's report uses qualified, vague language to describe the alleged GRU theft of Democratic
Party emails, offers an implausible timeline for when Wikileaks
may have
received the
emails from the GRU, and acknowledges that Mueller has not actually established how WikiLeaks
acquired the stolen information.
3. Why didn't you interview Julian Assange?
The uncertainty in Mueller's account of how WikiLeaks received the stolen emails could possibly
have been cleared up had Mueller attempted to interview Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks founder
insists that the Russian government was not his source, and has repeatedly offered to speak to US
investigators. Given that Assange received and published the stolen emails at the heart of
Mueller's investigation, his absence from Mueller's voluminous witness sheet is a glaring omission.
4. Why did you imply that key figures were Russian agents, and leave out
countervailing information, including their (more) extensive Western ties?
In the report, Mueller goes to great lengths to insinuate -- without directly asserting -- that two
key figures in the Trump-Russia affair, Konstanin Kilimnik and Joseph Mifsud, acted as Kremlin
agents or intermediaries. In the process, he omits or minimizes extensive evidence that casts doubt
on their supposed Russia connections or makes clear their far more extensive Western ties. Mueller
ignores the fact that the State Department described Kilimnik as a "sensitive source" who was
regularly supplying inside information on Ukrainian politics. And Mueller emphasizes that Mifsud
"had connections to Russia" and "maintained various Russian contacts," but doesn't ever mention
that he has
deep
connections in Western intelligence and diplomatic circles
.
Stephan Roh, a Swiss lawyer who has previously represented Mifsud, has
maintained
that
Mifsud "is not a Russian spy but a Western intelligence co-operator." Whatever the case,
it is puzzling that Mueller emphasized Mifsud's "connections to Russia" but ignored his connections
to governments in the West. It's also baffling that none of this was clarified when the FBI
interviewed Mifsud in February 2017 -- which raises a whole new question for Mueller.
5. Why did you indict several Trump officials for perjury, but not Joseph Mifsud?
Adding to the puzzle surrounding Mifsud is Mueller's revelation that Mifsud made false
statements to FBI investigators when they interviewed him in February 2017. (Mifsud was in
Washington, DC, for a conference sponsored by the State Department, yet one more Western
"connection" that has gone overlooked). If Mifsud really was a Russian agent, then it was always a
mystery why he was not arrested then, nor indicted since. And given that Mueller indicted others
for lying to the FBI -- foremost George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn -- it is unclear why Mifsud was
not.
6. Why did you omit the fact that Rob Goldstone's offer to Donald Jr. -- "official
documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia" as "part of
Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump" -- was "publicist puff" (in other words, a lie)?
Mueller devotes a 13-page section to the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, where Donald
Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with Russian nationals after Trump Jr. was promised
"official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia."
Mueller says that "the meeting showed that the Campaign anticipated receiving information from
Russia that could assist candidate Trump's electoral prospects," but acknowledges that the Russians
present "did not provide such information."
What Mueller conspicuously does not acknowledge is that the information "that the Campaign
anticipated receiving from Russia" was in fact fictional, and not from Russia. The offer came from
British music publicist Rob Goldstone, who was tasked with securing the meeting at the request of
his Russian pop star client, Emin Agalarov. In an act of what he called "publicist puff," Goldstone
said he about "Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump" that would later be widely
described as "the smoking gun" for collusion.
Goldstone told me this week that he was disappointed that Mueller chose to omit that critical
part of his testimony. "I told them that I had used my PR, puffed-up flourish in order to get Don
Jr.'s attention," Goldstone said. Mueller's decision to exclude that, Goldstone added, is a "shame
It would have been opportunity to have closure on that."
7. Did the Trump campaign receive any Russian government offers of assistance from
anyone actually acting on behalf of the Russian government?
The Mueller report obscures the absence of contacts between Trump and Russian government
intermediaries with ambiguous, suggestive assertions that the investigation "identified numerous
links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign," or "identified numerous links between
individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump
Campaign."
But the cases of Konstantin Kilimnik, Joseph Mifsud, and Rob Goldstone underscore a rather
inconvenient fact for proponents of the theory that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian
government: There are zero documented cases of Trump officials interacting with actual Kremlin
intermediaries making actual offers of assistance. The only Kremlin officials or
representatives shown to interact with the Trump camp in any significant way before the election
are the Russian ambassador having routine encounters and a Kremlin assistant who declined Trump
lawyer Michael Cohen's request for assistance on the failed Trump Tower Moscow project.
8. Were US intelligence officials compromised by Russophobia?
Key US officials behind the Russia investigation have made no secret of their animus towards
Russia. "I do always hate the Russians," Lisa Page, a senior FBI lawyer on the Russia probe,
testified
to Congress
in July 2018. "It is my opinion that with respect to Western ideals and who it is
and what it is we stand for as Americans, Russia poses the most dangerous threat to that way of
life." As he opened the FBI's probe of the Trump campaign's ties to Russians in July 2016, FBI
agent
Peter
Strzok texted Page
: "fuck the cheating motherfucking Russians Bastards. I hate them I think
they're probably the worst. Fucking conniving cheating savages."
Speaking
to NBC News in May 2017
, the former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper explained
why US officials saw interactions between the Trump camp and Russian nationals as a cause for
alarm: "The Russians," Clapper said, "almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor,
whatever, which is a typical Russian technique. So we were concerned." In a May
interview
with
Lawfare
, former FBI General Counsel Jim Baker, who helped oversee the Russia
probe, explained the origins of the investigation as follows: "It was about Russia, period, full
stop When the [George] Papadopoulos information comes across our radar screen, it's coming across
in the sense that we were always looking at Russia we've been thinking about Russia as a threat
actor for decades and decades."
The fixation with Russia was so great that, as
The
New
York Times
revealed in January
, on top of the FBI's initial probe in the summer of 2016,
the bureau opened a second probe in May of 2017 over whether or not Trump himself was "working on
behalf of Russia against American interests."
TheNew York Times
story makes no allusion to
any evidence underlying the FBI's concern. Instead, we learn that FBI was "disquieted" by a
"constellation of events," all public:
Mr. Trump had caught the attention of F.B.I. counterintelligence agents when he called on
Russia during a campaign news conference in July 2016 to hack into the emails of his opponent,
Hillary Clinton. Mr. Trump had refused to criticize Russia on the campaign trail, praising
President Vladimir V. Putin. And investigators had watched with alarm as the Republican Party
softened its convention platform on the Ukraine crisis in a way that seemed to benefit Russia.
This account is remarkable not just because it shows that the FBI opened up an extraordinary
investigation of the president of the United States as agent of Russia based on their
interpretation of public events. It also shows that their interpretation of those public events
involved several errors -- Trump's July 2016 comment was a joke, and the story about the GOP platform
change was
overblown
(and
later undermined in practice when Trump
sold
the weapons to Ukraine
, a move
President
Obama had opposed
).
The fact that so many key officials carry such xenophobic animus toward Russia - to the point
where they felt compelled to act on erroneous interpretations of public events - raised legitimate
questions about whether their personal biases influenced their professional decisions.
The same could be asked about the influential media and political voices who, despite
the absent evidence and sheer absurdity of their conspiracy theory, elevated Russiagate as the
dominant political issue of the Trump presidency.
Whatever questions they may have left
for Mueller, the now former special counsel and savior figure has made clear that he is not the
answer.
And there is a bipartisan consensus that none of these questions
will be asked.
Obamagate (not Russiagate) is about fooling the willing. Others
are not convinced by this "report".
I still wonder how Barr forced Mueller to conclude his circus.
The officially trotted out letters are not simply enough to stop
Mueller; remember, this is the man who arrested Flynn but not
Podesta. There must be some good ammunition that Barr has got hold
of that terrified Mueller to stop his "investigations" even though
he knew this will anger the Deep State.
And to add insult to injury, breaking just a couple of hours ago.
John Solomon of The Hill says DOJ met with Misfud attorneys and
have told Durham, he was hired by Western Intelligence (FBI, CIA)
to approach Popadapolus on their behalf, NOT ON BEHALF OF THE
RUSSIANS.
In other words... The origins of the investigation is
a lie. The Mueller probe should never have even started as there
was ZERO probable cause.
At this point, the Obama DOJ / FBI / State Dept have broken
dozens of laws to cover up the fact that they were spying on
EVERYONE, not just the Trump team... The resistance is so
great, that they have made themselves into a parody... When
everything gets declassified, none of these people will be able
to walk the street...
DefDog: Judge Slams Mueller for Lies & Misrepresentation and
Lack of Evidence -- Should Robert Mueller be Indicted?
Separately we have pointed out that we consider Robert
Mueller indictable for 3,000 counts of obstructing justice and
complicity in murder after the fact for his role, as Director
of the FBI, in obstructing proper investigation and actively
covering up for **** Cheney and the Zionists who planned 9/11
from 1988 and then carried it out with **** Cheney managing the
US Government to enable it to happen (and probably, with Donald
Rumsfeld, faking the Pentagon attack that resulted in
additional deaths).
8. Why didn't you interview Veselnitskya, or review all documents
related to her expedited approval for entering the country by
Lorenta Lynch and your prosecution team member Preet Bhrara ?
#5 is wrong. Those 'Trump officials' were only 'Trump officials'
for appearances. Manafort, for instance, was a plant. And Trump
knew he was a plant; Manafort was entered into the Trump campaign
under a contrived circumstance.
Trump knew he was a plant and he
used the Cuckoo's Egg strategy to not tip his hand that he was
'way ahead of the cabal. George Pap was the same thing. You can
read about GP in the Mueller Report and see that the Trump
campaign knew all along, and strung GP along. Halper was probably
working the Trump side of the counterintelligence op, scoping out
GP to find out GP's backing.
Well I don't expect anything to change. The Republicans won't ask
the right questions and the Democrats will spend their time
spewing immaterial "bad things" about Trump to influence public
perception because they have nothing of substance. All they can
hope for is to discredit him enough in the court of public
opinion.
Mueller's questioning will be anything but a disaster for the
Dems. The press will spin it all in their favor. At the end
of the day tomorrow you will see that, contrary to anything
that has to do with how the "law" works in the USA, the Trump
admin is guilty of crimes untold, even if there is no
evidentiary proof of that viewpoint.
Now if Mueller were on
the other side of the aisle, the Dems would absolutely crucify
him (and a hypothetical Dem president), like a murder of crows
descending. Could the Repubs do that? No way.
It was all a pile of **** from the start. The unfortunate part for
the country is that none of the criminals who perpetrated this
action will ever be held accountable. The US legal system is too
corrupt to do so. they will all walk away free and clear. And that
is doom for the Republic. Going forward, sentient US citizens will
no longer trust their DOJ and FBI. And that is an untenable
situation in a free republic.
Everybody understands there is no way to sweep this under;
they will simply accept these are unpardonable crimes
against American people, and then move on.
"... If Mueller says anything else he then exposes his initial report as a fraud. He already concluded, there was no collusion between the Trump team and the Russians. He will not do a 180 tomorrow and say there was. ..."
I write in response to your July 10, 2019 letter concerning the testimonial subpoenas you
received from the House Judiciary Committee (HJ C) and House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence (HPSCI). Your letter requests that the Department provide you with guidance
concerning privilege or other legal bars applicable to potential testimony in connection with
those subpoenas.
What does the letter mean? Mueller will stick strictly to what his report concludes and,
when pressed to go outside of that, will blame DOJ guidelines for preventing him from adding
anything else to his testimony.
If Mueller says anything else he then exposes his initial report as a fraud. He already
concluded, there was no collusion between the Trump team and the Russians. He will not do a 180
tomorrow and say there was.
Mueller did not indict on obstruction of justice. Mueller and Barr are both on the record
that the decision was NOT repeat NOT because of the DOJ guideline against indicting a sitting
President. I am sure you have heard several morons on TV state otherwise, but the fact on this
point is clear. Notwithstanding those guidelines Mueller did not indict.
"... Embarrassingly for the DOJ, a key document they submitted to Austria in support of Firtash's extradition allegedly from his corporate files and purportedly showing evidence that he sanctioned a bribery scheme in India was actually a slide from a powerpoint presentation created by the McKinsey consulting firm as part of a hypothetical presentation on ethics for the Boeing Corp. ..."
"... "Submitting a false and misleading document to a foreign sovereign and its courts for an extradition decision is not only unethical but also flouts the comity of trust necessary for that process where judicial systems rely only on documents to make that decision," Firtash's US legal team told Solomon. " DOJ's refusal to rescind the document after being specifically told it is false and misleading is an egregious violation of U.S. and international law. " ..."
As the FBI investigated whether Donald Trump was working with Russia, top bureau attorney Andrew
Weissmann secretly approached a Ukrainian Oligarch's US attorneys
seeking dirt on President
Trump
, according to
The
Hill
's John Solomon.
In exchange, the FBI was willing to drop an ongoing case against the Ukrainian -
Dmitry
Firtash
, who was hit with 2014 corruption charges in Chicago alleging that he engaged in
corruption and bribery in India linked to a US aerospace deal.
According to a defense memo recounting Weissmann's contacts, the prosecutor claimed the
Mueller team could "resolve the Firtash case" in Chicago and neither the DOJ nor the Chicago
U.S. Attorney's Office "could interfere with or prevent a solution," including withdrawing all
charges.
"The complete dropping of the proceedings was doubtless on the table,"
according to the defense memo. -
The
Hill
It was a desperate move for the FBI - which was grappling with a lack of evidence against Trump
as the Steele dossier was turning out to be an embarrassing dud ("
There's no big there
there
," lead FBI agent
Pete
Strzok texted
a few days before Weissmann's overture, writes Solomon).
At the same time, the DOJ's evidence against Firtash in the 2014 case was also falling apart.
Two central witnesses were in the process of recanting testimony
, and a
document the FBI portrayed as bribery evidence inside Firtash's company was exposed as a
hypothetical slide from an American consultant's PowerPoint presentation, according to court
records I reviewed. -
The
Hill
In short,
the DOJ had two high profile cases which were unraveling as Weissmann reached
out.
Two weeks before the offer was made, Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel - tasked with
continuing and expanding upon the FBI's substantial investigative efforts (including espionage)
against Donald Trump and anyone in his orbit.
Firtash's legal team thought Weissman was probably overstepping his authority,
as
the special counsel's office was still subject to DOJ oversight. They were also taken aback after
Weissmann went to extraordinary lengths to enlist the Ukrainian by sharing
prosecutorial
theories
the FBI was forming about Trump and his team.
Prosecutors in plea deals typically ask a defendant for a written proffer of what they can
provide in testimony and identify the general topics that might interest them. But
Weissmann appeared to go much further in a July 7, 2017, meeting with Firtash's American lawyers
and FBI agents
, sharing certain private theories of the nascent special counsel's
investigation into Trump, his former campaign chairman
Paul
Manafort
and Russia, according to defense memos.
For example,
Firtash's legal team wrote that Weissmann told them he believed a
company called Bayrock, tied to former FBI informant Felix Sater, had "made substantial
investments with Donald Trump's companies" and that prosecutors were looking for dirt on Trump
son-in-law
Jared Kushner
.
Weissmann told the Firtash team "
he believes that Manafort and his people
substantially coordinated their activities with Russians in order to win their work in Ukraine,
"
according to the defense memos. And the Mueller deputy said he "believed" a Ukrainian group tied
to Manafort "was merely a front for illegal criminal activities in Ukraine," and
suggested a "Russian secret service authority" may have been involved in influencing the 2016
U.S. election
, the defense memos show. -
The
Hill
Despite being 'holed up' in Austria for five years while fighting extradition charges to the
US, Firtash
turned down Weissmann's plea overtures.
His lawyers told John Solomon
that he rejected the deal
because he didn't have credible information or evidence
against
Trump, Manafort, or anyone else Weissmann laid out in his theories.
In sealed Austrian court filings earlier this month, Firtash's attorneys compared the DOJ's
13-year investigation to medieval inquisitions, citing Weissman's approach as politically motivated
- and noting the "possible cessation of separate criminal proceedings against the applicant if he
were prepared to exchange sufficiently incriminating statements for wide-ranging comprehensively
political subject areas which included the U.S. President himself as well as the Russian President
Vladimir Putin."
Hilariously, the DOJ won a ruling in Austria to secure Firtash's extradition to Chicago
- Austrian officials reversed course after his legal team filed new evidence that included the
Weissmann overture
, according to the report.
That new court filing asserts that
two key witnesses, cited by the DOJ in its
extradition request as affirming the bribery allegations against Firtash, since have recanted,
claiming the FBI grossly misquoted them and pressured them to sign their statements. One witness
claims
his 2012 statement to the FBI was "prewritten by the U.S. authorities"
and
contains "relevant inaccuracies in substance,"
including that he never used
the terms "bribery or bribe payments" as DOJ claimed, according to the Austrian court filing.
That witness also claimed
he only signed the 2012 statement because the FBI
"exercised undue pressure on him,"
including threats to seize his passport and keep him
from returning home to India, the memo alleges. That witness recanted his statements the same
summer as Weissmann's overture to Firtash's team.
Firtash's lawyers also offered the Austrian court evidence of alleged prosecutorial
wrongdoing. -
The
Hill
Embarrassingly for the DOJ, a key document they submitted to Austria in support of Firtash's
extradition allegedly from his corporate files and purportedly showing evidence that he sanctioned
a bribery scheme in India
was actually a slide from a powerpoint presentation created by
the McKinsey consulting firm as part of a hypothetical presentation on ethics for the Boeing Corp.
Firtash's U.S. legal team told me it alerted Weissmann to DOJ's false portrayal of the
McKinsey document in 2017, but he downplayed the concerns and refused to alert the Austrian
court. The document was never withdrawn as evidence, even after the New York Times
published
a story last December
questioning its validity. -
The
Hill
"Submitting a false and misleading document to a foreign sovereign and its courts for an
extradition decision is not only unethical but also flouts the comity of trust necessary for that
process where judicial systems rely only on documents to make that decision," Firtash's US legal
team told Solomon. "
DOJ's refusal to rescind the document after being specifically told it
is false and misleading is an egregious violation of U.S. and international law.
"
... "Submitting a false and misleading document to a foreign
sovereign...flouts the comity of trust...
Maybe they thought they were in the UK. The FBI no longer has
either a Comey or comity of trust left at this point. They've
been nothing but a comedy of errors.
Weismann and Mueller are the perfect poster children of the Deep
State. Total lack of ethics, conscience, morality, and an over
abundance of arrogance and self righteousness. Washington is over
flowing with these kind of evil people, and President Trump along
with a group of covert Patriots are in the midst of eradicating
these swine. With God's help, we just may be able to save our
Country.
All this "Mueller this", "Comes that" news has
reinforced the impression that these people will remain above the
law even after 8 years of Trump presidency.
"... File talks about Mueller indulging big crimes as FBI director, helping Mueller's own eventual law firm to defraud millions out of a Hillary donor, with bribery of two USA federal judges, & threats to kill an ex-DOJ employee, with Mueller getting a big payday after he indulged it all as FBI chief, Mueller getting funds channeled from a criminal outfit based in the UK. ..."
Another item here, is the file which the US Department of Justice Inspector General
Michael Horowitz acknowledged receiving a few months back, a file detailing alleged criminal
acts of Robert Mueller himself.
The file was referenced in President Trump's tweets, a photo meme of Mueller in jail, and
the President saying, "Heroes will come of this, and it won't be Mueller"
File talks about Mueller indulging big crimes as FBI director, helping Mueller's own
eventual law firm to defraud millions out of a Hillary donor, with bribery of two USA federal
judges, & threats to kill an ex-DOJ employee, with Mueller getting a big payday after he
indulged it all as FBI chief, Mueller getting funds channeled from a criminal outfit based
in the UK.
'Report on evidence of felonies violating Civil Rights, and bribery by foreign agents,
implicating United States Special Counsel Robert S Mueller III as a criminally-tainted agent
of foreign & racketeering interests'
"... Though Mr. Mueller's final report asserted that the Russian government interfered in "a sweeping and systemic fashion" to influence the 2016 election, the 450-page great tome contains zero evidence to support that claim, and the discrepancy was actually noticed by federal judge Dabney Friedrich who is presiding over the case against the alleged Russian Facebook trolls that was one of the two tent-poles in the RussiaGate fantasy. The case is now blowing up in Robert Mueller's face. ..."
"... To the great surprise of Mr. Mueller and his "team," Mr. Prigozhin hired some American lawyers to defend his company in court. Smooth move. It automatically triggered the discovery process , by which the accused is entitled to see the evidence that prosecutors hold. It turned out that Mr. Mueller's team had no evidence that the Russian government was involved with the Facebook pranks. This annoyed Judge Friedrich, who ordered Mr. Mueller and his lawyers to desist making public statements about Concord and IRA's alleged "sweeping and systemic" collusion with Russia, and threatened legal sanctions if they did. ..."
"... It's now a matter of public record that the DNC servers were never examined by federal officials. They were purportedly scrutinized by a DNC contractor called CrowdStrike, co-founded by Russian Dimitri Alperovitch, an adversary of Vladimir Putin, active in US-based anti-Putin lobbying and PR. CrowdStrike's "draft" report on their review of the server was laughably incomplete, and the Mueller team's lawyers took no steps to validate it. ..."
"... It would be interesting to hear Robert Mueller's explanation for how come US computer forensic experts were never dispatched to take possession of the DNC servers. Surely a ranking member on either House committee would have to ask him that, along with many other embarrassing questions about the stupendously sloppy and disingenuous work of the Special Counsel's team. It was only one glaring omission among many. ..."
"... The entire Mueller episode smacks of prosecutorial misconduct. In retrospect, it can only be explained as a desperate act undertaken by foolishly overconfident political activists ..."
"... If Mr. Mueller thought he was being enlisted to play an historically heroic role to help get rid of an elected president detested by the Establishment, then he made the blunder of a lifetime. It was not the first blunder of his long career, but it was the final and fatal one. It is not out of the question that Mr. Mueller himself may eventually be the one indicted and convicted of real crimes against the people of the United States ..."
Just how dead is the RussiaGate story -- and how brain-dead are the House Democratic
Committee chairmen, Nadler (Judiciary Committee) and Schiff (Intelligence Committee) to haul
RussiaGate's front-man, Robert Mueller back into the spotlight where the next thing to roll
over and die will be Mr. Mueller's evanescent reputation? The entrapment operation that was the
Special Counsel's covert mission has turned out to be Mr. Mueller own personal booby-trap,
prompting the question: is it possible that he's just not very bright? Though Mr. Mueller's
final report asserted that the Russian government interfered in "a sweeping and systemic
fashion" to influence the 2016 election, the 450-page great tome contains zero evidence to
support that claim, and the discrepancy was actually noticed by federal judge Dabney Friedrich
who is presiding over the case against the alleged Russian Facebook trolls that was one of the
two tent-poles in the RussiaGate fantasy. The case is now blowing up in Robert Mueller's
face.
In early 2018, Mr. Mueller sold a DC grand jury on producing indictments against a Russian
outfit called the Internet Research Agency and its parent company Concord Management, owned by
Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin for the so-called election meddling. The indictment was
celebrated as a huge coup at the time by the likes of CNN and The New York Times ,
styled as a silver bullet in the heart of the Trump presidency. But the indicted parties were
all in Russia, and could not be extradited, and there was zero expectation that any actual
trial would ever take place -- leaving Mueller & Co. off-the-hook for proving their
allegations.
To the great surprise of Mr. Mueller and his "team," Mr. Prigozhin hired some American
lawyers to defend his company in court. Smooth move. It automatically triggered the
discovery process , by which the accused is entitled to see the evidence that
prosecutors hold. It turned out that Mr. Mueller's team had no evidence that the Russian
government was involved with the Facebook pranks. This annoyed Judge Friedrich, who ordered Mr.
Mueller and his lawyers to desist making public statements about Concord and IRA's alleged
"sweeping and systemic" collusion with Russia, and threatened legal sanctions if they
did.
Judge Friedrich's rulings were unsealed in early July, after Messers Nadler and Schiff had
already scheduled Mr. Mueller's testimony before their committees. And now they're stuck with
him. The only purpose of his appearance was to repeat and reinforce the narrative that the
Russian government interfered in the election, which he is now forbidden to do, at least in
connection to the Concord and IRA's activities.
But the other tentpole of the two-year-plus
inquisition has also collapsed: the allegation that Russian intel hacked the DNC servers. It's
now a matter of public record that the DNC servers were never examined by federal officials.
They were purportedly scrutinized by a DNC contractor called CrowdStrike, co-founded by Russian
Dimitri Alperovitch, an adversary of Vladimir Putin, active in US-based anti-Putin lobbying and
PR. CrowdStrike's "draft" report on their review of the server was laughably incomplete, and
the Mueller team's lawyers took no steps to validate it.
It would be interesting to hear Robert Mueller's explanation for how come US computer
forensic experts were never dispatched to take possession of the DNC servers. Surely a ranking
member on either House committee would have to ask him that, along with many other embarrassing
questions about the stupendously sloppy and disingenuous work of the Special Counsel's team. It
was only one glaring omission among many.
The whole affair now takes on tragic contours of Shakespearean dimensions. The Attorney
General, Mr. Barr, is said to be an "old friend" of Mr. Mueller. They clashed pretty publicly
after the release of Mr. Mueller's long-awaited final report. Mr. Barr must at least be
dismayed by the bad faith and deliberate deceit in his old friend's final report, and he
really has to do something about it. The entire Mueller episode smacks of prosecutorial
misconduct. In retrospect, it can only be explained as a desperate act undertaken by foolishly
overconfident political activists.
If Mr. Mueller thought he was being enlisted to play an
historically heroic role to help get rid of an elected president detested by the Establishment,
then he made the blunder of a lifetime. It was not the first blunder of his long career, but it
was the final and fatal one. It is not out of the question that Mr. Mueller himself may
eventually be the one indicted and convicted of real crimes against the people of the United
States.
Those are weak question, but they are better then nothing. There are implicit rules that
governs any witch hunt and Mueller adhered to them.
Notable quotes:
"... A cardinal rule for prosecutors is to not publicize negative information that does not lead them to indict someone -- "the decision does the talking." James Comey was criticized for doing this to Hillary Clinton during the campaign. Yet most of your Report's Volume II is just that, descriptions of actions by Trump that contain elements of obstruction but that you ultimately did not charge. Why did you include this information so prominently? ..."
"... The number of people with access to those intercepts is small, and the number inside the Obama White House with the authority to unmask names is even smaller. Yet details were leaked to the press and ended Flynn's career. Given that the leak may have exposed U.S. intelligence methods, that it had to have been done at a very high level inside the Obama White House, and that the leak violated Flynn's constitutional rights, did you investigate? If not, why not? ..."
"... Given the central role the Steele Dossier played in your work, and certainly in the investigation that commenced as Crossfire Hurricane in summer 2016, why did you not include any overall assessment of why so much did not check out inside such a key document? ..."
"... Prosecutors do not issue certificates of exoneration. The job is to charge or drop a case. That's what constitutes exoneration in any practical sense. Yet you have as your final line that "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him." Why did you include that, and so prominently? ..."
"... Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well : How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People and Hooper's War : A Novel of WWII Japan. ..."
"... Why the cryptic wording on the Steele Dossier? Why wasn't Trump given an opportunity to defend himself in court? ..."
"... "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him." ..."
"... When are you going to examine the DNC's servers? ..."
"... Why did you rely solely upon the analysis produced by the DNC's hired consultants for the conclusion the DNC servers were hacked by Russians? ..."
"... It's supposed to be a big secret that the Russians DID NOT hack the DNC. It ruins their whole BS story. ..."
"... The status quo elites' attack dog was still salivating at the sound of the Democrats' dinner bell. ..."
"... 'Report on evidence of felonies violating Civil Rights, and bribery by foreign agents, implicating United States Special Counsel Robert S Mueller III as a criminally-tainted agent of foreign & racketeering interests' ..."
movie with Bruce Willis and the kid
who says "I see dead people"? In the end, it turns out everyone is already dead. Now imagine
there are people who don't believe that. They insist the story ends some other way. Spoiler
alert: the Mueller Report ends with no collusion. No one is going to prosecute anyone for
obstruction. That stuff is all dead. We all saw the same movie.
Yet there seem to still be questions from those who don't get it. And while it's doubtful
that the stoic Robert Mueller will ever write a tell-all book, or sit next to Seth Meyers and
Trevor Noah to dish, he may be called in front of Congress. If he is, here's some of what he
should be asked.
1) You didn't charge President Donald Trump with "collusion," obstruction, or any other new
crime. Tell us why. If the answer is "the evidence did not support it," please say so.
2) Your Report did not refer any crimes to Congress, the SDNY, or anyone else. Again, tell
us why. If the answer is "the evidence did not support it," please say so again.
3) Despite making no specific referrals, the Report does state, "The conclusion that
Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President's corrupt exercise of the powers of
the office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that
no person is above the law." Why did you include such a restating of a known fact? Many have
read that line to mean you could not indict a sitting president and so you wanted to leave a
clue to Congress. Yet you could have just spelled it out -- "this is beyond my and the attorney
general's constitutional roles and must/can only be resolved by Congress." Why didn't you?
4) Similarly, many believe they see clues (a
footnote looms as the grassy knoll of your work) that the only reason you did not indict
Trump was because of Department of Justice and Office of Legal Counsel guidance against
indicting a sitting president. Absent that, would you have indicted? If so, why didn't you say
so unambiguously and trigger what would be the obvious next steps?
5) When did you conclude there was no collusion, conspiracy, or coordination between Trump
and the Russians such that you would make no indictments? You must have closed at least some of
the subplots -- the Trump Tower meeting, the Moscow Hotel project -- months ago. Did you
consider announcing key findings as they occurred? You were clearly aware that there was
inaccurate reporting, damaging to the public trust. Yet you allowed that to happen. Why?
6) But before you answer that question, answer this one. You made a pre-Report public
statement saying Buzzfeed's story that claimed Trump ordered Michael Cohen to lie to Congress
was false. You restated that in the Report, where you also mentioned that you privately told
Jeff Sessions' lawyer in March 2018 that Sessions would not be charged. Since your work
confirmed that nearly all bombshell reporting on Russiagate was wrong (Cohen was never in
Prague, nothing criminal happened in the Seychelles, and so on), why was it only that single
instance that caused you to speak out publicly? And as with Sessions, did you privately inform
any others prior to the release of the Report that they would not be charged? What standard did
you apply to those decisions?
7) A cardinal rule for prosecutors is to not publicize negative information that does
not lead them to indict someone -- "the decision does the talking." James Comey was criticized
for doing this to Hillary Clinton during the campaign. Yet most of your Report's Volume II is
just that, descriptions of actions by Trump that contain elements of obstruction but that you
ultimately did not charge. Why did you include this information so prominently? Some say
it was because you wanted to draw a "road map" for impeachment. Why didn't you just say that?
You had no reason to speak in riddles.
8) There is a lot of lying documented in the Report. But you seemed to only charge people
with perjury (traps) early in your investigation. Was that aimed more at pressuring them to
"flip" than at justice per se? Is one of the reasons several of the people in the Report who
lied did not get charged with perjury later in the investigation because by then you knew they
had nothing to flip on?
9) In regard to the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, where derogatory information on Hillary
Clinton was offered (but never given), you declined prosecution. You cited in part questions
over whether such information constituted the necessary "thing of value" that would have to
exist, inter alia , to make its proffering a campaign finance violation. You don't
answer the question in the Report, but you do believe information could be a "thing of value"
(the thing of value must exceed $2,000 for a misdemeanor and $25,000 for a felony). What about
withholding information? Could someone saying they would not offer information publicly be a
"thing of value" and thus potentially part of a campaign finance law violation? Of course I'm
talking about Stormy Daniels, who received money not to offer information. Would you make the
claim that silence itself, non-information, is a "thing" of value?
10) You spend the entire first half of your Report, Volume I, explaining that "the Russians"
sought to manipulate our 2016 election via social media and by hacking the Democratic National
Committee. Though there is a lot of redacted material, at no point in the clear text is there
information on whether the Russians actually did influence the election. Even trying was a
crime, but given the importance of all this (some still claim the president is illegitimate)
and the potential impact on future elections, did you look into the actual effects of Russian
meddling? If not, why not?
11) Everything the Russians did, according to Volume I, they did on Obama's watch. Did you
investigate anyone in the Obama administration in regard to Russian meddling? Did you look at
what they did, what was missed, whether it could have been stopped, and how the response was
formed? Given that Trump's actions towards Russia followed on steps Obama took, this seems
relevant. Did you look? If not, why not?
12) Some of the information gathered about Michael Flynn was picked up inadvertently under
existing surveillance of the Russian ambassador. As an American, Flynn's name would have been
routinely masked in the reporting on those intercepts in order to protect his privacy. The
number of people with access to those intercepts is small, and the number inside the Obama
White House with the authority to unmask names is even smaller. Yet details were leaked to the
press and ended Flynn's career. Given that the leak may have exposed U.S. intelligence methods,
that it had to have been done at a very high level inside the Obama White House, and that the
leak violated Flynn's constitutional rights, did you investigate? If not, why not?
13) TheNew York Timeswrote
that "some of the most sensational claims in the [Steele] dossier appeared to be false, and
others were impossible to prove. Your report contained over a dozen passing references to the
document's claims but no overall assessment of why so much did not check out." Given the
central role the Steele Dossier played in your work, and certainly in the investigation that
commenced as Crossfire Hurricane in summer 2016, why did you not include any overall assessment
of why so much did not check out inside such a key document?
14) Prosecutors do not issue certificates of exoneration. The job is to charge or drop a
case. That's what constitutes exoneration in any practical sense. Yet you have as your final
line that "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also
does not exonerate him." Why did you include that, and so prominently?
15) You also wrote, "if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that
the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state." You argue
elsewhere in the Report that because Trump is a sitting president, he cannot be indicted, so
therefore it would be unjust to accuse him of something he could not go to court and defend
himself over. But didn't you do just that? Why did you leave the taint of guilt without giving
Trump the means of defending himself in court? You must have understood that such wording would
be raw meat to Democrats, and would force Trump to defend himself not in a court with legal
protections, but in an often hostile media. Was that your intention?
Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well : How I Helped Lose the Battle for
the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People and Hooper's War : A Novel of WWII Japan.
Why the cryptic wording on the Steele Dossier? Why wasn't Trump given an opportunity to
defend himself in court?
Did you drink whiskey for breakfast? How could he defend himself in court when he was not
charged in any court! Mueller made a decision it appears, that he could not charge the
President with a crime while the president is in office. Mueller worked as an employee of the
Justice Department and he has to follow Justice Department rules.
Mueller's good friend Comey deliberately leaked government information to someone outside
the Department of Justice in order to get revenge for being fired and to prompt a Special
Counsel. Comey knew his friend Mueller would be appointed!
Mueller spent over two years and Thirty Million Dollars of taxpayers money trying to
create a crime to undermine President Trump!
Mueller simply cannot be trusted and should be thoroughly investigated!
"while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also
does not exonerate him."
I've heard several legal experts opine that the above was a gratuitous and vexatious
"coda", if you will, which served only to illustrate Mueller's sore loser attitude.
In the meantime the question of who these "Russians" were who allegedly tried to subvert
the election process remains blissfully unanswered. And it says here that we probably never
will find out the answer either.
It's funny as all get out (TAC doesn't like it when I swear) watching Russiagate cultists
keep pushing their conspiracy theory, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that there is
nothing there.
But they cannot let it go, cannot admit that they were duped, and by many of the same crew
who sold us the "Iraq is chock a block with WMDs", the "Assad gassed his own people ZOMG!"
and the "Libyan rape rooms" lies.
The *really* funny and ironic part is that if they want evidence that Trump is working on
behalf of foreign governments, the cultists need look no further than Israel and Saudi
Arabia.
It's as if Melania were trying to catch Donald cheating. To prove it, she comes up with
elaborate and absurd conspiracy theories involving body doubles, fake credit card receipts
and a supposed secret Twitter code that Donald uses to communicate with his alleged
lover.
While she's doing all that, and ignoring all the evidence that obliterates her theory,
Mistress Bibi and Mistress Salman have the chains and whips and bondage gear on full display
as they make Donald perform the most obscene and humiliating sexual services, right in front
of Melania and everyone else, and with video footage to boot.
Of course, the rest of Team D and Team R would very much like to take Trump's place as
Mistress Salman's slaveboi, so they pretend not to notice any of that.
While we're playing these stupid games, I got some questions for Mueller to answer, yo.
1. When are you going to examine the DNC's servers?
2. Why did you rely solely upon the analysis produced by the DNC's hired consultants for
the conclusion the DNC servers were hacked by Russians?
3. When are you planning to question Assange or Craig Murray? Did you not know their
whereabouts for the last two years, or were you choosing only that evidence that fit your
preordained conclusion, like you did when you testified before Congress about Iraqi WMDs?
In a jury trial, a unanimous guilty verdict is a conviction; a unanimous acquital is an
exoneration. There is a gray area in between of a mistrial which is neither a conviction nor
an exoneration. Mueller closed the obstruction claims because the odds of getting convictions
on such flimsly politically-motivated claims are nearly zero. However, it is also clear that
in a jury trial there would not be a unanimous acquital, precisely because the accusations
are so partisan, so some jurors can be expected to vote guilty. That is why there no
"exoneration".
The lawyers at Lawfare blog talk about how Mueller, as an "institutionalist," is a true
conservative. If he's an institutionalist, why did he accept a special counsel appointment in
which no crime was plausibly identified? Prosecutors are supposed to look at, and prosecute,
crimes–that's their institutional job. The Steele dossier was the only basis for
thinking there was a crime committed by Trump or his campaign. Institutionalism–if it
means anything at all–therefore would have made an examination of its origins
immediately necessary. Mueller didn't do that.
What kind of institutionalism is this? Not the kind anyone, least of all conservatives,
should give any respect.
Another item here, is the file which the US Department of Justice Inspector General
Michael Horowitz acknowledged receiving a few months back, a file detailing alleged criminal
acts of Robert Mueller himself.
The file was referenced in President Trump's tweets, a photo meme of Mueller in jail, and
the President saying, "Heroes will come of this, and it won't be Mueller"
File talks about Mueller indulging big crimes as FBI director, helping Mueller's own
eventual law firm to defraud millions out of a Hillary donor, with bribery of two USA federal
judges, & threats to kill an ex-DOJ employee, with Mueller getting a big payday after he
indulged it all as FBI chief, Mueller getting funds channelled from a criminal outfit based
in the UK.
'Report on evidence of felonies violating Civil Rights, and bribery by foreign agents,
implicating United States Special Counsel Robert S Mueller III as a criminally-tainted agent
of foreign & racketeering interests'
It's kind of amazing actually. And scary. The Trump derangement syndrome is very real. That
normal, regular people are now going to bat for the likes of Mueller, Comey and Brennan says a
lot about how successful the media's obfuscation and gaslighting has been. Despite everything
we've seen, people are still taking even this very light and I would have thought
uncontroversial criticism of the Mueller report as outlandish and unwarranted
A little surprised the readership of this site is so ready to lap up the spin of Democrats,
who so obviously have everything to lose here. And so obviously have had Mueller tossing them
empty but effective 'red meat' consistently throughout this whole process. Not to mention the
blatant goalpost shifting at every turn.
There are so many reasons and ways to go after Trump, but 'obstructing' an investigation
into obstruction of itself ? Give me a break. What Orwellian nonsense.
Robert Mueller, might have to answer some embarrassing questions about the conduct of
his investigation -- like, why did it go on for two years when his chief deputy, Mr.
Weissmann, was informed from the get-go that the main predicate document was a fraud?
And why didn't they interview Julian Assange?
And did the FBI look into the Seth Rich murder investigation?
"... Moreover, if, as the memorandum asserted, 'British officials' were also aware that the 'most reliable intelligence' exonerated the Syrian government, rather fundamental questions arose as to how the JIC had felt able to claim precisely the reverse in support of David Cameron's unsuccessful attempt on 29 August to win Commons' support for British participation in air strikes. ..."
"... At the time, the Director General, Defence and Intelligence at the FCO was one Robert Hannigan, who in April 2014 would be appointed as Director of GCHQ. The National Security Adviser was a certain Sir Kim Darroch, whose appointment as Ambassador to the U.S. would be announced in August 2015. Both have been in the news, in relation to 'Russiagate.' ..."
"... Obviously, the same question arises about both of them as about Brennan: are they 'Gleiwitz types', who were actively complicit in preparing a murderous 'false flag', or were they simply part of a rather stupid Anglo-American 'dog', whom the 'tail', in the shape of the jihadists and their Turkish, Saudi and Qatari backers, could 'wag', as they chose? ..."
"... From the articles which Seymour Hersh published in the 'London Review of Books', and other materials, it became evident that the Defense Intelligence Agency, then headed by General Flynn, had been aware of the likelihood of fresh 'false flags' -- after the small scale incidents in spring 2013. ..."
"... An argument that 'Sundance' has repeatedly made is that a lot of what was happening in mid-2016, including the dossier attributed to Steele, had to do with the need to find justifications for these questionable surveillance operations. ..."
"... While I think there is something in this, I have long thought that the discovery that a mass of material exfiltrated from the DNC, and was going to be published by 'WikiLeaks', and the subsequent murder of Seth Rich, are likely to have been critically important triggers. ..."
"... panic-stricken improvisation found alike in the dossier, and the claims about the 'digital forensics' made by Dmitri Alperovitch of 'CrowdStrike', and the former GCHQ person Matt Tait. ..."
"... A week later, Butowsky filed a new action, in which the suggestion of a very-wide ranging conspiracy to suppress the truth about both the DNC leaks and Rich's murder was turned into a catalogue of defamation claims against a long list of people, including, as well as a variety of lawyers involved, CNN, the'Nw York Times', Vox, and the DNC. ..."
"... 'That Seth Rich was wacked because he stole the DNC emails and transferred them to Wikileaks is a conspiracy theory. It is possible and even plausible, but there is no evidence to confirm it. Many people seem to believe it because it makes more sense than the competing conspiracy theory, that Russia hacked the DNC and handed the emails to Wikileaks. Isikoff's claim, that Russia planted the Rich conspiracy theory, has no sound base. That theory existed before anything "Russian" mentioned it.' ..."
"... Reading the full text of Ms. Craven's report, I can see quite how well justified was Larry's suggestion in his post that Folkenflik and NPR were on a very sticky wicket indeed (as we say in England.) ..."
"... However, 'fools rush in', as the saying goes, so Isikoff decided to conspire with Deborah Sines, apparently the former U.S. assistant attorney in charge of investigating Seth Rich's murder, to suggest that suggestions that the victim had been the source of the material from the DNC published by 'WikiLeaks' originated as just another Russian plot. ..."
"... It appears that prior to the publication of his 'report', Isikoff talked to Butowsky, who in his efforts to dissuade him explained that his involvement in the whole affair began when Ellen Ratner, a news analyst with Fox, and sister of the late Michael Ratner, who had been an attorney for Assange, contacted him in Fall 2016 about a meeting she had with her that figure. ..."
"... And then, not particularly surprisingly, Butowsky and Clevenger abandoned their inhibitions about identifying Ellen Ratner as a source, and filled in a lot of 'blanks' in their 'narrative' about how Seth Rich lived and died. ..."
"... Among the many problems for Brennan and his co-conspirators -- among whom, on the British side, Hannigan and Darroch, and also Sedwill, are very important -- one relates to the way that the capabilities of 'scientific forensics', in all kinds of areas, have increased by leaps and bounds in recent years. ..."
"... This has meant that they have had little option but to corrupt the processes of investigation. The ludicrous claims by Dmitri Alperovitch of 'Crowdstrike' and the former GCHQ person Matt Tait, which nobody but a fool -- congenital 'useful idiot' one might say -- or a knave would dare to defend in public, are only one of many cases in point. ..."
One does not like to admit to having been one of John Brennan's 'useful idiots' -- I had
thought I could see through any of the 'active measures' which he and his co-conspirators, on
both sides of the Atlantic, could dream up. But I had swallowed whole the notion that Michael
Flynn had been stupid enough knowingly to get involved in Erdoğan's feud with
Gülen.
In fairness, however, I do think that when dealing with spiders like the former head of
the CIA, a prudent fly needs to be sure he, or she, gets competent legal advice at the
outset.
It may perhaps be interesting to put your account together with a post by 'Sundance' on
the 'Conservative Treehouse' site on 14 July, headlined 'Devin Nunes Discusses Upcoming
Mueller Testimony '
This takes up the issue, on which its author has commented extensively, of illegitimate
access by contractors to the databases of NSA intercepts -- an issue which is clearly bound
up with that of the use of such material to create the 'web' in which Flynn found himself
hopelessly entangled.
The post by 'Sundance' suggests, just as you do, that the driving force behind what has
happened was actually John Brennan. The April 2017 ruling by FISA Court Presiding Judge
Rosemary Collyer does not definitely establish that the illegitimate access of contractors
started in 2012, but it definitely strongly suggests that it did.
Reading the 6 September 'Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity' memorandum to
Obama, entitled 'Is Syria a Trap?', whose signatories included both you and Colonel Lang, it
seemed overwhelmingly likely to some of us who were familiar with both your writings that
Brennan had to have been involved in a conspiracy with the Turks, Saudis, and Qataris.
One relevant question related to whether the role of the Americans involved in this
conspiracy was simply 'ex post facto' exploitation of the patent 'false flag' sarin atrocity
at Ghouta the previous 21 August to attempt to inveigle the United States into toppling
Assad, or whether there was 'ex ante' complicity.
Moreover, if, as the memorandum asserted, 'British officials' were also aware that the
'most reliable intelligence' exonerated the Syrian government, rather fundamental questions
arose as to how the JIC had felt able to claim precisely the reverse in support of David
Cameron's unsuccessful attempt on 29 August to win Commons' support for British participation
in air strikes.
At the time, the Director General, Defence and Intelligence at the FCO was one Robert
Hannigan, who in April 2014 would be appointed as Director of GCHQ. The National Security
Adviser was a certain Sir Kim Darroch, whose appointment as Ambassador to the U.S. would be
announced in August 2015. Both have been in the news, in relation to 'Russiagate.'
Obviously, the same question arises about both of them as about Brennan: are they
'Gleiwitz types', who were actively complicit in preparing a murderous 'false flag', or were
they simply part of a rather stupid Anglo-American 'dog', whom the 'tail', in the shape of
the jihadists and their Turkish, Saudi and Qatari backers, could 'wag', as they chose?
From the articles which Seymour Hersh published in the 'London Review of Books', and other
materials, it became evident that the Defense Intelligence Agency, then headed by General
Flynn, had been aware of the likelihood of fresh 'false flags' -- after the small scale
incidents in spring 2013.
And it was clear enough, if one bothered to study the 'open source' material at all
carefully, that the DIA had been a key locus of opposition to the strategies being pursued by
Brennan, together with his British co-conspirators.
Accordingly, the fact that an 'interagency memorandum of understanding', which according
to Collyer's judgement looks as though it may well date from 2012 -- the year Brennan was
appointed to head the CIA -- appears to have led, in that year, to the granting of access to
the material, through the FBI, to outside contractors, looks somewhat interesting. (This is
well covered by 'Sundance'.)
So, I find myself asking whether in fact this gross abuse of the role of the NSA was not
linked at the outset to the divisions within the American intelligence apparatus and military
about policy towards the Middle East, and also whether this may not be relevant to assessing
the role of Robert Mueller, who was FBI Director through until September 2013.
An argument that 'Sundance' has repeatedly made is that a lot of what was happening in
mid-2016, including the dossier attributed to Steele, had to do with the need to find
justifications for these questionable surveillance operations.
While I think there is something in this, I have long thought that the discovery that a
mass of material exfiltrated from the DNC, and was going to be published by 'WikiLeaks', and
the subsequent murder of Seth Rich, are likely to have been critically important
triggers.
Among other things, I do not think that the version given by 'Sundance' can explain the
air of panic-stricken improvisation found alike in the dossier, and the claims about the
'digital forensics' made by Dmitri Alperovitch of 'CrowdStrike', and the former GCHQ person
Matt Tait.
I see that there has now been a dramatic escalation in the legal battles which began when
Ed Butowsky bought his initial action against David Folkenflik and his 'NPR' colleagues in
June 2018. The discovery process in that action was followed by an 'Amended Complaint' on 5
March this year.
A week later, Butowsky filed a new action, in which the suggestion of a very-wide ranging
conspiracy to suppress the truth about both the DNC leaks and Rich's murder was turned into a
catalogue of defamation claims against a long list of people, including, as well as a variety
of lawyers involved, CNN, the'Nw York Times', Vox, and the DNC.
On 9 July, Michael Isikoff published a story alleging that the claims about Rich and his
murder were the result of a Russian 'active measures' operation -- to use a favourite phrase
of TTG's.
'That Seth Rich was wacked because he stole the DNC emails and transferred them to
Wikileaks is a conspiracy theory. It is possible and even plausible, but there is no evidence
to confirm it. Many people seem to believe it because it makes more sense than the competing
conspiracy theory, that Russia hacked the DNC and handed the emails to Wikileaks. Isikoff's
claim, that Russia planted the Rich conspiracy theory, has no sound base. That theory existed
before anything "Russian" mentioned it.'
As it happens, Butowsky and his lawyer, Ty Clevenger, obviously decided it was time to, as
it were, 'unmask their batteries', and provide some of the evidence they have been
accumulating.
There is another useful post by 'Sundance', which in turn links to a very interesting post
on the Gateway Pundit' site. From there, you can access both Clevenger's blog post, and the
text of the 'Amended Complaint.'
It seems likely that Butowsky and Clevenger were pushed into acting a bit sooner than they
had intended. The fact that the name of Ellen Ratner, clearly a pivotal participant, was
misspellled 'Rattner' in the 'Amended Complaint', is likely to be an indication of this.
However, I also think that Clevenger, who seems to me a first-class 'ferret', could do
with the services of an old-style secretary, who checked his productions before they went
out.
As I have previously mentioned, I testified several times in Collyer's Washington district
court on non-FISA matters. My impression was that she is a very ambitious woman who wishes
always to do DoJ's bidding.
Your recollections of Collyer had, unfortunately, slipped my mind when I posted my comment
above. So, unfortunately, had Larry's post on Judge Caroline M. Craven's denial in her report
dated 17 April 2019 of the Motion to Dismiss filed by David Folkenflik and his NPR colleagues
in the defamation case brought against them by Ed Butowsky.
At the time of his post, the full text of the judgement was only available on PACER, which
requires a subscription. However, looking at the 'Court Listener' site, I now see that both
it and some other key documents in the case are freely available.
Reading the full text of Ms. Craven's report, I can see quite how well justified was
Larry's suggestion in his post that Folkenflik and NPR were on a very sticky wicket indeed
(as we say in England.)
And I can also see more clearly why, following the judgement, Butowsky and Ty Clevenger
felt they were in a position to launch an action both against some of the major legal players
in the cover-up of the fact that the materials published by the DNC were leaked by Seth Rich,
not hacked by the Russians, and also key disseminators of the cover-up, CNN, the NYT, and
Vox.
What looks to have happened subsequently is a natural enough process of escalation.
Among those who rather actively promoted the hogwash attributed to Christopher Steele was
Michael Isikoff, who is, apparently, chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News. In
April, he was reported in 'Vanity Fair' conceding that 'I think it's fair to say that all of
us should have approached this, in retrospect, with more skepticism'.
Any 'investigative reporter' worth his or her salt would have done elementary checks on
the dossier immediately, and not touched it with a bargepole -- again, as we used to say in
England. Also, even among the incompetent and corrupt, common prudence might have suggested
caution.
However, 'fools rush in', as the saying goes, so Isikoff decided to conspire with
Deborah Sines, apparently the former U.S. assistant attorney in charge of investigating Seth
Rich's murder, to suggest that suggestions that the victim had been the source of the
material from the DNC published by 'WikiLeaks' originated as just another Russian
plot.
It appears that prior to the publication of his 'report', Isikoff talked to Butowsky,
who in his efforts to dissuade him explained that his involvement in the whole affair began
when Ellen Ratner, a news analyst with Fox, and sister of the late Michael Ratner, who had
been an attorney for Assange, contacted him in Fall 2016 about a meeting she had with her
that figure.
Although Butowsky intended the conversation to be 'off the record', and the idea was
emphatically not that Isikoff would contact Ellen Ratner, he did. It seems that -- not
particularly surprisingly, in the current climate -- she lied to him, and he was stupid
enough to think that this meant he could get away with publishing his story.
And then, not particularly surprisingly, Butowsky and Clevenger abandoned their
inhibitions about identifying Ellen Ratner as a source, and filled in a lot of 'blanks' in
their 'narrative' about how Seth Rich lived and died.
I am still in the process of digesting the new information. However, a couple of
preliminary observations about the implications may be worth making.
Among the many problems for Brennan and his co-conspirators -- among whom, on the
British side, Hannigan and Darroch, and also Sedwill, are very important -- one relates to
the way that the capabilities of 'scientific forensics', in all kinds of areas, have
increased by leaps and bounds in recent years.
This has meant that they have had little option but to corrupt the processes of
investigation. The ludicrous claims by Dmitri Alperovitch of 'Crowdstrike' and the former
GCHQ person Matt Tait, which nobody but a fool -- congenital 'useful idiot' one might say --
or a knave would dare to defend in public, are only one of many cases in point.
What is really dangerous for the conspirators, however, is when the problems they have in
contesting rational arguments about the 'scientific forensics' come together with problems
relating to more 'old-fashioned' kinds of evidence: crucially, 'witness testimony'.
This, I think, may now be happening.
It also seems to me quite likely that some of those 'in the know' -- including perhaps
Rosemary Collyer -- had seen what was liable to happen a good while ago, and decided that a
prudent 'rat' keeps its options open.
"... I originally published this as a satirical Facebook Note on February 21, 2018, after the New York Times reported on February 16, 2018 that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had indicted 13 Russians. ..."
I originally published this as a satirical Facebook Note on February 21, 2018, after the
New York Times reported on February 16, 2018 that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had indicted
13 Russians.
February 21, 2018
The Honorable Robert Swan Mueller III
Special Investigating Counsel
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530–0001
Dear Mr. Mueller:
I read with great interest your indictments of 13 Russian citizens and three Russian
corporations.
Please note that Russia encourages you to continue your investigatory efforts as we are
confident you will find that neither myself or any representatives of my office and government
have anything to do with what many of your politicians and media members are describing as
"Russian collusion" or "Russian meddling" with the US 2016 elections.
Also, as a side note, please know that we in Russia are completely surprised at how you
conducted your 2016 election. From the vantage point of anyone living outside of America those
elections did not appear fair at all. We in Russia are surprised by this as we thought you were
a better nation than what we saw from your 2016 national elections.
Although the United States of America and The Russian Federation hold no formal extradition
treaty agreement, please be advised I am willing to use the powers of my office to contact
those whom you've indicted and I will do my utmost to encourage them to come to America in
order to stand the trial of your indictments. We are confident that your jurisprudence system
for legal discovery will produce both remarkable and enlightening evidence for your
investigation.
On a mundane matter, would you be willing to pay for the costs of their travel and housing
expenses while they stand trial in America, or would you prefer that The Russian Federation to
cover this expense?
Finally, please find attached a copy of the Constitution of The Russian Federation. You are
welcome to share with your fellow citizens as we are confident they will become very surprised
by what they learn from reading the contents of our Constitution.
PS: I strongly recommend that your FBI, NSA and DHS departments thoroughly examine the DNC
computers in order to determine if they were actually "hacked." I'm confident you will discover
that the documents published by Wikileaks were the product of an inside "leak" onto a thumb
drive. Please note that I am shocked that the thoroughness of your investigation has not yet
accomplished this simple and obvious task.
Mueller looks more and more like dirty Clinton fixer.
Notable quotes:
"... The Feb. 2018 indictment referred repeatedly to the IRA simply as a "Russian organization." But in Mueller's report 14 months later, the "Russian organization" had somehow morphed into "Russia." The IRA's lawyers argued, in effect, that Mueller's ipse-dixit "Russia did it" does not suffice as proof of Russian government involvement. Federal Judge Friedrich agreed and ordered Mueller to cease promoting his evidence-less charge against the IRA; she added that "any future violations of her order will trigger a range of potential sanctions." ..."
"... In testimony to Congress in October 2017, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch had cautioned earlier that from 2015 to 2017, "Americans using Facebook were exposed to, or 'served,' a total of over 33 trillion stories in their News Feeds." Shamefully misleading "analysis" by Times reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti in a 10,000-word article on September 20, 2018 made the case that the IRA's 80,000 posts helped deliver the presidency to Trump. ..."
"... Shane and Mazzetti neglected to report the 33 trillion number for needed context, even though the Times ' own coverage of Stretch's 2017 testimony stated outright: "Facebook cautioned that the Russia-linked posts represented a minuscule amount of content compared with the billions of posts that flow through users' News Feeds everyday." ..."
"... CrowdStrike, the controversial cybersecurity firm that the Democratic National Committee chose over the FBI in 2016 to examine its compromised computer servers, never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to, the Justice Department admitted. ..."
"... With Erin Ratner being named as a conduit between Seth Rich and Wikileaks in a lawsuit yesterday – the second flimsy leg of Mueller's claims – gets cut off at the knees. ..."
Daniel Lazare's July 12 Consortium Newspiece
shatters one of the twin prongs in Mueller's case that "the Russian government interfered in
the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion." It was the prong dripping
with incessant drivel about the Kremlin using social media to help Trump win in 2016.
Mueller led off his Russiagate report, a redacted version of which was published on April
18, with the dubious claim that his investigation had
" established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election principally through two
operations. First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored
presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against
entities, employees, and volunteers working in the Clinton campaign, and then released stolen
documents."
Judge to Mueller: Put Up or Shut Up
Mueller: Needs more time. (Flickr)
Regarding the social-media accusation, Judge Friederich has now told Mueller, in effect, to
put up or shut up. What happened was this: On February 16, 2018 a typically credulous grand
jury -- the usual kind that cynics say can be persuaded to indict the proverbial ham sandwich
-- was convinced by Mueller to return 16 indictments of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and
associates in St. Petersburg, giving his all-deliberate-speed investigation some momentum and a
much-needed, if short-lived, "big win" in "proving" interference by Russia in the 2016
election. It apparently never occurred to Mueller and the super-smart lawyers around him that
the Russians would outsmart them by hiring their own lawyers to show up in U.S. court and seek
discovery. Oops.
The Feb. 2018 indictment referred repeatedly to the IRA simply as a "Russian organization."
But in Mueller's report 14 months later, the "Russian organization" had somehow morphed into
"Russia." The IRA's lawyers argued, in effect, that Mueller's ipse-dixit "Russia did it"
does not suffice as proof of Russian government involvement. Federal Judge Friedrich agreed and
ordered Mueller to
cease promoting his evidence-less charge against the IRA; she added that "any future violations
of her order will trigger a range of potential sanctions."
More specifically, at the conclusion of a hearing held under seal on May 28, Judge Friedrich
ordered the government "to refrain from making or authorizing any public statement that links
the alleged conspiracy in the indictment to the Russian government or its agencies." The judge
ordered further that "any public statement about the allegations in the indictment . . . must
make clear that, one, the government is summarizing the allegations in the indictment which
remain unproven, and, two, the government does not express an opinion on the defendant's guilt
or innocence or the strength of the evidence in this case."
Reporting Thursday on Judge Friedrich's ruling, former CIA and State Department official
Larry C. Johnson
described it as a "potential game changer," observing that Mueller "has not offered one
piece of solid evidence that the defendants were involved in any way with the government of
Russia." After including a lot of useful background material, Johnson ends by noting:
"Some readers will insist that Mueller and his team have actual intelligence but cannot
put that in an indictment. Well boys and girls, here is a simple truth–if you cannot
produce evidence that can be presented in court then you do not have a case. There is that
part of the Constitution that allows those accused of a crime to confront their
accusers."
IRA Story a 'Stretch'
Last fall, investigative journalist Gareth Porter dissected and
debunkedThe New York Times 's far-fetched claim that 80,000 Facebook posts by the
Internet Research Agency helped swing the election to Donald Trump. What the Times story
neglected to say is that the relatively paltry 80,000 posts were engulfed in literally
trillions of posts on Facebook over the two-year period in question -- before and after the
2016 election.
Stretch and executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google hauled before a Senate Judiciary
subcommittee on crime and terrorism on Oct. 31, 2017.
In testimony to Congress in October 2017, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch had
cautioned earlier that from 2015 to 2017, "Americans using Facebook were exposed to, or
'served,' a total of over 33 trillion stories in their News Feeds." Shamefully misleading
"analysis" by Times reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti in a 10,000-word
article on September 20, 2018 made the case that the IRA's 80,000 posts helped deliver the
presidency to Trump.
Shane and Mazzetti neglected to report the 33 trillion number for needed context, even
though the Times ' own coverage of Stretch's 2017 testimony stated
outright: "Facebook cautioned that the Russia-linked posts represented a minuscule amount of
content compared with the billions of posts that flow through users' News Feeds everyday."
The chances that Americans saw any of these IRA ads -- let alone were influenced by them --
are infinitismal. Porter and others did the math and found that over the two-year period, the
80,000 Russian-origin Facebook posts represented just 0.0000000024 of total Facebook content in
that time. Porter commented that this particular Times contribution to the Russiagate
story "should vie in the annals of journalism as one of the most spectacularly misleading uses
of statistics of all time."
And now we know, courtesy of Judge Friederich, that Mueller has never produced proof, beyond
his say-so, that the Russian government was responsible for the activities of the IRA --
feckless as they were. That they swung the election is clearly a stretch.
The Other Prong: Hacking the DNC
The second of Mueller's two major accusations of Russian interference, as noted above,
charged that "a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against
entities, employees, and volunteers working in the Clinton campaign, and then released stolen
documents." Sadly for Russiagate aficionados, the evidence behind that charge doesn't hold
water either.
CrowdStrike, the controversial cybersecurity firm that the Democratic National Committee
chose over the FBI in 2016 to examine its compromised computer servers, never produced an
un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to,
the Justice Department
admitted.
The
revelation came in a
court filing by the government in the pre-trial phase of Roger Stone, a long-time
Republican operative who had an unofficial role in the campaign of candidate Donald Trump.
Stone has been charged with misleading Congress, obstructing justice and intimidating a
witness.
The filing was in response to a motion by Stone's lawyers asking for "unredacted reports"
from CrowdStrike challenging the government to prove that Russia hacked the DNC server. "The
government does not possess the information the defendant seeks," the DOJ filing says.
Small wonder that Mueller had hoped to escape further questioning. If he does testify on
July 24, the committee hearings will be well worth watching.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years and a presidential briefer.
In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. His colleagues and
he have been following closely the ins and outs of Russiagate.
Carlos , July 17, 2019 at 12:52
With Erin Ratner being named as a conduit between Seth Rich and Wikileaks in a lawsuit
yesterday – the second flimsy leg of Mueller's claims – gets cut off at the
knees.
cletus , July 17, 2019 at 05:29
just read your article at lewrockwell on 7/17.
you gave all the facts that irrefutably condemn the mueller hoax and reveal what a con man
he is. I salute you for this.
unfortutunately, you then come to a conclusion that cannot be supported by an reasonable
person.
you think that mueller's con will be called out by the republicans on the committee.
what a joke. They will avoid like the plague revealling that the russia claims by mueller
are a hoax.
they'll focus completely on ' you did conclude that trump didn't collude with the russians,
right?"
anyone who's been paying attention at all knows this.
Robert G. Hilton , July 17, 2019 at 01:13
There was no expert report showing hacking because the expert had found that the Russians
did not hack. Simple as that. The way it works is, that an expert puts nothing in writing
until AFTER orally consulting with the attorney who hired him. If the news is bad for said
attorney, then the expert is instructed NEVER to put the bad news in writing. I used to hire
experts when I litigated patent infringement cases, and that is the way it works. If you pay
the expert, then you make the rules. The judge may understand this too. I'm pretty sure that
the Crowd Strike expert also gave Muller (Andrew Wiseman?) the same news about no
hacking.
michael weddle , July 16, 2019 at 22:41
Why, shortly after Random Juan claimed the presidency, was a Crowdstrike employee trying
to stoke the Venezuelan coup?
I wish that this constant debunking of Russia Gate would be doing some good. Sadly it's
not. Most of the members of daily kos believe everything about Russia Gate and even after
reading some of the great essays written here that debunks it they instead say that this
website has been bought out by Russia.
I once thought that if people really looked at the evidence or lack of it that they would
wake up and smell the propaganda. It has always been so obvious to me that there was never
any there there and I couldn't understand how people bought into it. But I think it has to do
with who people voted for in the last election. Hillary's supporters just can't believe that
she could have lost without outside interference. Sad.
ex-PFC Chuck , July 16, 2019 at 18:08
A post yesterday at The Conservative Treehouse expands on a Gateway Pundit post about an
amended filing to the court in a Texas libel suit that could blow the whole Russia-gate hoax
wide open, taking with it whatever shred of credibility the Mueller Report might still have.
Not to mention the rationale for silencing Assange, General Flynn's prosecution, and the
murder of Seth Rich.
It looks like this fraudulent fable has finally been debunked by the US judicial system.
Now the Hillary bots will have to come up with another excuse for her wealthy donors as to
why she lost the election to a much maligned TV host that spent a small fraction of her
campaign funding. This also takes some of the fuel out of using the Russiagate fraud for a
march to war with Russia that was accompanied by large defense spending increases. Russiagate
was the perfect gift to the Clinton campaign apologists and the MIC that needs a causus belli
to feed the public war machine. That gift box has now been unraveled to display an empty box.
I'm surprised Ray McGovern did not bring up the issue of the alleged hacking of DNC emails to
have been contrary to the capability of the internet at that time. The rate of transfer was
consistent with downloading to a flash drive but impossible for transfer of packets across an
IP network – further debunking the Russia hacking narrative. This whole house of cards
has crashed in and it seems that it will be impossible for the Russiagate fraudsters to
reconstruct their tawdry myth.
jaycee , July 16, 2019 at 14:08
Perceptive bloggers identified the IRA as a commercial clickbait operation two years ago.
Everything about that operation was consistent with that description. Describing the IRA as a
Russian government psy-op program, in turn, was inconsistent with the evidence at hand and so
required the assumption that its purpose was to "sow chaos", or similar guesswork. It should
be remembered that the Facebook / Twitter people were initially reluctant to go along with
the latter theory, and only came on board after a great deal of pressure from members of
Congress such as Mark Warner. So this whole nonsensical story was magnified at the insistence
of powerful Democratic congressional persons, and Mueller was simply bolstering their
arguments – which was his job it appears. The result has been not only a false
consciousness deliberately seeded through the public, but also a raft of social media and
alternative news censorship which has been silencing both alt-right and progressive
voices.
Jeff Harrison , July 16, 2019 at 13:45
Thanx, Ray. I've said from the outset that Russiagate was bullshit perpetrated by Three
Names who just couldn't stand the fact that this was the latest in a long string of failures
that this incompetent, arrogant woman perpetrated on the American people. It was bullshit
from jump street because Three Names won the election by 3M votes but in the American
presidential election you not only need the votes, you need the distribution. Distribution
she didn't have. Russia (or any other actor sufficiently large and determined) can sway votes
for one candidate or another but they can't sway distribution. I personally thought the claim
that Russia via the Internet Research Agency sought to sway the election by disparaging Three
Names and pumping up Thump. Three Names won by 3M votes. Looks like Russia's IRA did a
spectacularly poor job of meddling.
There are some take aways from this that the government should be looking into/doing
something about.
1. Russiagate never had any legs. The legs that it got came from an effort by the deep state
to create them out of thin air. The deep state tried to take on the role of the Praetorian
Guard in old Rome. Their role originally was to protect the emperor but it morphed over the
years into picking who would be the emperor. The likes of Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Struck
(however you spell it) and his femme fatale (at a minimum, there may be more) should all be
marched off to jail and locked up for a considerable period of time for their attempts to
destroy our democracy (or republic – a distinction without a difference).
2. Seth Rich's murder needs to be actually investigated now that he has been outed as the
source of the leak to Wikileaks.
3. The Republican party needs to be banned as a political party. Any clear eyed view of
the 2016 election will conclude that the decades old effort by the Republicans at voter
suppression and gerrymandering are what resulted in the 2016 results. 80,000 votes in three
states that the Republicans have invested great voter suppression efforts – Wisconsin,
Michigan, and Pennsylvania would have changed the election results. This should have been a
major neon sign that winner take all for electoral votes is a bad idea. If proportional EC
votes were mandated, third parties would have a chance and our presidential elections might
become actual contests. Otherwise, we'll continue to have elections that are between two
candidates – worse and worser.
John Puma , July 16, 2019 at 12:36
The proportion of IRA "stories" among total Facebook postings
in the period in question, can be expressed in manner a bit more
readily grasped: on average, one IRA posting appeared among
every 412 million total. For perspective the US population is now
about 330 million.
The FBIs bungling with Crowdstrike information is reminiscent
of its reported 9-11 careless incompetence.
Jill , July 16, 2019 at 13:06
This may be why NPR featured that story:
"Businessman Ed Butowsky filed a lawsuit on Monday that outed FOX News reporter Ellen
Ratner was his source for the Seth Rich information.
This comes after Michael Isikoff's report last week that labeled Butowsky as a Russian
source."
Yahoo's reporter Michael Isikoff is a sock puppet for the CIA/FBI that provided the info
to NPR and was one of the first to spread the lies told to him by Steele about Russian
interference. He must have tried to head off the lawsuit filed today. Ed Butowsky filed a
lawsuit against the liberal media claiming defamation and business disparagement. He claims
that Assange told Ellen Ratner (Fox News analyst and sister of Assange's lawyer who passed
away) that Seth and Aaron Rich provided the emails to Wikileaks.
I don't think anyone with a couple of brain cells would dismiss the idea that an insider
with the DNC having access to delicate, perhaps damaging material, being what seems on the
surface, to be the victim of a motiveless murder would ask the question, was there any
connection between Seth Rich's demise and the crap storm that ensued after the Wikileaks
release. Really hello !
LarcoMarco , July 16, 2019 at 17:46
"NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Michael Isikoff" – what a predictable farce! "We
talked to Deborah Sines, who was the federal prosecutor in charge of the investigation into
Seth Rich's death. She was an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. attorney's office in the
District of Columbia, which prosecutes local murders. And she would see these conspiracy
theories about her case circulating on the Web. She was – she wanted to find out where
they were coming from."
At least we now know that Seth Rich's death is/was a Federal case. No more claiming the
DCPD has jurisdiction. But no disclosures of the contents of Seth Rich's cell phone and
laptop.
Eric32 , July 16, 2019 at 10:38
The author seems consumed by this carnival of politicized legalized covert intelligence
operations, by people and entities trying to retain money and power.
What's important is that the system hasn't been working for decades, and there's going to
be increasingly serious problems, maybe fatal ones, rising if a big overhaul doesn't
occur.
Al Pinto , July 16, 2019 at 09:43
The DNC and MSM sold, and sold well, the Russiagate to the general public. Does it really
matter, if the "Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has now come
apart at the seams"? Neither the DNC, nor the MSM will report/mention either of the court
case, pretty much a blackout for the general public.
Even, if these court cases are widely reported, do you really believe that the majority of
the people would change their mind? After almost three years, there's no way that these
people will change their mind. The only change that widely reporting these court cases would
result in is, that Trump and HRC supporters would hate each other even more.
This Russiagate will be with us pretty much forever, it'll morph in to accusing people of
being Russian agents and/or Russian Bots. We already see this taking place and just wait,
until next year. It's not going to be pretty
michael , July 16, 2019 at 12:40
Aaron Mate has done a brilliant job researching and debunking Russiagate. Unfortunately
for him, he is now ostracized and has to survive on the margins, with other people with
critical thinking skills.
You're right. The truth doesn't matter, just the BS narrative that has been shoved down
our throats for the last few years. It never made any sense to anyone who really thought
about it but the media whores just keep spewing total nonsense and they surely won't change
their ways now. The fact that the entire crock is really irrelevant to the majority of our
citizens doesn't matter to them a bit.
AnneR , July 16, 2019 at 09:42
Thank you again Mr McGovern for another article on this never ending saga. While I hope
that sanity begins to dawn among the so-called progressives, I have serious doubts.
1. Neither the BBC World Service nor NPR have mentioned (at least while I've been
listening) Judge Friedrich's ruling vis a vis provide the evidence (discovery) to the IRA
12's lawyers or tear up the indictment (essentially). Indeed, I've not heard, on the MSM,
anything about those 12 IRA folks employing a lawyer and challenging Mueller's indictment.
Silence works as well as obfuscation, lies.
2. The Demrats simply will not let their Russophobia go. I gather (from RT – tut tut
I must be an RU bottle) that Ms Harris AIPAC schmoozer, keen and eager lock 'em up and throw
away the key, corporate-capitalist crony Kamala has been accusing the Russians of stirring up
the controversy surrounding Kaepernick's bending of the knee. The Russians and their bots did
it.
3. And then this morning on NPR – a Steve Inskip interview with Michael Isikoff
focusing on the Seth Rich "conspiracy theory" and of course the whole thing (or that segment
which I could stomach hearing) presumed as a matter of established, and thus true, fact that
everything that went wrong for the DNC's HRC campaign was caused by the Russians – for
which read Putin. Isikoff was there as an "investigative" journalist for "Yahoo News" –
and his "investigation" had shown that the Russians were – who else – behind the
conspiracy theory that Seth Rich was killed by HRC thugs in order to keep him permanently
quiet about corruption in the DNC. (Corruption – a rather mealy-mouthed way of avoiding
bringing into NPR daylight what the DNC were actually doing: determining who would be the Dem
candidate willy nilly of who the voters wanted. But this mealy-mouthedness is fully in
keeping with NPR's basic silence on what Wikileaks revealed via that insider download.)
Orwellian. Propaganda at its Bernays, Goebbels best. Despair . This business is *not*
going away. The Demrats – both in DC and their bourgeois/progressive supporters have
far too much invested in the whole confabulation for them to admit that the former
deliberately lied and the latter were willing? hoodwinked.
Thanks for your comment. I would like it if somehow "despair," could be disallowed.
There are enough of us, after all. And, as Annie Dillard put it, "There never was anybody
but us."
I also take some inspiration from the dismal-sounding, yet somehow uplifting words of I.
F. Stone:
"The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you're going to lose, because somebody
has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do
wins."
THE CHALLENGE IS TO ACCEPT THAT, AND FIND JOY IN TRYING -- AND EVEN IN LOSING.
I believe the losing does not last forever; think we all need to do our part in the
"interim."
Best regards,
Ray
DW Bartoo , July 16, 2019 at 19:44
That sums things up precisely, Ray.
None of us may live to see a complete turn-around, yet it is the honest effort to
encourage and build the foundation for that fundamental systemic change to conscious and
principled human awareness which is the measure we must make of ourselves.
Your sense of moral presence, Ray, is very much appreciated.
It serves as inspiration for all, and especially the young, who already understand, and
encourages, as example, those who are coming to understand.
DW
AnneR , July 17, 2019 at 08:33
Dear Mr McGovern – thank you for reading and replying to my comment.
And, yes, I do understand the objection to despair – though not, might I add, any
thought that its frank expression be expunged!
Were it only the whole Russiagate fabrication, delusions, time and money waste (oh well,
only taxpayers' money) and fallout that was so dreadfully wrong, being heinously enacted.
Indeed were it all that our taxes were being wasted on.
Perhaps that's it – Russiagate while distracting from the things that the DNC and
HRC did, said, *also* makes for good deflection from the war crimes we are committing, the
never ending imperialist warmongering we are engaged in, from the fact that many Demrats
voted for those nice tax breaks given to the wealthiest tiers in our society, that many of
those Demrats voted to hand over to the MIC *even more* loot even as the Pentagon can't
account for the billions, or whatever fantastikal amount, it has already received over the
years, deflection from the fact that despite such a "good" economy increasing numbers of
people are living ever more economically precarious lives, rents rise astronomically,
healthcare is a joke (or would be were its lack not so serious for so many). And that's not
to mention the realities of climate change or the continuing (and MSM ignored) 70 plus year
plight of Palestinians, among so many others.
My late husband used to tell me to write to NPR, the BBC, to let them know that they
weren't codding everyone with their disinformation, non-information, lack of objectivity
– their propaganda. And I did, often and used to ask for a response. Did I even get
those? You must be joking
AnneR , July 17, 2019 at 14:08
In case someone might think that I expected either the BBC or NPR to alter their ways
because of my "letters" (interestingly the BBC only allows/ed for around 1000 characters or
something equally useless) – no. But when (in the case of the BBC) you can tick the
"please reply" box and get total silence, not even a "thank you for your blah blah we shan't
pay any attention to your complaints ," in response it is pretty frustrating.
As for NPR – I stopped our contributions. Why would we *pay* for the privilege of
being propagandized? I just wish we had stopped them years earlier
Anyway, thank you Mr McGovern for your continuing coverage of this whole affair. I just
wish my late partner in life and love had known of this website.
ML , July 16, 2019 at 09:24
Each morning when I arise, I get my coffee and settle down to read Consortium News. I also
make a habit of a quick perusal of what the stenographers are jawing about on CNN today,
there is a real doozy smearing Assange. The spinners are working overtime to patch over all
the holes in their hoax story. I couldn't get through the whole thing because it's another
smear piece and a long one including the old saw that Assange smeared feces on the Ecuadorian
embassy's walls. I had to stop reading. Gosh, I can't abide those people. Thanks Ray, for
telling the truth. We are drowning in $h** out there in la-la land. CN offers a much-needed
dose of reality medicine. Thank you kindly, all.
Skip Scott , July 16, 2019 at 10:19
Here's a good essay by Caitlin Johnstone regarding the Assange hit-piece.
Even worse news for the Russiahoaxers is the recent revelation , documented in a lawsuit ,
that Ellen Ratner , sister of deceased Wikileaks' lawyer Michael Ratner, met with Assange in
the fall of 2016 and was told by him that Aaron and Seth Rich provided the DNC leaks to
Wikileaks. Ed Butowsky was made aware of this , with instructions by Ms. Ratner for him to
relay the information to the Rich family. When he did so , in December 2016 , he was told by
Joel Rich , Seth's father , that he was already aware of his sons' involvement.
This is no longer conspiracy talk , folks. Ed Butowsky is not dumb enough to make these
claims on court documents without knowing he can back them up. Shit is about to get real for
Mueller and the DNC.
"BREAKING: Lawsuit Outs Reporter Ellen Ratner as Source for Seth Rich Information" @
Gateway Pundit
Well, Skip Scott, either this revelation will put "paid" to the "Russia-did-it!" charade,
or else the Voracious Memory Hole will act like a giant black hole and the event horizon will
be swallowed into total nothingness as a new Middle-Eastern Adventure captures the hearts and
minds of the happy warriors and consumers of U$ Imperialism.
Whatever happens, it will be wholey interesting times ahead.
DW
jmg , July 16, 2019 at 10:01
There was a related, extensive 2018 interview about Butowsky's private investigation into
the Seth Rich case to help the family, what they found, and what happened (the DNC assigned
someone to represent the family, etc.; the mentioned lawsuits were later dropped/dismissed).
It included, without naming Ratner, the unverified mention: "his friend came back from London
with information that he said he wanted to get to the Rich family." Since this alleged
private message appears to be not only doubtful, but of course also not confirmed by
WikiLeaks, we can't really know if it happened or not.
Seth Rich, disgruntled DNC worker, blows the whistle on HillBillary Clinton rigging the
Democratic presidential primary against Bernie Sanders, so he gives data supporting his
discovery of rigging to Wikileaks. Rich got the data on a thumdrive downloaded at DNC HQ
itself.
No Russians, no hacking, just a whistleblower on the fraud ironically called US
"democracy." We've all seen the data Rich leaked. Emails detailing HillBillary Clinton's
graft and fraud and collusion against Sanders.
No wonder no other candidates besides Sanders ran against HillBillary, for they all knew
the fix was in from its inception!
I dunno who killed Seth Rich, but I do know the Democratic party stole the election from
Bernie, then projected its own crimes onto Russia, same way a kid projects his own crime of
breaking a cookie jar on his brother when he tells Momma "He dit it –> He ate the
cookies and broke the jar!" Meanwhile, there's chocolate smeared all over the DNC's face.
We have evidence for this, the leaked emails themselves tell the story
Gregory Herr , July 16, 2019 at 18:15
Seth Rich copied and leaked the DNC e-mails and was murdered for it. For this to become
irrefutable common knowledge will be quite one godsend of a reality check. Maddow might not
be able to get out of bed for weeks.
Repeat after me Rachel there was no Russian hack, there was no Russian hack, there was no
Russian hack
jmg , July 16, 2019 at 07:13
From the Brennan–Comey–Rogers assessment/opinion (January 6, 2017):
"We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump's
election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her
unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high
confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence. . . .
"- High confidence generally indicates that judgments are based on high-quality
information from multiple sources. High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the
assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong.
"- Moderate confidence generally means that the information is credibly sourced and
plausible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher
level of confidence."
"When they say they have 'high confidence', that means they don't have any evidence!"
-- Bill Binney, former NSA Technical Director
DW Bartoo , July 16, 2019 at 07:10
Thank you, Ray McGovern for this splendid article laying out the facts which make clear
the absurdities of these last several years. One hopes, now that the "Russia-did-it" canard
is fully exposed, by US courts, that the truth may finally get through, over or around, the
media wall of enforced ignorance and Mueller hero-worship, and reach the ears and eyes of the
people.
Should that actually happen, it might even be possible that other truth, long subject to
media manipulation and distortion, the cases of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning come
readily to mind, could be seen in the honest light of day after an almost eight year
protracted nightmare of media driven deceit, psychological torture, and deliberately vicious
character assassination is revealed, in Assange's case, as it might well be, by Nils Melzer's
report to the UN.
The legacy U$ corporate media have much to answer for, from promulgating lies that led to
war, to missile attacks, and to brutal economic sanctions, a form of economic warfare, to
efforts to start a new Cold War, and to aggrandize intelligence agencies which have sought to
pervert justice and to illegally influence the political process by falsely accusing, on the
flimsy words of partisan political operatives, another nation of the very actions those
agencies have used, repeatedly and for many decades,to destroy the political processes of
other nations, including the very nation singled out to take the blame for Hillary Clinton's
abysmal and pathetic failure in the 2016 election.
What a waste of time, resources, trust, and energy it has bee, these last years, yet it
was all so very profitable and lucrative for the media, even if it were "not good" for the
country.
The media have damned and convicted themselves.
The U$ intelligence agencies have exposed themselves as corrupt, completely dishonest,
vindictive, petty, and thoroughly untrustworthy.
It remains to be seen if the people have learned anything, and whether they will do
anything with this costly, yet necessary, education.
DW
Allan , July 16, 2019 at 07:04
Will Adam Schiff spend the week with Bob Mueller to get their story straight
UserFriendly , July 16, 2019 at 05:18
?Unfortunately this is partially bunk. The first bit the judge didn't rule that there was
no evidence, she ruled that Mueller publicly saying that the IRA = kremlin and they did try
to help Trump win was prejudicial in the case against the IRA (quite obviously so). But him
not being able to say that during his testimony should go over well with the democrats. Of
course if he actually wanted to explain all he would have to do is drop the case against the
IRA because it's never going to trial anyways. Almost makes you wonder if he filed those
charges expressly so he wouldn't have to connect the imaginary dotts.
Aiya , July 16, 2019 at 11:03
What they called "trying to help Trump" was a miniscule amount of social media posts, 56%
of which were made AFTER the election. And Facebook had to look 3 times to come up with
ANYTHING–what they finally reported were posts coming from Russia or eastern Europe,
posts in Cyrillic language, and posts from people with Russian/European names.
Looks like Mueller and his team were extremely sloppy and just milked the US government and try to feed rumors to the media.
Mueller emerged as a stooge of Clinton mafia.
Notable quotes:
"... In short, the US Government cannot come out and declare that Concord Management, for example, was acting on behalf or or in collaboration with the Russian Government without presenting actual evidence. A prosecutor cannot simply claim that Concord is a Putin Stooge. ..."
"... The lawyers for Concord Management read the Mueller report and noted significant discrepancies between what was alleged in the original complaint and what was asserted as "fact" in the Mueller report. ..."
"... On April 25, 2019, Concord filed the instant motion in which it argues that the Attorney General and Special Counsel violated Local Rule 57.7 by releasing information to the public that was not contained in the indictment. Concord's main contention is that the Special Counsel's Report, as released to the public, and the Attorney General's related public statements improperly suggested a link between the defendants and the Russian government and expressed an opinion about the defendants' guilt and the evidence against them. ..."
"... Concord's lawyers wanted Judge Friedrich to find Robert Mueller and Attorney General Barr in contempt for violating rule 57.7. ..."
"... the Court has entered an order limiting public statements about this case moving forward and cautions the government that any future violations of that order will trigger a range of potential sanctions. ..."
"... But the Judge did not stop there. She pointed out some glaring discrepancies between the Mueller Report and the actual indictment: ..."
"... By attributing IRA's conduct to "Russia" -- as opposed to Russian individuals or entities -- the Report suggests that the activities alleged in the indictment were undertaken on behalf of, if not at the direction of, the Russian government. ..."
"... But the activities of the IRA and Concord Management are not established. In fact, Mueller's own report undermines his claims, as noted in a recent article by Nation's Aaron Mate. ..."
"... Mate's article, as I mentioned in a previous piece, does an excellent job of showing that the Mueller Report is based on heartfelt beliefs but devoid of corroborating evidence. ..."
"... I think Mueller, Weissman, et al did not expect Concord to contest their indictment. They believed they could continue their PR effort that Russia changed the outcome of the election by sending out tweets and Facebook posts without anyone calling them out. ..."
"... The national security surveillance state is only going to get bigger and more powerful. I suppose that is the real competition between the CCP & the USA who can get more totalitarian sooner. ..."
"... a very valuable recent piece in the 'Epoch Times' about the questions that need to be put to Mueller, Jeff Carlson discusses some of the problems relating both to Christopher Steele's involvement with Oleg Deripaska, and the involvement of Fusion GPS with Natalia Veseltnitskaya which led to the Trump Tower meeting. (See https://www.theepochtimes.com/33-key-questions-for-robert-mueller_2988876.html .) ..."
"... Andrew McCarthy, in the 'National Review', picks up one of the most interesting, and puzzling, moments in the fascinating notes by Kathy Kavalec of the conversation she had with Steele when Jonathan Winer brought him to see on her in October 2016. (See https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/oleg-deripaska-fbi-russia-collusion-theory/ ) ..."
"... 'Moreover, by January 2017, F.B.I. agents had tracked down and interviewed one of Mr. Steele's main sources, a Russian speaker from a former Soviet republic who had spent time in the West, according to a Justice Department document obtained by The New York Times and three people familiar with the events. After questioning him, F.B.I. officials came to suspect that the man might have added his own interpretations to reports from his own sources that he passed on to Mr. Steele, calling into question the reliability of the information.' ..."
"... Without wanting to prejudge things, it seems to me quite likely that what Horowitz has been contemplating is a kind of 'limited hangout'. So, the idea could be to suggest that Steele did have sources, that however these were not as reliable as he thought they were, but everything was done in good faith etc etc. In the light of information coming out, including that in the Friedrich ruling, he may however have decided to 'hold his horses.' ..."
"... It is important that the general pattern of assuming that Putin is some kind of omnipotent Sauron-figure, which has clearly left Mueller open to a counter-attack by Concord, was given a classic expression in the testimony which Glenn Simpson gave to the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017. ..."
"... Litvinenko himself, as well as having been a key member of the late Boris Berezovsky's 'information operations team', was an agent, as distinct from an informant, of MI6: accounts differ as to whether Steele was his personal 'handler' (John Sipher), or had never met him (Luke Harding). ..."
"... Also relevant is the fact that Shvets, a fanatical Ukrainian nationalist, and an important figure in the original 'Orange Revolution', was also a key member of Berezovsky's 'information operations' team. ..."
"... The account of his career by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier in his 2016 study 'Missing Man' is a tissue of sleazy evasions, not least in relation to the role of Levinson in 'investigating' the notorious mobster Semion Mogilevich, a key figure in 'information operations' against both Putin and Trump, and also the opponents of Yulia Tymoshenko. ..."
"... A large question involved is how co-operation between not simply elements in MI6 and the CIA, but also in the FBI, with the oligarchs who refused to accept Putin's terms goes back a very long way. ..."
Mueller Does Not Have Evidence That The IRA Was Part of Russian Government Meddling by
Larry C Johnson
In the criminal case against alleged Russian operatives--Internet Research Agency and
Concord Management and Consulting LLC--a Federal judge has declared that Robert Mueller has not
offered one piece of solid evidence that these defendants were involved in any way with the
Government of Russia. I think this is a potential game changer.
The world of law as opposed to the world of intelligence is as different as Mercury and
Mars. The intelligence community aka IC can traffic in rumor and speculation. IC "solid"
intelligence may be nothing more than the strident assertion of a source who lacks actual first
hand knowledge of an event. The legal world does not enjoy that kind of sloppiness. If a
prosecutor makes a claim, i.e., Jack shot Jill, then said prosecutor must show that Jack owned
a firearm that matches the bullets recovered from Jill's body. Then the prosecutor needs to
show that Jack was with Jill when the shooting took place and that forensic evidence recovered
from Jack showed he had fired a firearm. Keep this distinction in mind as you consider what has
transpired in the case against the Internet Research Agency and Concord Management and
Consulting.
To understand why Judge Friedrich ruled as she did you must understand Local Rule 57.7.
That rule: restricts public dissemination of information by attorneys involved in criminal cases where
"there is a reasonable likelihood that such dissemination will interfere with a fair trial or
otherwise prejudice the administration of justice." It also authorizes the court "[i]n a widely
publicized or sensational criminal case" to issue a special order governing extrajudicial
statements and other matters designed to limit publicity that might interfere with the conduct
of a fair trial. . . .
The rule prohibits lawyers associated with the prosecution or defense
from publishing, between the time of the indictment and the commencement of trial, "[a]ny
opinion as to the accused's guilt or innocence or as to the merits of the case or the evidence
in the case."
In short, the US Government cannot come out and declare that Concord Management, for
example, was acting on behalf or or in collaboration with the Russian Government without
presenting actual evidence. A prosecutor cannot simply claim that Concord is a Putin
Stooge.
The lawyers for Concord Management read the Mueller report and noted significant
discrepancies between what was alleged in the original complaint and what was asserted as
"fact" in the Mueller report.
On April 25, 2019, Concord filed the instant motion in which it argues that the Attorney
General and Special Counsel violated Local Rule 57.7 by releasing information to the public
that was not contained in the indictment. Concord's main contention is that the Special
Counsel's Report, as released to the public, and the Attorney General's related public
statements improperly suggested a link between the defendants and the Russian government and
expressed an opinion about the defendants' guilt and the evidence against them.
Concord's lawyers wanted Judge Friedrich to find Robert Mueller and Attorney General Barr in
contempt for violating rule 57.7.
Judge Friedrich gave Concord a partial victory:
Although the Court agrees that the government violated Rule 57.7 , it disagrees that
contempt proceedings are an appropriate response to that violation. Instead, the Court has
entered an order limiting public statements about this case moving forward and cautions the
government that any future violations of that order will trigger a range of potential
sanctions.
But the Judge did not stop there. She pointed out some glaring discrepancies between the
Mueller Report and the actual indictment:
The Special Counsel Report describes efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the
2016 presidential election. . . . But the indictment . . . does not link the defendants to the
Russian government. Save for a single allegation that Concord and Concord Catering had several
"government contracts" (with no further elaboration), id. ¶ 11, the indictment alleges
only private conduct by private actors.
. . . the concluding paragraph of the section of the [Mueller] Report related to Concord
states that the Special Counsel's "investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016
presidential election through the 'active measures' social media campaign carried out by"
Concord's co-defendant, the Internet Research Agency (IRA). By attributing IRA's conduct to
"Russia" -- as opposed to Russian individuals or entities -- the Report suggests that the
activities alleged in the indictment were undertaken on behalf of, if not at the direction of,
the Russian government.
Similarly, the Attorney General drew a link between the Russian government and this case
during a press conference in which he stated that "[t]he Special Counsel's report outlines two
main efforts by the Russian government to influence the 2016 election." . . . The "[f]irst"
involved "efforts by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company with close ties to the
Russian government, to sow social discord among American voters through disinformation and
social media operations." Id. The "[s]econd" involved "efforts by Russian military officials
associated with the GRU," a Russian intelligence agency, to hack and leak private documents and
emails from the Democratic Party and the Clinton Campaign.
The Report explains that it used the term "established" whenever "substantial, credible
evidence enabled the Office to reach a conclusion with confidence." . . . It then states in its
conclusion that the Special Counsel's "investigation established that Russia interfered in the
2016 presidential election through the 'active measures' social media campaign carried out by
the IRA." In context, this statement characterizes the evidence against the defendants as
"substantial" and "credible," and it provides the Special Counsel's Office's "conclusion" about
what actually occurred.
But the activities of the IRA and Concord Management are not established. In fact, Mueller's
own report undermines his claims, as noted in a recent article by Nation's Aaron Mate. Although
Mueller claims that it was "established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential
election through the 'active measures' social media campaign carried out by" Concord's
co-defendant, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), he provided no such evidence.
After two years and $35 million, Mueller apparently failed to uncover any direct evidence
linking the Prigozhin-controlled IRA's activities to the Kremlin. His best evidence is that
"[n]umerous media sources have reported on Prigozhin's ties to Putin, and the two have appeared
together in public photographs."
Mate's article, as I mentioned in a previous piece, does an excellent job of showing that
the Mueller Report is based on heartfelt beliefs but devoid of corroborating evidence.
Some readers will insist that Mueller and his team have actual intelligence but cannot put
that in an indictment. Well boys and girls, here is a simple truth--if you cannot produce
evidence that can be presented in court then you do not have a case. There is that part of the
Constitution that allows those accused of a crime to confront their accusers.
Minor quibble: Judge
Friedrich is a woman.
I expect that this will get no play from the MSM, since Judge Friedrich was appointed by
Trump, and "everyone" knows she's just covering up for him.
Under the conditions and in the environment that it was returned, this indictment was
Mueller and his partisan team throwing raw meat fo the media so as to prolong their mission,
nothing more. Once filed, no one involved ever expected to appear in a courtroom to prosecute
anyone, or defend any part of it. It was an abuse of process, pure and simple.
Consider it as a count against Mueller, his competence or his integrity, maybe both. He let
himself become a tool.
Johnson refers to "heartfelt beliefs" but i doubt Mueller believes his own bs. in this i
guess he distinguishes himself from earlier witch-hunters, who apparently sincerely believed
their targets were minions of satan.
I think Mueller, Weissman, et al did not expect Concord to contest their indictment. They
believed they could continue their PR effort that Russia changed the outcome of the election
by sending out tweets and Facebook posts without anyone calling them out.
It seems on the current trajectory both the Trump colluded with Russia and our law
enforcement & IC attempted a soft-coup will die on the vine. The latter because Trump is
unwilling to declassify. It seems for him it was all just another reality TV show and him
tweeting "witch hunt" constantly was what the script called for.
The next time the IC &
law enforcement who now must believe that they are the real power behind the throne decide to
exercise that power it will be a doozie.
The national security surveillance state is only going to get bigger and more powerful. I
suppose that is the real competition between the CCP & the USA who can get more
totalitarian sooner.
I think a large question is raised as to how far the kind of sloppiness in the handling of
evidence which Judge Friedrich identified in the Mueller report may have characterised a
great deal of the treatment of matters to do with the post-Soviet space by the FBI and others
– including almost all MSM journalists – for a very long time.
Unfortunately, one also finds this among some of the most useful critics of 'Russiagate'.
So, for example, in a very valuable recent piece in the 'Epoch Times' about the questions
that need to be put to Mueller, Jeff Carlson discusses some of the problems relating both to
Christopher Steele's involvement with Oleg Deripaska, and the involvement of Fusion GPS with
Natalia Veseltnitskaya which led to the Trump Tower meeting. (See https://www.theepochtimes.com/33-key-questions-for-robert-mueller_2988876.html
.)
He then however goes on to write: 'In other words, not only was the firm that hired
Steele, Fusion GPS, hired by the Russians, but Steele himself was hired directly by the
Russians.'
And Andrew McCarthy, in the 'National Review', picks up one of the most interesting, and
puzzling, moments in the fascinating notes by Kathy Kavalec of the conversation she had with
Steele when Jonathan Winer brought him to see on her in October 2016. (See https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/oleg-deripaska-fbi-russia-collusion-theory/
)
Commenting on the fact that, in her scribbled notes, beside the names of Vladislav Surkov
and Vyacheslav Trubnikov, who are indeed a top Putin adviser and a former SVR chief
respectively, Kavalec writes 'source', McCarthy simply concludes that she meant that he had
said that these were his – indirect – sources, and that this was accurate. And he
goes on to write:
'Deripaska, Surkov, and Trubnikov were not informing on the Kremlin. These are Putin's
guys. They were peddling what the Kremlin wanted the world to believe, and what the Kremlin
shrewdly calculated would sow division in the American body politic. So, the question is: Did
they find the perfect patsy in Christopher Steele?'
If you look at Kavalec's typing up of the notes, among a good deal of what looks to me
like pure 'horse manure' – including the claim that 'Manafort has been the go-between
with the campaign' – the single reference to Surkov and Trubnikov is that they are said
to be 'also involved.'
As it happens, Surkov is a very complex figure indeed. His talents as a 'political
technologist' were first identified by Khodorkovsky, before he subsequently played that role
for Putin. It would obviously be possible that he and Steele still had common contacts.
The suggestion in Kavalec's notes that Sergei Millian 'may be involved in some way,' and
also that, 'Per Steele, Millian is connected Simon Kukes (who took over management of Yukos
when Khodorkovsky was arrested)' is interesting, but would seem to suggest that he would not
have been cited to Kavalec as an intermediary.
All this is obviously worth putting together with claims made in the 'New York Times'
follow-up on 9 July to the Reuters report on the same day breaking the story of the
interviews carried out with Steele by the Inspector General's team in early June.
'Moreover, by January 2017, F.B.I. agents had tracked down and interviewed one of Mr.
Steele's main sources, a Russian speaker from a former Soviet republic who had spent time in
the West, according to a Justice Department document obtained by The New York Times and three
people familiar with the events. After questioning him, F.B.I. officials came to suspect that
the man might have added his own interpretations to reports from his own sources that he
passed on to Mr. Steele, calling into question the reliability of the information.'
Some observations prompted by all this.
Without wanting to prejudge things, it seems to me quite likely that what Horowitz has
been contemplating is a kind of 'limited hangout'. So, the idea could be to suggest that
Steele did have sources, that however these were not as reliable as he thought they were, but
everything was done in good faith etc etc. In the light of information coming out, including
that in the Friedrich ruling, he may however have decided to 'hold his horses.'
In trying to put together the accumulating evidence, it is necessary to realise, as so
many people seem to find it difficult to do, that in matters like these people commonly play
double games – often for very good reasons.
To say as Carlson does that Fusion and Steele were hired by 'the Russians' implies that
these are some kind of collective entity – and then, one is one step away from the
assumption that Veselnitskaya and Deripaska, as well as 'Putin's Cook', are simply puppets
controlled by the master manipulator in the Kremlin. (The fact that Friedrich applies serious
standards for assessing evidence to Mueller's version of this is one of the reasons why her
judgement is so important.)
As regards what McCarthy says, to lump Surkov and Deripaska together as 'Putin's guys' is
unhelpful. Actually, it seems to me very unlikely, although perhaps not absolutely
impossible, that, had he been implicated in any conspiracy to intervene in an American
election, Surkov would have been talking candidly about his role to anyone liable to relay
the information to Steele.
Likewise, however, the notion of a Machiachiavellian Surkov, feeding disinformation about
a non-existent plot through an intermediary to Steele, who swallows it hook, line and sinker,
does not seem particularly plausible.
A rather more obvious possibility is that the intermediaries who were supposed to have
conveyed a whole lot of 'smoking gun' evidence to Steele were either 1. fabrications, 2.
people whom without their knowledge he cast in this role, or 3. co-conspirators. It would,
obviously, be possible that Millian, although one can say no more than that at this stage,
was involved in either or both of roles 2. and 3.
It is important that the general pattern of assuming that Putin is some kind of omnipotent
Sauron-figure, which has clearly left Mueller open to a counter-attack by Concord, was given
a classic expression in the testimony which Glenn Simpson gave to the House Intelligence
Committee in November 2017.
Providing his version of what was going on following his move from the Washington office
of the 'Wall Street Journal' to its European headquarters in January 2005, Simpson told the
Committee:
'And the oligarchs, during this period of consolidation of power by Vladimir Putin, when I
was living in Brussels and doing all this work, was about him essentially taking control over
both the oligarchs and the mafia groups. And so basically everyone in Russia works for Putin
now. And that's true of the diaspora as well. So the Russian mafia in the United States is
believed bylaw enforcement criminologists to have – to be under the influence of the
Russian security services. And this is convenient for the security services because it gives
them a level of deniability.'
A bit less than two years after Simpson's move to Brussels, a similar account featured in
what appears to have been the first attempt by Christopher Steele and his confederates to
provide a 'narrative' in terms of which could situate the supposed assassination by polonium
poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.
This came in a BBC Radio 4 programme, entitled 'The Litvinenko Mystery', in which a
veteran presenter with the Corporation, Tom Mangold, produced an account by the former KGB
Major Yuri Shvets, supported by the former FBI Agent Robert Levinson, and an 'Unidentified
Informer', who is told by Mangold that he cannot be identified 'reasons of your own personal
security'.
This figure, whose credentials we have no means of assessing, explains:
'Well it's not well known to Western leaders or Western people but it is pretty well known
in Russia. Because essentially it is common knowledge in Russia that by the end of Nineties
the so called Russian organised crime had been destroyed by the Government and then the
Russian security agencies, primarily the law enforcement and primarily the FSB, essentially
assumes the functions and methods of Russian organised crime. And they became one of the most
dangerous organised crime group because they are protected by law. They're protected by all
power of the State. They have essentially the free hand in the country and this shadow
establishment essentially includes the entire structure of the FSB from the very top people
in Moscow going down to the low offices.'
The story Mangold told was a pathetic tale of how Litvinenko and Shvets, trying to turn an
honest penny from 'due diligence' work, identified damning evidence about the links of a
figure close to Putin to organised crime, who in return sent Andrei Lugovoi to poison the
former with polonium.
A few problems with this version have, however, subsequently, emerged. Among them is the
fact that, at the time, Litvinenko himself, as well as having been a key member of the late
Boris Berezovsky's 'information operations team', was an agent, as distinct from an
informant, of MI6: accounts differ as to whether Steele was his personal 'handler' (John
Sipher), or had never met him (Luke Harding).
Also relevant is the fact that Shvets, a fanatical Ukrainian nationalist, and an important
figure in the original 'Orange Revolution', was also a key member of Berezovsky's
'information operations' team.
Perhaps most interesting is the fact that the disappearance of Levinson, on the Iranian
island of Kish, the following March, was not as was claimed for years related to his private
sector work. His entrapment and imprisonment – from which we now know Deripaska was
later involved in attempting to rescue him – related to an undercover mission on behalf
of elements in the CIA.
The account of his career by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier in his 2016 study
'Missing Man' is a tissue of sleazy evasions, not least in relation to the role of Levinson
in 'investigating' the notorious mobster Semion Mogilevich, a key figure in 'information
operations' against both Putin and Trump, and also the opponents of Yulia Tymoshenko.
A large question involved is how co-operation between not simply elements in MI6 and the
CIA, but also in the FBI, with the oligarchs who refused to accept Putin's terms goes back a
very long way.
And, among other things, that raises a whole range of questions about Mueller.
Great info, thanks. I admittedly don't watch the skeptics' comments closely enough, and
can be susceptible to twisted observations from guys like Carlson and Solomon.
"... Halper, such as he could be called a source at all, appears to have been, has to have been, working in the UK with Agency people and almost certainly with MI6 as well. ..."
"... If John Brennan was not there at the genesis of this fiasco, I will eat my hat; and I cannot see how there weren't high level officials at MI6 engaged as well ..."
"... Similarly, Steele is dredging for Russian dirt wherever he can get it and he's sealed himself off from his former employer? Not likely. ..."
"... The one thing which overwhelms all else is the actual nature of the material that came from the DNC servers and appeared on Wikileaks. A great deal of noise is made about that information's journey, who stole (hacked or copied) it, how it was done, who transmitted it, etc. But no noise whatever is made about the information itself, or at least when an attempt is made it is buried by the "Russia meddled" noise. ..."
"... The information itself is that the DNC is a bad actor, that it rigged the primary election for Hillary Clinton. No one, no one , denies the truth of the information itself. When what the DNC did is mentioned the conversation instantly changes to the Russians having "meddled in our election." ..."
"... Buried in the noise is that the DNC meddled in the electoral process far more destructively and far more directly than the Rusians did, if the Russians did so at all, which I perceive as highly doubtful. ..."
I would guess that the Bureau Agents had to be read in on what the Agency people had been
doing with Halper and possibly Mifsud,; that, and to bring their purported
counter-intelligence expertise to bear. Active investigation in the UK with respect to
Papadopolis was in prospect, probably to include tech surveillance, and the Bureau has no
authority to conduct active independent investigation overseas.
Halper, such as he could be called a source at all, appears to have been, has to have
been, working in the UK with Agency people and almost certainly with MI6 as well.
If NSA was there in the UK, it was with a view to coordinating tech; but with that said,
it would be highly irregular for our people to be conducting active investigation, especially
if it included physical and technical surveillance, without coordinating at some level with
MI6 and 5 as well.
If John Brennan was not there at the genesis of this fiasco, I will eat my hat; and I
cannot see how there weren't high level officials at MI6 engaged as well .
Halper is working in the UK with the Agency in re Russia and not working with the Russia
obsessed MI6? Similarly, Steele is dredging for Russian dirt wherever he can get it and
he's sealed himself off from his former employer? Not likely.
The one thing which overwhelms all else is the actual nature of the material that came
from the DNC servers and appeared on Wikileaks. A great deal of noise is made about that
information's journey, who stole (hacked or copied) it, how it was done, who transmitted it,
etc. But no noise whatever is made about the information itself, or at least when an attempt
is made it is buried by the "Russia meddled" noise.
The information itself is that the DNC is a bad actor, that it rigged the primary election
for Hillary Clinton. No one, no one , denies the truth of the information itself. When
what the DNC did is mentioned the conversation instantly changes to the Russians having
"meddled in our election."
Buried in the noise is that the DNC meddled in the electoral process far more
destructively and far more directly than the Rusians did, if the Russians did so at all,
which I perceive as highly doubtful.
i'm not familiar with all the intricate details of the "investigation" (i just detect a
strong smell of bs coming from mueller), and I found this piece hard to follow on the
page-strzok texts and their significance.
This from the Fox article: "Fox News has learned some of the words and names that were
redacted in the string of Strzok-Page messages" prompts a (maybe dumb) question:
Do we know/can we infer how Fox managed to fill in just some of the redacted info?
It seems odd to me that only a few of the blanks have been filled in, as if Fox had access to
the original FBI phone records they'd have all of it. Also, the new handwritten parts seem to
contain information which could not possibly have been gathered from any other source outside
of this private 2 way conversation - e.g. "Just you two? Was DCM present for the interview?"
and the reply "No, two of them, two of us".
Do Fox have it all and are they then just teasing us, or is perhaps one of the two
star-crossed lovers singing?
"... It wasn't to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton, which the Russian lawyer did not have and never produced. That was a ploy by Robert Goldstone, a British music publicist whose job is to get what his clients want, in this case, a meeting. So, recklessly, he invented the idea of Clinton dirt as a bait-and-switch to get Trump's people to come to it. He got the lawyer the meeting for her to lobby a potentially incoming administration against the Magnitsky Act, which is why she was in the United States in the first place. ..."
"... The lawyer lobbying against the act, Natalia Veselnitskaya, told Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort that Browder's story was fake, a smokescreen to block the Russians from going after him for multi-millions in tax evasion. She argued the Magnitsky Act was built on this fraud. Manafort's notes, included in the Mueller Report, trace what she said. ..."
"... The Mueller investigators appear not to have looked into her charges. The report promotes Browder's fabrications, citing "the Magnitsky Act, which imposed financial sanctions and travel restrictions on Russian officials and which was named for a Russian tax specialist who exposed a fraud and later died in a Russian prison." ..."
"... But instead of his "lawyer" Magnitsky exposing Russian fraud, for which he was jailed and killed in prison, Magnitsky was actually Browder's accountant who was detained under investigation for his part in Browder's tax evasion and died of natural causes in prison, as Magnitsky's own mother admits to filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov in the film "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes." ..."
"... The documents include a deposition where Browder admits that the alleged "lawyer" Magnitsky did not go to law school nor have a law degree. Magnitsky's own testimony file identifies him as an "auditor." ..."
"... I interviewed Veselnitskaya in New York in November 2016. She explained what she later told the Trump group, that Browder's clients the Ziff Brothers had invested in Russian shares in a way that routed the money through loans so that they could evade U.S. taxes. ["Not invest – loans" in Manafort's notes.] ..."
Natalia Veselnitskaya didn't have "dirt" on Hillary Clinton and when the Russian lawyer met
with Trump's people her focus was not on the 2016 campaign, writes Lucy Komisar.
By Lucy Komisar Special to Consortium News
A "key event" described in the Mueller
Report is the Trump Tower meeting where a Russian lawyer met with the president's son
Donald Trump Jr, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Russiagaters have been obsessed with the meeting saying it was the smoking gun to prove
collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to steal the 2016 election. Months after
Mueller concluded that there was no collusion at all, the obsession has switched to
"obstruction of justice," which is like someone being apprehended for resisting arrest without
committing any other crime.
Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump team members in Trump Tower,
and her interpreter, in background. (Lucy Komisar)
The Mueller report thus focuses instead on "efforts to prevent disclosure of information
about the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Russians and senior campaign officials."
But the report on this topic is deceptive. Ironically, as it attacks Donald Trump and top
campaign officials for lying, the report itself lies about the issue the meeting addressed.
It wasn't to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton, which the Russian lawyer did not have and
never produced. That was a ploy by Robert Goldstone, a British music publicist whose job is to
get what his clients want, in this case, a meeting. So, recklessly, he invented the idea of
Clinton dirt as a bait-and-switch to get Trump's people to come to it. He got the lawyer the
meeting for her to lobby a potentially incoming administration against the Magnitsky Act, which
is why she was in the United States in the first place.
The Magnitsky Act is a 2012 U.S. law that was promoted by William Browder, an American-born
British citizen and hedge fund investor, who claimed his "lawyer" Sergei Magnitsky had been
imprisoned and murdered because he uncovered a scheme by Russian officials to steal $230
million from the Russian Treasury. It sanctioned Russians he said were involved or benefitted
from Magnitsky's death. It has since been used by the U.S. to put sanctions on other Russians
and nationals from other countries.
The lawyer lobbying against the act, Natalia Veselnitskaya, told Trump Jr., Kushner and
Manafort that Browder's story was fake, a smokescreen to block the Russians from going after
him for multi-millions in tax evasion. She argued the Magnitsky Act was built on this fraud.
Manafort's notes, included in the Mueller Report, trace what she said.
Nothing Illegal
The Trump people did nothing illegal to meet with her. Their problem was the exaggerating
communications Goldstone sent them about Veselnitskaya having "dirt" on Clinton. (While U.S.
election laws says it's illegal for a campaign to receive "a thing of value" from a foreign
source, it's never been established by a court that opposition research fits that description,
the Mueller Report admits. ) Veselnitskaya
testified to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in November 2017 that Browder's major
American client, the Ziff brothers, had cheated on American and Russian taxes and contributed
the "dirty money" to the Democrats.
The Mueller investigators appear not to have looked into her charges. The report
promotes Browder's fabrications, citing "the Magnitsky Act, which imposed financial sanctions
and travel restrictions on Russian officials and which was named for a Russian tax specialist
who exposed a fraud and later died in a Russian prison."
But instead of his "lawyer" Magnitsky exposing Russian fraud, for which he was jailed
and killed in prison, Magnitsky was actually Browder's accountant who was detained under
investigation for his part in Browder's tax evasion and died of natural causes in prison, as
Magnitsky's own mother admits to filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov in the film "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes."
Mueller's investigators might have started with documents filed in U.S. federal court in the
case of Veselnitskaya's client, Prevezon, a Russian holding company that settled a
civil-forfeiture claim by the U.S. government that linked it, without proof, to the tax
fraud.
The documents include a deposition where
Browder admits that the alleged "lawyer" Magnitsky did not go to law school nor have a law
degree. Magnitsky's own testimony
file identifies him as an "auditor."
Why does that matter? Because it was Browder's red herring. Magnitsky had worked as
Browder's accountant since 1997, fiddling on Browder's taxes on profits from sales of shares
held by Russian shell companies run by his Hermitage Fund. He was not an attorney hired in 2007
to investigate and then expose a tax fraud against the Russian Treasury.
That fraud was exposed by Rimma Starova, the Russian nominee director of a British Virgin
Islands shell company that held Hermitage's reregistered companies and who gave testimony to
Russian police on
April 9 and
July 10, 2008 . It was reported
by The New York Times and Vedomosti
on July 24, 2008, months before Magnitsky mentioned it in an Oct. 7 interrogation.
Kremlin-connected?
Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan. (Jorge Láscar, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia
Commons)
The Mueller Report says Veselnitskaya promised dirt on Hillary Clinton as "part of Russia
and its government support for Trump." Two days before the meeting, Goldstone emailed Trump Jr.
and said "the Russian government attorney" was flying in from Moscow. She had not been a
government attorney since 2001, 15 years earlier.
I interviewed Veselnitskaya in New York in November 2016. She explained what she later
told the Trump group, that Browder's clients the Ziff Brothers had invested in Russian shares
in a way that routed the money through loans so that they could evade U.S. taxes. ["Not invest
– loans" in Manafort's notes.]
The report says, "Natalia Veselnitskaya had previously worked for the Russian government and
maintained a relationship with that government throughout this period of time." Later it says
that from 1998 to 2001, she had worked as a prosecutor for the "Central Administrative
District" of the Russian Prosecutor's office. "And continued to perform government-related work
and maintain ties to the Russian government following her departure." We are meant to presume,
with no evidence, as the media does – that means "a Kremlin-connected lawyer."
When Trump Jr asked for evidence, how the payments could be tied to the Clinton campaign,
she said she couldn't trace them, according to the Mueller Report.
Then she turned to the Magnitsky Act. The report repeats earlier fakery: "She lobbied and
testified about the Magnitsky Act, which imposed financial sanctions and travel restrictions on
Russian officials and which was named for a Russian tax specialist who exposed a fraud and
later died in a Russian prison." Magnitsky did not expose a fraud. Rimma Starova
did.
A footnote in the report said: "Browder hired Magnitsky to investigate tax fraud by Russian
officials, and Magnitsky was charged with helping Browder embezzle money." Browder did not hire
Magnitsky to investigate the fraud. Magnitsky had been the accountant in charge of Hermitage
since 1997, 10 years before the fraud. Embezzlement refers to Browder shifting assets out of
Russia without paying taxes.
But the investigation's focus was not on Browder's fakery -- the substance of the Trump
Tower meeting -- but on the communications organizing the event. The section on obstruction
says Trump became aware of "emails setting up the June 9, 2016 meeting between senior campaign
officials and Russians who offered derogatory information on Hillary Clinton as 'part of Russia
and its government's support for Mr. Trump.'"
That would have been inflated Goldstone's promises.
The report says "at the meeting the Russian attorney claimed that funds derived from illegal
activities in Russia were provided to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats." Trump Jr. told a
White House press officer that "they started with some Hillary thing, which was bs and some
other nonsense, which we shot down fast."
As Veselnitskaya told me, she knew the Ziffs made contributions to Democrats. She probably
started with that. Manafort's notes don't report a "Hillary thing," but are about Browder and
the Ziffs.
On the issue of Browder, the Magnitsky story and the essence of the Trump Tower meeting, the
Mueller Report is a deception intended to keep the myth of collusion in the air while
dismissing that any collusion took place.
Lucy Komisar is an investigative reporter who writes about financial corruption and
won a Gerald Loeb award, the most important prize in financial journalism, for breaking the
story about how Ponzi schemer Allen Stanford got the Florida Banking Dept to allow him to move
money offshore with no regulation. Her stories about William Browder focus on tax evasion. Find
out more on The Komisar Scoop and on
Twitter, @lucykomisar
.
If you enjoyed this original article, please considermaking a donationto Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
one.
The Deep State managed to swipe under the carpet the dirt of JFK assassination and the level of CIA involvement in it.
The reasons of collapse of Building 7 remain highly suspicious and no investigation was performed. The evidence was deliberately
destroyed.
All this suggests that the Deep State acts with absolute impunity and the opinion of common people does not matter one bit.
So it is logical to expect the same will happen with Russiagate. All inconvenient facts will be swiped under the carpet.
Notable quotes:
"... Did Nadler summon Mueller from beach or lake-side to just recite chapter and verse from his report? What would be the point of that? Well, perhaps to whip up enough media froth to refresh the public's memory of how Comrade Trump stole the 2016 election at the bidding of his Russian handlers. Is that all? Could be. ..."
"... The problem is that Nadler's majority Democrat members are not the only ones who get to ask questions. Did the chairman forget that? Or did he think the minority -- including Reps. Doug Collins, Jim Jordan, Louis Gohmert, and Matt Gaetz -- would just lob softballs at the witness? ..."
"... Why did you allow the GI cell phones of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page to be destroyed shortly after you were informed about their unprofessional and compromising text exchanges, for which they were fired off your "team?" ..."
"... When did you learn that international men-of-mystery Stefan Halper and Josef Mifsud, whose operations spurred your prosecutions, were not Russian agents but rather in the employ of U.S. and British government intel agencies? ..."
"... Your deputy, Andrew Weissmann, was informed by Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr in the summer of 2016, months before your appointment, that the predicating documents for your inquiry, known as the Steele Dossier, amounted to a Clinton campaign oppo research digest -- when did he happen to tell you that? ..."
"... You devoted nearly 20 pages of your report to the Trump Tower meeting between the president's son, Donald, Jr., and two Russians, lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin. Why did you omit to mention that both Russians were in the employ of Glenn Simpson's Fusion GPS company, candidate Clinton's oppo research contractor, and met with Simpson both before and after the Trump Tower meeting? ..."
"... How did it happen that you hired attorney Jeannie Rhee for your team, knowing that she had previously worked as a lawyer for the Clinton Foundation? ..."
"... Under what legal standard did you pronounce Trump to be "not exonerated" in the obstruction of justice matter, considering you told Attorney General William Barr that it was not based on findings by the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel concerning presidential immunity from indictment? ..."
"... The DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is overdue with his own report -- perhaps stymied by a lack of cooperation in wringing declassified documents from the hands of the many intel agencies involved while Barr and his deputy, John Durham, are at work in the background on their own investigation. There will also be repercussions upcoming in the matter of General Michael Flynn, who switched attorneys recently and may be reconsidering his guilty plea based on Mueller's prosecutorial misconduct in withholding exculpatory evidence from Judge Emmet Sullivan's court. ..."
"... It's not just the democrats that are pushing the Russian interference propaganda nonsense. The republicans are also saying that Russia interfered with the election because both parties know that in order to get their war with Russia going they will need consent from the masses. ..."
"... Mueller never explained how Russia interfered with the election. He just reported that 1/6/2017 intelligence report by Brennan and Clapper which stated that they believed that Russia did the deed and that they have high confidence on it. ..."
"... The Russian Internet agency had nothing to do with Putin either. This company got its start when the owner was a food contractor and his hotdogs made people sick. He hired people to write reviews of the hotdogs to change the publics perception of the dogs. Then he went from there seeing a picture of Jesus and Satan discussing the election was one of the ads. How that could have affected people to vote for Hillary or Trump is beyond me ..."
"... Another pertinent question: Why did you rely solely on the 'investigation' of the DNC email server by a private cyber-security firm (that had been employed by the Clinton campaign) rather than a forensic analysis by FBI experts? ..."
"... It's actually even worse than that, as court documents revealed just recently: federal investigators received from Crowdstrike a redacted draft i.e. not a "final report", and something like a "final report" may never have been completed. This reacted draft then was used for the January 2017 ICA which began the hysteria, and also the basis for the indictments of Russian officials in 2018 which Mueller announced on the eve of the Trump-Putin summit. ..."
"... There is also the case of Manafort's business partner in Kiev – Kliminik – who as late as this past January Mueller's officials were describing to the media as a known "GRU agent" while the whole time they were sitting on State Department documents which reveal Kliminik as a long-time valued source of information to US officials on internal Ukraine politics. ..."
T he playwrights of yore had a neat way of resolving sticky plots: when it seemed all was
lost among the confounded mortals on stage, a supernatural figure would descend from the
riggings above the proscenium, lowered in a basket on a cable -- Moliere liked to use an actor
playing Louis XIV, his patron -- to resolve, untangle, forgive, and pardon all the
complications of the story. This device is known as the Deus ex Machina , God in a
machine.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) announced last week that ex-Special Counsel Robert Mueller has
agreed to descend from on-high into the witness chair of Nadler's House Judiciary Committee
chamber on July 17, presumably to resolve all the conundrums left by his semi-inconclusive
Russiagate report. Remember, in his nine-minute homily on May 29, Mueller said that if called
to testify, he would only answer by referring to the text of his report -- hallowed in
Wokesterdom until its disappointing release.
Mueller's notion of testimony-by-script is at least as unorthodox as his innovation of
pronouncing the object of his criminal inquiry "not exonerated," an unprecedented and certainly
extra-legal spin to the prosecutorial standard of finding an indictable offense or not --
without added aspersions, insinuations and defamations.
Sphinx-hood
Meanwhile, Mueller's standing as a potent God figure has eroded badly. He started out in
2017 as the Avenging Angel in a Brooks Brothers suit, morphed into Yahweh as the Russiagate Mob
patiently awaited his Last Judgment, and then got demoted to mere Sphinx-hood after his Sacred
Text failed its basic task: to oust the Golden Golem of Greatness from his unholy occupation of
the White House.
Did Nadler summon Mueller from beach or lake-side to just recite chapter and verse from his
report? What would be the point of that? Well, perhaps to whip up enough media froth to refresh
the public's memory of how Comrade Trump stole the 2016 election at the bidding of his Russian
handlers. Is that all? Could be.
The problem is that Nadler's majority Democrat members are not the only ones who get to ask
questions. Did the chairman forget that? Or did he think the minority -- including Reps. Doug
Collins, Jim Jordan, Louis Gohmert, and Matt Gaetz -- would just lob softballs at the
witness?
A Few Hardballs
I can think of a few 90-mph sliders I'd like to pitch to Mueller, some of them already
floated in the press:
Why did you allow the GI cell phones of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page to be destroyed shortly
after you were informed about their unprofessional and compromising text exchanges, for which
they were fired off your "team?"
When did you learn that international men-of-mystery Stefan Halper and Josef Mifsud, whose
operations spurred your prosecutions, were not Russian agents but rather in the employ of U.S.
and British government intel agencies?
Your deputy, Andrew Weissmann, was informed by Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr in the
summer of 2016, months before your appointment, that the predicating documents for your
inquiry, known as the Steele Dossier, amounted to a Clinton campaign oppo research digest --
when did he happen to tell you that?
You devoted nearly 20 pages of your report to the Trump Tower meeting between the
president's son, Donald, Jr., and two Russians, lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and lobbyist Rinat
Akhmetshin. Why did you omit to mention that both Russians were in the employ of Glenn
Simpson's Fusion GPS company, candidate Clinton's oppo research contractor, and met with
Simpson both before and after the Trump Tower meeting?
How did it happen that you hired attorney Jeannie Rhee for your team, knowing that she had
previously worked as a lawyer for the Clinton Foundation?
Under what legal standard did you pronounce Trump to be "not exonerated" in the obstruction
of justice matter, considering you told Attorney General William Barr that it was not
based on findings by the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel concerning presidential immunity from
indictment?
The public has been well-distracted by the Democratic Party primary circus, and all
reporting about the aftermath of Russiagate has vanished from the front pages of the news
media. Ostensibly, Hillary Clinton is enjoying her solitary walks in the Chappaqua, N.Y., woods
and all seems well in the Deep State world. Yet, consider that wild things lurk in those
thickets.
The DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is overdue with his own report -- perhaps stymied
by a lack of cooperation in wringing declassified documents from the hands of the many intel
agencies involved while Barr and his deputy, John Durham, are at work in the background on
their own investigation. There will also be repercussions upcoming in the matter of General
Michael Flynn, who switched attorneys recently and may be reconsidering his guilty plea based
on Mueller's prosecutorial misconduct in withholding exculpatory evidence from Judge Emmet
Sullivan's court.
It's just possible that Robert Mueller will not be reading chapter and verse from his sacred
report, like an old-school Episcopal priest, but rather pleading the Fifth Amendment to avert
his own potential prosecution.
James Howard Kunstler is author of "The Geography of Nowhere," which he says he wrote
"Because I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway
strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that
makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work." He has written several
other works of nonfiction and fiction. Read more about him here.
It would be nice to see that the House Reps – or even an unbrainwashed House Dem
– would ask any of these questions, but I'm not holding my breath.
Frankly – the HRC owned and controlled DNC should be being roasted for having sicced
the Strumpet on us and the world. But for their internal and infernal machinations we would
likely have Sanders as prezzie. Not that I'm all that sure, mind, Bernie being prezzie would
have brought an end to our occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq, our war on Syria, our support for
destroying Yemen, our chummy support for Israel or our political-
corporate-capitalist-imperialist and bourgeois Russo, Sino and Irano-phobia.
Abby , July 4, 2019 at 21:45
It's not just the democrats that are pushing the Russian interference propaganda nonsense.
The republicans are also saying that Russia interfered with the election because both parties
know that in order to get their war with Russia going they will need consent from the
masses.
Mueller never explained how Russia interfered with the election. He just reported that
1/6/2017 intelligence report by Brennan and Clapper which stated that they believed that
Russia did the deed and that they have high confidence on it.
The Russian Internet agency had nothing to do with Putin either. This company got its
start when the owner was a food contractor and his hotdogs made people sick. He hired people
to write reviews of the hotdogs to change the publics perception of the dogs. Then he went
from there seeing a picture of Jesus and Satan discussing the election was one of the ads.
How that could have affected people to vote for Hillary or Trump is beyond me
Skip Scott , July 4, 2019 at 07:20
What a great set of "hardball" questions! If only it were to come to pass to have them
actually asked and answered! However, it is much more likely that we will be subjected to
more theater rather than any real grilling of Mueller. I hope I'm wrong.
Bill Pilgrim , July 4, 2019 at 00:12
Another pertinent question: Why did you rely solely on the 'investigation' of the DNC
email server by a private cyber-security firm (that had been employed by the Clinton
campaign) rather than a forensic analysis by FBI experts?
punkyboy , July 4, 2019 at 13:20
That was my first question. Something's rotten in the DNC.
jaycee , July 4, 2019 at 13:45
It's actually even worse than that, as court documents revealed just recently: federal
investigators received from Crowdstrike a redacted draft i.e. not a "final report", and
something like a "final report" may never have been completed. This reacted draft then was
used for the January 2017 ICA which began the hysteria, and also the basis for the
indictments of Russian officials in 2018 which Mueller announced on the eve of the
Trump-Putin summit.
There is also the case of Manafort's business partner in Kiev – Kliminik – who
as late as this past January Mueller's officials were describing to the media as a known "GRU
agent" while the whole time they were sitting on State Department documents which reveal
Kliminik as a long-time valued source of information to US officials on internal Ukraine
politics.
IvyMike , July 3, 2019 at 17:52
The prospect of real change in our media/politics is teensy weensy, but it would be at
least a small pleasure to see Mueller on the TV taking the 5th.
"... the whole mueller investigation continues to look like a set up to frame russia, with a lot of partisanship thrown in...perfect for version 2 cold war.. the media has played the role of propagandist and most americans are so busy being divided along party lines, they can't see straight, let alone see how they are being played... ..."
"... Why does everyone keep mentioning The Goddam server. Its one item. America monitors everything. Ask for the logs from the ISP. ..."
"... Mate's investigation also begs a huge question: Where are the other exhaustive investigations of Mueller's report by MSM? A couple of people with a shoestring budget outwork media outlets with far more resources? Seems like enough evidence to assert MSM doesn't want to get at the truth of the matter so it remains covered up. ..."
"... Law & Order was once a major plank in Conservative platforms. IMO, the Outlaw US Empire requires a massive dose of Law & Order to evict the forever lawbreaking neoliberal and neocon sadists from government and other major institutions--banks, other corporations and universities come to mind. ..."
"... "I would guess, however, that even though NSA may be able to track some hacking operations, it would be inherently difficult, if not impossible, to connect specific individuals to the computer transfer operations in question." ..."
"... The most recent summary by William Binney on the evidence that the DNC server was not 'hacked' by the Russians or anyone else. https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2019/02/why-the-dnc-was-not-hacked-by-the-russians.html ..."
"... The basis of Russiagate is and always has been very simple, it is directed not at starting a New Cold War but at returning to the wonderful days of the '90s in which Bill Browder and other capitalists looted the country, the people starved and the state fell apart into bite sized chunks for imperialists. ..."
"... It was designed to bring down Putin and establish the Fifth Column in power, with the final object being to mobilise Russia's enormous resources, human, mineral, agricultural, geographical and cultural behind the US drive for hegemony. ..."
"... The United States with Russia trotting obediently behind its oversized rump could never be challenged by China. China plus Russia equals "Game Over" for the Atlanticists. ..."
"... Clinton's victory in the election was a foregone conclusion which was totally destroyed by nutsy outsider Trump. That was a national embarrassment which has to be accounted for, which was Mueller's mission. ..."
"... The Russians did it, and many people already believe it b/c of the widely reported findings(sic) of 17 intelligence agencies. It's the establishment defending itself, no more, and to be expected. It's a human trait to fight back when attacked. Trump's flippant attitude toward it is just right. He's not completely nutsy. ..."
"... Great reporting by Mate. Russiagate reveals more even after the official Mueller report. More to bury I suppose. My theory now after watching the Mark Steyn interview of George Papadouplous and given the revelations about Brennan, is that there were two major operations working independently operations trying to take down Trump. ..."
"... There was the deep state conspiracy run by Brennan, and other was an independent black ops run by Clinton operatives who had ties to intelligence agencies (and Obama's White House) to tie Trump to the Russians. They intersected with the Steele Dossier being handed over to the FBI/CIA. ..."
"... What Papadouplous revealed were attempts (he didn't know at the time) to connect him to Russia in sort of a guilt by association method (later directly by the Australian official) that ironcially did not involve one Russian. ..."
"... Same thing with the Trump Tower meeting. It was a set up to put Trump election officials in a room with a "Putin connected asset". Again, a kind of guilt by association--omg, they met with a Russian. ..."
An excerpt from a long piece by Aaron Maté who points at the huge holes in the
Mueller Report about alleged Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election.
At a May press conference capping his tenure as special counsel, Robert Mueller emphasized
what he called "the central allegation" of the two-year Russia probe. The Russian government,
Mueller sternly declared, engaged in "multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our
election, and that allegation deserves the attention of every American." Mueller's comments
echoed a January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) asserting with "high confidence"
that Russia conducted a sweeping 2016 election influence campaign. "I don't think we've ever
encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process,"
then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told a Senate hearing.
While the 448-page
Mueller report found no conspiracy between Donald Trump's campaign and Russia, it offered
voluminous details to support the sweeping conclusion that the Kremlin worked to secure Trump's
victory. The report claims that the interference operation occurred "principally" on two
fronts: Russian military intelligence officers hacked and leaked embarrassing Democratic Party
documents, and a government-linked troll farm orchestrated a sophisticated and far-reaching
social media campaign that denigrated Hillary Clinton and promoted Trump.
But a close examination of the report shows that none of those headline assertions are
supported by the report's evidence or other publicly available sources. They are further
undercut by investigative shortcomings and the conflicts of interest of key players
involved:
The report uses qualified and vague language to describe key events, indicating that
Mueller and his investigators do not actually know for certain whether Russian intelligence
officers stole Democratic Party emails, or how those emails were transferred to
WikiLeaks.
The report's timeline of events appears to defy logic. According to its narrative,
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced the publication of Democratic Party emails not
only before he received the documents but before he even communicated with the source that
provided them.
There is strong reason to doubt Mueller's suggestion that an alleged Russian cutout
called Guccifer 2.0 supplied the stolen emails to Assange.
Mueller's decision not to interview Assange – a central figure who claims Russia
was not behind the hack – suggests an unwillingness to explore avenues of evidence on
fundamental questions.
U.S. intelligence officials cannot make definitive conclusions about the hacking of the
Democratic National Committee computer servers because they did not analyze those servers
themselves. Instead, they relied on the forensics of CrowdStrike, a private contractor for
the DNC that was not a neutral party, much as "Russian dossier" compiler Christopher Steele,
also a DNC contractor, was not a neutral party. This puts two Democrat-hired contractors
squarely behind underlying allegations in the affair – a key circumstance that Mueller
ignores.
Further, the government allowed CrowdStrike and the Democratic Party's legal counsel to
submit redacted records, meaning CrowdStrike and not the government decided what could be
revealed or not regarding evidence of hacking.
Mueller's report conspicuously does not allege that the Russian government carried out
the social media campaign. Instead it blames, as Mueller said in his closing remarks, "a
private Russian entity" known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).
Mueller also falls far short of proving that the Russian social campaign was
sophisticated, or even more than minimally related to the 2016 election. As with the
collusion and Russian hacking allegations, Democratic officials had a central and overlooked
hand in generating the alarm about Russian social media activity.
John Brennan, then director of the CIA, played a seminal and overlooked role in all
facets of what became Mueller's investigation: the suspicions that triggered the initial
collusion probe; the allegations of Russian interference; and the intelligence assessment
that purported to validate the interference allegations that Brennan himself helped generate.
Yet Brennan has since revealed himself to be, like CrowdStrike and Steele, hardly a neutral
party -- in fact a partisan with a
deep animus toward Trump.
None of this means that the Mueller report's core finding of "sweeping and systematic"
Russian government election interference is necessarily false. But his report does not present
sufficient evidence to substantiate it. This shortcoming has gone overlooked in the partisan
battle over two more highly charged aspects of Mueller's report: potential Trump-Russia
collusion and Trump's potential obstruction of the resulting investigation. As Mueller prepares
to testify before House committees later this month, the questions surrounding his claims of a
far-reaching Russian influence campaign are no less important. They raise doubts about the
genesis and perpetuation of Russiagate and the performance of those tasked with investigating
it.
...
If we really want to know who is interfering in the world's elections and political theatre,
particularly in Russia, we need look no further than this:
Aaron Mate is doing great work exposing RussiaGate as outlined. He has also done some great
interviews with Jimmy Dore , which are well worth watching. Also worthwhile following
@aaronjmate
"America in Denial: Gabor Mate on the Psychology of Russiagate."
"Physician, mental health expert, and best-selling author Dr. Gabor Maté sits down
with The Grayzone's Aaron Maté to analyze how Russiagate was able to take hold of U.S.
society following Donald Trump's election."
thanks b... kudos to aaron mate for the work he's doing.. all the points he and you
articulate are important..
the whole mueller investigation continues to look like a set up to
frame russia, with a lot of partisanship thrown in...perfect for version 2 cold war.. the
media has played the role of propagandist and most americans are so busy being divided along
party lines, they can't see straight, let alone see how they are being played...
As I commented when I linked to Mate's report on open thread, Mueller's Report is clearly a
cover-up job similar to the Warren Report in more than a few ways--the "magical" Assange
timeline mimics the magic bullet and the very many illegalities revealed go ignored and
uninvestigated.
Mate's investigation also begs a huge question: Where are the other
exhaustive investigations of Mueller's report by MSM? A couple of people with a shoestring
budget outwork media outlets with far more resources? Seems like enough evidence to assert
MSM doesn't want to get at the truth of the matter so it remains covered up.
And what about Trump's obstruction of any investigation into Hillary Clinton and DNC
election illegalities that are all public knowledge? Somebody needs to get some swamp mud and
anoint Trump so that he becomes officially inducted.
And it what way ought this become an election issue? Gabbard just introduced Securing America's Elections
Act in which setting the record straight about the Mueller report ought to figure.
Law & Order was once a major plank in Conservative platforms. IMO, the Outlaw US
Empire requires a massive dose of Law & Order to evict the forever lawbreaking neoliberal
and neocon sadists from government and other major institutions--banks, other corporations
and universities come to mind.
That's one of the major points dealing with the utter lack of real investigation--neither
Mueller or the FBI earlier tried to get unadulterated source evidence, relying on D-Party
affiliated cutouts instead. Doesn't it seem odd to you or anyone else that Trump's aiding the
D-Party cover up, as well as Senate Republicans? I'm I the only one sensing the Current
Oligarchy wants to ensure the true story is never revealed or the numerous law breakers
prosecuted?
The real problems with the regime, are in the areas obstruction of justice, and violations of
the emoluments clause of the Constitution.
The "Russian thing" is BS, but, it provides distraction, so Pelosi and her minions can
continue to aid her donors, instead of pursuing the real "High crimes & Misdemeanors" of
our current regime.
Televised "impeachment" hearings are not wanted by Pelosi, because, in the end, she loves
and supports the regime, because it aids her class, the 1%ers.
PS, I almost forgot, violations of the Hatch Act..
"I would guess, however, that even though NSA may be able to track some hacking
operations, it would be inherently difficult, if not impossible, to connect specific
individuals to the computer transfer operations in question."
I thought that since the NSA "captures everything" that the absence of any corroboration
from them in the report indicates an absence of evidence.
Later in the piece Aaron writes that: "There has been no public confirmation that
intelligence acquired by the NSA was used in the Mueller probe."
I think it will be very hard to dodge since it touches so many different policy areas, and
that's one reason why I decided to work for her campaign--to ask the uncomfortable questions.
You can't only expose the lies used to justify regime change wars and omit others just as
glaring if you intend to portray yourself as a honest candidate amongst the usual pack of
liars as she's attempting.
Comparing Mueller's tissue of nonsense to the Warren Report is an insult to the latter.
Mueller has produced nothing. There is no evidence at all that Russia intervened in the
election, in fact it would seem to be one of the few states that didn't.
Why? Because like the rest of us, the grown-ups in the Kremlin couldn't tell the difference
between Tweedle Trump and Tweedle Clinton.
Or does anyone seriously believe that Putin had any high hopes of rational behaviour from
Trump, whose reputation was well established long ago as that of an opportunist devoid if
principles who would be-and has been- putty in the hands of the ruling scum?
The basis of Russiagate is and always has been very simple, it is directed not at starting a
New Cold War but at returning to the wonderful days of the '90s in which Bill Browder and
other capitalists looted the country, the people starved and the state fell apart into bite
sized chunks for imperialists.
It was designed to bring down Putin and establish the Fifth Column in power, with the final
object being to mobilise Russia's enormous resources, human, mineral, agricultural,
geographical and cultural behind the US drive for hegemony.
The United States with Russia trotting obediently behind its oversized rump could never be
challenged by China. China plus Russia equals "Game Over" for the Atlanticists.
Putin's crime is to have tamed the oligarchs, without challenging the capitalist counter
revolution and employing the techniques of economic regulation first perfected in the
West.
Of course 'Putin' is as much a short hand for the able faction that he leads, which
increasingly dominates the Kremlin as it is the individual himself.
What makes things so interesting is that Putin, who really is master in the arts of self
defence, has turned the attacks on him into an offensive which has Imperialism staggering as
it retreats into the arsehole of its own sordid, stale and anachronistic ideologies.
Clinton's victory in the election was a foregone conclusion which was totally destroyed by
nutsy outsider Trump. That was a national embarrassment which has to be accounted for, which
was Mueller's mission.
The Russians did it, and many people already believe it b/c of the
widely reported findings(sic) of 17 intelligence agencies. It's the establishment defending
itself, no more, and to be expected. It's a human trait to fight back when attacked. Trump's
flippant attitude toward it is just right. He's not completely nutsy.
@Karlof1 who say's " that's one reason why I decided to work for her campaign to ask the
uncomfortable questions" kudos too you sir. I wish you luck today, tmorrow and all days till
your fight is over. The ONLY way any of this will change is if AS individuals we make the
changes within. If more would think like you and other's here and (not too be hokey here,
however) 'be the change' they want this would already be over and the balance would
be.......well balanced. Thanks Karlof1.
Great reporting by Mate. Russiagate reveals more even after the official Mueller report. More
to bury I suppose. My theory now after watching the Mark Steyn interview of George
Papadouplous and given the revelations about Brennan, is that there were two major operations
working independently operations trying to take down Trump.
There was the deep state conspiracy run by Brennan, and other was an independent black ops
run by Clinton operatives who had ties to intelligence agencies (and Obama's White House) to
tie Trump to the Russians. They intersected with the Steele Dossier being handed over to the
FBI/CIA.
You know, I thought it strange that Hillary was hitting Trump over and over again with
accusations of ties and subservience to the Russians. Was Russia really a burning concern in
the Midwest or through the farm belts???? In fact, Wikileaks did a count on what subjects
were talked about the most and it was stuff related to Russia. I believe that this was a
setup to condition the public to revelations about Trump and Russians.
What Papadouplous revealed were attempts (he didn't know at the time) to connect him to
Russia in sort of a guilt by association method (later directly by the Australian official)
that ironcially did not involve one Russian.
Same thing with the Trump Tower meeting. It was
a set up to put Trump election officials in a room with a "Putin connected asset". Again, a
kind of guilt by association--omg, they met with a Russian. We know now that the lawyer,
forgot her name, meet with the GPS Fusion people after the meeting. I believe Hillary's team
was going to reveal these setups as showing how connected Trump was to Russia before
November. In an ironic way, it was the Russians who were being set up as the patsies.
But it seems to me the Clinton campaign thought they would not need the phony meetings to
defeat Trump. By Hillary campaignI mean Hillary, Bill, with input from the black ops guys and
nobody else (mayber some White House contacts also). Rest is history.
Don't forget that lost in all of it is the real election tampering by Israel, happening
right under our noses and fully abetted by the MSM. But let's keep blaming Russia.
Sorry, that was comparing apples to oranges, after all, the Warren Report merely covered
up the assassination of a sitting US president and the conspiracy built to accomplish it -- an
event that solidified the Current Oligarchy's hold on the Federal Executive and its veto via
magic bullet.
Mueller merely covers up rather pedestrian lawbreaking and somewhat ho-hum
impeachable offenses as well as the CIA and FBI's gross interference in the electoral process
to predetermine the outcome. Surely not nearly as important as killing JFK to bring in LBJ--no, surely not.
Tannehhouser @18--
Thanks again for your reply and support for trying to do the right thing. I apologize for
the following modification, but it seems appropriate for our times: The Meek shall inherit
the Earth--Only when they grab the Strong by their Balls and Yank them from their
Pedestal!
I think it will be very hard to dodge since it touches so many different policy areas,
and that's one reason why I decided to work for her campaign--to ask the uncomfortable
questions
if it's high treason, as it certainly looks to be at the highest echelons of the
Democratic apparatus, well, i really can't imagine them letting that cat out of the bag.
so i'll further wager that when you start to ask the uncomfortable questions...they'll let
you go :(
"... Given these facts you would think it would be easy for Robert Mueller to explain how the Russians got their hands on the DNC emails and then passed them on to Wikileaks. But it is not easy because the foundation of the case against the Russians rests on assumptions and beliefs. No solid facts. ..."
"... To reiterate a point I have raised in previous posts, the only entity to have forensic access to the DNC computers, i.e. CrowdStrike, is on the record in the person of the CrowdStrike CEO, Dimitri Alperovitch admitting they don't know how the Russians got access. ..."
"... CrowdStrike is not sure how the hackers got in. The firm suspects they may have targeted DNC employees with "spearphishing" emails. These are communications that appear legitimate -- often made to look like they came from a colleague or someone trusted -- but that contain links or attachments that when clicked on deploy malicious software that enables a hacker to gain access to a computer. " But we don't have hard evidence ," Alperovitch said. ..."
"... If CrowdStrike actually had conducted a legitimate forensic examination of the DNC server/servers then they absolutely would have had "hard evidence." ..."
"... The government produced the CrowdStrike reports because the Indictment in this case referenced, as background, CrowdStrike's statements about the DNC hack. Stone's statement that the government has no other evidence is not only irrelevant to this proceeding but is also mistaken. ..."
"... It is a horrible irony that Stone is being persecuted with prosecution based on an even bigger lie -- i.e., the Russians hacked the DNC. Russia did not hack the DNC. Let's hope that Stone's lawyers get a chance to demand the US Government put up the evidence or shut up. ..."
There is zero forensic evidence in the public arena that supports the US Government's
assertion that the Russian Government hacked the DNC. In fact, the forensic computer evidence
that is available indicates that the emails from the DNC were downloaded onto something like a
thumb drive.
There also is zero forensic evidence in the public arena that the Russians passed/delivered
the DNC emails to Julian Assange/Wikileaks. There are only two ways to get DNC emails into the
hands of Wiki people--an electronic transfer or a physical/human transfer. That's it.
And here is what we know for certain. First, since Edward Snowden absconded with the NSA's
family jewels with the help of Wikileaks, U.S. and British intelligence assets have been
monitoring every single electronic communication to and from Wikileaks/Julian Assange. They
also have been conducting surveillance on all personal contacts with Assange and other key
members of the Wikileaks staff.
Given these facts you would think it would be easy for Robert Mueller to explain how the
Russians got their hands on the DNC emails and then passed them on to Wikileaks. But it is not
easy because the foundation of the case against the Russians rests on assumptions and beliefs.
No solid facts.
To reiterate a point I have raised in previous posts, the only entity to have forensic
access to the DNC computers, i.e. CrowdStrike, is on the record in the person of the
CrowdStrike CEO, Dimitri Alperovitch admitting they don't know how the Russians got access. Alperovitch told Washington Post Reporter Ellen Nakashima on
June 14, 2016 the following :
CrowdStrike is not sure how the hackers got in. The firm suspects they may have targeted DNC
employees with "spearphishing" emails. These are communications that appear legitimate -- often
made to look like they came from a colleague or someone trusted -- but that contain links or
attachments that when clicked on deploy malicious software that enables a hacker to gain access
to a computer. " But we don't have hard evidence ," Alperovitch said.
If CrowdStrike actually had conducted a legitimate forensic examination of the DNC
server/servers then they absolutely would have had "hard evidence."
Then, 13 months later, we have FBI Director Jim Comey admitting that the FBI relied on
CrowdStrike for its "evidence." Jim Comey testified to the House Intelligence Committee in
March 2017 and
stated the following :
"we never got direct access to the machines themselves. The DNC in the spring of 2016 hired
a firm that ultimately shared with us their forensics from their review of the system."
Now take a look at a very significant reversal of the US Government's position in the case
against Roger Stone. On 20 June 2019, US Attorney Jessie Liu filed a motion attempting to rebut
the argument presented by Stone's attorneys that there was no supporting evidence for the claim
that Russia hacked the DNC. Here are the key snippets from her filing:
As the government has argued (Doc. 122, at 6, 9, 14), Russia's role in the DNC hack is not
material to the eighteen findings of probable cause that Stone appears to be challenging. . . .
The government produced the CrowdStrike reports because the Indictment in this case referenced,
as background, CrowdStrike's statements about the DNC hack. Stone's statement that the
government has no other evidence is not only irrelevant to this proceeding but is also
mistaken.
Yet, when you read the original indictment, Roger Stone was put in the cross hairs because
he was allegedly communicating with Wikileaks/Julian Assange about the DNC emails. And those
emails are identified in the indictment as "stolen." The Government is hoping to nail Stone on
the charge of "lying" to Congress. Good luck with that.
It is a horrible irony that Stone is being persecuted with prosecution based on an even
bigger lie -- i.e., the Russians hacked the DNC. Russia did not hack the DNC. Let's hope that
Stone's lawyers get a chance to demand the US Government put up the evidence or shut up.
"... You might think the Democratic Party would be horrified at this result, which one conservative analyst calls: "one of the greatest self-defeating acts in history." You might think Democrats would now move quickly and decisively toward a strategy of offering a substantive political alternative, and abandon this awful own-goal Mueller/Russiagate tack that has already helped Trump immensely (and which they are not going to turn their way). That is obviously what would happen if the Democrats' main goal was to defeat Trump. But it isn't. ..."
"... As discussed above, the Democratic establishment's' main goal throughout this was not to "get" Trump, but to channel its own voters' disgust with him into support for some halcyon, liberal, status quo ante-Trump, and away from left demands for a radical change to the social, economic, and political conditions that produced him and his clueless establishment opponent in 2016. The Democrats' goal was, and is, not to defeat Trump, but to stave off the left. ..."
"... The Democrats' main goal in all this is not to impeach, or stop the re-election of, Donald Trump; it's to prevent the nomination and election of Bernie Sanders, or anyone like him. ..."
"... You mean the five million people who voted for Obama in 2012, in the 90% of counties that voted for Obama either in 2008 or 2012, but would not vote for Hillary in 2019, aren’t streaming back into—are indeed still streaming out of—the Democratic Party, despite all the Mueller investigation has done for them? Imagine that. ..."
"... What has Russiagate/The Mueller Investigation wrought? It’s either a shrewd political gambit sure to take down Trump, or it’s ridiculous political theater leading Democrats, and the country, over another cliff. Double-down or leave that table? ..."
So the Mueller investigation is over. The official "Report on the
Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election" has been written,
and is in the hands of Attorney General William Barr, who has issued a summary of its findings.
On the core mandate of the investigation, given to Special Counsel Mueller by Rod Rosenstein as
Acting Attorney General in May of 2017 -- to investigate "any links and/or coordination between
the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump"
-- the takeaway conclusion stated in the Mueller report, as quoted in the Barr summary, is that
"[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or
coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.1"
In the footnote indicated at the end of that sentence, Barr further clarifies the
comprehensive meaning of that conclusion, again quoting the Report's own words: "In assessing
potential conspiracy charges, the Special Counsel also considered whether members of the Trump
campaign 'coordinated' with Russian election interference activities. The Special Counsel
defined 'coordination' as an 'agreement -- tacit or express -- between the Trump Campaign and
the Russian government on election interference'."
Barr restates the point of the cited conclusion from the Mueller Report a number of times:
"The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated
with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S.
presidential election the Special Counsel did not find that any U.S. person or Trump campaign
official or associate conspired or knowingly coordinated with the IRA [Internet Research
Agency, the indicted Russian clickbait operation] in its efforts."
Thus, the Mueller investigation found no "conspiracy," no "coordination," -- i.e., no
"collusion" -- "tacit or express" between the Trump campaign or any U.S. person and the Russian
government. The Mueller investigation did not make, seal, or recommend any indictment for any
U.S. person for any such crime.
This is as clear and forceful a repudiation as one can get of the "collusion" narrative that
has been insistently shoved down our throats by the Democratic Party, its McResistance, its
allied media, and its allied intelligence and national security agencies and officials.
Whatever one wants to say about any other aspect of this investigation -- campaign finance
violations, obstruction of justice, etc. -- they were not the main saga for the past two+ years
as spun by the Russiagaters. The core narrative was that Donald Trump was some kind of Russian
agent or asset, arguably guilty of treason and taking orders from his handler/blackmailer
Vladimir Putin, who conspired with him to steal the 2016 election, and, furthermore, that Saint
Mueller and his investigation team of patriotic FBI/CIA agents were going to find the goods
that would have the Donald taken out of the White House in handcuffs for that.
Keith Olbermann's spectacular rant in January 2017 defined the core narrative and
exemplified the Trump Derangement Syndrome that powered it: an emotional, visceral hatred of
Donald Trump wrapped in the fantasy -- insisted upon as "elemental, existential fact" -- that
he was "put in power by Vladimir Putin." A projection and deflection, I would say, of liberals'
self-hatred for creating the conditions -- eight years of war and wealth transfer capped off by
a despised and entitled candidate -- that allowed a vapid clown like Trump to be elected. It
couldn't be our fault! It must have been Putin who arranged it!
Here's a highlight of Keith's delusional discourse. But, please watch the whole six-minute
video below. They may have been a bit calmer, but this is the fundamental lunacy that was
exuding from the rhetorical pores of Rachel, Chris, and Co. day after day for two+ years:
The military apparatus of this country is about to be handed over to scum, who are
beholden to scum, Russian scum! As things are today January 20th will not be an inauguration
but rather the end of the United States as an independent country. Donald John Trump is not a
president; he is a puppet, put in power by Vladimir Putin. Those who ignore these elemental,
existential facts -- Democrats or Republicans -- are traitors to this country. [Emphases in
original. Really, watch it.]
This -- Trump's secret, treasonous collusion with Putin, and not hush money or campaign
finance violations or "obstruction of justice" or his obvious overall sleaziness -- was
Russiagate.
Russiagate is Dead! Long Live Russiagate!
And it still is. Here's the demonstration in New York last Thursday, convened by the
MoveOn/Maddow #Resistance, singing from "the hymnal" about how Trump is a "Russian whore" who
is "busy blowing Vladimir":
Here are the three lines of excuse and denial currently being fired off by diehard
Russiagaters in their fighting retreat, and my responses to them.
1. The Mueller Report is irrelevant, anyhow. 'Cause either A) Per Congressional blowhard
Adam Schiff: There already "is direct evidence" proving Trump-Russia collusion, dating from
before the Mueller Investigation, so who cares what that doesn't find; or B) (My personal
favorite) Per former prosecutor and CNN legal expert Renato Mariotti: Of course there is no
evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, and it's "your fault" for letting Trump fool you into
thinking Mueller's job was to find it. (The Mueller "collusion" investigation was a red herring
orchestrated/promoted by Trump! I cannot make this up.)
Mueller's report will almost certainly disappoint you, and it's not his fault. It's your
fault for buying into Trump's false narrative that it is Mueller's' job to prove "collusion,"
a nearly impossible bar for any prosecutor to clear.
This is, of course, the weakest volley. It's absurd, patent bad faith, for Russiagaters to
pretend that they knew, thought, or suggested the Mueller investigation was irrelevant. It is
they who have been insisting that the integrity and super-sleuthiness of the "revered" Robert
Mueller himself was the thing that would nail Donald Trump for Russian collusion. To now deny
that any of that was important only acknowledges how thoroughly they have been fooling the
American people and/or themselves for two years. Either Adam Schiff had the goods on Trump's
traitorous Russian collusion two years ago, in which case he's got a lot of explaining to do
about why he's been stringing us along with Mueller, or Schiff is just bluffing. Place your
bets.
Russiagaters in 2017: YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT MUELLER KNOWS
Russiagaters in 2018: YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT MUELLER KNOWS
Russiagaters in 2019: Shut up Mueller, what would you know.
2. The Mueller Report didn't exonerate Trump entirely. It was agnostic about whether
Trump was guilty of "obstruction of justice," and there are probably many nasty things in the
report that may not be provably criminal, but nonetheless demonstrate what a slimeball Trump
is.
No, Russiagaters will not get away with denying that the core purpose of the Mueller
investigation was to prove Trump's traitorous relation to Vladimir Putin and the Russian
government, which helped him win the 2016 election. They will not get away with denying that,
if the Mueller investigation failed to prove that, it failed in its main purpose, as they
constantly defined and reinforced it, with table-pounding, hyperventilating, and -- a few days
ago! -- disco-dancing to "the hymnal."
They will not get away with trying to appropriate, as if it were their point all along, what
the left critics of Russiagate have been saying for two+ years -- that Donald Trump is a
slimeball grifter whose culpability for politically substantive and probably legally actionable
crimes and misdemeanors should not be hard to establish, without reverting to the absurd
accusation that he's a Russian agent.
These are the left critics of Russiagate and Trump, whom Russiagaters deliberately excluded
from all their media platforms, in order to make it seem that only right-wing Trump supporters
could be skeptical of Russiagate -- the left critics Russiagaters then excoriated as "Trump
enablers" and "Putin apologists" for speaking on the only media platforms that would host them.
Among them, Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Maté (who just deservedly won the I.F. Stone prize
for his Russiagate coverage) were the most prominent, but many others, including me, made this
point week after week (Brian Becker, Dave Lindorff, Dan Kovalik, Daniel Lazare, Ted Rall, to
name a few). As I put it in an essay last year: "There are a thousand reasons to criticize
Donald Trump That Donald Trump is a Russian agent is not one of them. There are a number of
very good justifications for seeking his impeachment That he is a Kremlin agent is not one of
them."
So, it's a particularly slimy for Russiagaters to slip into the position that we Russiagate
skeptics have been enunciating, and they have been excluding, for two years, without
acknowledging that we were right and they were wrong and accounting for their effort to edit us
out.
3. But we haven't seen the whole Mueller Report! Barr may be fooling us! Mueller's own
team says so! You are now doing what you accused us of doing for two years -- abandoning proper
skepticism about Republicans like Barr and even Mueller (Yup. He's a suspicious Republican
now!), and assuming a final result we have not yet seen.
This is the one the Russiagaters like the most. Gotcha with your own logic!
Well, let's first of all thank those who are saying this for, again, recognizing that we
Russiagate critics had the right attitude toward such an investigation: cautious skepticism as
opposed to false certainty. And let's linger for a moment or more on how belated that
recognition is and what its delay cost.
But let's also recognize that what's being expressed here is the last-minute hope on the
part of the Russiagaters that the Mueller report actually does contain dispositive evidence of
Trump's treasonous Russian collusion. Because, again, that is the core accusation that hopeful
Russiagaters are still singing about, and nobody ever argued that evidence of other hijinks was
unlikely.
Well, that hope can only be realized if one or both of the following are true: 1) Barr's
quotes from the report exonerating Trump of collusion are complete fabrications, or 2) Mueller
both wrote those words even though they contradict the substance of his own report and declined
to indict a single U.S. person for such "collusion" even though he could have.
Sure, in the abstract, one or both of those conditions could be true. But there is no
evidence, none, that either is. The New York Times (NYT) report that set everyone aflutter
about the "concern" from "some members of Mr. Mueller's team" is anonymous, unspecified, and
second-hand. Read it carefully: The NYT did not report what any member of Mueller's team said,
but what "government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations" said.
Those "officials and others interviewed [not members of the Mueller team itself] declined to
flesh out" to the NYT what "some of the special counsel's investigators" were unhappy about. To
that empty hearsay, the NYT appends the phrase "although the report is believed to examine Mr.
Trump's efforts to thwart the investigation" -- suggesting, but not stating, that obstruction
of justice issues are the reasons for the investigators' "vexation." The NYT cannot state,
because it does not know, anything. It is reporting empty hearsay that is evidence of nothing,
but is meant to keep hope alive.
"[T]he report is believed to examine" is a particularly strange locution. Is the NYT
suggesting that the Mueller report might not have examined obstruction of justice
possibilities? Or is it just getting tangled up in its attempt to suggest this or that? Hey, it
could just as well be true that Barr's characterization of what the Mueller Report says about
"obstruction of justice" is a misleading fabrication. Maybe Mueller actually exonerated Trump
of that. If you mistrust Barr's version of what the Mueller Report says about collusion, why
not equally mistrust what it says about obstruction of justice?
There is no evidence that Barr's summary is radically misleading about the core collusion
conclusion of the Mueller Report. The walls are closing in, alright, on that story. The I'm
just being as cautious now as you were before! line is the opposite of the reasonable
skepticism is claims to be; it's Russiagaters clinging to a wish and a belief that something
they want to be true is, despite the determinate lack of any evidence.
It's not just the words; it's the melody, and the desperation in the voices. The core
Trump-blowing-Vladimir collusion song that #Resisters are still singing is a fantastical
fiction and the people still singing it are the pathetic choir on the Russiagate Titanic. And
while they're singing as they sink, Trump is escaping in the lifeboat they have provided him.
The single most definite and undeniable effect of the Mueller investigation on American
politics has been to hand Donald Trump a potent political weapon for his 2020 re-election
campaign. A real bombshell.
But it's worse than that. The falsity of the Trump-as-a-Russian-agent narrative does not
depend on any confidence in Mueller and his report or Barr and his summary. The truth is there
was no Russiagate investigation, in the sense of a serious attempt to find out whether Donald
Trump was taking orders from, or "coordinating" with, Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.
No person in their right mind could believe that. Robert Mueller doesn't believe it. Nancy
Pelosi doesn't believe it. Adam Schiff doesn't believe it. John Brennan, James Clapper, and the
heads of intelligence agencies do not believe it. Not for a second. No knowledgeable
international affairs journalist or academic who thinks about it for two minutes believes it.
Sure, some politicians and media pundits did work themselves up into a state where they
internalized and projected a belief in the narrative, but few of them really believed it. They
were serving the Kool-Aid. Only the most gullible sectors of their target audience drank
it.
With some exceptions, to be sure (Donald Trump among them), the people in the highest
echelons of the state-media-academic apparatus are just not that stupid. And, most obvious and
important, Vladimir Putin is not that stupid, and they know he is not. Vladimir Putin would
never rely on Donald Trump to be his operative in a complex operation that required shrewdly
playing and evading the US intelligence and media apparatuses. Nobody is that stupid. Thinking
about it that way for a second dissipates the entire ridiculous idea. (Not to mention that
Trump ended up enacting a number of policies -- many more than Obama! -- contrary to Russian
interests.)
The obvious, which many people in the independent media and none in the mainstream media
(because it is so obvious, and would have blown their game) have pointed out, is that any real
investigation of Russiagate would have sought to talk with the principals who had direct
knowledge of who is responsible for leaking the infamous DNC documents: Julian Assange and
former British ambassador Craig Murray ("I know who leaked them. I've met the person who leaked
them."). They were essentially two undisputed eyewitnesses to the crime Mueller was supposed to
be investigating, and he made no effort to talk to either of them. Ipso facto, it was not
really an investigation, not a project whole purpose was to find the truth about whatever the
thing called "Russiagate" is supposed to be.
The Eternal Witch-hunt
It was a theater of discipline. Its purpose, which it achieved, was to discipline Trump, the
Democratic electorate, and the media. Its method was fishing around in the muck of Washington
consultants, lobbyists, and influence peddlers to generate indictments and plea bargains for
crimes irrelevant to the core mandate. Not hard, in a carceral state where prosecutors can pin
three felonies a day on anyone.
The US establishment, especially its national security arm, was genuinely shocked that their
anointed candidate, Hillary, who was, as Glen Ford puts it "'all in' with the global military
offensive" that Obama had run through Libya, Syria, and the coup in Ukraine, was defeated by a
nitwit candidate who was making impermissibly non-aggressive noises about things like Russia
and NATO, and who actually wanted to lose. For their part, the Democrats were horrified, and
did not want to face the necessary reckoning about the complete failure of their candidate, and
the best-of-all-possible-liberaloid-worlds strategy she personified.
So, "within 24 hours of her concession speech" Hillary's campaign team (Robby Mook and John
Podesta) created a "script they would pitch to the press and the public" to explain why she
lost. "Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument." A few months later, a coalition of
congressional Democrats,, establishment Republicans, and intelligence/natsec professionals
pressured Trump (who, we can now see clearly, is putty in the hands of the latter) to initiate
a Special Counsel investigation. Its ostensible goal was to investigate Russian collusion, but
its real goals were:
1) To discipline Trump, preventing any backpedaling on NATO/imperialist war-mongering
against Russia or any other target. Frankly, I think this was unnecessary. Trump never had any
depth of principle in his remarks about de-escalating with Russia and Syria. He was always a
staunch American exceptionalist and Zionist. Nobody has forced him (that's a right-wing
fantasy) to attack Syria, appoint John Bolton, recognize Israeli authority over Jerusalem and
the Golan Heights, or threaten Iran and Venezuela. But the natsec deep state actors did (and
do) not trust Trump's impulsiveness. They probably also thought it would be useful to "send a
message" to Russia, which, in their arrogance, they think they can, but they cannot,
"discipline," as I've discussed in a previous essay.
2) To discipline the media, making "Russian collusion," as Off-Guardian journalist Kit
Knightly says, "a concept that keeps everyone in check." Thus, a Russophobia-related
McCarthyite hysteria was engendered that defined any strong anti-interventionist or
anti-establishment sentiment as Russian-sown "divisiveness" and "Putin apologetics." This
discipline was eagerly accepted by the mainstream media, which joined in the related drive to
demand new forms of censorship for independent and internet media. The epitome of this is the
mainstream media's execrable, tacit and sometimes explicit acceptance of the US government's
campaign to prosecute Julian Assange.
3) To discipline and corral the Democratic constituency. Establishment Dems riled up
outraged progressives with deceptive implied promises to take Trump down based on the collusion
fiction, which excused Hillary and diverted their attention from the real egregious failures
and crimes that led their party to political ruin, and culminated in the election of Trump in
the first place. This discipline also instituted a #Resistance to Trump that involved the party
doing nothing substantively progressive in policy -- indeed, it allowed embracing Trump's most
egregious militarism and promoting an alliance with, a positive reverence for, the most
deceptive and reactionary institutions of the state.
Finally, incorporating point 2, perhaps the main point of this discipline -- indeed of the
whole Mueller enterprise -- was to stigmatize the leftists and socialists in and around the
party, who were questioning the collusion fiction and calling critical attention to the party's
failures, as crypto-fascist "Trump enablers" or "Putin's useful idiots." It's all about fencing
out the left and corralling the base.
Note the point regarding the deceptive implications about taking down Trump. Though they
gave the opposite impression to rile up their constituents, Democratic Congressional leaders,
for the reasons given above and others I laid out in a previous essay, did not think for a
second they were going to impeach Trump. They were never really after impeaching Trump; they
were and are after stringing along their dissatisfied progressive-minded voters. They, not
Trump, were and are the target of the foolery.
We should recognize that Russiagate/The Mueller Investigation achieved all of these goals,
and was therefore a great success. That's the case whatever part of the Mueller Report is
summarized and released, and whoever interprets it. The whole report with all of the underlying
evidence cannot legally be released to the public, and the Democrats know that. So, even if the
House gets it, the public will only ever see portions doled out by various interested
parties.
Thus, it will continue to be a great success. There will be endless leaks, and
interpretations of leaks, and arguments about the interpretations of leaks based on speculation
about what's still hidden. The Mueller Investigation has morphed into the Mueller Report, a
hermeneutical exercise that will go on forever.
The Mueller Investigation never happened and will never end.
It wasn't an investigation. It was/is an act of political theater, staged in an ongoing
dramatic festival where, increasingly, litigation substitutes for politics. Neither party has
anything of real, lasting, positive political substance to offer, and each finds itself in
power only because it conned the electorate into thinking it offered something new. That
results in every politician being vulnerable, but to a politically vacuous opposition that can
only mount its attacks on largely politically irrelevant, often impossible to adjudicate,
legalistic or moralistic grounds. Prosecutorial inquiry becomes a substitute for substantive
political challenge.
It's the template that was established by the Republicans against Bill Clinton, has been
adapted by the Democrats for Trump and Russiagate, and will be ceaselessly repeated. What's
coming next, already hinted at in William Barr's congressional testimony, will be an
investigation of FISAGate -- an inquiry into whether the FISA warrants for spying on the Trump
campaign and administration were obtained legally ("adequately predicated"). And/or
UkraineGate, about the evidence "Ukrainian law enforcement officials believe they have of
wrongdoing by American Democrats and their allies in Kiev, ranging from 2016 election
interference to obstructing criminal probes," involving Tony Podesta (who worked right
alongside Paul Manafort in Ukraine), Hillary Clinton's campaign, Joe Biden and his son, et. al.
And/or CampaignGate, the lawsuit claiming that Hillary's national campaign illegally took $84
million of "straw man" contributions made to state Democratic campaigns. And/or CraigGate,
involving powerful Democratic fixer and Obama White House Counsel, Gregory Craig, who has
already been referred to federal prosecutors by Mueller, and whose law firm has already paid a
$4.6 million-dollar fine for making false statement and failing to register under the Foreign
Agents Registration Act -- for work he did in Ukraine with -- who else? -- Paul Manafort.
There are Gates galore. If you haven't heard about any of these simmering scandals in the
way you've heard incessantly about, you know, Paul Manafort, perhaps that's because they didn't
fit into the "get Trump" theme of the Mueller Investigation/Russiagate political theater. Rest
assured the Republicans have, and will likely make sure that you do. If you think the
Republicans do not have at least as much of a chance to make a serious case with some of these
as Mueller did with Trump, you are wrong. If you think the Republicans will pursue any of these
investigations because they have the same principled concern as the Democrats about foreign
collusion in US elections, or the legality of campaign contributions or surveillance warrants,
you are right. They have none. Like the Democrats, they have zero concern for the ostensible
issues of principle, and infinite enthusiasm for mounting "gotcha" political theater.
Neither party really wants, or knows how, to engage in a sustained, principled debate on
substantive political issues -- things like universal-coverage, single-payer health insurance,
a job guarantee, a radical reduction of the military budget, an end to imperialist
intervention, increasing taxes on the wealthy and lowering them for working people, a break
from the "overwhelming" and destructive influence of Zionism, to name a few of the policies the
Democratic congressional leadership could have insisted on "investigating" over the last two
years..
Instead, both parties' political campaigns rely on otherizing appeals based on superficial
identity politics (white-affirmative on the one hand, POC-affirmative on the other) and,
mainly, on bashing the other party for all the problems it ignored or exacerbated, and all the
terrible policies it enacted, when it was in power -- and for the version of superficial,
otherizing identity politics it supposedly based those policies on (the real determinants of
class power remaining invisible). What both parties know how and will continue to do is mount
hypocritical legalistic and moralistic "investigations" of illegal campaign contributions,
support from foreign governments, teenage make-out sessions, personal-space violations, et.
al., that they are just "shocked, shocked" about.
It's Investigation Nation. Fake politics in the simulacrum of a democratic polity. Indeed,
someone, of some political perspicuity, might just notice, if only for a flash, that the people
who do pretty well politically are often the ones who frankly don't give a crap about all that.
Maybe because they're talking to people who don't give a crap about all that. But we wouldn't
want to confuse ourselves thinking on that for too long.
Which brings us to the last point about Russiagate/The Mueller Investigation mentioned
above. It may not (or may!) have been an intended goal, but it has been its most definite
political effect: The Mueller Investigation has been a great political gift to Donald Trump.
#Resisters and Russiagaters can wriggle around that all they want. They can insist that, once
we get the whole Report, we'll turn the corner, the bombshell will explode, the walls will
close in -- for real, this time. Sure.
But even they can't deny that's the case right now. Trump is saying the Mueller
investigation was a political counterattack against the result of the election, masquerading as
a disinterested judicial investigation; that it was based on a flimsy fiction and designed to
dig around in every corner of his closets to find nasty and incriminating things that were
entirely irrelevant to the ostensible mandate of the investigation and to any substantive,
upfront political critique -- a "witchhunt," a "fishing expedition." And he is right. And too
many people in the country know he's right. At this point, even most Russiagaters themselves
know it -- though they don't care, and will never admit it.
So now Trump, who could have been attacked for two years politically on substance for
betraying most of the promises that got him elected -- more aggressive war, more tax cuts for
the wealthy, threatening Medicare and Social Security -- has instead been handed, by the
Democrats, the strongest arrow he now has in his political quiver. As Matt Taibbi says: "Trump
couldn't have asked for a juicier campaign issue, and an easier way to argue that 'elites'
don't respect the democratic choices of flyover voters. It's hard to imagine what could look
worse."
You might think the Democratic Party would be horrified at this result, which one conservative
analyst calls: "one of the greatest self-defeating acts in history." You might think Democrats
would now move quickly and decisively toward a strategy of offering a substantive political
alternative, and abandon this awful own-goal Mueller/Russiagate tack that has already helped
Trump immensely (and which they are not going to turn their way). That is obviously what would
happen if the Democrats' main goal was to defeat Trump. But it isn't.
As discussed above, the Democratic establishment's' main goal throughout this was not to "get"
Trump, but to channel its own voters' disgust with him into support for some halcyon, liberal,
status quo ante-Trump, and away from left demands for a radical change to the social, economic,
and political conditions that produced him and his clueless establishment opponent in 2016. The
Democrats' goal was, and is, not to defeat Trump, but to stave off the left.
What they are doing with the Mueller Investigation/Russiagate is what they did in the
primaries in 2016: Then, they deliberately promoted Trump as an opponent, while working
assiduously to cheat their own leftist candidate; now, they gin up a fictional spy story whose
inevitable collapse helps Trump, but on which they will double down, in order to continue
branding "divisive" leftists who challenge any return to their version of status-quo normalcy
as the Kremlin's "useful idiots."
The Democrats' main goal in all this is not to impeach, or stop the re-election of, Donald
Trump; it's to prevent the nomination and election of Bernie Sanders, or anyone like him.
Russiagate Forever
Here's Tim Ryan's presidential campaign kickoff speech in Youngstown, Ohio, a poster city of
late American capitalist deindustrialization, explaining to the voters what is causing the
destruction of their lives and towns. After complaining that "We have politicians and leaders
today that want to divide us. They want to put us in one box or the other. You know, you can't
be for business and for labor," he elaborates:
Yup, it’s those Russians, you see, sowing division through certain “politicians and leaders,” who are preventing us from
fixing our healthcare, education, economic and government systems. This—doubling down on Russiagate—is the centrist Democrats’
idea of a winning political appeal. I consider it utterly delusional.
I heard last week from a friend in Western Pennsylvania, not too far from Youngstown. She’s a good person who is trying to
organize Democrats in the area to beat Trump in 2020, and, pleading for advice, she expressed her exasperation: “They’re leaving
the party!”
You mean the five million people who voted for Obama in 2012, in the 90% of counties that voted for Obama either in 2008
or 2012, but would not vote for Hillary in 2019, aren’t streaming back into—are indeed still streaming out of—the Democratic
Party, despite all the Mueller investigation has done for them? Imagine that.
What has Russiagate/The Mueller Investigation wrought? It’s either a shrewd political gambit sure to take down Trump, or
it’s ridiculous political theater leading Democrats, and the country, over another cliff. Double-down or leave that table?
Parteigenosse Mueller mission was to derail Trump. Investigation of real DNC scandal was outside of scope of this tool of
the Deep State. From comments: "Mueller was brought in as the Cleaner! It is a massive cover-up for which most of those who
are complicit should be behind bars! "
Mueller report was concocted with only goal: to sink Trump. Objective investigation of events was beyond the scope.
Moreover it looks like Mueller investigators were instrumental in setting an entrapment for members of Trump team and as such might
be criminally liable for this abuse of their status.
Images deleted.
Notable quotes:
"... No one knows who killed Rich in Washington, D.C., on July 10, 2016. All we know is that he was found at 4:19 a.m. in the Bloomingdale neighborhood "with apparent gunshot wound(s) to the back" according to the police report . Conscious and still breathing, he was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead at 5:57. ..."
"... Rich's mother, Mary, told local TV news that her son struggled with his assailants: "His hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything . They took his life for literally no reason. They didn't finish robbing him, they just took his life." ..."
"... But cops said shortly after the killing that they had no immediate indication that robbery was a motive. Despite his mother's report of two shots in the back, all the local medical examiner would say is that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the torso. According to Rich's brother, Aaron , Seth "was very aware, very talkative," when police found him lying on the pavement. Yet cops have refused to say if he described his assailant. A month later, they put out a statement that "there is no indication that Seth Rich's death is connected to his employment at the DNC," but refused to elaborate. ..."
"... all the Mueller report did was replace one conspiracy theory with another involving the Kremlin and its minions that is equally unconvincing. ..."
"... there's nothing in the Mueller report indicating that the special counselor independently reviewed the forensic evidence or questioned family members and friends. ..."
"... He certainly didn't interview Assange, the person in the best position to know who supplied the data, even though Craig Murray, the ex-British diplomat who serves as an unofficial WikiLeaks spokesman, says the WikiLeaks founder would have been "very willing to give evidence to Mueller" while holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, "which could have been done by video-link, by interview in the Embassy, or by written communication." ..."
"... This was as close as Assange could come to confirming that Rich was tied up with the leak without actually saying it. Hours later, WikiLeaks tweeted about the $20k reward. ..."
"... Four months after that, Craig Murray told the Libertarian Institute's Scott Horton: "Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that he [Rich] was the source of the leaks. What I'm saying is that it's probably not an unfair indication to draw that WikiLeaks believe[s] that he may have been killed by someone who thought he was the source of the leaks." (Quote begins at 11:20 .) ..."
"... But if speculation refuses to die, it's for a simple reason. If the DNC email disclosure was a hack, then Rich clearly had nothing to do with it, which means his death was no more than a robbery gone awry. But if it was a leak, then – based on broad hints dropped by Assange and Murray – it looks like the story could well be more complicated. This proves nothing in and of itself. But it guarantees that questions will grow as long as the Washington police make zero progress in its investigation and the Mueller report continues to fall apart. ..."
"... And that's just what's happening. Mueller's account of how Russian intelligence supposedly supplied WikiLeaks with stolen data makes no sense because, according to the report's chronology, the transfer left WikiLeaks with just four days to review some 28,000 emails and other electronic documents to make sure that they were genuine and unaltered – a clear impossibility. ..."
"... The FBI assessment that Paul Manafort associate Konstantin Kilimnik "has ties to Russian intelligence" – which Mueller cites (vol. 1, p. 133) in order to justify holding Manafort in solitary confinement during the Russia-gate investigation – is similarly disintegrating amid reports that Kilimnik actually served as an important State Department intelligence source. ..."
"... "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." Arthur Conan Doyle ..."
"... No need for arrests, extradition requests, or 17 espionage charges. A simple email phone call might just do the trick... It shows once again that Trump is a similar fascist as Hillary and the DNC! ..."
"... Why would an assassin leave him alive on the sidewalk? ..."
"... Today we've learned that the FBI didn't, inexplicably, go and grab the DNC server but also never even saw the report from Crowdstrike that was used as the basis for blaming everything on Russia. ..."
"... Of course, the FBI admitted that it never examined the DNC servers and just revealed in court that it never saw a detailed report from Crowdstrike showing that Russians hacked the server. That's why Mueller never investigated. He knew it was a lie but one the entire 3 years, Obama admin, Hillary, the DNC & corrupt cabal depend on maintaining. ..."
"... If you followed the story, the Rich family was very much doubted this was a random robbery until political operators had a long chat with them. Their stories changed and cooperation with the independent investigation ended. This neighborhood has cameras everywhere. Suddenly, none of them worked. ..."
"... Not only did the FBI never get the DNC server for forensic investigation, it turns out the FBI never even got a finalized report on "DNC hacking" from Crowdstrike. Every conclusion drawn by the various agencies within the Intelligence Community is based on a redacted copy of a draft report from Crowdstrike, and this report was never finalized from its draft form. And even the draft was never unredacted for the FBI. ..."
"... 'Why Didn't Mueller Investigate Seth Rich?' Occam's razor. Why would a paid lackey disobey direct orders by the chief architects of this Criminal Conspiracy and risk his own life in the process? It makes no sense on any level. ..."
The idea that the DNC
email disclosures were produced by a hack - not a leak - makes less and less sense...
After bungling every last aspect of Russia-gate since the day the pseudo-scandal broke, the
corporate press is now seizing on the Mueller report to shut down debate on one of the key
questions still outstanding from the 2016 presidential election: the murder of Democratic National
Committee staffer Seth Rich.
No one knows who killed Rich in Washington, D.C., on July 10, 2016. All we know is that he was
found at 4:19 a.m. in the Bloomingdale neighborhood "with apparent gunshot wound(s) to the back"
according to the police
report
.
Conscious and still breathing, he was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead at
5:57.
Police have added to the confusion by releasing information only in the tiniest dribs and
drabs.
Rich's mother, Mary,
told
local
TV news that her son struggled with his assailants: "His hands were bruised, his knees are bruised,
his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything . They
took his life for literally no reason. They didn't finish robbing him, they just took his life."
But cops
said
shortly
after the killing that they had no immediate indication that robbery was a motive. Despite his
mother's report of two shots in the back, all the local medical examiner
would
say
is that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the torso. According to Rich's brother,
Aaron
,
Seth "was very aware, very talkative," when police found him lying on the pavement. Yet cops have
refused
to
say if he described his assailant. A month later, they put out a
statement
that
"there is no indication that Seth Rich's death is connected to his employment at the DNC," but
refused to elaborate.
The result is a scattering of disconnected facts that can be used to support just about any
theory from a random killing to a political assassination. Nonetheless, Robert Mueller is dead
certain that the murder had nothing to do with the emails -- just as he was dead certain in 2003
that Iraq was bristling with weapons of mass destruction "
pos[ing]
a clear threat to our national security
.
Scene of the crime. (YouTube)
Mueller's Theory About Assange 'Dissembling'
Mueller is equally positive that, merely by expressing concern that the murder may have had
something to do with the release of thousands of DNC emails less than two weeks later,
WikiLeaks
founder
Julian Assange was trying to protect the real source, which of course is Russia.
Here's how the Mueller report puts it:
"Beginning in the summer of 2016, Assange and WikiLeaks made a number of statements about
Seth Rich, a former DNC staff member who was killed in July 2016. The statements about Rich
implied falsely that he had been the source of the stolen DNC emails. On August 9, 2016, the
@WikiLeaks Twitter accounted posted: 'ANNOUNCE: WikiLeaks has decided to issue a US$20k reward
for information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.'
Likewise, on August 25, 2016, Assange was asked in an interview, 'Why are you so interested
in Seth Rich's killer?' and responded, 'We're very interested in anything that might be a threat
to alleged WikiLeaks sources.' The interviewer responded to Assange's statement by commenting,
'I know you don't want to reveal your source, but it certainly sounds like you're suggesting a
man who leaked information to WikiLeaks was then murdered.'
Assange replied, 'If there's someone who's potentially connected to our publication, and that
person has been murdered in suspicious, circumstances, it doesn't necessarily mean that the two
are connected. But it is a very serious matter that type of allegation is very serious, as
it's taken very seriously by us'" (vol. 1, pp. 48-49).
Mueller: Says Assange's real source was Russia. (All Your Breaking News Here via Flickr)
This is what the Mueller report calls "dissembling."
The conclusion caused
jubilation in corporate newsrooms where hostility to both Russia and
WikiLeaks
runs
high. "The Seth Rich conspiracy theory needs to end now,"
declared
Vox.com.
"The special counsel's report confirmed this week that Seth Rich was not the source,"
said
The
New York Times
. "The Mueller report might not end the debate over what President Donald Trump
did," the Poynter Institute's
Politifact
added
,"but
it has scuttled one conspiracy theory involving a murdered Democratic party staffer and WikiLeaks."
One Conspiracy Theory for Another
But
all the Mueller report did was replace one conspiracy theory with another involving the
Kremlin and its minions that is equally unconvincing.
Remarkably,
there's nothing in the Mueller report indicating that the special counselor
independently reviewed the forensic evidence or questioned family members and friends.
He
certainly didn't interview Assange, the person in the best position to know who supplied the data,
even though Craig Murray, the ex-British diplomat who serves as an unofficial
WikiLeaks
spokesman,
says
the
WikiLeaks
founder
would have been "very willing to give evidence to Mueller" while holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy
in London, "which could have been done by video-link, by interview in the Embassy, or by written
communication."
Bike rack and plaque outside DNC headquarters. (Johanna745, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons)
Murray says Mueller's team made no effort to contact him either even though he has publicly
stated
that
he met clandestinely with an associate of the leaker near the American University campus in
Washington.
Why not? Because Mueller didn't want anything that might disturb his a priori assumption that
Russia is the guilty party. If he had bucked the intelligence community finding – set forth in a
formal
assessment
in January 2017
– that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign aimed at undermining Hillary
Clinton's candidacy -- it would have been front-page news since an anti-Trump press had already
accepted the assessment as gospel. ButMueller is far too much of an establishmentarian to do
anything so reckless.
So he selected evidence in support of the official theory that "[t]he Russian government
interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion," as the report
states on its very first page. And since Assange had consistently
maintained
that
the data was the result of an inside leak rather than internal hack and that "[o]ur source is not
the Russian government," he cherry picked evidence to show that Assange is a liar, not only about
Russia but about Seth Rich.
Cryptic Exchange
It's a self-serving myth that corporate media have swallowed whole because it serves their
interests too. One problem in exposing it, however, is Assange's pledge – intrinsic to the
WikiLeaks
mission
– to safeguard the identities of whistleblowers who furnish it with information. The upshot has
been a good deal of beating around the bush. A month after the murder, the
WikiLeaks
founder
appeared on a Dutch program called "Nieuwsuur" and took part in
a
cryptic exchange
with journalist Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal:
Assange during exchange with Rosenthal. (YouTube)
Assange:
Whistle blowers go to significant efforts to get us material and
often very significant risks. There's a 27-year-old – works for the DNC – who was shot in the
back, murdered, just a few weeks ago for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in
Washington, so .
Rosenthal:
That was just a robbery, I believe, wasn't it?
Assange:
No, there's no finding, so –
Rosenthal:
What are you suggesting?
Assange:
I'm suggesting that our sources take risks, and they become
concerned to see things occurring like that.
Rosenthal:
But was he one of your sources then? I mean –
Assange:
We don't comment about who our sources are.
Rosenthal:
But why make the suggestion about a young guy being shot in the
streets of Washington?
Assange:
Because we have to understand how high the stakes are in the United
States and that our sources, you know, face serious risks. That's why they come to us – so we
can protect their anonymity.
Rosenthal:
But it's quite something to suggest a murder. That's basically
what you're doing.
This was as close as Assange could come to confirming that Rich was tied up with the leak
without actually saying it. Hours later,
WikiLeaks
tweeted
about
the $20k reward.
Four months after that, Craig Murray told the Libertarian Institute's Scott Horton: "Don't get
me wrong, I'm not saying that he [Rich] was the source of the leaks. What I'm saying is that it's
probably not an unfair indication to draw that WikiLeaks believe[s] that he may have been killed by
someone who thought he was the source of the leaks." (Quote begins at
11:20
.)
Thanks to such foggy rhetoric, it was all but inevitable that conspiracy theories would ignite.
Two months after the killing, an ultra-conservative talk-radio host named Jack Burkman – best known
for organizing a protest campaign against the Dallas Cowboys' hiring of an openly gay football
player named
Michael
Sam
– approached members of the Rich family and offered to launch an investigation in their
behalf.
The family said yes, but then backed off when Burkman
grandly
announced
that the murder was a Kremlin hit. Things turned even more bizarre a year later when
Kevin Doherty, an ex-Marine whom Burkman had hired to look into the case, lured his ex-boss to a
Marriott hotel in Arlington, Virgina, where he shot him twice in the buttocks and then tried to run
him down with a rented SUV. Doherty received
a
nine-year sentence
last December.
The rightwing
Washington Times
meanwhile reported that
WikiLeaks
had paid Seth
and Aaron Rich an undisclosed sum, a story it was forced to
retract
,
and Fox News named Seth as the source as well. (A sympathetic judge
dismissed
a
lawsuit filed by the Rich family on technical grounds.) But still the speculation bubbled on,
with
conservative
nuts
blaming everyone from ex-DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to acting DNC chairwoman Donna
Brazile, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and Bill and Hillary themselves.
All of which plays into the hands of a corporate press happy to write off any and all
suspicion as a product of alt-right paranoia.
But if speculation refuses to die, it's for a simple reason. If the DNC email disclosure was a
hack, then Rich clearly had nothing to do with it, which means his death was no more than a robbery
gone awry. But if it was a leak, then – based on broad hints dropped by Assange and Murray – it
looks like the story could well be more complicated. This proves nothing in and of itself. But it
guarantees that questions will grow as long as the Washington police make zero progress in its
investigation and the Mueller report continues to fall apart.
And that's just what's happening. Mueller's account of how Russian intelligence supposedly
supplied
WikiLeaks
with stolen data makes no sense because, according to the report's
chronology, the transfer left
WikiLeaks
with just four days to review some 28,000 emails
and other electronic documents to make sure that they were genuine and unaltered – a clear
impossibility.
(See "
The
'Guccifer 2.0' Gaps in Mueller's Full Report
," April 18.)
The FBI assessment that Paul Manafort associate Konstantin Kilimnik "has ties to Russian
intelligence" – which Mueller cites (vol. 1, p. 133) in order to justify holding Manafort in
solitary confinement during the Russia-gate investigation – is similarly disintegrating amid
reports
that
Kilimnik actually served as an important State Department intelligence source.
So the idea of a hack makes less and less sense and an inside leak seems more and more
plausible, which is why questions about the Rich case will not go away.
Bottom line: you don't have to be a loony rightist to suspect that
there is more
to the murder than Robert Mueller would like us to believe.
Question: why is the Trump Administration still actively PERSECUTING
Julian Assange?
"...Craig Murray, the ex-British diplomat who serves as an
unofficial WikiLeaks spokesman,
says
the WikiLeaks founder
would have been "very willing to give evidence to Mueller" while
holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, "which could have
been done by video-link, by interview in the Embassy, or by
written communication."
No need for arrests, extradition requests, or 17 espionage
charges. A simple email phone call might just do the trick...
It shows once again that Trump is a similar fascist as Hillary and
the DNC!
The best thing a person can do if anything happens to them is try to
document it and send it to a friendly media outlet since the police
and FBI may cover it up. Perhaps dump it directly on to the
internet so at least some folks hear/see the truth before it all
vanishes.
Why didn't the red team make him do it, or do it themselves?
Today
we've learned that the FBI didn't, inexplicably, go and grab the DNC
server but also
never even saw the report from Crowdstrike that
was used as the basis for blaming everything on Russia.
Of course, the FBI admitted that it never examined the DNC servers
and just revealed in court that it never saw a detailed report from
Crowdstrike showing that Russians hacked the server.
That's why
Mueller never investigated.
He knew it was a lie but one the entire 3 years, Obama admin,
Hillary, the DNC & corrupt cabal depend on maintaining.
The author quotes Seth Rich's brother to support his theory.
According to Rich's brother,
Aaron
,
Seth "was very aware, very talkative," when police found him lying
on the pavement.
... but then fails to quote his brothers press statement ?
Which is:
The special counsel has now provided hard facts that
demonstrate this conspiracy is false. I hope that the people who
pushed, fueled, spread, ran headlines, articles, interviews, talk
and opinion shows, or in any way used my family's tragedy to
advance their political agendas -- despite our pleas that what they
were saying was not based on any facts -- will take responsibility
for the unimaginable pain they have caused us. We will continue to
pursue justice for Seth's murderers, as well as those who used his
murder to advance their personal or political agendas by advancing
false conspiracy theories
If you followed the story, the Rich family was very much doubted
this was a random robbery until political operators had a long
chat with them. Their stories changed and cooperation with the
independent investigation ended.
This neighborhood has cameras
everywhere. Suddenly, none of them worked.
Not only did the FBI never get the DNC server for forensic
investigation, it turns out the FBI never even got a finalized report
on "DNC hacking" from Crowdstrike. Every conclusion drawn by the
various agencies within the Intelligence Community is based on a
redacted copy of a draft report from Crowdstrike, and this report was
never finalized from its draft form. And even the draft was never
unredacted for the FBI.
The whole thing was a sham from the start,
as many people suspected. The Mueller operation was never seeking to
uncover truth; it was an impeachment investigation by any other name.
Why Mueller didn't carry it over the goal line will forever remain a
mystery to me.
Yet that did not stop Mueller from a pre-dawn raid of Stone's
house with 27 armed officers & CNN claiming he helped Wikileaks
get the DNC emails from Russian hackers. It isn't stopping the
corrupt cabal from prosecuting Stone & Assange for that continued
lie.
'Why Didn't Mueller Investigate Seth Rich?' Occam's razor.
Why would a paid lackey disobey direct orders by the chief
architects of this Criminal Conspiracy and risk his own life in the
process? It makes no sense on any level.
Funny how we hear about all the great whistle blower-leakers in
Wastergate and the wonder cub reporters aka CI$$A shills like
Woodward, Bernstein and Ben Bradley who were and are CI$$A puppets.
Watergate was Deepstate Rockefellers/Rothschilds taking Nixon out for
tariffs and ending the gravy train Vietnam war with endless opium and
heroin.
But when you have Seth Rich murdered and Wiki Leaks saying
he is the guy then "democracy dies in the darkness" with the fake ***
USA news media aka Operation Mockingbird Wa Post, NY Times, AP and
the rest.
The significance of that can't be overstated. The investigations
that have been going on NON-STOP for three years are all fake and
*everybody* in DC knows it.
page 48 of the mueller report does mention seth rich as the source of
the hack. As quoted by Julian Assange and Mueller casually mentioned
that it's untrue with no further investigation.
"... Never mind that to this day the DNC servers have not been examined by the FBI, nor indeed were they examined by the Special Counsel of Robert " Iraq has WMD " Mueller, preferring instead to go with the analyses of this extremely shady outfit with extensive and well-documented ties with the oligarchic leaders of the US-centralized empire. ..."
"... When the Romanian REAL Guccifer got Podesta password (password) by phishing, exposing his pizza and walnut sauce perversions, the US had him jailed. When WikiLeaks made a DNC dump, CrowdStrike concocted Guccifer 2.0, then more leaks Fancy Bear, and more leaks Cozy Bear. All these CrowdStrike fabrications used CIA Vault 7 fingerprints to frame Russia. It is time to execute our ruling demonic warlords. ..."
A
new article by Forbes reports that the CEO of Crowdstrike, the extremely shady
cybersecurity corporation which was foundational in the construction of the official CIA/CNN
Russian hacking narrative, is now a billionaire. George Kurtz ascended to the billionaire
rankings on the back of
soaring stocks immediately after the company went public, carried no doubt on the winds of
the international fame it gained from its central protagonistic role in the most well-known
hacking news story of all time.
Never mind that to this day the DNC servers have not been examined
by the FBI,
nor indeed were they examined by the Special Counsel of Robert "
Iraq has WMD " Mueller, preferring instead to
go with the analyses of this extremely shady outfit with extensive and well-documented ties with
the oligarchic leaders of the US-centralized empire.
The CEO of the Atlantic Council-tied Crowdstrike, which formed the foundation of the official
CIA/CNN Russian hacking narrative, is now a billionaire. I'm telling you, the real underlying
currency of this world is narrative and the ability to control it. https://t.co/XsBCvkIDzJ -- Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz)
June 12, 2019
As I never tire of saying, the real underlying currency in our world is not gold,
nor bureaucratic fiat, nor even raw military might.
The real underlying currency of our world is
narrative, and the ability to control it.
As soon as you really grok this dynamic, you start
noticing it everywhere.
George Kurtz is one clear example today of narrative control's central role in the maintenance and expansion of existing
power structures, as well as an illustration of how the empire is wired to reward those who advance pro-empire narratives and
punish those who damage them...
When the Romanian REAL Guccifer got Podesta password (password) by phishing, exposing his
pizza and walnut sauce perversions, the US had him jailed. When WikiLeaks made a DNC dump,
CrowdStrike concocted Guccifer 2.0, then more leaks Fancy Bear, and more leaks Cozy Bear. All
these CrowdStrike fabrications used CIA Vault 7 fingerprints to frame Russia. It is time to
execute our ruling demonic warlords.
Andrew C. McCarthy testifies before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on the Mueller Report
(C-SPAN) Our government must make transparent, good-faith efforts to police itself, or risk losing legitimacy in the
public's eyes.
Editor's Note: The following is the written testimony submitted by Mr. McCarthy in connection with a hearing earlier today before
the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on the Mueller Report (specifically, the first volume of the report, which addresses
Russia's interference in the 2016 campaign, as to which Special Counsel Mueller found no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and
the Kremlin). The hearing was broadcast on C-SPAN,
here .
Chairman Schiff, Ranking Member Nunes, members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to this morning's hearing.
I served as a federal prosecutor for nearly 20 years, almost all at the Office of the United States Attorney for the Southern
District of New York, from which I retired in 2003 as the chief assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the Southern District's satellite
office in White Plains. I've also done a short stint working on an independent-counsel probe, and for several months in 2004, I was
a consultant to the deputy secretary of defense while the Pentagon was grappling with various legal issues after the onset of post-9/11
military operations. During my years as a prosecutor, I was honored to receive the Attorney General's Distinguished Service Award
in 1988 and the Attorney General's Exceptional Service Award in 1996 for my work on international-organized-crime and international-terrorism
cases.
Since leaving government service, I have been a writer and commentator. I am appearing this morning in my personal capacity as
a former government official who cares deeply about our national security and the rule of law.
For most of my first several years as a prosecutor, my work focused on international organized crime. After the World Trade Center
was bombed on February 26, 1993, I spent much of the last decade of my tenure working on national-security investigations. I am proud
to have led the successful prosecution of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven other jihadists for conspiring to wage a war of urban
terrorism against the United States, which included the Trade Center attack, a plot to bomb New York City landmarks, and other plots
to carry out political assassinations and terrorist strikes against civilian populations. In that effort, I was privileged to work
alongside a superb team of federal prosecutors, support staff, and investigators assigned to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.
It was in connection with that investigation that I became intimately familiar with the FBI's counterintelligence mission, and
the powerful tools that the Constitution and federal law make available for the execution of that mission. While it escapes the attention
of many Americans, who know the bureau as the nation's premier law-enforcement agency, the FBI is also our domestic-security service.
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That is a purposeful arrangement on our government's part, and I believe a prudent one. Most of our intelligence services focus
on the activities of foreigners outside the United States that could threaten American interests. Their work is essential, but it
is frequently dangerous and often occurs outside the writ of our laws and courts. We want our domestic security to be safeguarded
by an agency that is both highly professional and at all times beholden to our Constitution and laws. The FBI fits that bill.
In some nations, the law-enforcement and domestic-security functions are handled by separate agencies. Our government's theory,
to the contrary, has been that housing them under the same bureaucratic roof allows these missions to be carried out more efficiently
in that they support one another more easily. This is a sound theory, and I have seen how effective it can be when the FBI's counterintelligence
mission is leveraged not only by the Bureau's criminal division and federal prosecutors, but also by the force multiplier that is
the combination of state law-enforcement agencies and the public at large. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the spate of
1990s atrocities that preceded them, cooperation and information-sharing between the federal government and state agencies, and the
cooperation among federal agencies themselves (particularly intelligence agencies), have become far superior to what they were when
I started working on these matters a generation ago.
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There is an implicit understanding in our law: The awesome powers vested in our security agencies must not be used pretextually
to carry out law-enforcement functions. This was the major controversy we dealt with in the 1990s. The infamous "Wall" imposed by
internal Justice Department guidelines, which had the effect of impeding cooperation between intelligence and law-enforcement investigators,
was unwise policy driven by good intentions. The idea was to ensure that agents who lacked an adequate factual predicate to use criminal-law
investigative techniques would not do an end-around on the Constitution by conjuring a national-security angle that would justify
resort to foreign counterintelligence authorities -- such as warrants issued under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA).
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Law enforcement involves serious intrusions on our most fundamental freedoms -- liberty, privacy, in some instances even life.
Consequently, our law builds in due-process presumptions and protections to safeguard Americans. Search, arrest, and eavesdropping
warrants, for example, may only issue based on probable cause that a crime has been (or is being) committed.
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FISA bypasses important Fourth Amendment safeguards. Our law permits this for two reasons. First, the objective of a counterintelligence
investigation is not to build criminal prosecutions but to collect information. Second, the "target" of a counterintelligence investigation
is a foreign power that threatens U.S. interests. Consequently, the typical counterintelligence scenario is not an effort to gather
evidence against an American in order to arrest, indict, convict, and imprison that American.
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Nevertheless, FISA does endeavor to give an American suspected of being a foreign agent some protections. A warrant may not issue
unless the FBI and Justice Department demonstrate probable cause to believe the American is knowingly engaged in clandestine activity.
The relevant FISA statute (50 U.S. Code, Section 1804(b)(2)) does not quite require probable cause of a crime; but it calls for something
very close -- a showing that the suspected activities may involve a violation of criminal statutes. To underscore that the required
showing calls for a demonstration of grave and willful conduct, the statute speaks of taking direction from foreign powers to commit
criminal offenses, engaging in such activities as sabotage or terrorism, or intentionally using false identities specifically on
behalf of a foreign power -- which, of course, makes more serious clandestine activity possible.
There has been some expert commentary and testimony over the last few years about the threats posed by Russian espionage, addressing
the fact that Russian intelligence services attempt to coopt or dupe Americans into providing assistance. This is, indeed, a serious
threat. It is noteworthy, though, that it would not be an adequate basis for a surveillance warrant against the unwitting American.
Our law requires a showing of purposeful action on the foreign power's behalf against our country.
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It is also worth noting that our law calls for electronic surveillance to be something like a last resort because it is such an
intrusive investigative technique -- the monitoring of all a person's communications, by telephone, email, text, and the like. Whether
we are talking about criminal or counterintelligence investigations, the law requires the FBI and the Justice Department to satisfy
the court that alternative investigative techniques have been tried and have failed, or would surely fail if tried. For example,
a warrant would not be justifiable if investigators had the ability to conduct productive interviews with the subject, or if the
investigators had other ways of drawing information from the subject, such as the infiltration of an informant.
I mention these aspects of surveillance to highlight that, even in normal circumstances where no extraordinary public interests
are at stake, our law permits counterintelligence monitoring of Americans only reluctantly, and only on a strong showing that they
truly are involved in nefarious activities on behalf of a foreign power.
Obviously, 2016 was not a normal circumstance in that regard. It involved the extraordinary public interest of a campaign for
the presidency. We have an important norm in the United States against the use of the government's investigative authorities, very
much including its foreign counterintelligence powers, to monitor the political opposition of the incumbent government. This norm
is salutary fallout from the political-spying misadventures of the 1960s and 1970s.
There are some commentators who recoil at the terms "spying" and "political spying." There are others who suggest that, because
of the negative implications investigations could have for our capacity for self-governance, a political campaign should be immune
from surveillance. I have never fallen into either of these camps.
Spying is simply the covert collection of information. If the government is doing the spying, the issue is not what term we use
to describe it but, rather, whether the government had a lawful basis and an appropriate factual predicate for it.
Our nation has a relatively recent history of political-spying episodes from which there is much to learn. When I was prosecuting
terrorism cases, that history was instructive: It is an unavoidable fact that unlawful forcible action against our country is inextricably
bound up with lawful political dissent; nevertheless, the Constitution creates a safe harbor for political dissent, even noxious
political dissent, and therefore we must avoid criminalizing policy disputes even if doing so makes it harder to protect the nation
from foreign threats.
My own view of Russia's government, for what it's worth, is that it is a menace: an anti-American regime that engages in territorial
aggression, crushes dissent internally (and, occasionally, outside its borders), and abets bad actors globally -- including Iran,
the world's leading state sponsor of anti-American terrorism. If the 1980s wanted to call to ask for their foreign policy back, I
would be glad to dial the number for them. I've never thought Vladimir Putin thought the Cold War was over, and I said as much in
dissenting from the Bush administration's depiction of Russia as a potential strategic partner, and the Obama administration's foolish
"Russia Reset" policies. Naturally, I also disagreed with the Trump campaign's blandishments toward the Kremlin and what I regard
as the quixotic quest for better relations with Putin's regime. That was a big reason why I supported a different candidate in the
Republican primaries, and why I have been pleased that the Trump administration has taken tougher action against Russia than the
rhetoric presaged.
All that said, these are policy disputes. Personally, I do not favor bending over backward to have better relations with Moscow.
That does not mean people who do favor it are unpatriotic or are engaged in espionage -- they could just be wrong, or I could be
wrong. Our First Amendment guarantees should enable us to engage in robust political debates without criminalizing our disagreements.
On the other hand, when the Framers were writing and debating the Constitution, few specters caused them more anxiety than the
possibility that the immense powers of the presidency they were creating could fall under the sway of foreign powers. Consequently,
if there actually were strong evidence that a president or presidential candidate was a clandestine agent of a foreign power, the
incumbent government would have not only the authority but the duty to take investigative and enforcement action. If the evidence
were compelling, it would not matter whether the candidate in question was from the opposition party -- the administration's duty
would be to protect the United States.
But the evidence would have to be compelling.
That is the way it is with norms. We should not discount the possibility that our norm against training government surveillance
powers on political campaigns could ever be overcome; but the proof required to overcome the presumption against such surveillance
must be very convincing.
Based on what is publicly known, including through the now-concluded Mueller investigation, there was never compelling evidence
for the proposition that the Trump campaign was engaged in an espionage conspiracy with the Kremlin.
The only publicly known allegations that the Trump campaign was complicit in Russia's hacking and influence operations, and in
the dissemination of stolen emails, are contained in the Steele dossier. To date, there is no known corroboration for those claims.
Obviously, had they been verified, the Mueller investigation would have had a very different conclusion.
While looking forward to engaging with the Committee, I would conclude with the following points:
Volume I of the Mueller Report draws three principal conclusions: (a) the Putin regime perceived advantage in a Trump victory
and conducted its operations accordingly; (b) there is evidence the Trump campaign hoped to benefit from the publication of negative
information about the opponent; and (c) there is no evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian regime.
The first two of these are more in the nature of political assertions than prosecutorial findings. If there is insufficient evidence
that a conspiratorial enterprise existed, a prosecutor has no business speculating on motives in a politically provocative manner.
Moreover, I do not believe the assertion is borne out by the evidence. The report shows that agents of Putin's regime expressed
support for Trump's candidacy. That is entirely consistent with a motivation to incite divisions and dissent in the body politic
of free Western nations, which is Russia's modus operandi. Russia's goal is to destabilize Western governments, which advantages
the Kremlin by making it more difficult for those governments to pursue their interests in the world. Putin tends to back the
candidates he believes will lose, on the theory that an alienated losing faction will make it harder for the winning faction to
govern. Putin is all about Russia's interests, which are in destabilization. It is a mistake to allow him to divide us by portraying
him as on one side or the other; he is against all of us.
There is no reason to doubt that the Trump campaign hoped to benefit from the publication of negative information about Secretary
Clinton. That is what campaigns do. It is not an admirable aspect of our electoral politics that campaigns seek negative information
-- euphemistically called "opposition research" -- wherever they can find it. Candidate Trump's opposition hoped to benefit from
the theft of his tax information. The Clinton campaign took help from elements of the Ukrainian government, and, through its agents,
it hired a British former spy to tap Kremlin-connected operatives for damaging information about Trump. The First Amendment makes
it difficult to regulate this sort of thing; our guiding principle is that good information will win out over bogus information.
We can debate how well that works, but we shouldn't pretend that the Trump campaign is the first or only one ever to play this
game.
As for the conclusion that there was no Trump–Russia conspiracy to commit espionage or violate any other federal criminal
law, I believe this had to have been obvious since no later than the end of 2017. In September 2017, the Carter Page FISA warrant
lapsed, and it would have been time for the Mueller investigation to seek its reauthorization -- which would, in turn, have called
for reaffirming Steele's information. That did not happen. In 2018, Special Counsel Mueller began filing indictments against Russian
actors, which did not allege any participation by Americans; in fact, they indicated that Russia preferred to act in stealth and
with deniability, which makes perfect sense. I believe the special counsel should have been directed by the deputy attorney general
to issue an interim report by late 2017, advising the country that neither the president nor his campaign was under criminal investigation
for conspiring with the Kremlin. That would not have prejudiced the investigation's continuing work on Russia's interference in
the campaign, or on whether the investigation had been obstructed.
Criminal investigations have a way of keeping investigators honest in a way that counterintelligence investigations do not.
In a criminal probe, while it is true that prosecutors and agents petition the court for warrants in sealed proceedings, everyone
acts on the assumption that there will be an eventual prosecution in which their work will be carefully scrutinized by counsel
for the accused and reviewing courts. If liberties are taken with facts, if information that should be disclosed is withheld,
if rules or guidelines are flouted, that will become publicly known and could have serious ramifications for the case. In counterintelligence,
by contrast, everything is done in secret and the only due process an American suspected of being a foreign agent ever gets is
if the Justice Department and the FBI scrupulously honor their obligations of disclosure and compliance, and if the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court holds them to those obligations.
Congress has been wrestling with national-security powers for nearly a half century because we understand that, on the one
hand, they are essential for the protection of the nation, but on the other hand, they can easily be abused. It is essential that
when serious questions arise about how they have been used, the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Congress conduct serious,
searching inquiries to get to the bottom of what happened, and to take remedial action. What I have feared from the beginning
of the controversies over investigations touching on the 2016 election is that the public would become convinced that our government
is not serious about policing itself. If that happens, there will be even more public demand than there has been in recent years
for the restriction or even the repeal of foreign-intelligence-surveillance authorities. I believe, based on first-hand experience,
that these authorities are critical to protecting the United States from the threats posed by foreign powers -- both anti-American
regimes and such sub-sovereign entities as foreign terrorist organizations.
Good-faith investigations require that we gather facts but do not rush to judgment. I spent many months advising people that
it was highly unlikely -- I occasionally said it was inconceivable -- that the FBI and the Justice Department would rely in the
FISC on sensational, suspect allegations such as those contained in the Steele report. I said the Bureau would surely have taken
the handful of facts needed to show probable cause and done what the Bureau does better than any other investigative agency: investigate
them until they were so solidly corroborated that it would be unnecessary even to refer to Christopher Steele in the warrant application.
I turn out to have been spectacularly wrong on that score. But I'm not sorry about the sentiment behind the error. There is reason
to suspect that investigative judgments were made in some instances and by some actors for improper political motivations; there
may also be innocent explanations, or explanations that involve a zeal to protect the country from a perceived threat that was
well-intentioned but excessive under the circumstances. We do not know the answers to these questions but they should be answered.
And to ask them is not to attack our institutions but to preserve them by showing the public that we know how to police ourselves.
I do not believe evidence of connections and associations with Russian operatives is irrelevant for counterintelligence purposes.
It is, however, important to distinguish between two things: Incriminating evidence and indications of disturbing ties. The purpose
of a criminal investigation or a counterintelligence probe that rises to the level of monitoring Americans on suspicion that they
are foreign agents would be to investigate evidence of serious criminal activity, in particular, espionage. That is especially
the case if we are talking about overcoming the norm against the intrusion of surveillance powers into political campaigns.
If, on the contrary, we are talking about disturbing connections with a hostile regime, those connections may be worth exploring.
But then, we should look at everybody's connections to Russian officials, Russian oligarchs, and Russian commerce -- not just
the Trump campaign's connections. And we should do so mindful of the fact that it has been bipartisan doctrine in Washington since
the fall of the Soviet Union that Russia is not an enemy regime but a potential strategic partner with which the U.S. can and
should do business. We should not pretend as if that were not the case just because we are in an overheated partisan environment.
As someone who has long been skeptical of our government's approach to Russia, I am quite confident that the perils we've been
obsessing over for the past two years did not start with the Trump campaign.
"... Comey said in an interview that he used tactics he would not ordinarily use because the then fledgling Trump administration was unorganized at the beginning. Basically, he and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe discouraged Flynn from asking White House general counsel to sit in on the interview. Flynn, according to several source with knowledge, had no idea he was being targeted by the FBI for an investigation. ..."
"... Weissmann served as Mueller's second in command for the special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign, despite the fact that his tactics have been highly criticized by both judges and colleagues. He was called unscrupulous and has had several significant issues raised about how he operated during the Mueller inquiry into Trump campaign officials, including Flynn. ..."
"... Powell has openly stated in columns and on cable networks that Weissmann's dirty tactics of withholding exculpatory evidence and threatening witnesses to garner prosecutions should have had him disbarred long ago. ..."
"... Flynn plead guilty after Mueller [ Weissmann ] threatened Flynn's family, including his son Michael Jr. According to sources close to Flynn family, Mueller threatened Flynn on multiple occasions that if he did not plead guilty to lying to the FBI, Mueller would investigate other Flynn family members, including his son. ..."
"... I sent them. Something we've, I probably wouldn't have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized administration," Comey said. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe made a similar statement regarding Flynn, which was uncovered by congressional investigators. ..."
"... Five Ways "Dirty Cop Mueller" Played Americans For Complete Fools . . . https://youtu.be/-YYmSIoCp50 ..."
"... The world's greatest liars and scum prosecuting someone for telling a lie. Seth Rich https://consortiumnews.com/2019/06/12/why-didnt-mueller-investigate-seth-rich/ ..."
"... Mark Meadows destroys The Mueller Coverup . . . https://youtu.be/iPgPgev7Yd4 ..."
"... Sidney Powell Rips Into Mueller https://youtu.be/udRqsEa2N9E ..."
Embattled Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn has hired well known defense attorney Sidney Powell to represent him before his sentencing hearing
in Washington D.C.'s federal court . Flynn, who fired his attorney's last week, will still fully cooperate with the government in
all cases pending, Powell
told SaraACarter.com.
Flynn's former legal counsel Robert Kelner and Stephen Anthony offered no explanation for their abrupt dismissal telling
SaraACarter.com
they "decline to comment."
"He is and will continue to cooperate with the government in all aspects," Powell told
SaraACarter.com.
"He and his family truly appreciate all the cards and letters of support from countless people and the contributions to the
defense fund which are even more important now."
Powell noted that Flynn's case file, "is massive" and "it will take me at least 90 days to review it."
Kelner and Anthony submitted a two-page motion last week to the federal judge. Flynn's sentencing will be based on his 2017 guilty
plea to special counsel Robert Mueller's prosecutors for one count of lying to the FBI.
The guilty plea has been a source of contention in news reports, after evidence and testimony surfaced that the FBI special agents
that interviewed Flynn in January, 2017 didn't believe he was lying. Both former
FBI Special Agent
Peter Strzok and FBI Special Agent
Joe Pientka interviewed Flynn about his phone conversation with then Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak. The interview
was conducted just as Flynn began his then role as National Security Advisor for Trump.
Former FBI Director James Comey joked about the bureau's interview with Flynn.
Comey said in an interview that he used tactics he would not ordinarily use because the then fledgling Trump administration
was unorganized at the beginning. Basically, he and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe discouraged Flynn from asking White
House general counsel to sit in on the interview. Flynn, according to several source with knowledge, had no idea he was being targeted
by the FBI for an investigation.
"I sent them. Something we've, I probably wouldn't have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized administration,"
Comey said. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe made a similar statement regarding Flynn, which was uncovered by congressional
investigators.
Flynn's attorneys said
in the filing that they had been notified "he is terminating Covington & Burling LLP as his counsel and has already retained new
counsel for this matter."
Powell is the author of the New York Times best seller and tell-all book
Licensed To Lie, which exposed the corruption within the justice system. The book is based on the case Powell won against prosecutor
Andrew Weissmann, when he was deputy and later director of the Enron Task Force.
Weissmann served as Mueller's second in command for the special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign, despite the
fact that his tactics have been highly criticized by both judges and colleagues. He was called unscrupulous and has had several significant
issues raised about how he operated during the Mueller inquiry into Trump campaign officials, including Flynn.
He prosecuted the accounting firm Arthur Andersen LLP, which ended in the collapse of the firm and 85,000 jobs lost world wide.
Maureen Mahoney took the case to the Supreme Court, and Powell consulted. Mahoney overturned Weissmann's conviction and the decision
was
reversed unanimously by the court.
Powell has openly stated in columns and on cable networks that Weissmann's dirty tactics of withholding exculpatory evidence
and threatening witnesses to garner prosecutions should have had him disbarred long ago.
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Powell has openly stated in columns and on cable networks that Weissmann's dirty tactics of withholding exculpatory evidence
and threatening witnesses to garner prosecutions should have had him disbarred long ago.
Flynn plead guilty after Mueller [ Weissmann ] threatened Flynn's family, including his son Michael Jr. According to sources
close to Flynn family, Mueller threatened Flynn on multiple occasions that if he did not plead guilty to lying to the FBI, Mueller
would investigate other Flynn family members, including his son.
Good people tend to talk to law enforcement because they naively believe that people in government and LE have good intentions
and follow the rule of law. A lot of people get screwed trying to legitimately help, sad as that is.
I sent them. Something we've, I probably wouldn't have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized administration,"
Comey said. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe made a similar statement regarding Flynn, which was uncovered by congressional
investigators.
Well Comeboy, we will keep that in mind when you are brought before a jury of your peers. Make sure you have a good lawyer.
******* incredible. Why on earth is our government so filled with sociopaths. What have we done to deserve this level of treatment?
I hope the whole cabal ends up in jail.
If you don't think treason matters, Weissman's games with Alaskan senator Ted Stevens caused a Democrat to get elected in a
red state and was the 60th vote needed for Obama care.
Although I wasn't enamored with the amount of military personnel Trump initially chose for his cabinet, Flynn didn't feel like
the same type as McMaster and Kelly. I hope he can get his name cleared
Unless we drain the swamp, decent people will be discouraged from entering public service. They've dragged this man through
the mud while conflicted high level bureaucrats, corrupt FBI types, the DNC, the Clintons, and all the other pieces of swamp crap
are still basking in the sunshine.
Let's not forget the rabidly over-the-top military assaults on elderly people in the middle of the night. Although I doubt
he ever tried that on some mafia guy. Just solid citizens.
In announcing that DOJ had declined to prosecuted this unnamed high-ranking FBI official, the inspector general also said that
the case in question had been referenced in the IG's earlier report on the FBI's activities leading up to the 2016 election.
"The OIG investigation," said a summary released
by the OIG , "concluded that the DAD engaged in misconduct when the DAD: (1) disclosed to the media the existence of information
that had been filed under seal in federal court, in violation of 18 USC 401, Contempt of Court; (2) provided without authorization
FBI law enforcement sensitive information to reporters on multiple occasions; and (3) had dozens of official contacts with the
media without authorization, in violation of FBI policy."
I get that the DOJ punted, but Barr is going to fry his ***, so unlike the presentation you depict, they are still going after
this ****
Nice attempt at deception
Occams_Razor_Trader_Part_Deux , 54 minutes ago
link
"In announcing that DOJ had declined to prosecuted this unnamed high-ranking FBI official"
That's Barr's DOJ that decided to not prosecute an unnamed deputy assistant director of the FBI that was found to have leaked
information which is misconduct! Unless that person is cooperating with the investigation- THAT'S ********!
This is beautiful! A lot of legal luminaries will have the opportunity to bring their brilliant minds to the table, to help
repair the laws of the Republic.. Let them tackle issues such as privacy, spying on citizens, the Patriot Act, unreasonable seizures
and searches, police brutality, home/office invasions etc.
If such a battlefield is provided (legal battlefields), perhaps we might contrive a delay in "cessation" of dissemination.
Let Comey and the others lawyer up too, the hammer is gonna drop, and let the executive lawyer up as well, we're gonna restore
the foundation of the Republic!
What took you so long Sidney Powell? Life is good, battle beckons!
Let's have at it, restoration of Law, that is, cheers...
I enjoy listening to Sidney Powell speak on this matter.
She's got guts, and with the smarts required to win against these criminals running everything. I hope she has good security.
She's someone I'd not want to go up against in a courtroom.
How they treated Flynn was a disgrace. Just think of how law enforcement treats the average citizen with no power and no publicity
to shine light on their cases. I hope they slam these guys. I would say that the judges in cases like these should be throwing
cases like this out. The courts have become politicized and a lot of judges need to be shown the door as well.
I think it is oversimplification. It was the intelligence agencies that controlled Hillary,
not vise versa. The interests of intelligence agencies and Hillary campaign coincided, that's why
she got as much support form CIA and FBI: Trump represented a central danger to flow of funds to
"national security parasites" so their reaction was predictable reaction of any large bureaucracy
of the possibility of losing power -- they circle the wagons.
Notable quotes:
"... But Steele's first overture on July 5, 2016, failed to capture the FBI's imagination. So the Clinton machine escalated. Steele, a British national, went to senior Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr -- whose wife, Nellie, also worked for Fusion -- to push his Trump dirt to the top of the FBI. ..."
"... Nellie Ohr likewise sent some of her own anti-Trump research augmenting Steele's dossier to the FBI through her husband. Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann used his connection to former FBI general counsel James Baker to dump Trump dirt at the FBI, too. ..."
"... In short, the Clinton machine flooded the FBI with pressure -- and bad intel -- until an investigation of Trump was started. The bureau and its hapless sheriff at the time, James Comey, eventually acquiesced with the help of such Clinton fans as then-FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. ..."
"... The Clinton team's dirty trick was as diabolical as it was brilliant. It literally used house money and a large part of the U.S. intelligence apparatus to carry out its political hit job on Trump. ..."
"... After two years of American discomfort, and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars spent, it's time for the house to call in its IOU. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton owes us answers -- lots of them. So far, she has ducked them, even while doing many high-profile media interviews. ..."
"... Longtime Clinton adviser Douglas Schoen said Friday night on Fox News that it's time for Clinton to answer what she knew and when she knew it. ..."
"... John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists' misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports . ..."
During the combined two decades she served as a U.S. senator and secretary of State,
Hillary Clinton 's
patrons regularly donated to her family charity when they had official business pending before
America's most powerful political woman.
The pattern of political IOUs paid to the Clinton Foundation was so pernicious that the
State Department even tried to execute a special
agreement with the charity to avoid the overt appearance of "pay-to-play" policy.
Still, the money continued to flow by the millions of dollars, from foreigners and Americans
alike who were perceived to be indebted to the Clinton machine or in need of its help.
It's time for the American public to call in their own IOU on political transparency.
The reason? Never before -- until 2016 -- had the apparatus of a U.S. presidential candidate
managed to sic the weight of the FBI and U.S. intelligence community on a rival nominee during
an election, and by using a foreign-fed, uncorroborated political opposition research
document.
But Clinton's campaign, in concert with the Democratic Party and through their shared law
firm, funded Christopher Steele's unverified
dossier which, it turns out, falsely portrayed Republican Donald Trump as a treasonous asset colluding with
Russian President Vladimir Putin to hijack the U.S. election.
Steele went to the FBI to get an investigation started and then leaked the existence of the
investigation, with the hope of sinking Trump's presidential aspirations.
On its face, it is arguably the most devious political dirty trick in American history and
one of the most overt intrusions of a foreigner into a U.S. election.
It appears the Clinton machine knew that what it was doing was controversial. That's why it
did backflips to disguise the operation from Congress and the public, and in its Federal
Election Commission (FEC) spending reports.
Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC)
used the law firm of Perkins Coie to hire Glenn Simpson's research firm, Fusion GPS, which
then hired Steele -- several layers that obfuscated transparency, kept the operation off the
campaign's public FEC reports and gave the Clintons plausible deniability.
But Steele's first overture on July 5, 2016, failed to capture the FBI's imagination. So
the Clinton machine escalated. Steele, a British national, went to senior Department of Justice
official Bruce Ohr -- whose wife, Nellie, also worked for Fusion -- to push his Trump dirt to
the top of the FBI.
Nellie Ohr likewise sent some of her own anti-Trump research augmenting Steele's dossier
to the FBI through her husband. Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann
used his connection to former FBI general counsel James Baker to dump Trump dirt at the
FBI, too.
In short, the Clinton machine flooded the FBI with pressure -- and bad intel -- until an
investigation of Trump was started. The bureau and its hapless sheriff at the time, James
Comey, eventually acquiesced with the help of such Clinton fans as then-FBI employees Peter
Strzok and Lisa Page.
To finish the mission, Simpson and Steele leaked the existence of the FBI investigation to
the news media to ensure it would hurt Trump politically. Simpson even
called the leaks a "hail Mary" that failed.
Trump won, however. And now, thanks to special counsel Robert Mueller, we know the
Russia-collusion allegations relentlessly peddled by Team Clinton were bogus. But not before
the FBI used the Clinton-funded, foreign-created research to get a total of four warrants to
spy on the Trump campaign , transition and presidency from October 2016 through the
following autumn.
The Clinton team's dirty trick was as diabolical as it was brilliant. It literally used
house money and a large part of the U.S. intelligence apparatus to carry out its political hit
job on Trump.
After two years of American discomfort, and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars spent,
it's time for the house to call in its IOU.
Hillary Clinton owes us answers -- lots of them. So far, she has ducked them, even while
doing many high-profile media interviews.
I'm not the only one who thinks this way. Longtime Clinton adviser Douglas Schoen said
Friday night on Fox News that it's time for Clinton to answer what she knew and when she knew
it.
Here are 10 essential questions:
Please identify each person in your campaign, including Perkins Coie lawyers, who were
aware that Steele provided information to the FBI or State Department, and when they learned
it.
Describe any information you and your campaign staff received, or were briefed on, before
Election Day that was derived from the work of Simpson, Steele, Fusion GPS, Nellie Ohr or
Perkins Coie and that tried to connect Trump, his campaign or his business empire with
Russia.
Did you or any senior members of your campaign, including lawyers such as Michael
Sussmann, have any contact with the CIA, its former Director John Brennan, current Director
Gina Haspel, James Baker, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page or former FBI Deputy Director Andrew
McCabe?
Describe all
contacts your campaign had with Cody Shearer and Sidney Blumenthal concerning Trump,
Russia and Ukraine.
Describe all contacts you and your campaign had
with DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa, the Ukraine government, the Ukraine Embassy in the
United States or the U.S. Embassy in Kiev concerning Trump, Russia or former Trump campaign
chairman Paul Manafort.
Why did your campaign and the Democratic Party make a concerted effort to portray Trump as
a Russian asset?
Given that investigations by a House committee, a Senate committee and a special
prosecutor all have concluded there isn't evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, do you regret
the actions by your campaign and by Steele, Simpson and Sussmann to inject these unfounded
allegations into the FBI, the U.S. intelligence community and the news media?
Hillary Clinton owes us answers to each of these questions. She should skip the lawyer-speak
and answer them with the candor worthy of an elder American stateswoman.
John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has
exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists'
misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political
corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at
The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports .
This is a brilliant article by Tabbi. So far the best expose of hatchet job Mueller was forced or volunteered to perform.
All "Russian agents" in the story magically turn with time into FBI provocateurs ;-)
The whole episode with Kilimnik reveals the poisoned microcosm of the Russiagate: unhinged speculation, a flailing, openly accusatory
posture, maximally evil motives ascribed to insignificant actions, lockstep agreement on everything (especially the limitless treason
of the president), no allowance for the possibility of gray areas
Claim that would-be key Russiagate figure Konstantin Kilimnik is a longtime American informant might be a game-changing story –
in a country with a real press corps
Notable quotes:
"... There are two big possibilities: either Solomon's report is wrong somehow, and the nature of Kilimnik's relationship with the United States government has been misrepresented, or he's right and this tale at the "heart" of the Mueller probe has been over-spun in an Everest of misleading news reports. ..."
"... It's a failed state department and intelligence coup. ..."
"... There is no nice way to say it. the press was complicit, repeating "leaked" information from FBI sources. Leaked implies an accidental release of info. This was deliberate. ..."
John Solomon of The Hill just came out with what could be a narrative-changing story. If news organizations that heavily covered
Russiagate don't at least check out this report – confirm it or refute it – few explanations other than bias will make sense. In "
Key figure that Mueller report linked to Russia was a State Department intel source ," Solomon asserts that Konstantin Kilimnik,
the mysterious Ukrainian cohort of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, has been a "sensitive" source for the U.S. State department
dating back to at least 2013, including "while he was still working for Manafort." Solomon describes Kilimnik meeting "several times
a week" with the chief political officer of the U.S. Embassy in Kiev. Kilimnik "relayed messages back to Ukraine's leaders and delivered
written reports to U.S. officials via emails that stretched on for thousands of words," according to memos Solomon reviewed. Solomon's
report, which raises significant questions about an episode frequently described as the "heart" of the Mueller investigation (and which
was the subject of thousands of news stories), came out on June 6th. As of June 8th, here's the list of major news organizations that
have followed up on his report:
That's it. Nobody else has touched it. Solomon is a controversial figure, especially to Democratic audiences. The Columbia Journalism
Review has hounded him in the
past for what it called "suspect" work, especially for pushing "less than meets the eye" stories that turned into right-wing talking
points. The Washington Post has done stories citing Hill staffers who've complained that a trail of "Solomon investigations"
that veered "rightward" was also misleading and lacking "context." The Post likewise quoted staffers who complained that Solomon
was making too much of texts between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok of the FBI. On the Russiagate story, however, Solomon clearly has sources,
as he's repeatedly broken news about things that other reporters have heard about, but didn't have in full. He reported about former
British spy and FBI informant
Christopher Steele speaking to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavelec before the 2016 election, among other things
admitting he'd been speaking to the media. Solomon also reported that Kavelec's notes about Steele had been passed to the FBI, eight
days before the FBI described Steele as credible in a FISA warrant application. It would be one thing if other outlets were rebutting
his claims about Kilimnik, as people have with some of this other stories. But this report has attracted zero response from non-conservative
media, despite the fact that Kilimnik has long been one of the most talked-about figures in the whole Russiagate drama. This story matters
for a few reasons. If Kilimnik was that regular and important a U.S. government source, it would deal a blow to the credibility of Special
Counsel Robert Mueller.
Kilimnik's relationship with Manafort was among the most damaging to Donald Trump in the Mueller report. Here
was Trump's campaign manager commiserating with a man Mueller said was "assessed" to have "ties to Russian intelligence." In one of
the most lurid sections of the Mueller report, Manafort is described writing to Kilimnik after being named Trump's campaign manager
to ask if "our friends" had seen media coverage about his new role. "Absolutely. Every article," said Kilimnik. To this, Manafort replied:
"How do we use to get whole. Has Ovd operation seen?" referring to Deripaska. The implication was clear: Manafort was offering to use
his position within the Trump campaign to "get whole" with the scary metals baron, Deripaska. Manafort believed his role on the campaign
could help "confirm" Deripaska would drop a lawsuit he had filed against Manafort. When Manafort later sent "internal polling data"
to Kilimnik with the idea that it was being shared with Ukrainian oligarchs and Deripaska, this seemed like very damaging news indeed:
high-ranking Trump official gives inside info to someone with "ties" to Russian intelligence. Mueller didn't just describe Kilimnik
as having ties to Russian intelligence. He said that while working in Moscow between 1998 and 2005 for the
International Republican Institute – that's an American think-tank connected to the
Republican Party, its sister organization being the National Democratic Institute – IRI officials told the FBI he'd been fired because
his "links to Russian intelligence were too strong." In other words, Mueller not only made a current assessment about Kilimnik, he made
a show of retracing Kilimnik's career steps in a series of bullet points, from his birth in the Dnieprpetrovsk region in 1970 to his
travel to the U.S. in 1997, to his effort in 2014 to do PR work defending Russia's move into Crimea. Mueller left out a bit, according
to Solomon, who says he "reviewed" FBI and State Department memos about Kilimnik's status as an informant. He even went so far as to
name the U.S. embassy officials in Ukraine who dealt with Kilimnik:
Alan Purcell, the chief political officer at the Kiev embassy from 2014 to 2017, told FBI agents that State officials, including
senior embassy officials Alexander Kasanof and Eric Schultz, deemed Kilimnik to be such a valuable asset that they kept his name
out of cables for fear he would be compromised by leaks to WikiLeaks. "Purcell described what he considered an unusual level
of discretion that was taken with handling Kilimnik," states one FBI interview report that I reviewed. "Normally the head of the
political section would not handle sources, but Kasanof informed Purcell that KILIMNIK was a sensitive source."
This relationship was described in "hundreds of pages of government documents" that Solomon reports Mueller "possessed since 2018."
The FBI, he added, knew all about Kilimnik's status as a State Department informant before the conclusion of Mueller's investigation.
This is one of a growing number of examples of people whose status as documented U.S. informants goes unmentioned in the Mueller report,
where they are instead described under the general heading, "Russian government links to, and contact with, the Trump campaign." One
of the first such "Russian-government connected individuals" is Felix Sater, described in Mueller's report as a "New York based real
estate advisor" who contacted Cohen with a "new inquiry about building a Trump Tower project in Moscow." It's Sater who initiates the
inquiry and Sater who wrote the most
oft-quoted emails to Cohen, like "Buddy our boy can become President of the USA" and "I will get all of Putin's team to buy in."
Sater in the report encourages Cohen to keep the project alive and keeps promising he can deliver meetings with the likes of Putin and
aide Dmitry Peskov. But nowhere in the report is it disclosed that Sater, as
reported by the Intercept , has been a registered
FBI informant since 1998, when after racketeering and assault cases he signed a cooperation agreement. The document was
signed on the government
side by Mueller's future chief investigator, Andrew Weissman , another detail no one seems to find odd.
Similarly there is a section in the report involving a character named Henry Oknyansky (a.k.a. Henry Greenberg). Oknyansky-Greenberg
(he has other aliases) is a Miami-based hustler who approached former Trump aide Michael Caputo in May of 2016, ostensibly offering
"derogatory information" on Hillary Clinton. Mueller lists the Greenberg case under a header about "potential Russian interest in Russian
hacked materials."
He leaves out the part where any idiot with a PACER account can
run a search on Greenberg and find the series of court
documents in which the oft-arrested figure claims, "I cooperated with the FBI for 17 years, often put my life in danger." Of course,
anyone bold enough might claim to be an FBI informant in an effort to stave off deportation.
But in this case, in an effort to prove to he was in fact a government tipster, Greenberg submitted a Freedom of Information Request
to the FBI about himself – and actually got the documentation! California court records show Oknyansky/Greenberg received a series of
"significant public benefit" parole visas of varying lengths from the U.S. government between 2008 and 2012. The documents even list
the name and phone number of his FBI case officer.
Mueller's failure to identify the U.S. government links to either Greenberg or Sater was suspicious (there are other head-scratching
omissions as well), but failing to do so in the case of Kilimnik would be mind-boggling. Manafort's interactions with Kilimnik were
described by Judge Amy Berman Jackson as the "
undisputed
core of the Office of Special Counsel's investigation ." Much was made of the fact that Kilimnik visited the Trump Tower in August
of 2016 to present a plan for resolving the Russian-Ukrainian conflict:
Kilimnik requested the meeting to deliver in person a peace plan for Ukraine that Manafort acknowledged to the Special Counsel's
Office was a 'backdoor' way for Russia to control part of eastern Ukraine; both men believed the plan would require Trump assent
to succeed.
But Solomon's report indicates Kilimnik traveled to the U.S. twice in 2016 to meet with State officials, and delivered the same "peace
plan" to Obama administration officials. Kilimnik appeared to have discussed the plan in Washington with former embassy official Alexander
Kasanof – who'd since been promoted to a senior State position – at a dinner on May 5, 2016. Not that anyone much cares, but Kilimnik
has angrily denied the characterization of him as a spy. As Solomon writes: Officials for the State Department, the FBI, the Justice
Department and Mueller's office did not respond to requests for comment. Kilimnik did not respond to an email seeking comment but, in
an email
last month to The Washington Post , he slammed the Mueller report's "made-up narrative" about him. "I have no ties to Russian or,
for that matter, any intelligence operation," he wrote. The Manafort-Kilimnik tale is a fundamentally different news story if Kilimnik
is more of an American asset than a Russian one. If Kilimnik was giving regular reports to the State Department through 2016, if his
peace plan was not a diabolical Trump-Manafort backdoor effort to carve up Ukraine, if Kilimnik was someone who could be "flabbergasted
at the Russian invasion of Crimea," as Solomon says the FBI concluded, then this entire part of the Russiagate story has been farce.
It would become a more ambiguous story that was made to look diabolical through inference and omission. Though it might not absolve
Paul Manafort of lying or thinking he was doing something wrong, it could change the complexion of the actual narrative, how we should
understand the story. "Trump campaign manager gives polling data to longtime U.S. government informant" doesn't have the same punch
as " Manafort
Suggests He Gave Suspected Russian Spy 2016 Polling Data," as the oft-hyperventilating Daily Beast put it. The Times
did cover some of this ground a while ago, in a story that to me lends credence to the idea that the Hill and the Times
were looking at the same Kilimnik documents. The Times , which has become a dependable venue for the gentle spinning of soon-to-be-released
dispositive information about the collusion theory, wrote a long feature on Kilimnik in February: "
Russian Spy or Hustling Political
Operative? The Enigmatic Figure at the Heart of Mueller's Inquiry ." That piece, based on "dozens of interviews, court filings and
other documents," described Kilimnik as an "operator who moved easily between Russian, Ukrainian and American patrons, playing one off
the other while leaving a jumble of conflicting suspicions in his wake." The Times added:
To American diplomats in Washington and Kiev, [Kilimnik] has been a well-known character for nearly a decade, developing a reputation
as a broker of valuable information
The paper noted that Kilimnik traveled "freely" to the U.S. and appeared to reference the dinner with Kasanof, noting Kilimnik "in May
2016 met senior State Department officials for drinks at the Off the Record bar." Only in the last two paragraphs did they get to the
point, quoting Caputo:
To buttress this case, Mr. Manafort's lawyers requested and received records from the government showing that Mr. Kilimnik communicated
with officials at the American Embassy in Kiev. "If he was a Russian intelligence asset, then the State Department officials
who met with him over the years should be under investigation," Mr. Caputo said.
No shit! It's one thing if Kilimnik was just another hustler who moved back and forth between Western and Russian orbits, trading on
connections on both sides. There were countless such figures in Moscow, especially dating back to the nineties, when Kilimnik began
working for the IRI. But it's a different matter if Kilimnik was meeting multiple times a week with American embassy officials and providing
thousands of words of intel on a regular basis. There's no scenario where Kilimnik is actually a Russian spy and that kind of record
doesn't reflect badly on whoever was regularly downloading and sharing his intelligence on the American side.
There are two big possibilities:
either Solomon's report is wrong somehow, and the nature of Kilimnik's relationship with the United States government has been misrepresented,
or he's right and this tale at the "heart" of the Mueller probe has been over-spun in an Everest of misleading news reports.
Either
way, it has to be looked into. It appears, though, that no one among the usual suspects is interested, just as the press declined to
descend upon Italy in search of the ostensible Patient Zero of Russiagate, Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud (who was said to be shacked
up in a Rome apartment for seven months after the Russiagate insanity broke before going to ground).
MSNBC burned up countless hours
obsessing over the Manafort-Kilimnik relationship. You can find the tale discussed ad nauseum
here ,
here ,
here ,
here , and in many other places, with Kilimnik routinely described on air as a "
Russian asset " with "ties to Russian intelligence," who even
bragged that he learned his English from Russian spies.
Some reports said Manafort's conduct "hints" at collusion, while Chris Cilizza said his meetings with a "Russian-linked operative" were a "
very big deal
." Bloviator-in-chief Jake Tapper wondered if this story was "
Game, Set, Match " for the collusion case. Anytime a Democrat spoke about how "stunning" and "damning" was the news that Manafort
gave Kilimnik poll numbers, reporters
repeated
those assertions in a snap. I could go up and down the line with the Times
, the
Washington Post , and other print outlets.
Every major news organization that covered Russiagate has covered the hell out of
this part of the story. But the instant there's a suggestion there's another angle:
crickets . Russiagate is fast becoming a post-journalistic news phenomenon. We live in an information landscape so bifurcated,
media companies don't cover news, because they can stick with narratives.
Kilimnik being a regular State Department informant crosses
the MSNBC-approved line that he's a Russian cutout who tried to leverage Donald Trump's campaign manager. So it literally has no news
value to many companies, even if it's clearly a newsworthy item according to traditional measure. Incidentally, Solomon's report being
true wouldn't necessarily exonerate either Kilimnik or Manafort.
It may just mean a complication of the picture, along with uncomfortable
questions for Robert Muller and embassy officials who dealt with Kilimnik. That's what's so maddening. We've gotten to the point where
news editors and producers are more like film continuity editors -- worried about maintaining literary consistency in coverage -- than
addressing newsworthy developments that might move us into gray areas. Our press sucks. There are third-world dictatorships where newspapers
try harder than they do here. We used to at least pretend to cover the bases. Now, we're a joke.
FWIW, Larry Johnson of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) had a post about how Solomon may have fumbled
what Klimnick's role was as an "source" of the State Department. (You'll this it is not written as a defense of the Mueller
Report.)
' Konstantin Kilimnik was not a special State Department source. He was a routine contact. Solomon is correct is pointing
out that the Mueller team portrays contacts with Kilimnik as nefarious and potentially illegal. That is just another example
of the fraud and shoddiness that is the Mueller Report.
A genuine Foreign Service Officer aka FSO (i.e., someone who has taken passed the Foreign Service exams and been appointed
to the State Departmnet) serving in a U.S. Embassies overseas do not recruit nor run "confidential" human sources. That is
the work of the CIA and the DIA. Foreign Service Officers meet with foreign citizens and they do so without having training
in conducting clandestine meetings and using clandestine methods to communicate.
Almost all meetings between a FAO and a foreign "source" occur at the U.S. Embassy or Consulate or at some public diplomatic
function, such as a reception. The FSO does not set up "secret" meetings.
...
Solomon is skirting the real story--there was nothing unusual or out of the ordinary about Kilimnik communicating with a
U.S. Embassy official. There also was nothing wrong about Kilimnik communicating with Manafort and passing along information
received from Manafort. Manafort was not dealing in classified information or intel that was proprietary to the U.S. Government.
Nor was he getting paid by the Russians (though that would not have been illegal either) to collect U.S. intelligence.
Foreign Service Officer Kasanof did what any state department officer working in the Political Section of the U.S. Embassy
in Kiev would do--he obtained non-classified information from Ukrainians with access to information and key personnel and communicated
that back to main State. Normal work for real U.S. diplomats.
The real heart of the matter is that the Kilimnik/Kasanof communications were ignored by Mueller. Nothing that Paul Manafort
was passing on to Kilimnik was illegal or inappropriate.
Solomon wastes a lot of ink trying to paint Kilimnik as some sort of super secret "State Department source." Talking to
a person like Kilimnik is routine and quite normal for a FSO working out of the U.S. Embassy in Kiev. Their reports on a conversation
with Kilimnik would be classified as either Confidential or Secret. A really sensitive contact (and Kilimnik was not that)
would get an additional caveat, such as EXDIS, which would limit distribution inside State Department. Kilimnik is really not
that special. He had no formal position with the Ukrainian Government and only was offering his own well-informed opinion.
That kind of information does not qualify as "sensitive" intelligence. '
It's a failed state department and intelligence coup.There is no nice way to say it. the press was complicit, repeating "leaked" information from FBI sources. Leaked implies
an accidental release of info. This was deliberate.
I'm telling you... the political power in this country was too busy stuffing it's faces in the greedy trough to be manning
the helm, and while they were asleep at the wheel, dreaming about god-knows-what decadence the human mind can dream of, Trump
hijacked their own propaganda arm and played them all.
Now, look at the shit we have to deal with. Most people are "just OK" with a corrupted political system that they know is bought and paid for, so long as the cart stays
upright. The cart is precariously sitting atop a heap of crap though, and the pinnacle is too narrow to support it.
The notion that makes Potus 45 to be guilty till proven innocent? Surely, anyone is a
criminal to practice that in that nature, since the legal justice and bill of rights only
accepts the exact opposite of what it try to suggest. Tho Msm do it often, it doesnt mean its
right.... media should be held accountable and stiffer price should be paid (12yrs hard labor
imprisonment minimum or per count. To prevent people in the news to use their wide reach for
their benefit or they will to be used as a tools or parrots from people of monetary influence
to ruin peoples lives permanently. Which often they did since they got the statewide
broadcast... so on and so forth. They been unchallenged by anyone outside from its network
since the 50's) If not with the internet? Msm parrot's crap are revealed for what they
are.... train to talk to make bullshit to look like delicious cupcake lol And mueller, is
just another cupcake of the system of the dnc
Mark Meadows confirmed what many have suspected about the Trump-Russia for a long time; the FBI knew early on that the foundation
of its counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign was built on 'a foundation of sand,' reports the Daily Caller 's Chuck
Ross.
North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows (R) told Hannity Friday night that the FBI knew "within 60 days of them opening the investigation,
prior to [Robert] Mueller coming on, the FBI and the [Department of Justice] knew that Christopher Steele was not credible, the dossier
was not true, George Papadopoulos was innocent."
Meadows did not elaborate on why he believes the FBI knew their investigation was built on a mountain of lies, however according
to The Hill 's John Solomon last month, memos which were retroactively classified by the DOJ reveal that a high-ranking government
official who met with Christopher Steele in October 2016 determined that
information in the Trump-Russia dossier was inaccurate , and likely leaked to the media.
Meadows also suggested that the FBI had exculpatory information on Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who was fed the
rumor that Russia had negative information on Hillary Clinton, and later bilked for said information by a Clinton-linked Australian
diplomat. Papadopoulos would later be subject to a spying operation in which the FBI sent in two operatives to trick the Trump adviser
in a failed business / honeypot operation.
The bureau opened its investigation of the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016, after receiving a tip about Papadopoulos from the
Australian government. Within those two months, the FBI team leading the investigation received information from Steele's dossier.
The FBI also dispatched a longtime FBI informant,
Stefan Halper , to meet with
Papadopoulos.
The pair met in London in mid-September 2016 after Halper offered Papadopoulos $3,000 to write a policy paper. Halper, a former
Cambridge professor, was accompanied by a woman he claimed was his assistant,
Azra Turk . She is reportedly
a government investigator.
Meadows in the past has suggested the FBI had exculpatory information on Papadopoulos that showed the Trump aide was not working
with Russia. - Daily Caller
The FBI relied on the Steele dossier to obtain surveillance warrants on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, ostensibly
allowing the Obama administration to surveil those Page was in contact with.
Obummer put it all together......Little mr community organizer.....He had nothing to lose as he wasn't going to be able
to run again.
PS....did you hear about the half a BILLION dollars in travel and security perks obummer ok's for himself into "retirement"
on the taxpayers' dime? obummer is a puke. Fortunately, Trump undid that little executive order.
I wish I was George Papadopoulos -- he is going to be a multi millionaire from legal judgements against Comey, Brennen, US
Govt, McCabe and hopefully, the Clintons and Obama. Every week in jail is an extra million....no wonder he didnt get a pardon.
All those *** holes pensions should be made payable to all the injured parties--Stone, Papadopoulos, Flynn, Manafort, and all
the Trumps that had to use so much of their time fighting false accusations.
They will never pay him any restitution, though he is the one who deserves it the most. They thought they were just dealing
with stupid twerp who would grab the bait - using a boobalicious woman as the lure. Turns out he was sharper than the pros - says
alot. The FBI thinks it is the sharpest ax in the shed, which has been proven otherwise...
Now, if Barr only does not cover for Mueller because they are best buds, like he seemed to do when Mueller made that very queer
statement a few weeks back, in what seemed to be an herculean effort to confuse the restless public even more.
Confirmatiom bias. You have to say stuff like that in advance while also considering other situations that could cause the same outcome. Its not easy, but becomes easier with practice.
YOU MEAN......It took $40 Million Investigation, to tell us what we already knew : "FOUNDATION OF SAND".....Created by them, their boss, OBAMA, & his MOB Syndicate.....???
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is
less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his
sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor;
he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies
deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars
of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague."
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
The Former Bureau of Investigation knew from the start since it was in on the whole thing. It's not dissimilar from all the
entrapment scenarios they used to be involved in when the agency existed desperately trying to pad the stats on how wonderful
a job it was doing stopping terrorists.
Every activity for quite some time now, as with 100% of all now global former so called law enforcement, are felonies under
color of law/authority. And now that the global judiciary were permanently relieved of duty and all courts dissolved nobody can
pretend to either pull together a fake prosecution or ignore the sedition, treason and real crimes and pretend those don't deserve
prosecution.
When did alleged so called prosecutors first delusionally pretend that only these jobs could move something along legally?
No problems it will be disclosed publicly at your trials. ALL types of immunity were permanently eliminated longer ago than any
have been working so don't hold a false sense of security.
The FBI knew their investigation was based on a mountain of lies because they were the ones who lied to get the fake investigation
going. Does not take any monumental logic to state. I watched last night - it was Bongino sitting in for Sean. By the time you
get done listening, you almost get a bit confused because they need to use so many words/mental snares to describe the actions
that took place, when it is really that simple.
Robert Mueller is special counsel no more, but he fired a parting shot during his televised
statement that has sent Democrats into a frenzy of calls for impeaching President Donald Trump,
whether by accident or by design. At a remarkable press conference on Wednesday – at
which he refused to take questions – Mueller sank the theory that Attorney General
William Barr somehow misinterpreted his report, and sent a clear message to House Democrats
eager to have him testify about the probe that "the report is my testimony."
Despite years of work, millions of dollars and near-unlimited powers, Mueller's special
prosecutors found zero evidence of collusion or conspiracy – and absent that underlying
crime, no grounds to charge the US president with obstruction of justice, even as they wrote up
240 pages of tortured reasoning as to why they wanted to. Case closed, conspiracies put to bed,
lots of people with egg on their face, time for the republic to move on, right?
Wrong!
Did you honestly expect people who have gone all in on a conspiracy theory about Russia
somehow "stealing" the election from Hillary Clinton – investing not just the past
three years, but their entire political and media capital into it – to give up just
because there isn't a grain of truth in it? Instead, they latched onto Mueller's carefully
weasel-worded declaration:
If we had confidence the President did not commit a crime, we would have said
so.
That was no mere misstep, either. Mueller followed that line up with a passage about how his
office did not make a determination whether Trump committed a crime because the standing policy
of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) is that a sitting president cannot be indicted. Not their
fault, you see, they had no choice.
Does the OLC guideline prevent a prosecutor from at least specifying chargeable conduct by
POTUS and recommending those charges? If not, why didn't Mueller do it?
The entirety of volume II is Mueller slinging innuendo at Trump without making a firm
commitment to anything
That strategic vagueness allowed Mueller to dodge the massive constitutional problems with
his obstruction theory
Which aggressively impinges on the President's power
-- Will Chamberlain
🇺🇸 (@willchamberlain) May 29,
2019
Except they did, and they had the avenue to make their claim – but chose not to,
knowing that Barr would shoot it down, because he disagreed with their interpretation of
obstruction laws long before he became AG. But those are details known to lawyers and honest
legal analysts, not the propagandists and conspiracy-peddlers who have spent years whipping the
American public into a hysteria not seen since the 1950s.
Mueller's was a weasel statement, worthy of former FBI boss and his personal friend James
Comey – who actually admitted to Congress that he hoped to force the appointment of a
special counsel by leaking the memos of his meetings with Trump to the press.
It also seems to have been a dog-whistle to Democrats, who have been arguing ever since the
Mueller report was published that it totally proved obstruction of justice and gave them the
pretext for impeachment. A variety of party luminaries, such as House Judiciary Committee Chair
Jerry Nadler (D-New York), presidential candidate Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) and
firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), now doubled down on the claim.
Read my statement following Special Counsel Robert Muller's press conference this morning
on the conclusion of the investigation into President Trump and his associates: pic.twitter.com/1FDMotIgiY
-- (((Rep.
Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler) May 29,
2019
Robert Mueller's statement makes it clear: Congress has a legal and moral obligation to
begin impeachment proceedings immediately.
What happens next is anybody's guess: Democrats may hope enough Republicans will break ranks
to successfully impeach and convict Trump, though that's no more likely to succeed than any of
the schemes to overturn the 2016 election result so far. Or they might hope that impeachment
proceedings will mobilize their voters for 2020. Either way, the opposition party and the media
aligned with it are determined to keep flogging the dead horse of Russiagate, hoping it will
deliver them victory.
Those who believe Mueller's mission was to "get Trump" will no doubt be happy with
the former special counsel's last move. But Americans who hoped he would clear the air clogged
by endless conspiracy theories have every right to feel disappointed.
I demand a $35 million refund from Mueller and his staff. Their job was to add clarity. He
did exactly the opposite.
"... Other than it is against the law for CIA to spy in the US. It is FBI's job. And Brennan lied to Congress under oath, a crime for which Clinton was impeached. And the fact that if they are coneding this crime, they must've been caught on something even bigger. ..."
"... They are way out of control. They need to take a step back and reevaluate their reason for being and their goals. You can't protect the people if you see them as the enemy. ..."
"... The intelligence agencies are civil servants who need to be reigned in whenever they exceed the instructions given to them by their civilian bosses. ..."
"... And the CIA torture? ..."
"... Who ever was over the hacking of the Senator's computer and the Senator's staffers computers should be invited to leave. If that extends all the way up to Brennan, so be it. ..."
"... Unfortunately, that corrective action has to come from those who are perpetrating these crimes in order for it to be legal. It's the classic Catch-22 of political corruption. ..."
"... "They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretences, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace." ― Tacitus (AD56 to after AD117) The Agricola and the Germania ..."
"... The problem with political power is that it proves to be a magnet to those with sociopathic/psychopathic tendencies and they are easily corrupted. ..."
"... Back in the day, the people of Russia knew that what they were being fed was propaganda, in the US and the UK we thought it was news. ..."
"... Intelligence Agencies have their own Agenda. The CIA spy on everyone including the Senate it seems. Meanwhile the Israeli Intelligence Agencies spy on many people Including the USA,the very people who give them the money... ..."
"... If the CIA are Spying on the Senate you have to ask the Question who are they working for ? ..."
There should be no discussion about this! However just like Mockingbird, National Students Ass., Tailwind, PBSUCCESS,and so many
others, they will stall until they get it dropped from the media and we will forget again.
John Brennan's next job should be in a orange jump suit earning pennies and hour.
But we all know that this will never happen. Brennan is the right hand of the commander and chief of death, destruction and torture.
and has been for a long time. This is the work of evil, plain and simple.
How can you have any faith or trust in a government like this? It's one damn thing after another. The Executive branch, the Congress,
the high courts, the Justice Dept. are all corrupt. Laws are broken, constitutional protections are laughed at, we are constantly
being spied on. No charges are brought. Nobody goes to jail.
A minor detail?
The CIA and security services have every right to know who is who on all and every politician and their staff.
That's why we are safe. :-)
Other than it is against the law for CIA to spy in the US. It is FBI's job.
And Brennan lied to Congress under oath, a crime for which Clinton was impeached. And the fact that if they are coneding this
crime, they must've been caught on something even bigger.
Sure, everything else is just fine. As far as we know, that is.
They are way out of control. They need to take a step back and reevaluate their reason for being and their goals.
You can't protect the people if you see them as the enemy.
So it appears that some in Congress will get upset if a Executive agency misuses its powers? Are these the same folks who seem
to be okay with the IRS focus on Conservative 501(c)(3) applicants?
Who ever was over the hacking of the Senator's computer and the Senator's staffers computers should be invited to leave. If that
extends all the way up to Brennan, so be it.
Unfortunately, that corrective action has to come from those who are perpetrating these crimes in order for it to be legal. It's
the classic Catch-22 of political corruption.
Don't fire Brennan. Arrest him and charge him violating the prohibition against domestic surveillance, lying under oath and,
arguably, treason. Maybe there is space in Guantanamo for him to reflect upon the meaning of the Constitution and the rule of
law.
And the reason that we never hear of these supposed 'facts' is what? That we're all too dumb to know? Dumbing down America is
getting mighty costly of late, n'est-pas?
Just because they say you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Remember: America is not a democracy. That's a
sideshow. It's an oligarchy and don't you forget it.
You can always trust some govts/agencies/people to always take the wrong path/back door. It would simply never occur to them to
take the right one. This is who they are.
Staffs carry out directives. I'm not buying that staff had cause to go looking otherwise.
Feinstein has problems with being spied on, yet heads the Intelligence Committee who for several years has been authorizing
spying on - well, everybody.
Feinstein shouldn't worry about spying, unless she's doing something wrong. Isn't that the proposition?
So why is it scandalous for public officials in our supposed western liberal democracies to spy on officials in other agencies,
and deserving of an apology, but it's Okay for officials to spy on fellow citizens?
What might a government of the people that does not trust the people it governs be properly called?
I would like to point out that beyond what is touted in the press as "the story" the nature of these sorts of things can remain
hidden for many years. Recent events in Germany and in Washington, if viewed from a different perspective may be connected. In
the past when such revelations come to light it is resultant from security issues that are of such magnitude that those tasked
with intelligence responsibilities remain in power because they are simply doing their job and are doing so at the command of
elected officials, who when made aware of covert matters go all quiet and allow the chips to fall as they may. Seldom does the
public ever hear of the actual facts in a timely way, and by the time that does happens they have long since moved on to more
pressing matters.
Has any politician asked them to explain why they spied, in terms of their motivations ? It seems the 'why' is surely more damaging
than the act of spying itself?
What else is new!...Corruption / deceit / fraud / theft, at the highest level of tax payers money is being conducted..War criminals
being sponsored by their own corrupt government ministers / agencies, to create carnage, by divide & rule tactics...Its a fatal
backfiring failure / disaster which is causing their downfall.
Not surprising...All these out of control "rogue agencies" I.E. CIA / NSA / MI5 / MI6 / GCHG / MOSAD, must be brought to book
for their corrupt / deceitful / fraudulent workings...Their most senior officers are involved in a worldwide cover up into illegal
involvement of creating criminal wars around the world, by using spying techniques upon government institutions & citizens...The
recent scandal of phone tapping / voice mail / email interception, goes to show the lengths they are prepared to conduct / cover
up their own war criminality acts. They are the REAL terrorists !!
"They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by
ambition, if poor They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretences, and all of this they hail as the construction of
empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace."
― Tacitus (AD56 to after AD117) The Agricola and the Germania
They'll even eat their own... How this behaviour doesn't equate to criminal actions is part of the disgrace. The US government
have morphed in to a dystopian movement.
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA by Webster Griffin Tarpley (ISBN: 9780930852375) another good read and makes a plausible case
for a coup carried out on America.
In the reign of Elizabeth 1st a blacksmith was executed for treason because he was overhead saying that he believed the uncrowned
King Edward V was still alive.
A quick search on Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's Secretary of State will reveal for just how long and how sophisticated
state spying on state has been.
Yes, they don't like others to be in a position to know of their venality, their sexual deviances and assorted other human failings.
Else that knowledge be used to control them...............
The problem of how the rest of the world views the actions of the US is exacerbated by the seeming inability or disinterest of
its citizens in doing anything about it.
Admittedly, a frustration shared by many citizens/subjects in Western countries, that pretend to be functioning democracies but
are in fact anything but.
The problem with political power is that it proves to be a magnet to those with sociopathic/psychopathic tendencies and they
are easily corrupted.
We are politically and economically very poorly educated and are daily fed propaganda and mind filling mush by media that are
'on message'.
The media ownership needs to be broken up but politicians, corporations and the media are one self serving body and would resist
that and have the power to do so.
Back in the day, the people of Russia knew that what they were being fed was propaganda, in the US and the UK we thought it
was news.
Intelligence Agencies have their own Agenda.
The CIA spy on everyone including the Senate it seems.
Meanwhile the Israeli Intelligence Agencies spy on many people Including the USA,the very people who give them the money...
(Out of Control is the thought that springs to mind)
If the CIA are Spying on the Senate you have to ask the Question who are they working for ? Is it the American Government ? Is
it the American Military? Is it The American Citizen ? Or are we seeing the henchmen of the illuminati in action here !
Their fingers seem to be in every pie and no one seems to be able to control them .
"... Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, was described on page 6 of the Mueller report as having "ties to Russian intelligence" - and was cast in a sinister light as a potential threat to democracy. Mueller completely omitted the fact that Kilimnik was working as an informant and intermediary between America and Ukraine , and subsequently indicted him for obstruction of justice. ..."
"... Kilimnik was not just any run-of-the-mill source, either. He interacted with the chief political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, sometimes meeting several times a week to provide information on the Ukraine government. He relayed messages back to Ukraine's leaders and delivered written reports to U.S. officials via emails that stretched on for thousands of words, the memos show. ..."
"... What's more, the chief political officer at the Kiev embassy from 2014 to 2017, Alan Purcell, told the FBI that State officials - including senior embassy officials Alexander Kasanof and Eric Schultz, thought Klimnik was such a valuable asset that they wouldn't mention his name in official cables out of fear that WikiLeaks would expose him . ..."
"... Purcell told the FBI that Kilimnik provided "detailed information about OB (Ukraine's opposition bloc) inner workings" that sometimes was so valuable it was forwarded immediately to the ambassador . Purcell learned that other Western governments relied on Kilimnik as a source , too. ..."
"... Three sources with direct knowledge of the inner workings of Mueller's office confirmed to me that the special prosecutor's team had all of the FBI interviews with State officials, as well as Kilimnik's intelligence reports to the U.S. Embassy, well before they portrayed him as a Russian sympathizer tied to Moscow intelligence or charged Kilimnik with participating with Manafort in a scheme to obstruct the Russia investigation. - The Hill ..."
"... Kilimnik was described by Purcell's predecessor, Alexander Kasanov, as one of the few reliable informants spying on former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, whose Party of Regions had hired Manafort's lobbying firm. ..."
"... We learn this four days after deceptive edits were found in the Mueller report regarding a phone call between attorneys for President Trump and former national security adviser Mike Flynn designed to make it appear as though Trump was attempting to strongarm Flynn and possibly obstruct justice by shaping witness testimony. ..."
"... As Solomon concludes - "A few more such errors and omissions, and Americans may begin to wonder if the Mueller report is worth the paper on which it was printed. " Tags Politics ..."
"... No doubt K. Kilimnik was instrumental in the overthrow of Yanukovich in 2014, situated as he was in a position to tell U.S. intelligence everything they needed to know about Yanukovich's cowardice and political weakness. ..."
"... The Mueller Report was the Insurance Plan ! ..."
"... Obama started Illegal Spying sometime before Reelection but after Reelection he had Presidential Daily briefings formated into open meetings, that did Not require attending ( Huma had a Daily Briefings report left unattended on her front porch ) and outsourced Spies who were granted Computer Passwords and SKIF = Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility = A Private Guarded Room with Computer for People to access and exchange Top Secret Governmental Secure Information ! ..."
"... While we all want to see these guys in front of a grand jury, there is a lot of bargaining going on in the back room. I have no idea what these guys are offering Trump and Barr but Trump knows how to deal and I'm sure he'll get his money's worth... ..."
Mueller Caught In Another Deception; Key 'Russia Link' Exposed As Informant For US,
Ukraine
by Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/07/2019 - 10:25 120 SHARES
A Ukrainian businessman painted in the Mueller report as a sinister link to Russia was
actually a "sensitive" intelligence source for the US State Department who informed on
Ukrainian and Russian issues - and passed messages between the Washington and Kiev, according
to
The Hill 's John Solomon.
Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, was described
on page 6 of the Mueller report as having "ties to Russian intelligence" - and was cast in a
sinister light as a potential threat to democracy. Mueller completely omitted the fact that
Kilimnik was working as an informant and intermediary between America and Ukraine , and
subsequently
indicted him for obstruction of justice.
Kilimnik was not just any run-of-the-mill source, either. He interacted with the chief
political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, sometimes meeting several times a week to
provide information on the Ukraine government. He relayed messages back to Ukraine's leaders
and delivered written reports to U.S. officials via emails that stretched on for thousands of
words, the memos show.
The FBI knew all of this, well before the Mueller investigation concluded. -
The Hill
What's more, the chief political officer at the Kiev embassy from 2014 to 2017, Alan
Purcell, told the FBI that State officials - including senior embassy officials Alexander
Kasanof and Eric Schultz, thought Klimnik was such a valuable asset that they wouldn't mention
his name in official cables out of fear that WikiLeaks would expose him .
"Purcell described what he considered an unusual level of discretion that was taken with
handling Kilimnik," said one FBI interview report reviewed by Solomon. "Normally the head of
the political section would not handle sources, but Kasanof informed Purcell that KILIMNIK was
a sensitive source. "
Purcell told the FBI that Kilimnik provided "detailed information about OB (Ukraine's
opposition bloc) inner workings" that sometimes was so valuable it was forwarded immediately
to the ambassador . Purcell learned that other Western governments relied on Kilimnik as a
source , too.
"One time, in a meeting with the Italian embassy, Purcell heard the Italian ambassador
echo a talking point that was strikingly familiar to the point Kilimnik had shared with
Purcell," the FBI report states. -
The Hill
And Mueller mentioned none of this in his report despite knowing about it since 2018 - more
than a year before the final report.
Three sources with direct knowledge of the inner workings of Mueller's office
confirmed to me that the special prosecutor's team had all of the FBI interviews with State
officials, as well as Kilimnik's intelligence reports to the U.S. Embassy, well before they
portrayed him as a Russian sympathizer tied to Moscow intelligence or
charged Kilimnik with participating with Manafort in a scheme to obstruct the Russia
investigation. -
The Hill
Kilimnik was described by Purcell's predecessor, Alexander Kasanov, as one of the few
reliable informants spying on former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, whose Party of
Regions had hired Manafort's lobbying firm.
Kasanof described Kilimnik as one of the few reliable insiders the U.S. Embassy had
informing on Yanukovych . Kilimnik began his relationship as an informant with the U.S.
deputy chief of mission in 2012-13, before being handed off to the embassy's political
office, the records suggest.
"Kilimnik was one of the only people within the administration who was willing to talk to
USEMB," referring to the U.S. embassy, and he "provided information about the inner workings
of Yanukovych's administration," Kasanof told the FBI agents.
"Kasanof met with Kilimnik at least bi-weekly and occasionally multiple times in the same
week," always outside the embassy to avoid detection, the FBI wrote. " Kasanof allowed
Kilimnik to take the lead on operational security" for their meetings. -
The Hill
And, despite the Mueller report suggesting Kilimnik is a Russian stooge, state officials
told the FBI that he did not appear to hold any allegiance to the Kremlin , and had been
"flabbergasted at the Russian invasion of Crimea. "
"Most sources of information in Ukraine were slanted in one direction or another," Kasanof
told the FBI. "Kilimnik came across as less slanted than others."
Solomon corroborated the FBI interviews with Kasanov and Purcell with "scores of State
Department emails" which contain regular intelligence dispatches from Kilimnik on what was
going on inside of the Yanukovych administration, the Crimea conflict, and Ukrainian and
Russian politics.
Not a threat
Contrary to the dire threat to national security implied in the Mueller report, Kilimnik was
allowed to enter the United States twice in 2016 to meet with State officials - meaning he
clearly wasn't flagged in visa databases as a foreign intelligence threat.
Mueller also painted a one-sided picture of Kilimnik's peace plan for Crimea which he had
presented to the Trump administration - suggesting that it was a "backdoor" way for Russia to
control part of eastern Ukraine. In fact, Kilimnik had presented the idea to the Obama
administration in 2016.
As Solomon notes " That's what many in the intelligence world might call "deception by
omission. "
Specifically, the Mueller report flagged Kilimnik's delivery of a peace plan to the Trump
campaign for settling the two-year-old Crimea conflict between Russia and Ukraine .
"Kilimnik requested the meeting to deliver in person a peace plan for Ukraine that
Manafort acknowledged to the Special Counsel's Office was a 'backdoor' way for Russia to
control part of eastern Ukraine ," the Mueller report stated.
But State emails showed Kilimnik first delivered a version of his peace plan in May 2016
to the Obama administration during a visit to Washington . Kasanof, his former handler at the
U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, had been promoted to a top policy position at State, and the two met
for dinner on May 5, 2016.
The day after the dinner, Kilimnik sent an email to Kasanof's official State email address
recounting the peace plan they had discussed the night before. -
The Hill
While Kilimnik did not respond to The Hill for comment, he slammed the "made-up narrative"
about him in a May email to the
Washington Post , adding "I have no ties to Russian or, for that matter, any intelligence
operation."
That said, as Solomon writes "Kilimnik holds Ukrainian and Russian citizenship, served in
the Soviet military, attended a prestigious Russian language academy and had contacts with
Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. So it is likely he had contacts over the years with Russian
intelligence figures. There also is evidence Kilimnik left the U.S.-funded International
Republican Institute (IRI) in 2005 because of concerns about his past connections to Russia,
though at least one IRI witness disputed that evidence to the FBI, the memos show."
However Mueller's omission of his " extensive, trusted assistance to the State Department
seems inexplicable ."
We learn this four days after deceptive
edits were found in the Mueller report regarding a phone call between attorneys for
President Trump and former national security adviser Mike Flynn designed to make it appear as
though Trump was attempting to strongarm Flynn and possibly obstruct justice by shaping witness
testimony.
As Solomon concludes - "A few more such errors and omissions, and Americans may begin to
wonder if the Mueller report is worth the paper on which it was printed. " Tags Politics
Mueller is compromised. You wouldn't want him to say anything about this, would you? Your
propaganda ministry at CNN is dead, frozen, scared to speak up about the truth. They'd rather
preach fairy tales of Trump to all the dumb population:
No doubt K. Kilimnik was instrumental in the overthrow of Yanukovich in 2014, situated as
he was in a position to tell U.S. intelligence everything they needed to know about
Yanukovich's cowardice and political weakness.
With all the gross errors and omissions within the report, it is completely understandable
why he would not want to make a recommendation for impeachment. It would blow-back on him later.
As a government employee and a lawyer yall didnt really expect truths to be popping out of
his mouth did ya? I can hardly ever get a straight answer out of either group.
Obama started Illegal Spying sometime before Reelection but after Reelection he had
Presidential Daily briefings formated into open meetings, that did Not require attending (
Huma had a Daily Briefings report left unattended on her front porch ) and outsourced Spies
who were granted Computer Passwords and SKIF = Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility =
A Private Guarded Room with Computer for People to access and exchange Top Secret
Governmental Secure Information !
After Tarmac Hillary was assumed again electable and then the Laptop and all of that
needed to be hidden because of it being 'High Crimes And Mistomeaners' Crimes Against The
State, Obama had been Spying on Donald Trump for years due to Donald exposing the Birther
Treason and the Spying consistently escalated into Russia-Gate of Mueller Report, every crime
Mirrored blame from Hillary or Obama or Bureaucrat or Newscaster or Hollywood Star, from
Mayors to Election vote thievery by saying Team Trump did-it !
The God of Israel Is a Bloodthirsty, Vindictive Sociopath - Does This Explain the
Misanthropy of the Jews?
'"The finest trick of the devil, Charles Baudelaire wrote, is to persuade you
that he does not exist". Perhaps he was mistaken. His finest trick, I believe, is to
convince the world that he is God.'
While we all want to see these guys in front of a grand jury, there is a lot of bargaining
going on in the back room. I have no idea what these guys are offering Trump and Barr but Trump knows how to deal and
I'm sure he'll get his money's worth...
I guess i need to spell it out for you. Manafort is in prison getting it up the *** every
night and Hillary is free as a bird, flying wherever she wants.
Let US spell it out for you: Clinton's enablers who covered up her corruption for years
are being exposed. They will want to save themselves by making a deal. Clinton will be seeing
the underside of a bus a lot.
Clinton, in turn, will make deals to stay out of jail, exposing Obama and his admin
because it could never have happened without him.
Surprise, surprise. Horse face Mueller is even more corrupt than originally thought. What will they do for him now? Buy him his own house on a beautiful Island somewhere where
he and his family can live in luxury, with all expenses paid and a never ending
(((Rothschild))) bank account for him and his family, including all future generations?
NXIVM trial conclusion will expose Pizzagate to some degree, and will also expose more
Pizzagate entities that will be World-Shaking when put to trial !...
Most of now-former special counsel Robert Mueller 's public
statement to the press last week seemed to fall under the category of "Fair enough." After all, the man did nearly two years of work,
he kept largely silent throughout, and he alternately was called a hero or a dog.
So the day Mueller resigns, he chooses to make a
fairly brief statement putting a button on all of it, and at the same time declining to take any questions, before gliding back
into private life.
But there's at least one comment Mueller made that nags at me. It's when he said, "If we had had confidence that the president
clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so."
Mueller must have had his reasons for shading his commentary in that way rather than in the other direction: If they'd found adequate
evidence to implicate Trump in a crime, or even "collusion," they would have said that, too.
The statement Mueller chose to give carries with it an implication that his team looked for evidence of
President Trump 's innocence but simply could not find it.
With that in mind, I thought of a short list of questions I'd like to ask Mueller, if ever permitted to do so:
What witnesses did you interview and what evidence did you collect in an attempt to exonerate Trump or prove him not guilty?
(I believe the answer would be, "None. It's not the job of a special counsel or prosecutor to do so." Therefore, was Mueller's
comment appropriate?)
Does it concern you that the FBI claimed "
collection tool failure " in
stating that 19,000 text messages between former FBI employees Lisa Page and Peter Strozk had been deleted and were unavailable
for review by the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general? Is it worth investigating how the inspector general was
able to recover the messages , when the FBI said it could not? Does the FBI lack the technical expertise, or the will? Isn't
it a serious issue that should be addressed, either way?
Along the same lines, do you think it strange or inappropriate that the DOJ
wiped text messages between Strzok and Page from their special counsel cell phones? The deletions happened shortly after they
were ejected from the team and before the DOJ's Office of the Inspector General could review them -- at a time when all had been
informed that their actions were under review. Did technicians attempt to recover the messages? Were the circumstances of the
deletions thoroughly investigated?
When did you first learn that the FBI and DOJ signed off on and presented unverified, anti-Trump political opposition research
to a court
to get wiretaps on an innocent U.S. citizen? Doesn't this violate the
strict procedures enacted while you were FBI director,
intended to ensure that only verified information is seen by the court? Who will be held accountable for any lapses in this arena?
Do these issues point to larger problems within our intelligence community, in terms of how officials operate? Does that put
you in a position where there's a conflict of interest since you were in charge of the FBI when
prior surveillance abuses were identified by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court? Did you consider disclosing this
potential conflict and stepping aside, or referring any issues that overlap with your interests?
What steps did you take after Strzok and Page were exposed, to try to learn if other investigators on your team likewise were
conflicted? Did you take action to segregate the work of these agents and any potential biases they injected into your investigation
and team? Wasn't their behavior a beacon to call you to follow an investigative trail in another direction?
Did you become concerned about foreign influence beyond Russia when you learned that a foreign national, Christopher Steele,
claimed to have obtained opposition research from Russian officials connected to Putin -- and that the FBI and DOJ presented this
material to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to obtain wiretap approvals?
Were you aware that some Democratic Party officials acknowledged
coordinating with Ukraine in 2016 to undermine Trump and his associates and to leak disparaging information to the news media?
Is it true that you
applied
for the job as FBI director but Trump rejected you, the day before then-Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed you
as special counsel to investigate Trump? Does that put you in a potentially conflicted position?
Do you think Donald Trump is guilty of a crime? If so, then do you believe he is perhaps the most clever criminal of our time
since he was able to conceal the evidence despite all the government wiretaps, investigations, informants, surveillance and hundreds
of interviews spanning several years?
Clearly, Robert Mueller hopes he has closed the book on his public statements about his investigation. If he has his way, he will
not discuss the case further on the record. But his parting shot raised plenty of questions.
1) You said DoJ policy prevented you from indicting a sitting president. Did anything prevent you from indicting any co-conspirators
in any obstruction efforts the president may have taken? Did anything prevent you from naming the president as an unindicted co-conspirator
if there were any obstruction?
2) You said that if you had found clear evidence the president was innocent of collusion or obstruction you would have said
so in the report. Would you have done the same if you found clear evidence the president did collude or obstruct even though you
were barred from indicting him?
3) Your report says Russian intelligence hacked into DNC servers and stole emails and then leaked the stolen emails through
Wikileaks in order to influence the election. Did your investigators ever examine the DNC servers? Did FBI investigators ever
examine the DNC servers? Did employess of any other government agency examin the servers? Did anybody other than a firm hired
by the DNC do a forensic examination of the DNC servers? What evidence do you have that the DNC servers were hacked? And what
evidence do you have that it was by Russian intelligence? How can you be certain that Wikileaks source was not Seth Rich or some
other disgruntled DNC employee?
4) Would you like to talk about Whitey Bulger you slimy son of a bitch?
She ignored the two most important questions of all: (1) that Mueller never confirmed that "Russians" hacked the DNC server
because they never looked at it and instead relied on CrowdStrike to tell them it was "Russians" and (2) that Mueller never confirmed
that "Russians" uploaded HillDog's, the DNC's and Podesta's emails to Wikileaks. Yet Mueller reaches these 2 conclusions in his
Report.
The Report is a total farce when it reaches the foregoing two conclusions as the basis for "the Russians interfering in our
elections" absent any evidentiary proof of the same admissible in a court of law. Would be hearsay if they tried to introduce
those two facts into evidence at a trial.
One of the oldest legal tactics, force your adversary to prove a negative, prove an event did not occur, prove a crime was
not committed. Won't work at bench trials, but in front of a jury of "peers" it stands a chance. Especially when you have the
dem congress/MSM-industrial complex willing to parrot the story.
In a different time, Mueller would be shredded in the editorials: two years, unlimited resources, and all you produce is an
insinuation? FU, bob.
Yes. Judge Sullivan alluded to it at the time of the Flynn sentencing. Since Muellers' hands were deliberately tied from
investigating the actual crimes of a treasonous nature - vis a vis the laundered money from the turco-talmudic gangsters -
he could not bring that element of the serious and flagrant abuses both pre and post election into the proceedings.
The "Steele Dossier" was a joint effort of Uk/USA intelligence operatives who colluded with several parties - including
the Clintons, to muddy the waters according to the plans of Urusalem.
Rhetorical. Ignore
When it became clear that the "Russian" government as such operates as a network of mafiyas doing for.... and receiving
from the state... favors which are more often than not part of the strategy of a criminal network known as Chabad. That later
party is the partner in 'collusion'... which took place in the interests of Urusalem.
Peripheral to the investigation.
Crimes have been committed by both Democrat and Republican operatives. Only those which are part of the specific mandate
of the SC were investigated.
Certain specific persons were placed "off limits" to the investigators. All of whom share in common a degree of allegiance
to/control by Urusalem
Seth Rich is alive and well, living in a small beacon of democracy in the middle east. The investigation was tasked with
investigating false flag operations staged by parties whose names can never be mentioned.
Folks, the fact that FISA courts are even "legal" on the books is so far outside the boundaries of fair play I don't even know
where to start. How is this not a civil war starting offense? We're fucked folks.
I'd add two more questions, if slightly off topic.
Why did you let 4 men rot in prison for murders they did not commit when you had evidence exonerating them and implicating
corrupt FBI agents. I guess that question answers itself.
Why did Whitey Bulger get transferred to a new Federal prison and conveniently murdered - out of the camera's view - just as
Rep. Lynch was seeking to expose the FBI's corrupt handling of informants. I guess that question answers itself too.
These questions are just a start. I would also include: "What sort of punishment should people who try to sponsor a coup to
overthrow a duly elected President be subject to?".
"... Mueller's deceptive edits beg the question; what else may have been manipulated by the special counsel to make Trump look guilty? ..."
"... When reached for comment by attorney 'Techno Fog' (@Techno_Fog), Dowd said of the edits: " It is unfair and despicable. It was a friendly privileged call between counsel - with NO conflict. I think Flynn got screwed." ..."
"... Flynn pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI about contacts with Russians and is currently awaiting sentencing. ..."
"... Time to lock up that big nosed sneaky ******* *** bastard Andrew Weissmann ..."
"... They were all hired under the supervision of another sneaky *** ****, "No" Rod Rosenstein...who was behind him pulling the strings, who's business was he really doing ? It sure was not the interests of Justice, nor the good of the US. ..."
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) on Saturday called for the immediate release of "all backup and source information" for the Mueller report
after internet sleuth @almostjingo (Rosie Memos) discovered that the
special counsel's office deceptively edited content which was then cited as evidence of possible obstruction.
" It's all a fraud " tweeted Nunes, replying to a tweet by @JohnWHuber (Undercover Huber), who also posted a comparison between
the Mueller report and a newly released transcript of a November 2017 voicemail message left by former Trump lawyer John Dowd, in
which he asked former national security adviser Michael Flynn's attorney for a "heads up" if Flynn was planning on saying anything
that might damage the president.
Mueller's team omitted key context suggesting that Dowd was trying to strongarm Flynn and possibly obstruct justice by shaping
witness testimony, while the actual voicemail reveals that Dowd was careful not to tread into obstruction territory in what was
a friendly and routine call between lawyers.
Dowd qualifies his request by saying " without you having to give up any...confidential information " in order to determine "If,
on the other hand, we have, there's information that...implicates the President, then we've got a national security issue, or maybe
a national security issue, I don't know ... some issue, we got to-we got to deal with, not only for the President but for the country
."
Once again # MuellerReport edited messages
to make them appear more damaging, full transcript of this phone call reveals Dowd's message was pretty typical for a lawyer
and he clearly states he's not interested in any confidential info. What else did they manipulate
Mueller's deceptive edits beg the question; what else may have been manipulated by the special counsel to make Trump look
guilty?
When reached for comment by attorney 'Techno Fog' (@Techno_Fog), Dowd said of the edits: " It is unfair and despicable. It
was a friendly privileged call between counsel - with NO conflict. I think Flynn got screwed."
Dowd told
Fox News : "During the joint defense relationship, counsel for the president provided to Flynn's counsel documents, advice and
encouragement to provide to SC [the special counsel] as part of his effort to cooperate with the SC," adding " SC never raised or
questioned the president's counsel about these allegations despite numerous opportunities to do so. "
Flynn pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI about contacts with Russians and is currently awaiting sentencing.
DOJ stonewalls on Flynn evidence
Meanwhile, the Justice Department has resisted a court order to release the transcripts of Flynn's conversations with Russian
officials , including former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
This raises at least two questions. First, did the DOJ give Flynn the transcripts? And second, did the DOJ violate a previous
court order from Judge Emmett Sullivan to produce evidence during discovery?
Note - per competing Orders, still not certain if Judge Sullivan will require all audio recording transcripts be filed with
court. DOJ seems to read the orders that he doesn't need them. https:// twitter.com/Techno_Fog/sta
tus/1129416066382336000
Note that the 5/16 Order required the production of "the transcripts of any other audio recordings of Mr. Flynn, including,
but not limited to, audio recordings of Mr. Flynn's conversations with Russian officials"
Compliance may be an issue. Awaiting Judge response...
Could there be exculpatory evidence in the transcript that Flynn's team never received?
Law Crime
GoldRulesPaperDrools , 4 minutes ago
Mueller was a dirty cop back from his days in Boston dealing with Whitey Bulger. Like most gubmint employees he can't be
fired when he ***** up (especially if they're a minority or if they get high up in the management pyramid). He should have been
fired from the FBI and probably indicted long before he left Boston.
Add to the fact that he's personal friends with Cankles Clinton's personal legal snowplow James Comey who got her off in
the New Square Four issue up in NY and you have a dishonest and biased party. Trump was the only one who called these fucktards
on their past. Even the rhinos were quiet and gave Mueller props. He and Comey should be looking at a date with a firing squad
along with ex-president Smirking Chimp and several of his leftist cronies.
Pinefox , 8 minutes ago
Let's hope their are some brilliant technologically savvy patriotic citizens who can unearth the corrupt manipulation of
evidence and display it to the American people.
Joebloinvestor , 9 minutes ago
Looks like Flynn got railroaded and he willingly took the trip.
pissed off american , 13 minutes ago
lisa barsoomian used to an ACTIVE undercover CIA agent/NWO lawyer and rod rosenstein wife
blindfaith , 14 minutes ago
Imagine my surprise. What else would 18 radical pro liberal Democrat lawyers do to?
Criminal behavior overdue for prosecution and prison terms, and forfeiture of assets. You know like happens to regular folks.
JD59 , 16 minutes ago
Of course it is "ALL A FRAUD" it is called a COUP, by the DEMOCRAT PARTY AND OBAMA!
It was treason and sedition. The good news is, they will never be held accountable because there is no unbiased justice system.
Just controlled chaos. /sarc
Teamtc321 , 16 minutes ago
Mueller and Clan forged 302's to charge Mike Flynn with a process Crime, FACT. Period. End of Story.
Listen to this from Dan Bongino from December, follow the proof he speaks of that is coming out as fact now. This is the
real Story and it's factual.
Ep. 865 Mike Flynn Was Set Up! The Dan Bongino Show 12/5/2018.
Long, but if you really want to understand how Flynn was set up in a perjury trap, how they did it and then charged
him with a process crime.
It's right there and proven factual. Period.
Teamtc321 , 14 minutes ago
Mike Flynn needs to be exonerated, Now. That is a long podcast from Dan Bongino but it is Factual. Not bull ****.
Flynn was set up with Fake 302's, Period.
iSage , 10 minutes ago
Well, they asked him a question and he got the answer wrong in an interview, I say he committed no crime, except to misspeak
in a FBI interview.
Hardly treason, or anything other than a memory lapse. Try remembering all your phone call details from 2 years ago?
Teamtc321 , 2 minutes ago
The written notes from the interview, the 302's were dated 6 months after the actual interview also. Bongino not only laid
it out, had the doc's to show it.............
Flynn was not only set up, he got rail roaded with the full weight and force of the Mueller Investigation.
They basically broke Flynn trying to defend himself. He lost everything trying to finance the battle.
Non-Corporate Entity , 16 minutes ago
hahahha!!!! Mueller is used to having people in place to overlook his deceptions but now they've been replaced by Americans
LOOKING for his deceptions.
St. TwinkleToes , 17 minutes ago
Note to Self:
The US Government, every local and state official, everyone working in academia, all public service employees, military command,
and all 70 plus unions representing the entertainment industry and those they employ, are your enemy. Avoid these subhuman pos
with all possible means. They are cancers of civilization, a curse upon mankind. Zombies, the walking dead.
Abaco , 20 minutes ago
The first question that should be asked is why the hell is anyone still working at DOJ who is stonewalling the courts and/or
the Attorney General. Doing so is a fireable offense and any money spent walking these schmucks through the paperwork and out
the door is well worth it. In the meantime they should be order to report to the DOJ branch office in Somalia.
Of course Mueller's team unlawfully withheld discovery evidence and of course they falsified evidence. That ******** Weissman
has a track record of doing just that. The fact that the stupid prick still has a law license is evidence enough that the entire
federal "justice" system is completely corrupt.
Robert of Ottawa , 18 minutes ago
Quite so Abaco, this is Mueller's modus operandum
johngaltfla , 24 minutes ago
Mueller is a partisan hack who is used as a hit man by the Beltway elites to attack and destroy innocent people. His track
record is an abomination and this is just anther verification of how corrupt this son of a bitch really is.
artvandalai , 25 minutes ago
I suppose somebody could still say that there is no Deep State. But nobody nowhere can say that this kind of thing isn't
what Deep Staters would do if they existed.
Harry Lightning , 27 minutes ago
Time to lock up that big nosed sneaky ******* *** bastard Andrew Weissmann. He looks like the kind of prick who
will spill his guts once threatened with a prison sentence, because he and everyone on the planet knows he would not last one
day in the joint.
Once they get him to squeal, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down on that treasonous ********** Mueller. Let's see
how tough he really is when the heat is on him for a change. My bet is he wilts like a flower in the summer heat.
They were all hired under the supervision of another sneaky *** ****, "No" Rod Rosenstein...who was behind him pulling
the strings, who's business was he really doing ? It sure was not the interests of Justice, nor the good of the US.
Only when this onion is peeled layer by l;ayer will the countrey find out who truly was responsible for this hit job on the
President, and Trump should use every available means at his disposal as President to get to the bottom of this horseshit.
Abaco , 17 minutes ago
Weissmann, Rosenstein and Mueller, at the very least should each be hanging, todya, half from the Cabin John Bridge
and half from the Woodrow Wilson bridge.
Teamtc321 , 21 minutes ago
Obama Spy Gate is unfolding...
btrp , 28 minutes ago
Mueller picked 16 democrat lawyers for his special counselors office. I'm sure those weasly wittle democrats didn't edit
those transcripts.
turkey george palmer , 29 minutes ago
Seems like they want the country to go lawless. Who would.want.tge United States to go down like that.
Britain is the culprit ultimately. Well besides the little ticks with all the money
MalteseFalcon , 32 minutes ago
The FISA system invites abuse. Get rid of it. In fact jettison all post 9/11 security constructs.
iSage , 16 minutes ago
Get rid of Patriot and NDA Acts, as a start! There are plenty more to repeal too!
Teamtc321 , 34 minutes ago
Obama Spied..............
Seth Rich Died...........
While you ******* Crooked Libtards Screech Impeach.................
Teamtc321 , 35 minutes ago
The Rats are being rolled out as the Treasonous Scum they are. Obama Spy-Gate is showing it's face..........
Flynn was set up in a Perjury Trap to get a shitty process crime charge......... Mueller is a Dirty MFER................
Mike Flynn need to be Exonerated, NOW !!!!!!
========================
Former Deputy Assistant AG Toensing: There Is Evidence Obama Administration FISA Abuse Started As Early As 2012 (VIdeo)
On Friday night Sean Hannity invited several expert sources on the Deep State spying scandal to discuss the latest developments
in the government spying on the Trump campaign, Trump Transition team and Trump administration.
With such overwhelming evidence of DOJ, FBI and IC / proprietorial fraud, if there are is no "real" investigation - which
should be a mere formality - to confirm severe malfeasance, and worse, followed up by prosecution and punishment, then I'm staying
the **** home next elections ... totally sick of this ******* two-tiered ****.
The Democrat establishment are bereft of any new policy ideas or the ability to advance any policy framework through the
House let alone bring along the Senate. Egged on by the TDS afflicted "fake news" media all they've got is politicization. Their
Mueller silver bullet failed. So they'll go with an impeachment with all the media hysteria accompanying it fully realizing
that they don't have the votes in the Senate convict.
I'm not certain how this will play out in the mid-west where the next election will be decided. OTOH, an impeachment would
possibly force Trump to get aggressive about releasing all the incriminating documents and communications about the attempted
coup by the Obama administration law enforcement and intelligence leadership. Of course they would claim that what Trump is
doing is purely political and that they were only doing their patriotic duty. We're going to be in for more TDS media frenzy.
The last time they lost an election with sure thing Hillary. Do they expect to win with the same tactics with Sleepy Joe and
his long track record of being in the pocket of the financial industry?
It looks like Barr may mean business. He seems to be pushing ahead trying to get to the bottom of how the Russia collusion
investigation began in the first place.
Listen to this interview of Barr. Very interesting. As someone who has always opposed the growth in the unfettered powers
of the national security surveillance state, the fact that a sitting attorney general is using words like "praetorian guard"
in an interview is of great interest. Let's see how this is going to shake out. There is a possibility that the tide is
turning and the investigators may actually be investigated.
"The American Dream" as well as the American "Middle Class" have always bee a puzzle to me. The Dream seems to mean owning
a house to a lot of people. The Middle Class is what, a European style bourgeoisie?
As an outsider, it has always seemed to be that a succinct definition of the "American Dream" is that your kids will be better
off (you define "better") than you were.
Not unique to the USA, of course, but the inspiration for many many immigrants.
I think Trump is a buffoon who should not be President but that is not an impeachable offense. I think the Democrats would
be stupid to try to impeach, it would fail miserably in the Senate and probably lead to a trump victory in 2020. Compared with
Bush and Cheney, Trump is a minor sinner. Bush and Cheney should have been impeached for putting together a false case for going
to war in Iraq. That is the kind of mistake that cost thousands of lives a couple trillion dollars. If ever there was a case
for impeachment - that was the big one we missed.
Dick Morris agrees that impeachment will destroy the Dems "what will destroy them is that they apparently have nothing else
to say" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnI64DKD6o0
Main reassons to impeach Trump are related to its behavior on foreign policy,... if in that he would not be fully supported
by the Democrat apparatus...
The harm he has done to the US word and image throughout the world is of epic proportions, one wonders if it would be recoverable
any time....
-Storming of foreign embassies, starting with the Russian ones amd following with Venezuela´s
-Appropiating of foreign assests on basis of not liking the sign of the countryés governments.
-Naming presidents in charge of foreign countries whose government he does not like.
-Giving away foreign cities which do not belong to him to alleged allies tied to his close family.
-Illegal presence of US troops in foreign countries even after calls by legitimate authorities of those counries to go.
-Threatening every country whose government he does not like through his Twitter account and officials, even with war.
-Going against every principle of free market, which the US economy is supposedly based on, by ordering fully protectionist
measures on Us products and to private companies to comply with his overextended sanctions on everybody who could compete in
anything with the US or do not submit to US designs...
Then it is his continuous refusal to show his tax return.....There is something there, for sure...
Congratulations!
This year your birthday coincided with Al Quds Day...May be a sign...
Patric Buchanan is out of depth. Mueller was a member of the clique that staged color
revolution against Trump. The last thing he was interested in was an objective investigation. The
plan was to create "process crime" out of thin air -- obstruction of justice.
That's why NYT presstitutes which were also an integral (and very important) part of "regime
change" team put the headline "Mueller Declines to Absolve Trump"
The problem was that obstruction of justice presuppose that real crime was committed. It this
was a witch hunt like Mueller investigation was onstruction of jsutice is impossible as Trump
obligation was to resist this witch hunt and derail the attack on the Office of the
President.
Prevention of Hillary, Comey, Brennan (and other co-conspirators) to jail for staging this
color revolution/"regime change" is a real obstruction of justice in this particular case.
Notable quotes:
"... His nine-minute summary of the findings of his office, after two years of investigation, was a mess. It guaranteed that the internecine warfare that has poisoned our politics will continue into 2020. ..."
"... This suggests that there was at least some evidence to conclude that Donald Trump's campaign did conspire with Vladimir Putin's Kremlin to fix the 2016 election, just not enough to sustain a charge of treason. Didn't they use to call this McCarthyism? ..."
"... On obstruction of justice, Trump attempting to impede his investigation, Mueller said: "If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so." "Mueller Declines to Absolve Trump" was the New York Times headline. ..."
"... That tells us that Mueller would not give Trump absolution. But why would Trump need absolution if he did not commit the crime? ..."
"... Simply, Special Counsel Robert Mueller committed insubordination. Why? Because, I respectful submit, a Special Counsel is first, foremost and finally a political appointment, by politicians for a political purpose. The effective factual reality of politics ( reality itself? ) demands, dictates the maintenance of the status quo. ..."
"... @ JohnT: "Robert Mueller has a near spotless record serving our nation". Yea right. Mueller focused obsessively on convicting an innocent man, Steven Hatfill, of manufacturing weapons grade anthrax. Mueller still refuses to admit he made a mistake. Mueller covered for the FBI when FBI agents framed an innocent men of murder. ..."
Why is it that special counsel Robert Mueller cannot say clearly and concisely what he
means?
His nine-minute summary of the findings of his office, after two years of investigation,
was a mess. It guaranteed that the internecine warfare that has poisoned our politics will
continue into 2020.
If it was the intention of the Russian hackers and trolls of 2016 to sow discord within
their great power rival, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Consider. Of the charge of conspiracy to collude with the Russians to hack the emails of the
DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign, Mueller said, "there was insufficient evidence to charge a
larger conspiracy."
This suggests that there was at least some evidence to conclude that Donald Trump's
campaign did conspire with Vladimir Putin's Kremlin to fix the 2016 election, just not enough
to sustain a charge of treason. Didn't they use to call this McCarthyism?
On obstruction of justice, Trump attempting to impede his investigation, Mueller said:
"If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said
so." "Mueller Declines to Absolve Trump" was the New York Times headline.
That tells us that Mueller would not give Trump absolution. But why would Trump need
absolution if he did not commit the crime?
Mueller implied that his refusal to charge Trump publicly was based on a Justice Department
ruling that presidents cannot be indicted.
But if the special counsel cannot indict a sitting president and ought not charge him, as,
said Mueller, it is "unfair to accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution
of the actual charge," then what was the point of naming a special counsel?
If Mueller actually believes Trump was guilty of obstruction, why did he not forthrightly
declare "While the Justice Department's interpretation of the Constitution precludes my office
us from indicting President Trump, we believe his actions during the course of our
investigation constituted an obstruction of justice"?
At least we would have clarity. Now we have Mueller walking out without taking questions,
and leaving us with this toxic mush.
Republicans should not let Mueller skate on this. For the James Comey-Mueller investigation
is itself in need of investigation.
Among the questions that need answering: if, after two years, Mueller found "insufficient
evidence" of collusion by Trump, what was the compelling evidence that justified launching the
investigation during the Obama era?
Did that earlier "evidence" turn out to be false allegations and lies?
When did Mueller discover that George Papadopoulos and Carter Page were not agents of the
GRU or KGB?
When did Mueller decide there was no collusion or conspiracy? Was it not until this spring?
Or has Mueller known for a good while?
Why are these questions important? Because the investigation itself, leaving as it did a
cloud over the legitimacy of the president, was damaging not only to Trump but also to the
nation. As long as half the country believed Trump was an agent or asset or blackmail victim of
Putin, America could not come together.
Did Mueller feel no obligation to clear up that false impression as swiftly and fully as
possible, if, indeed, he believes it is false?
When did Mueller discover that the Steele dossier was the product of a dirt-diving operation
financed by the Clinton campaign and fabricated by a Trump-hating ex-chief of British
intelligence with long ties both to former agents of Russia's FSB and James Comey's FBI?
Did Mueller ever suspect that the investigation he inherited was a takedown operation,
instigated by enemies of Trump who were determined that he never become president or, if he
did, that his tenure would be short?
Mueller's performance Wednesday has reinvigorated the impeach Trump caucus. But it has
disserved the Democratic Party as much as it has the country. The progressive left and its media auxiliaries, rabid on the subject, are egging on and
cheering for candidates who call for impeachment. As of now, at least eight Democratic
presidential candidates favor hearings. The Democratic left is out to break Nancy Pelosi's resistance.
If they succeed and this city and the nation turn their attention to a titanic battle to see
if the Democratic Party can remove the Republican president, it will be bad news for the
republic. The real business of the nation will be put off until 2021.
... ... ...
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made
and Broke a President and Divided America Forever . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan
and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at
www.creators.com.
It used to be that, in America at least, you were considered innocent until proven guilty.
Robert Mueller has turned this tradition on its head. Now, unless your are "exonorated" (that
is proven innocent), your must be considered guilty. That's a pretty high bar. I wonder how
many of us could ever pass it.
The Constitution does not grant the president immunity from criminal charges or
prosecution. 800 hundred years of English Common Law stand for the unerring proposition "that which is
not prohibited is permitted."
Consequently, the President of the United States during his/her term of office can be
found to have committed criminal conduct, charged with a crime(s), tried, convicted and
sentenced, with taken into custody delayed until conclusion of an impeachment by the House of
Representatives and trial in the senate.
Complicated, involved, messy? Yes!, that is Life and the way of the World!
Any other interpretation would not only contradict the governing federal regulations,
including, but not limited to, the Special Counsel statute, but also contradict the explicit
instructions Special Counsel Mueller's Justice Department superiors, Attorney General Bill
Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Special Counsel Mueller failed to perform the most basic function of a special counsel (
or prosecutor ), which is to reach conclusions on the discover of or existence of evidence of
a crime or criminal conduct or not.
Simply, Special Counsel Robert Mueller committed insubordination. Why? Because, I respectful submit, a Special Counsel is first, foremost and finally a political
appointment, by politicians for a political purpose. The effective factual reality of politics ( reality itself? ) demands, dictates the
maintenance of the status quo.
Avoidance of a crisis functions as a corollary.
Second, any reasonable reading of the two Justice Department memoranda does not support
any Constitutional, Statutory or lawful limit on special counsels.
The memoranda are merely, solely and exclusively internal Justice Department guidelines,
which have no legal authority.
Assuming the memoranda have legal weight or authority, the memoranda only address
indicting a president during his term in office. The concern or worry suggested is any
indictment would burden a president with litigation. The thinking stated was that it would
interfere with his duties as president. The departmental guidelines do not prevent, preclude
or in any way prohibit a special counsel from identifying evidence of a crime or perpetrators
of a crime.
Special counsel Mueller stated he discovered or found no evidence of a crime, i.e.
conspiracy or collusion, or criminal conduct, i.e. conspiracy or collusion, by President
Trump or any person in his family or campaign. He concluded there was evidence of and conduct
by persons on the allegation of obstruction. Therefore, no reasonable, logical or common sense reading of the memoranda preclude,
prevent or prohibit a finding or charging of a president during his term of office of a crime
or criminal conduct.
dennis hanna,
retired attorney; worked in the U. S. Attorney's Office San Francisco, 1981 and 1982, civil
division, at time Robert Mueller was head of the criminal division
Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat . Innocent, unless proven guilty.
This is one of the basic principles of the law, American or otherwise. Mueller was utterly
(and shamefully, after so much time and empty noise) unable to prove Trump's guilt. Hence he
absolved him, no matter whether he wants to admit it or not. This is what the law says. And
when compared to what the law says, even a higher official's interpretations would be as null
and void as those of Mueller. So I can only suggest that those who still cannot get over this
fact and keep on melting down over it like children (which they are) should grow up. In no
way holding my breath, though.
The Magnifique Undulating Eagerly-Latitudinarian Lawyer Escaping Restraint (MUELLER) is
still at it. Who will rid us of this pest of a priest?
I used to think the most notable part of MUELLER was "latitudinarian lawyer escaping
restraint," as has been well shown by Andrew C. McCarthy. But his latest burst of genteel
venom–because Orange Man Bad–has me thinking the "magnifique undulating" part is
the most notable thing.
He won't explain on what basis a prosecutor gets to say someone is "not exonerated," as
opposed to either charged or not charged–which is undulating like heck in this legal
and political context, and he's doing so with magnificent disdain for both the American
people and his own long-term reputation.
@ JohnT: "Robert Mueller has a near spotless record serving our nation". Yea right. Mueller focused obsessively on
convicting an innocent man, Steven Hatfill, of manufacturing weapons grade anthrax. Mueller still refuses to admit he made a
mistake. Mueller covered for the FBI when FBI agents framed an innocent men of murder.
THE LIE. The Mueller report kills half of the lie (Trump colluded) but the other half
(Russia interfered) is still alive. But things are happening.
One well-informed reporter says Trump told AG Barr to "find out what happened"; Barr ran
into resistance; went back to Trump who gave him the authority to declassify everything. The
Trump conspiracy began with several entrapment efforts (mostly done in the UK so as to create a
bogus "intelligence trail"); one of the innocents is suing. She was supposed to be "Putin's
honeytrap" for Flynn:
details here .
"... Mueller is a weasel. However, by pouring some gas on the impeachment fire, he's only going to help Trump in the long run. ..."
"... The Mueller Report was the biggest joke of a letdown, obvious political document since the Steele Dossier itself. It seemed designed to justify and give cover to intelligence community wrongdoing, to pretend that there were legitimate issues that demanded investigation early in the 2016 campaign. On numerous topics it used weasel words to create clouds of smoke, or obscure simple answers to their conspiracy theories. ..."
"... Like his pal Comey's, the man's behavior is disgraceful. Had this claque of smug bureacrats merely said that they welcome Barr's investigation, the reputations of their Agencies might have started on their way to recovery. It looks like for Barr's investigation, it will have to be slash and burn for it to get anywhere. The Bureau and the Agency will be looking way worse before they look better, if they ever do. ..."
"... If Barr really wishes to pursue his investigation he does have the resources of the NSA, which, presumably, has archived literally every communication sent over the airwaves, and he could invoke the procedure promulgated under Obama, allowing the NSA to share its information with other agencies investigating criminal activity. ..."
"... It was a crappy politicized investigation that, unfortunately, will only further damage the credibility of our justice system. ..."
"... Mueller allegedly said: ""If we have confidence the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so." If this is true, and I'm not misunderstanding the context, then Mueller is either an idiot or a rat. By definition, the above statement is a meaningless truism. NO ONE can say "with confidence" that a crime has not been committed because negative evidence cannot be turned into positive evidence. To translate Mueller: "we couldn't find any evidence he did it, but that doesn't mean he didn't!" - the presumption of innocence was developed to protect suspects from exactly this sort of biased speculation. ..."
"... "This is the behavior of a prosecutor from a third-world shithole. Certainly appears that the United States is headed in that direction." ..."
"... Sure looks that way. Deep State totalitarianism. We have FBI SWAT teams kicking in doors in the middle of the night and dragging out senior citizens for process crimes in a phony criminal investigation. You have high-profile Trump supporters being set up and secretly videotaped at massage parlors. You have Chinese business people and Trump donors being investigated and subpoenaed by federal prosecutors in The Swamp ( https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article230946518.html). ..."
"... According to Prof. Luke Johnson, America became an empire around the time of Teddy Roosevelt (putting global concerns above nation). IMHO, the empire will end shortly after Trump leaves office. Whether it ends with a whimper or bang is the question. And our vassal states in Europe (most have been hollowed out because of globalism) will fall faster and harder. ..."
"... JFK unionized government workers. Big government employee unions have amassed huge political war chests and disciplined rank and file GOTV ground troops on election days. DNC is nothing but a front for the big government unions. ..."
"... Precisely the day after Mueller's peculiar statement in which he forgot not to mention with stress the no longer alleged but "real" US election interference by the Russians, the US Defense Intelligence Agency accused the Russians of violating the nuclear test ban agreement. Vehemently denied by officials in Moscow. Coincidence more than likely. ..."
"... Mueller`s latest statements were pretty weird. A press conference where he does not actually take questions and blow the impeachment flames using contradictory legal reasoning (why investigate in the first place if he can not indict?). ..."
"... I would say one of the objectives is to mud the watters on the investigation that Barr is pushing on the start of the Russia conspiracy probe. ..."
Robert Mueller is a fool and a liar. He is not worthy of being described as honorable. He is
a disgrace to the Marine Corps.
The justice system in the United States is based on the principle that you are presumed
innocent until proven guilty. The government and its prosecutors do not have the right to
accuse someone of a crime or criminal behavior without providing proof and presenting that
evidence in a public trial.
Remember the justifiable outrage that in the aftermath of Jim Comey's boneheaded press
conference in July 2016, when he implied Hillary Clinton was guilty and then said there was no
case to be brought. That was wrong. Today, Robert Mueller did the same damn thing. He had one
job--gather evidence and indict or say nothing.
Mueller LOOKS the part - the serious unsmiling official above reproach.
Actually, he's just another swamp creature.
The report (by his staff of Clintonistas) was no surprise and this last ditch attempt to
jumpstart impeachment is no surprise.
The swamp rats are not going to go easily - if they go.
In April 2017, a piece by Anatol Lieven appeared in the 'National Interest', under the
title 'Is America Becoming a Third World Country?' The subheading read: 'Conspiracy theories
about Russia suggest that the awful prospect for the USA is of a global superpower with the
domestic politics of the Philippines or Argentina.'
I would strongly recommend the piece to members of this 'Committee of Correspondence.'
Do not, incidentally, make the mistake of thinking that because its author is born and
bred in Britain this is a case of 'Brit' arrogance.
There seems to me little reason to believe that Lieven thought his native country was in a
less parlous state than he suggesed you were. (I certainly don't!)
Part of this is to do with what I am tempted to call a 'Cassandra complex.'
The Lieven brothers – Anatol and his elder brother Dominic – are among the
very best British commentators on international affairs.
This may be partly because their origins are not actually British. On the father's side,
they were Baltic German servants of the Tsars, on the mother's, Catholic Irish servants of
the British Raj (hence the balance of names – Dominic for the first son, Anatol for the
second.)
The background provides a useful introduction to some of the complexities of modern
history – and also, ironically perhaps, may have helped both brothers absorb some of
the better elements of British culture (unlike most American 'Rhodes Scholars', who seem
often to absorb the worst.)
But the result appears to be that, as with Cassandra, people do not listen to them. So,
Anatol teaches in Qatar.
His brother, after spending many years in the thankless task of trying to educate
'political scientists' at the London School of Economics, is now back in Cambridge.
However, Dominic's – brilliant – summation of large elements of his life's
work on the centenary of the October Revolution was not delivered, as in a rational world it
might have been, at Chatham House, or Brookings – but at that year's Valdai Group
meeting.
Agree, fascinating material from Dominic L at Valdai site.
I had seen Anatol articles at commencement Ukraine coup but was ignorant of Dominic.
Thanks for the post
Agree, Anatol is one of those people who does produce sober accounts. I remember his
superb piece in Foreign Affairs some years ago about non-linearity of history. It was a
revelation in the midst of still raging "The End of History" euphoria, or, rather,
pseudo-scientific delusion.
Mueller is a weasel. However, by pouring some gas on the impeachment fire, he's only going
to help Trump in the long run. The Senate has made it clear that they will not back
impeachment. Also, Trump will just go after Mueller's pals in the IC, FBI and DOJ that much
harder. Obstruction of justice allegations will be moot in the light of high crimes and
misdemeanors committed by the swamp denizens. In fact, obstructing such people will end up
looking totally justified and correct.
Watched the Mueller statement. Looked decidedly nervy at the start as if he knew he was
going to set the cat among the pigeons. And he did. So Trump will have to go after the
originators of it all, as you say, "that much harder".
When rogues fall out, honest men come by their own. I hope in this case some dishonest
ones do as well.
I was SO hoping he was going to announce that he had come to an agreement with the US
attorney for DC, and will plead Guilty to lying to Congress in the Iraq run up, and will have
a sentence similar to Michael Cohen's.
The Mueller Report was the biggest joke of a letdown, obvious political document since the
Steele Dossier itself. It seemed designed to justify and give cover to intelligence community
wrongdoing, to pretend that there were legitimate issues that demanded investigation early in
the 2016 campaign. On numerous topics it used weasel words to create clouds of smoke, or
obscure simple answers to their conspiracy theories.
I had expected more of Mueller, based on just some vague notions of who he was, but I
should have realized from the very weak earlier indictments about Russian hacking and
meddling that his team was no better than the rest of Trump's enemies.
He couldn't go without picking at the scab he and his handpicked crew of political
partisans spent 2 years in forming. Once he realized that his 'friend', Bill Barr, intended
to plumb the trap to determine the legal and prudential sufficiencies behind what is coming
into focus as a mix of witting and unwitting political jihad, to include the Bob Mueller act
itself, he couldn't leave without pissing into his 'friend's' well by inflaming the
Congressional Democratic moronocracy and siccing it on him. His scab-picking will have no
other practical effect than to obstruct Barr, and Mueller knows it.
Like his pal Comey's, the man's behavior is disgraceful. Had this claque of smug bureacrats
merely said that they welcome Barr's investigation, the reputations of their Agencies might
have started on their way to recovery. It looks like for Barr's investigation, it will have
to be slash and burn for it to get anywhere. The Bureau and the Agency will be looking way
worse before they look better, if they ever do.
''Today, Robert Mueller did the same damn thing. He had one job--gather evidence and
indict or say nothing.''
I think Mueller did his job well. He gathered evidence, indicted the wrong doers on who he
did have enough evidence. As he said, the Justice Department policy does not allow the
indictment of a sitting President even if the evidence warranted it. I think he made clear he
didn't find definitive evidence of Trump collusion with Russia but did find 'signs' of
possible obstruction.
Bottom line he did his job, turned his report over to the AG and only spoke today to correct
Barr's 'incomplete' representation of his conclusions...that's it.
Whatever congress does with Muller's findings is up to congress.
catherine, I understand he simply wanted to tell, I did my best for two years but other
then finding people don't always follow the rules, I have nothing more to say.
In other words, is maybe our collected wisdom not solidly usable enough? Which one way or
another influences how we read and interpret it?
******
9/11 triggered a lot of activities expanding the duties of the US services into the
cyberwar-cyberprotection space. Now , what again was it, about the needle and haystack?
Today close to 20 years later we come back and choose to decide maybe its better to decide
based on our basic instincts? Our political alignment?
If Barr really wishes to pursue his investigation he does have the resources of the NSA,
which, presumably, has archived literally every communication sent over the airwaves, and he
could invoke the procedure promulgated under Obama, allowing the NSA to share its information
with other agencies investigating criminal activity.
Mueller had the same opportunity, but instead cherry picked the NSA's resources, and
ignored the rest, when it came to the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC. Had he followed
through in conjunction with the Binney/VIPS forensics, he could have put an early nail in the
coffin of the imaginary Guccifer 2.0 and the Russian interference canard.
It was a crappy politicized investigation that, unfortunately, will only further damage
the credibility of our justice system.
Mueller allegedly said: ""If we have confidence the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so." If this is true, and I'm not misunderstanding the context, then Mueller is either an idiot
or a rat. By definition, the above statement is a meaningless truism. NO ONE can say "with
confidence" that a crime has not been committed because negative evidence cannot be turned
into positive evidence. To translate Mueller: "we couldn't find any evidence he did it, but
that doesn't mean he didn't!" - the presumption of innocence was developed to protect
suspects from exactly this sort of biased speculation.
Mueller has fed Congress exactly what the Democrats wanted; meaningless speculation and
innuendo with no apparent basis in fact. To put that another way, Democrats can now say:"this
report raises more questions than it answers". Thanks for nothing Mueller.
Since the Senate is the body responsible for any trial that would result from impeachment
Senator Graham can cut to the chase and subpoena Mueller and all the members of his team and
start asking questions. I suggest they involve things like just what is spelled out in the
4th, 5th, 6th and 14th Amendments and how did each lawyer there comply with those
constitutional requirements. Oh, and who was is they talked/emailed/tweeted/etc. to at the
NYT/WAPO etc. Under oath and in public, since we would hate to have a 'constitutional crisis'
that would requiring denying the right to public trials! But of course we now live in an
America transformed by Barack Obama and the new legal term everyone is looking for is
"Presumption of Guilt".
BTW I can't wait for the Senate impeachment committee to subpoena Barack to ask him just
what he told his people to do and when he told them to do so.
"This is the behavior of a prosecutor from a third-world shithole. Certainly appears that
the United States is headed in that direction."
Sure looks that way. Deep State totalitarianism. We have FBI SWAT teams kicking in doors in the middle of the night and
dragging out senior citizens for process crimes in a phony criminal investigation. You have high-profile Trump supporters
being set up and secretly videotaped at massage parlors. You have Chinese business people and Trump donors being
investigated and subpoenaed by federal prosecutors in The Swamp (
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article230946518.html).
According to Prof. Luke Johnson, America became an empire around the time of Teddy
Roosevelt (putting global concerns above nation). IMHO, the empire will end shortly after
Trump leaves office. Whether it ends with a whimper or bang is the question. And our vassal
states in Europe (most have been hollowed out because of globalism) will fall faster and
harder.
Karma. The chickens are coming home to roost. Our lawless behavior in casually undermining
and overthrowing govts in other countries while braying that we are upholding international
norms makes it acceptable to do the same here.
There is an irony that the deep state (permanent neocon bureaucracy) is blaming the
Russians while they are the ones doing it here. As much as I hate the Mueller's, I hate their
minions in the MSM even more. Shouldn't THEY understand that people do not have to be
exonerated by Prosecutors? Our MSM echoes whatever their handlers tell them to say whether
it's about Venezuela or about elected officials.
I just never expected anything else coming out of a swamp rat.
It's sad for me, a person who grew up so very proud of our country. I know now, after
growing more wise, that there has always been a rat presence in our government, but it seems
to have really gotten out of control lately.
I can still hope that out here in fly over country there are enough people to make the D C
swamp creatures irrelevant in every national election cycle until the swamp is drained at bit
and fumigated.
But, unfortunately we'll have to first eliminate the rats that have gained some control of
our state offices.
JFK unionized government workers. Big government employee unions have amassed huge
political war chests and disciplined rank and file GOTV ground troops on election days. DNC
is nothing but a front for the big government unions.
You can measure the decline of America political discourse from that point forward. When
SEIU spends nearly one billion dollars to get Obama elected in 2008, everyone needs to follow
the money and understand how the power of big government union member dues plays such a
deciding role in our rapidly devolving political climate.
Who even suspects the teachers unions are the primary beneficiaries of open borders,
filling their classrooms with endless supplies of new students and preserving their own jobs
perks and benefits. Such is the incestuous web we have now woven in our oountry and its
highly polarized political debate.
Follow the money - much of it leads right back to the expanding self-interests of the big
government employee unions.
Precisely the day after Mueller's peculiar statement in which he forgot not to mention
with stress the no longer alleged but "real" US election interference by the Russians, the US
Defense Intelligence Agency accused the Russians of violating the nuclear test ban agreement.
Vehemently denied by officials in Moscow.
Coincidence more than likely.
Mueller`s latest statements were pretty weird. A press conference where he does not
actually take questions and blow the impeachment flames using contradictory legal reasoning
(why investigate in the first place if he can not indict?).
I would say one of the objectives is to mud the watters on the investigation that Barr is
pushing on the start of the Russia conspiracy probe.
"... There are numerous NGOs that act on behalf of Israel in the U.S., examples being CUFI, JINSA, AIPAC and the Chabad Lubbivitcher sect. ..."
"... For, if the real intention had been to "get" Trump post election -- and not make him a sympathetic character to the average American -- an investigation would have focused on the "Russian" mafia and their banks, Israeli intel, Trump's bankruptcies (and who got him out of them) and the Chabad Lubbavitcher sect. Does anyone really believe that a U.S. legislature that previously violated protocol and invited Bibi Netanyahu to the U.S. on its own -- and then gave him more than 15 standing ovations -- would impeach the man who gave Jerusalem and the Golan Heights to Israel? This is sheer nonsense -- theater intended to sway the gullible public. ..."
"... In fact, Adelson even funds a major newspaper in Israel -- Israel Today -- that has helped keep Netanyahu in power. (The 85-year-old and his wife Miriam gave $82-million+ to Republicans and candidate Trump in 2016.) But, alas, this alone is not enough to account for the election upset (if that was what it was.) ..."
"... In order for Trump to win, it would be necessary to swing a small percentage of disaffected white Americans from both parties. That small percentage (8%-10%) is now referred to as the "Alt Right." ..."
"... It should be remembered that, during the 2016 campaign, Hillary had discussed creating a private non-monitored hotline to Netanyahu when she was elected [12] ) ..."
"... So, the unhinged and unprecedented frothing-at-the-mouth rage towards Trump displayed by the worst of the Neocons (Bill Kristol, Jennifer Rubin, Max Boot, etc.) is all part of the ruse? ..."
"... entire deep state apparatus, with international assistance swung into action with the phony Mueller investigation was a sure sign that Trump's platform was never going to be allowed. ..."
"... "When a public is stressed and confused, a big lie told repeatedly and unchallenged can become accepted truth." ~George Orwell ..."
"... As for Flynn: he knew about many of the misdeeds of the previous administration. They took advantage of a neophyte administration fending off Sally Yates Russian Collusion initiative via a corrupt FBI Director to pressure them to let Flynn go – a terrible newbie mistake telegraphing weakness to all his enemies. ..."
"... So that being said, what's his point. That Trump is exceptionally corrupt despite no collusion with Russia because he's controlled by Izzies? ..."
The Mueller Report is done, and from the digest made public, its conclusion of no collusion to "fix" the last election by the
Russian or "other" foreign governments does not surprise me. I agree with this conclusion. These foreign governments would, presumably,
include Israel. However, in the case of Israel, I believe this may be a question of semantics.There is, I believe, considerable
evidence that non-governmental forces acting on behalf of Israel succeeded in placing an individual in charge of the U.S. who is
currently redirecting the power and financial resources of the nation to almost entirely serve the interests of a foreign power.
(And that entity is not Russia!)
There are numerous NGOs that act on behalf of Israel in the U.S., examples being CUFI, JINSA, AIPAC and the Chabad Lubbivitcher
sect. There are many super-wealthy patrons of Israel and the Netanyahu government, such as Sheldon Adelson, that were involved
in Trump's election. Finally there are shadowy private Israeli contractors, such as those referred to by Cambridge Analytica's Alexander
Nix, and the so-called "Russian" mafia, which is reputedly controlled by individuals loyal to Israel. Trump apparently has had business
proximity in the past to such entities and their bank.
[1]
First indication along these lines can be deduced from special prosecutor Robert Mueller's indictment of General Michael Flynn
[2]
. Flynn admits lying to FBI agents about his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, then-Russian Ambassador to the United States,
in December 2016, when Trump was president-elect. Apparently acting on orders from Jared Kushner, Trump's senior advisor and son-in-law,
Flynn contacted Kislyak to ask if Russia would delay or veto a UN Security Council vote criticizing Israeli settlements. It's certainly
a stretch to see how aiding and abetting actions illegal under international law would benefit the U.S. or Trump's MAGA agenda.
Empirical evidence of the preceding and a good example of the type of Israelocentric policy making that came in with the election
of Mr. Trump can be found in the book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House .
[2a] There author Michael
Wolff relates an alleged conversation between former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and Roger Ailes, the former CEO of
Fox News. Bannon reportedly told Ailes that Trump, Bibi Netanyahu and Trump-Netanyahu backer Sheldon Adelson are in agreement with
moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. The national interests of the U.S. and possible international ramifications of this act apparently
were not considered.
Trump's reaction to Bannon's alleged statement: "When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind."
"Donald Trump is the Zionist water boy in the Oval Office. Trump's collusion was never with the Russian government; it was always
with the Bolshevik/Ashkenazi/Zionist mafia (the new Deep State) that has now ousted the old Clinton-Bush mafia (the old Deep State)
from power. And that coup was stunningly successful and swift. Accordingly, Donald Trump has faithfully filled his administration
with quintessential Zionist insiders -- including Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Nikki Haley, Elliot Abrams, Gary Cohn, Steve
Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross, David Friedman, Jared Kushner, et al.," comments America's most courageous evangelist, Chuck Baldwin, "God
help us." [3]
MAGA -- Make America Great Again -- was widely believed to be a spontaneous outpouring of authentic nationalistic sentiment embodied
by President Donald Trump. Trump's election was initially welcomed by some countries as a government acting in the actual self-interest
of the U.S. because it would be far more predictable than one acting for hidden interests. And Trump's election, promising to reduce
the footprint of the U.S. abroad, offered the hope of rolling back the push toward a world war.
Alas, much as was the case with the so-called "Arab Spring", these hopes did not materialize and U.S. interventions overseas
have grown. Often, these are somehow related to the interests of the Israeli state and its Likud government:
Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal and placed new sanctions on Iran, in accordance with the wishes of Netanyahu
and Sheldon Adelson. On April 22 nd , for instance, oil prices jumped 3% as the Trump administration promised to remove
sanction waivers on Iran oil
[4] -- which had allowed
countries such as India to continue buying Iranian oil -- prompting threats from Iran to close the Straits of Hormuz for this violation
of the nuclear disarmament treaty. American consumers could pay soaring prices on all their purchases for this act which demonstrably
is connected to pre-election planning by backers of Israel with the Trump campaign. (Apparently fearing that this would cause a
major rift with India, further alienate Turkey, and scuttle hopes of a trade agreement with China, Trump quietly reversed course
to give these countries another year to comply, further demonstrating the Israelocentric monomania of the Neocon-Zionists vs. the
actual interests of the U.S.) The ongoing negotiations with North Korea appear centered on its "giving up" Iranian nuclear and missile
secrets -- as well as destroying its own offensive missile capabilities -- in return for normalization. Trump recently vetoed a
bill to pull U.S. troops out of Yemen and their support of the Saudi aggression (apparently as part of a deal to have Saudi Arabia
guarantee Arab support for Trump and Jared Kushner's new Mid-East "peace plan".) Trump's promises of reducing involvement in Syria
appear stalled and the U.S. continues the de facto support of he partition of Syria (A future Kurdistan may well become a
part of Eretz Israel in the future -- the Barzani brothers were trained by Israel and articles have appeared linking the Kurds to
the genetics of the Israeli population) as well as the protection of the evacuation of key ISIS operatives. In South America, war
is on the horizon as Neocons move to topple Venezuela -- going so far as to name an alternative president. Venezuela's heavy crude
is key to diesel production and China has substantial claims on it (which might not be honored if they don't play ball with Trump.)
And the restructuring of South America may also play a role in the creation of a "New Israel" in Patagonia -- a potential evacuation
zone of Jews from Israel, the U.S., Canada and elsewhere in the event of war or national chaos -- where Israeli operatives are reported
to be extremely active.
[4a] Meanwhile, President Trump has destroyed the last vestiges of international law relating to conquest of territory by aggressive
warfare, as in the case of the 1967 Mideast War. He has ceded control of territory so seized (recognizing Israeli conquest of East
Jerusalem and Syria's Golan Heights) despite U.S. membership in the U.N., which was created to prevent such events in the future
so as to make war less attractive. Was this done for any specific U.S. benefit? I think not. But it may have something to do with
President Trump's "fabulous" new Mideast peace plan that is similar to Bill Clinton's fabulous new peace plan. Possibly to pressure
Europe to support the redrawing of the Mid East, the Trump administration is expected to launch a tariff war with the EU starting
this May. (This will apparently follow an expected superficial agreement with China during the same period.) And money for Israel
has not been stinted either. Military aid for Israel apparently avoided the budget ax in Trump's 2020 fiscal plan sent to Congress.
It includes the full $3.3-billion in assistance promised under a 10-year memorandum of understanding, despite spending cuts in other
sectors affecting American interests throughout the proposal.
[5]
While the interests of the Israeli ally have been thoroughly protected, in the economic sphere, Trump's MAGA has been something
of a train wreck for Trump's populist supporters on main street. Their indebtedness has soared
[6]
while the interest on savings (for the 40-something percent of those who have any) dropped to near zero. They got tax breaks
that were temporary (as opposed to the massive permanent tax cuts for corporations who are often heavily indebted to large banks)
and then, many learned they wouldn't be getting their usual annual tax refunds due to quirks in the tax law -- something that has
hit the retail economy hard. Wall St. and the big banks have certainly prospered. U.S. Corporations were allowed to repatriate huge
sums of money with no strings attached. And what did they do with this money? Did they invest in infrastructure, job training of
Americans and building/retooling of factories as President Trump should have insisted? No, they used it for stock buybacks and acquisitions
-- mostly paper shuffling -- that has kept the stock market propped up.
Trump's tariff war, meanwhile, has imposed new costs on average Americans -- not on the Chinese -- with industrial production
dropping or remaining flat and U.S. trade deficits soaring. The ham-handed imposition of tariffs without corresponding domestic
industrial capacity may also have destroyed some of America's backbone and staunch Trump supporters -- farmers on small- and mid-sized
farms. Large amounts of corn and soybeans were placed in silos awaiting the end of Trump's "trade war". These have mostly been destroyed
by record flooding and are NOT covered by crop insurance. Many of these farmers will go bankrupt and big agribusiness may ultimately
take over their land. (And the "farm bailouts" announced by Trump will mainly go to large farms and big agribusiness -- including
farms owned by Chinese interests!)
In a nutshell, Trump "jazzed" a brief economic recovery in the U.S. with massive tax cuts for big business and temporary cuts
for voters (more bark than bite variety) while increasing the national debt, which these same overtaxed voters will ultimately be
on the hook for. At the same time Trump "jawboned" the Federal Reserve to ease monetary policy so interest rates wouldn't rise as
a result of the vast increase in national indebtedness. He has laid the groundwork for eventual hyperinflation (or hyper-stagflation)
that may well ruin more of his middle class voters after the 2020 election.
"Manufacturing production ( in March -- Ed. ) was flat after dropping in January and February. In the first three months
of the year, factory output fell at an annual rate of 1.1%. Production of cars, truck and auto parts dropped 2.5% in March and 4.5%
over the past year." [7]
The Cass Freight Index, a measure of truck shipments indicative of overall economic activity is down for the fourth consecutive
month year-over-year. [8]
Sales of Class 8 trucks (18-wheelers) hit the ditch in January, with orders down 58 percent from a year ago hitting a level
not seen since October 2016, near the end of the transportation recession, "when Class-8 truck orders had plunged to the lowest
levels since 2009, and truck and engine manufacturers responded with layoffs," writes Wolf Richter.
[9]
American businesses expanded in April at the slowest pace in 31 months, according to IHS Markit's survey of business executives.
IHS Markit's flash PMI for services slipped to 52.9 from 55.3, while the manufacturing index was flat at 52.4. Any number over 50
signifies expansion. "The U.S. economy started the second quarter with its weakest expansion since mid-2016 as businesses reported
a marked slowing in output, new orders and hiring," said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at IHS Markit "
[10]
"Manufacturing production has pivoted to the downside in the first quarter of the year, showing the revival in factories and
output is sputtering for the first time since the Trump economics team took office," said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG
in New York. "The trade war and America First policies have not brought factories back home yet."
[11]
What about immigration? While President Trump "talks the talk" he has failed to close the border as previous presidents have
done and seems more interested in expanding the H1B program for large corporate interests instead of retraining Americans to fill
at least some of the gap of necessary skills . He allows American soldiers to be captured and disarmed by the Mexican military
inside U.S. borders (as happened recently without a proportionate response) and the rate of "catch and release" has soared
due to lack of internment facilities. America is filled with unemployed (U6 -- the real unemployment rate -- is 3 times higher than
the publicized rate and many of the real jobs are part time and multiple jobs can be held by a single person), homeless and homeless
camps, yet we need hordes of unskilled labor pouring into the country? Trump proposes to dump refugees in sanctuary cities, which
sounds nice until one realizes that these cities will simply give the refugees tickets to go elsewhere in America. (This already
happens in some places in the U.S. where indigents are given tickets to go elsewhere.)
The empirical evidence is therefore clear. Trump's announced program vs. what he has actually delivered to nationalist voters
who supported him is what a Hollywood Western town is to a real Western town: it is only a facade. (It should be remembered that
Steve Bannon, one of the chief architects of the Trump victory, went from being a Goldman Sachs investment banker to being a Hollywood
movie director!) The only plausible explanation? That the Neocon-Zionist power structure co-opted the authentic nationalist sentiments
of Americans for their own ends and disguised this control with "Pepe": a neo-Nazi green frog "front man" wearing a red "MAGA" ball
cap. It stands to reason that such potent and capable forces are the real source of President Trump's power.
Amazingly, Trump's approval rating remains surprisingly high despite the outcome. Part of this may be the unwillingness of average
people to believe their vote counted for nothing and they are heading for the same outcome as if Hillary Clinton had been elected.
Then there is something called the Galileo gambit (also called the "Galileo fallacy.") This informal logical fallacy is a way to
convince listeners (or viewers) that a questionable leader (or his policies) are good despite evidence to the contrary. I believe
this was accomplished using the Russian meddling meme and having the establishment media -- widely distrusted by Trump supporters
-- pile on Trump. For, if the real intention had been to "get" Trump post election -- and not make him a sympathetic character
to the average American -- an investigation would have focused on the "Russian" mafia and their banks, Israeli intel, Trump's bankruptcies
(and who got him out of them) and the Chabad Lubbavitcher sect. Does anyone really believe that a U.S. legislature that previously
violated protocol and invited Bibi Netanyahu to the U.S. on its own -- and then gave him more than 15 standing ovations -- would
impeach the man who gave Jerusalem and the Golan Heights to Israel? This is sheer nonsense -- theater intended to sway the gullible
public.
To make a case for the election of Trump being a soft takeover of the U.S., it's necessary to examine how this might have been
accomplished. It is child's play to hack Diebold voting machines for which no paper trails exist. But due to the nature of such
rigging it would likely be impossible to prove, say, a hypothesis that Hillary had some machines in key states rigged and "someone's"
black ops unrigged them. We also know one of Trump's major backers, the Zionist Sheldon Adelson, is also the main backer of Netanyahu
in Israel. In fact, Adelson even funds a major newspaper in Israel -- Israel Today -- that has helped keep Netanyahu in power.
(The 85-year-old and his wife Miriam gave $82-million+ to Republicans and candidate Trump in 2016.) But, alas, this alone is not
enough to account for the election upset (if that was what it was.)
America is pretty well divided by party and elections are typically very close. There is a block of Israeli-indoctrinated Pentecostal
and "Christian Zionist" voters that could deliver 20% of votes. But many of these are already on the Republican rolls. In order
for Trump to win, it would be necessary to swing a small percentage of disaffected white Americans from both parties. That small
percentage (8%-10%) is now referred to as the "Alt Right."
And it is the Alt Right -- comprised of voters who might otherwise not have voted in the election -- that swung the election
coupled with the divisive campaign of Hillary Clinton, which many middle class Americans found odious. (It must be remembered how
quickly Trump backed off his "jail Hillary" meme at the conclusion of the election. Was this also play acting? It should be
remembered that, during the 2016 campaign, Hillary had discussed creating a private non-monitored hotline to Netanyahu when she
was elected [12] )
So, we may start with the genesis of this Alt Right movement. Which was in Israel. Breitbart News, the flagship of the Alt Right
movement and a mouthpiece for the Trump campaign (and the eventual nesting place of Steve Bannon) was actually started by a Jewish
lawyer and businessman, Larry Solov.
[13]
In a 2015 post announcing the opening of Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau, Solov wrote that Breitbart News itself was conceived of
in Israel, when Solov traveled to the Israeli state with Andrew Breitbart, the now-deceased founder of Breitbart and met with him
and Bibi Netanyahu in planning sessions. (There are pictures of this event.)
"One thing we specifically discussed that night was our desire to start a site that would be unapologetically pro-freedom and
pro-Israel. We were sick of the anti-Israel bias of the mainstream media and J-Street," he wrote.
[14]
Breitbart's infatuation with Israel is eerily reminiscent of a similar situation in the 1930s. National Socialist propagandist
Josef Goebbels ran a publication called the Algerminer in the 1930s prior to the Second World War. Goebbels was quite sympathetic
to Zionist interests, sponsored a fact-finding trip to Palestine and had a commemorative coin issued in honor of this collaboration
depicting a swastika on one side and a Jewish hexagram ("Mogen David") on the obverse.
[15]
Subsequently, the so-called Transfer Agreement saw German Jews brought to Palestine on German ships.
[16]
Andrew Breitbart subsequently died -- but not before Steve Bannon had him narrate one of his turgid Hollywood conservative documentaries
and got on his and Larry Solov's "good side." Solov then tapped Bannon as Breitbart's successor and brought him on to run the website
-- possibly also due to his links with the wealthy Mercer family. Bannon went on to transform Breitbart into the spearhead of Trump's
campaign to disaffected Americans vis a vis the Alt-Right. (Although Bannon was reputed in a divorce proceeding to have once made
a comment about "whiny Jews," he was given a kosheresque seal of approval by no less than the Israeli ambassador to the U.S.
[17]
)
Bannon's masterful use of Breitbart's ideas and website pale in comparison with the impact of his creation of Cambridge Analytica
in 2013 (with billionaire fund manager Robert Mercer)
[18]
as a spinoff from Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL.)
[19] SCL is a UK firm
whose niche "specialties" were once described as psychological warfare , public diplomacy and influence operations.
Cambridge's first big success with "behavorial microtargeting" was swinging the Brexit vote in the U.K., a cause also championed
by the Zionist politician Boris Johnson
[20] (The Israeli press,
not surprisingly, now raises the possibility of Israel becoming Britain's "window on the world" in the event of a hard Brexit! No
doubt, Israel may ultimately benefit from the trade wars launched by President Trump as well. It has free trade arrangements with
many nations.) Thanks to what's alleged to have been a massive data breach of some 50-million Facebook users, Cambridge was apparently
able to corral the (private) data on the social media accounts of millions of American voters in swing states
[21]
, allowing development of Trump's talking points and election materials directed at individual voters' "hot buttons" by a sophisticated
AI program allegedly developed by company whistleblower Christopher Wylie with help getting the data from a company, Global Science
Research (GSR), controlled by researcher Aleksandr Kogan of Cambridge University.
[22] Kogan reportedly
gave thousands of volunteers a personality test app (thisisyourdigitallife) and then used the Facebook platform (allegedly in violation
of the terms of use) to find their friends and their friends' friends and so on much like Carnivore to create a relational database
that grew into many tens of millions. In effect, this created the potential for psychological warfare to be used by Cambridge Analytica
on the American voting public in order to "game" the election.
For its part, Cambridge claimed that it believed GSR had abided by the UK Data Protection Act and, as soon as it found out this
was not the case, terminated the data and deleted the information. And that, after being paid $6.2-million by the Trump campaign,
none of the consent-less data was used to elect Trump. (Reuters relates that the N.Y. Times interviewed half a dozen former employees
and contractors and reviewed documents and records and claimed these indicate Cambridge retained the data and did use the data.
Facebook, after receiving information that 270,000 people had downloaded Kogan's app and that data obtained without consent had
not been deleted, then banned Cambridge Analytica and Wylie from using its platform.
[23] )
What is even more disturbing is that foreign players may also have been involved in the 2016 election. While Cambridge Analytica
and its parent SCL ceased operations on May 2nd, 2018 (possibly to stymie investigations as to the extent of its activities for
the Trump campaign and foreign governments)
[24]
that cessation came after its former CEO Alexander Nix had some interesting things to say when recorded by TV Channel
4 with a hidden camera while making a sales presentation.
[25] In addition to
the usual allusions to prostitutes, shady characters, blackmail and the like, Nix carelessly " boasted of his ability to employ
"Israeli companies" to gather intelligence on politicians Nix then went on to praise the ability of "Israeli" intelligence personnel
in what can only be described as a power sales pitch to a would-be client."
[26]
Like Bannon with his revelations to Wolff, Nix had gone too far and was quickly sacked pending an investigation. Had he committed
the unforgivable sin of speaking the truth in an insecure venue??? According to a statement put out by CA at the time:
"In the view of the Board, Mr. Nix's recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent
the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation. We have asked
Dr. Alexander Tayler to serve as acting CEO while an independent investigation is launched to review those comments and allegations."
[27]
Much like exploding armor on tanks, Trump seemingly uses associates and then fires them to deflect criticism when they become
compromised. In the case of the massive Cambridge data breach and its possible use to swing the election, Steve Bannon fared no
better than General Flynn.
After Bannon's departure from the White House, quoting McClatchy Washington Bureau: " Bannon sold his stake in Cambridge Analytica
-- the controversial data firm Donald Trump's campaign employed to reach voters with hyper-targeted online messaging -- in April,
as required by his ethics requirement. But Bannon only notified the government of the sale in November, three months after he had
left the White House and one month after McClatchy asked him if he still had an interest in the company. He was fined for the late
report about the sale Bannon was supposed to sell his $1 million to $5 million stake in Cambridge Analytica while he served in the
administration as part of his ethics agreement, but it was never clear until now if he had done so Under Federal law, late filers
such as Bannon are fined $200. However, while the fine is small only a tiny percentage of such government-required reports are filed
late. Obviously, most reports are timely filed because tardy filing could be an indication of some misfeasance or malfeasance.
[28]
[2] United States
of America vs. Michael T. Flynn, Violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1001
In a plea agreement, Flynn admitted that he had lied to Justice Dept. investigators, with regard to a resolution submitted by
Egypt to the UNSC concerning sanctions on Israel for illegal settlement construction in Palestinian areas, he contacted the Russian
Ambassador to the U.S. on December 22 nd , 2016 at the behest of a "very senior member of Trump's transition team" (believed
to be Jared Kushner -- Ed.) and requested Russia vote against the resolution or at least delay it. He met again with the Russian
Ambassador on December 23 rd and was informed Russia would not comply if the resolution came to a vote.
https://www.justice.gov/file/1015126/download
[2a] Wolff, Michael,
Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, ISBN 978-1-250-15806-2, Henry Holt and Co. (2018)
[3] Baldwin further
adds that (in addition to the Kushners -- Ed.) Trump's association with Jewish mafia billionaires is easily documented. I'm talking
about men such as Alexander Mashkevich, Tevfik Arif (not Jewish by birth but a strong Zionist), Felix Henry Sater and Lev Avnerovich
Leviev. Look them up for yourself. Jewish Zionist Wilbur Ross (Bilderberg), whom Trump appointed as Secretary of Commerce, was one
of the Jewish billionaire Rothschild bankers who bailed Trump out of one of his bankruptcies. "Donald Trump, John Hagee, Zionism
And The Chabad," by Chuck Baldwin, February 14, 2019
[6] Americans'
credit spending was greater than ever in 2018, as debt levels reached record totals. Overall consumer debt reached $13.3 trillion
in the last quarter of 2018, while the total amount of unpaid revolving debt hit $4.1 trillion.
[17] Ron Dermer,
Israel's ambassador to the United States, in 2016 praised President-elect Donald Trump as a "true friend of Israel" and said he
looks forward to working with incoming White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. "Israel has no doubt that President-elect Trump
is a true friend of Israel "
[18] According
to testimony given to British lawmakers by a company whistle blower, Christopher Wylie, Cambridge Analytica was founded by billionaire
Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon.
In other words, Bannon was likely a kingpin and not just a bit player in what transpired -- and probably the real reason he had
to leave the White House. "Trump and Brexit: Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Gives Bombshell Testimony to British Lawmakers,"
by Pam and Russ Martens, Wall Street on Parade, 27 March 2018
[24] Are
Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group attempting
to evade recent negative coverage, only to re-form and continue their work as part of a new entity? "The news Wednesday about the
closure of Cambridge Analytica does not mention Emerdata or its subsidiary Firecrest Technologies All of the other UK SCL-related
companies are still listed as active and have no pending filings .
The business purpose of Emerdata is not known, beyond the general description of "data processing, hosting and related activities".
However, in a channel 4 News report, the SCL Group founder, Nigel Oakes, said it was his understanding that Emerdata was set up
to acquire all of Cambridge Analytica and SCL.
"Cambridge Analytica is dead -- but its obscure network is alive and well," by Wendy Siegelman, The Guardian Weekly, 5 May 2018
[26] "The Cambridge
Analytica Scandal Could Provide Hard Evidence of "Israeli" Meddling in Trump Election," by Adam Garrie, Global Policy and Analysis
Think Tank, 20 March 2018
[28] "Bannon Sold
His Stake in Cambridge Analytica, and was Fined for Late Ethics Report," Hamodia-The Daily Newspaper of Torah Jewry, 20 February
2018
menters to Ignore ...to Follow Endorsed Only Trim Comments?
So, the unhinged and unprecedented frothing-at-the-mouth rage towards Trump displayed by the worst of the Neocons (Bill
Kristol, Jennifer Rubin, Max Boot, etc.) is all part of the ruse?
"There is, I believe, considerable evidence that non-governmental forces acting on behalf of Israel succeeded in placing
an individual in charge of the U.S. who is currently redirecting the power and financial resources of the nation to almost
entirely serve the interests of a foreign power. (And that entity is not Russia!)"
Wow, I've been looking for an article with this level of truth since this latest cardboard cutout was ushered into office.
You shills who will be screaming for evidence I suggest you watch the video below and then tell me Israhell is not in charge
of American foreign policy.
Wait! We have had a president in the last 30 years who hasn't been a water boy for Israel? Even the "Muslim" Obama bent over
for that insignificant nation.
I think there are people on the alt-right who are both pro and anti Israel. Obviously the pro ones only love Israel because
Israel likes killing brown people.
14.05.2017 International Cyber Attack: Roots Traced to US National Security Agency
Over 45,000 ransomware attacks have been tracked in large-scale attacks across Europe and Asia - particularly Russia and
China - as well as attacks in the US and South America. There are reports of infections in 99 countries. A string of ransomware
attacks appears to have started in the United Kingdom, Spain and the rest of Europe, before striking Japan, Vietnam and the
Philippines on May 12. According to Kaspersky Laboratory, Russia, Ukraine, India and Taiwan were hit hardest.
and yet many Jews are after Trump. Why is that? Now that you know about Trump's wicked friends, learn about Trump's
wicked enemies Anti-Trump & Pro-Obama, the Pritzkers made Obama. "They're bigshots in Holocaustianity, pioneers of mortgage-backed
derivatives & publish the genocidal Zohar."
It looks to me like the anti-Trump 'cranks' are getting the upper hand here at Unz Review. Tom Mysiewicz is known for writing
articles of this type for Renegade Tribune, which presents the most highly conspiratorial view of world politics possible. Just
because he can create 28 footnotes doesn't mean that any of them are credible or actually provide evidence for what he is proposing.
In this article, most don't. For example, this paragraph:
Breitbart's infatuation with Israel is eerily reminiscent of a similar situation in the 1930s. National Socialist propagandist
Josef Goebbels ran a publication called the Algerminer in the 1930s prior to the Second World War. Goebbels was quite sympathetic
to Zionist interests, sponsored a fact-finding trip to Palestine and had a commemorative coin issued in honor of this collaboration
depicting a swastika on one side and a Jewish hexagram ("Mogen David") on the obverse.[15]
Subsequently, the so-called Transfer Agreement saw German Jews brought to Palestine on German ships.[16]
I can confidently say that this simplified description and 'conclusion' misrepresents the actual situation at the time and
also misrepresents Josef Goebbels intentions. It's the same with many of Mysiewicz's sources intended to back up his argument
that Trump is a bought and paid for Israeli asset, and Israel rules the world. What's really going on is that the Jewish population
in every country acts as Israeli assets, which gives them their power. And who is responsible for that? Let's look first at
the English aristocracy.
Donald Trump is who he is. He has a long history as a public figure and he's been saying the same things for many years.
The idea that he has set out to fool Americans in order to serve the interests of Israel and bring about total Jewish domination
over us is not supported by the overall reality. The reality is that every U.S. president has limited power and is beset by
opposition at all times (including the fierce Jewish Lobby). That is Democracy as we know it. Those who want to sell two-dimensional
comic-book villains to their conspiracy-obsessed readers are doing us all a disservice.
@Carolyn Yeager
Then he shit on his base and became the most insanely pro-Israel zealot we have ever seen. The southern border is wide open
with thousands of invaders pouring in, and they are given WORK PERMITS. Trump was a shill to begin with, or they threatened
him and his family so he caved. I kind of think he was a shill to begin with, that he was always a globalist piece of shit and
he lied to us to get elected.
In any case, Trump actually is a two dimensional comic book villain that hires every neocon he can find and turns his back
on people that believed in him.
" our June 8, 2019 Memorial Service will be held at the Navy Memorial, 701 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington DC 20004
at noon. I admit it would be more moving to have the service at Section 34, Arlington Cemetery, however, because of security,
logistics, and cost issues, the Navy Memorial is the better choice. In any case, prayer and remembrance can occur anywhere the
heart is."
entire deep state apparatus, with international assistance swung into action with the phony Mueller investigation
was a sure sign that Trump's platform was never going to be allowed.
Whether you like Bannon or not, his departure statement – the Trump presidency is dead – has been entirely accurate. The
unanswered question is whether that was the plan all along, or whether Trump received an offer that he couldn't refuse. Until
proof otherwise, my view is the latter. This was confirmed yesterday when I saw Mueller's bullshit political statement which
was essentially, the President can't prove when he stopped beating his wife.
Although the term "Alt Right" has gone out of style these days, the group to which it actually referred is NOT in any way
pro-Israel. Tommy Robinson and his like were never Alt Right. The Alt Right is characterized by many things, and some disagree
on these, but two things on which no one disagrees is regarding race realism and knowledge of the Jewish question, which means
the Alt Right is "anti-semitic" in the eyes of its true enemies. Semitism causes anti-Semitism, and any who refuse to address
the Jewish question, and especially those who shill for Israel are NOT Alt Right.
Again, some here are totally unable to face the truth. This is known as cognitive dissonance. If you suffer from this condition
please seek help. Here is a good place to start.
"When a public is stressed and confused, a big lie told repeatedly and unchallenged can become accepted truth." ~George
Orwell
Trump's tariff war, meanwhile, has imposed new costs on average Americans - not on the Chinese - with industrial production
dropping or remaining flat and U.S. trade deficits soaring.
Not on the Chinese? That is news to them and everyone else
China's economy grew at its slowest pace in 28 years in 2018, with gross domestic product expanding 6.6%, down 0.2 percentage
point from the previous year, according to data released Monday by the country's National Bureau of Statistics.
The last time economic growth was so tepid was 1990, when the economy slumped in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square
incident. Last year, the economy was hampered by a drive to cut regional government and corporate debt, as well as China's trade
war with the U.S.
In a nutshell, Trump "jazzed" a brief economic recovery in the U.S. with massive tax cuts for big business and temporary
cuts for voters (more bark than bite variety) while increasing the national debt, which these same overtaxed voters will ultimately
be on the hook for. At the same time Trump "jawboned" the Federal Reserve to ease monetary policy so interest rates wouldn't
rise as a result of the vast increase in national indebtedness. He has laid the groundwork for eventual hyperinflation (or hyper-stagflation)
that may well ruin more of his middle class voters after the 2020 election.
There has never been hyperinflation in any Western nation other than the Weimar Republic. This has been going on since the
Bretton Woods agreement. Trump has been dealing with a coup since he took office, when exactly did he have time to reform or
replace our central bank with a new money standard and reform our banking laws? Was he supposed to start a recession the moment
he took office so we could start tightening our belts and paying all our debts?
said:
"Wow, I've been looking for an article with this level of truth since this latest cardboard cutout was ushered into office.
You shills who will be screaming for evidence I suggest you watch the video below and then tell me Israhell is not in charge
of American foreign policy."
Yawn. As if Trump is any different from all the other Presidents who have bowed to Jew / Israeli interests. The alternative
was Hillary.
Quit the strawman arguments. People here realize that Trump yields to Jew interests. The problem you and those like you have
is that none of you have differentiated Trump from other Jew ass kissing Presidents. And given the for-Israel wars of Bush &
Obama, it's fair to say that Trump is actually better in that regard.
You have also not explained why most Jews dislike Trump. Now please sit down.
Israel can be useful to the Alt-Right in two ways.
1. As a destination for Jewish diaspora relocation.
2. The existence of the Jewish ethnostate serves as a talking point for white nationalists.
First, apart from mentioning it's over in first paragraph, it has NOTHING to do with the Mueller report. It's a reasonable
diatribe about how the Izzies have their hands on the American Presidential throat. Name me one President for whom that has
not been the case since the 1950s. One: Obama (maybe). And what a totalitarian, police state disaster he was. Maybe in order
to do all that he had to do an end run around most of the Izzy agents in the USG, or maybe it was a highly principled stand.
But apart from him, nobody. Well, maybe Kennedy, actually, but look what they did to him?
As for Flynn: he knew about many of the misdeeds of the previous administration. They took advantage of a neophyte administration
fending off Sally Yates Russian Collusion initiative via a corrupt FBI Director to pressure them to let Flynn go – a terrible
newbie mistake telegraphing weakness to all his enemies.
So that being said, what's his point. That Trump is exceptionally corrupt despite no collusion with Russia because he's
controlled by Izzies?
Rather feeble if you ask me. I expect better in Unz.
Kusnher and Graham have drafted new immigration legislation for amnesty and higher levels of immigration. Trump SAYS what
we want to hear, then does NOTHING.
Nothing about sanctuary cities. Nothing about E-verify. Nothing about birthright citizenship. Nothing about the Visa lottery.
No wall to speak of, maybe a few miles. His fraud on immigration is handing the democrats permanent power and he has to know
this.
Yes ..the nose has fought him at every turn, you're right about that.
But Israel got 38 billion dollars, while we get more mexicans.
Maybe I'm just tired of seeing the national dept continue to skyrocket.
Maybe I'm just tired of the crumbling infrastructure of my country being ignored while billions upon billions are given to
other countries in the form of foreign aid.
Maybe I'm just tired of never ending wars that drain my country of blood and treasure.
Maybe I'm just tired of putting my faith in some politician promising the world and never delivering.
Maybe I'm just tired of the right/left, Republican/Democrat game.
Just like the vague conclusions of the commission which investigated the 9/11 and didn't reveal the real story, Robert Mueller
did the same by deceiving the people and didn't reveal the real story of his investigation into 2016 election. By announcing
in detail yesterday as how the Russians manipulated the election in 2016 Mueller completely failed to describe that some of
the Russians involved in meddling were Russian Zionists with ties to the Russian mobs! So far this is the 2nd event that they've
gotten away with it. It's so sad to see the extend of their involvement in the US government affairs!!!!
The State of Israel as a Light unto the Nations. In his writings and speeches, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973)
emphasized his vision of the state of Israel as a moral and social beacon to the whole world, and by that, in his view, it shall
implement the vision of the prophets.
@Robert Dolan
come together. If you think any president can just do away with all these things you mention, you are very naive, even childish.
I remember during Trump's campaign, he was speaking to a small rally in the West, maybe California, and one man stood up
and asked his position on Israel as a criminal, enemy nation (not his exact words). Trump seemed genuinely shocked, all he could
say was, 'We all love Israel don't we? Israel is great, Israel is our friend' like that, then went on to someone else's
question. Trump also praised Israel when he spoke to AIPAC and said then he would move the US embassy to Jerusalem. So you are
cherry-picking things he said that fit your "poor me" scenario of being lied to.
The individuals you name are fanatical supporters of the Zionist state. Looking at what Mr. Trump has done to date vis a
vis Israel, how can that not be the case, i.e., that their criticism was a ruse? Suggested reading is the Thomas Friedman book
"From Beirut to Jerusalem" where he recounts how covert Arab assets of the Israelis were deliberately attacked in the Israeli
press to increase their credibility on the Arab "street." If you read my article carefully–especially on the microtargeting
of the disaffected white minority–you will see that such attacks by Neocons were necessary and entirely predictable.
@Carolyn Yeager
sume to know the mind of Josef Goebbels I cannot make a conclusion on the actual, documented events..FACTS? It's documented
that leading members of the Stern Gang (such as Shamir and Begin) were on the Axis side until well into 1942. Admiral Canaris
provided the Jewish Lubbavitcher "Rebbe" Schneerson and his family safe passage in and out of the Warsaw Ghetto. What was he
thinking–have you any telepathic revelations on the subject.
I base my conclusions on facts and observations. You, in light of what you said on tariffs, have another methodology. And,
sadly, I am an "anti-Trump crank" who voted for Trump as the lesser of two evils and now regrets it. Mea culpa!
@Chris Mallory
r grasp of jurisprudence is remarkable. Do you allege Russia rigged voting machines or destroyed ballots? What, precisely
did Russia do to swing the election in favor of Trump? This is nonsense. Except for the U.S., no state player–even Israel–would
be so careless as to risk being implicated in such a scandal. Because that would swing public opinion against the interests
of the offending state.
Trump cannot be prosecuted for any crimes related to this while in office, as Mueller pointed out. So these avenues were
not pursued. Which is what I allude to in my article. A serious question: what is the definition of treason in the U.S. Constitution?
I'm not sure there is one.
I don't think any Unz readers need any more proof that Israel has ruled American foreign policy since Truman. There were
just a couple refusals by Eisenhower and Kennedy to comply with Israel orders. But since November 1963 every president has been
an Israel puppet.
In America, the treasonous act must be done in time of war to aid the enemy.
Since we're not at war with Israel or Russia whatever anyone does to help those countries is not treason. All the Israeli
and in the old days, Russian theft of military information and materials didn't fit the definition of treason since we weren't
at war with those countries.
The constitution is whatever one federal state or even municipal Judge says it is.
I have a book about Abu Nidal. He was a big anti Israel bogeyman for decades. The author claims the evil anti semitic Nidal
was an Israeli operative all along. The purpose was to supply a bogey man to scare gullible American Jews into giving more and
more money and lobby for the American tax payers to give even more to help Israel. He also allegedly gave Israel information
about Palestinian activists.
It's pretty well known that even 100 years ago the Zionists had plenty of spies and operatives in the Arab organizations.
Neither Mueller nor his 3 year investigation came up with one concrete, actual thing the Russians did to influence the election.
So some Russians may might have set up a website that some American voters may, might have looked at. BFD
@Corvinus ment
point of view. You kept writing about collusion. Exactly what did Trump or his associates DO that constitutes collusion? 3 years
of investigation and Mueller has found NOTHING that constitutes collusion.
For your simple minded incoherent self: for example the crime of theft. Something must be taken. Robbery, something must
be taken from the physical person who owns or legally possesses it. Burglary burglar must go inside a building.
So, what exactly was the ACT of collusion? Mueller found nothing. The only people who are interested any more are the same
old same old ultra liberals who hate Whites, Republicans , and Trump/
This investigation is way above your intellectual pay grade. I dumbed down the comment especially for your ilk to understand
what is going on. Just keep putting your hands over your face and say "Nothing to see here, move along".
@Johnny Walker Read
. Yes, even the sainted Tulsi Gabbard has taken her pull on the kosher sausage.
Yes – it is sad.
Israeli security – Israeli security – Israeli security - those two words are part of Washington's DNA. Deny those words and
lightening will strike you dead in DC. The fact is that Gabbard has served against mutual US/Israeli enemies – surly that has
influenced her.
I am for Peace, even for Jews – I also do not want a blood bath in Israel. I still believe that Gabbard is anti war with
Iran. A pure and total anti-Israel stance.
He received the offer on election night. The real-time poll agglomerate I was following simply couldn't update Georgia and
other states.. tv commentators were stuck in a loop.. then tv stations announced .. and the first words out of Trump's mouth
were "sorry to keep you waiting, complicated business".
He had agreed not to prosecute Hillary in exchange for an easy recognition of his triumph. And so the enemy was free to persecute
him..
In 3 years Mueller did not find one administrative, civil or criminal city county state or federal law violation. Some Russians
had a website on which was posted news about the election. BFD!!!!!!!
You're not an attorney are you? If you were,you'd know the difference between unproven allegations and some kind of law breaking,tort,
sharp practice whatever that could be prosecuted or the grounds for a civil suit.
@Monty Ahwazi
us you've never been involved in any kind of litigation. Never heard of cause of action or violation of a law code. You're
so naive you'll believe anything somebody named Mueller talks about on TV.
What exactly did Trump DO. What violation of an administrative civil or criminal code did Trump DO? Trump did nothing wrong
and Mueller and the liberals know they found nothing. so they are just starting from scratch allover again hoping to convince
idiots like you that there is something,anything.
So some Russians posted something on the internet. BFD
@Carolyn Yeager
– he is a total loser on immigration. Our country is going backwards.
Things just get worse – now he is penalizing our neighbor Mexico because he cannot lead America to an immigration solution.
We on our side of the issues, need to begin to see the whole picture of his administration – not just the opposition. He
bears some responsibility for much of the crazed opposition.
He is the president – he needs to lead us to solutions – not spend his time saving his ego.
How much of our country's disfunction – is his personal disfunction?
"... "All political analysis which favors either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party is inherently worthless, because both parties are made of swamp and exist in service of the swamp. If you can't see that the entire system is one unified block of corruption and that ordinary people need to come together and unite against it, then you really don't understand what you're looking at." ..."
Whatever you may think of Trump, the people who set out to 'get him' are the scum of the
Earth. I recommend listening to the two-part interview of George Papadopoulos with Mark
Steyn, where he describes the convoluted plot to use him to bring down Trump.
What they did to this guy is truly disgusting. Brennan belongs in a prison cell, and he
should be sharing it with Mueller. Papadopoulos also has written a book about his
experiences called 'Deep State Target, How I got caught in the crosshairs of the plot to
bring down President Trump.
And, a final comment. Hillary Clinton proved beyond all doubt that she and not Trump was
not fit to be President. To engage in this scheme and then to raise tensions through the
roof with a nuclear superpower, which can destroy this country, is about as low and selfish
as it is possible to be.
As I stated on the open thread, to paraphrase Muller;
I don't give a s###. figure it out yourself, Im f***ing outta' here.
The whole point of impeachment, is to have a show trial, not actually impeach. If the
thing is on TV, the American people may watch it, and that would be interesting.
Not to worry though, Pelosi and Schumer won't let that happen. Appeasing their donors,is
all they care about.
psycho @ 2 quoting C. Johnston stated;
"All political analysis which favors either the Democratic Party or the Republican
Party is inherently worthless, because both parties are made of swamp and exist in service of
the swamp. If you can't see that the entire system is one unified block of corruption and
that ordinary people need to come together and unite against it, then you really don't
understand what you're looking at."
Mueller put a great deal of emphasis on Russian interference with the election, which is
being both parroted and universally interpreted as a Russian hack of the DNC server - a
hack which could not possibly have taken place. https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-evidence/
The "Russian interference" issue was ancillary to Mueller's investigation, yet it is a
focal point of his comments. Why was it so important that it merited that degree of
relative emphasis? If it was a download and not a hack, the only suspect is the late Seth
Rich. The only person (I assume) who can unequivocally prove where those materials came
from is Julian Assange. After years, suddenly asylum is revoked, and suddenly the US is
prosecuting for espionage. After years of disparagement, mainstream media is suddenly
rallying to Assange's case - yet truth be told nobody at CNN will ever face even
administrative sanction for the same sort of activity as Assange's. SOS Pompeo met with
FM Lavrov, came back to the US and said he had warned Lavrov about interfering with US
elections...and Lavrov and Russian press reported those statements were never made.
Apparently someone corrected Pompeo's errant failure, and at the next meeting he did in
fact warn Lavrov about such interference. Obviously it was a big deal - to someone that
was sufficiently powerful to tell the SOS what to do with great specificity - that this
official condemnation was publicly registered. It certainly was not Trump. Lavrov
responded with not only denial, but as Aaron Mate pointed out and was noted here, Lavrov
said he had a file on it and was prepared to discuss it. Pompeo was not prepared to
discuss whatever was in that file. Although it is patently obvious the Russians did not
hack the DNC server, and that the materials in question - which relate to HRC - were
downloaded, it is apparently an imperative of a very large number of powerful people to
maintain the official narrative of a Russian hack of the DNC computer. While that suits
other narratives, it also buries any questions as to who might have downloaded the
materials (and someone did). Which ends any inquiry as to what might have happened from
that moment in time, just as inquiry into Whitewater ended with Vince Foster's demise and
an incredibly "irregular" forensic inquiry. Boxes of documents were removed from Foster's
office that same evening - by HRC personally. Recall she wanted to drone strike Assange.
All of this is happening on the heels of the revelation that the Mueller investigation
was not going to take down Trump and end all potential for inquiry into any untoward DNC
related activity. Thank you in advance to any comments in response to this comment.
After reading numerous articles on "Russia gate," the 2016 presidential election and the
rise of Generalissimo Bone Spur and President Chief Kaiser to the US presidency, Donald
Trump, the 19th century British political historian and thinker Lord Acton summed it all
up best; namely "never underestimate the influence of stupidity on history." What else is
there to say?
Posted by: GeorgeV | May 29, 2019 5:24:48 PM |
29 @ Bruce # 29 with the Seth Rich questions about the DNC
You are correct in pointing out that the Mueller investigation is hiding DNC and
Clinton II crimes which is why I said above that the impeachment will not proceed.
Somewhere I read that Hillary is on tape having said that she/they were screwed if Trump
won.
The bottom line is that none of those folks are working in my best interest and are
committing crime after crime to stay in power.
"... Although these Hoover successors, now occupying center stage in the investigation of President Trump, have been hailed for their impeccable character by much of Official Washington, the truth is, as top law enforcement officials of the George W. Bush Administration (Mueller as FBI Director and James Comey as Deputy Attorney General), both presided over post-9/11 cover-ups and secret abuses of the Constitution, enabled Bush-Cheney fabrications used to launch wrongful wars, and exhibited plain vanilla incompetence. ..."
"... Worse, Bush and Cheney used that post 9/11 period of obfuscation to "roll out" their misbegotten "war on terror," which only served to exponentially increase worldwide terrorism . ..."
"... A few months later, when it appeared he was acceding to Bush-Cheney's ginning up intelligence to launch the unjustified, counterproductive and illegal war on Iraq, I took Mueller up on his offer, emailing him my concerns in late February 2003. Mueller knew, for instance, that Vice President Dick Cheney's claims connecting 9/11 to Iraq were bogus yet he remained quiet. He also never responded to my email. ..."
"... Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political pressures. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the " post 9/11 round-up " of about 1,000 immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong time. FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI "progress" in fighting terrorism. Consequently, some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that none turned out to be terrorists . ..."
"... Long before he became FBI Director, serious questions existed about Mueller's role as Acting U.S. Attorney in Boston in effectively enabling decades of corruption and covering up of the FBI's illicit deals with mobster Whitey Bulger and other "top echelon" informants who committed numerous murders and crimes. When the truth was finally uncovered through intrepid investigative reporting and persistent, honest judges, U.S. taxpayers footed a $100 million court award to the four men framed for murders committed by (the FBI-operated) Bulger gang. ..."
"... Current media applause omits the fact that former FBI Director Mueller was the top official in charge of the Anthrax terror fiasco investigation into those 2001 murders , which targeted an innocent man (Steven Hatfil l) whose lawsuit eventually forced the FBI to pay $5 million in compensation. Mueller's FBI was also severely criticized by Department of Justice Inspector Generals finding the FBI overstepped the law improperly serving hundreds of thousands of "national security letters" to obtain private (and irrelevant) metadata on citizens, and for infiltrating nonviolent anti-war groups under the guise of investigating "terrorism." ..."
"... Up to the March 2004 night in Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital room, both Comey and Mueller were complicit with implementing a form of martial law, perpetrated via secret Office of Legal Counsel memos mainly written by John Yoo and predicated upon Yoo's singular theories of absolute "imperial" or "war presidency" powers, and requiring Ashcroft every 90 days to renew certification of a "state of emergency." ..."
"... Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any "war crimes files" were made to disappear. Not only did "collect it all" surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller's (and then Comey's) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities. ..."
"... Neither Comey nor Mueller -- who are reported to be " joined at the hip " -- deserve their current lionization among politicians and mainstream media. Instead of Jimmy Stewart-like "G-men" with reputations for principled integrity, the two close confidants and collaborators merely proved themselves, along with former CIA Director George "Slam Dunk" Tenet, reliably politicized sycophants, enmeshing themselves in a series of wrongful abuses of power along with official incompetence. ..."
"... It seems clear that based on his history and close "partnership" with Comey, called "one of the closest working relationships the top ranks of the Justice Department have ever seen," Mueller was chosen as Special Counsel not because he has integrity but because he will do what the powerful want him to do. ..."
"... Mueller didn't speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn't speak out against torture. He didn't speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn't tell the truth about 9/11. He is just "their man." ..."
"... The anthrax attacks of 2001 were the double-tap to follow the events of 9/11, and were crucial to the successful passage of the Patriot Act. ..."
"... Some history: Robert Swan Mueller III married his childhood sweetheart Ann Cabell Standish in 1966, three years after the JFK assassination. Her grandfather, Charles Cabell, was second in command at the CIA during the Bay of Pigs failure and was fired, along with Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell, for lying to him about the mission, which had been doomed to failure before its start. Her great uncle, Earle Cabell Jr. was the mayor of Dallas when it hosted the JFK assassination in 1963. Documents declassified in the last few years revealed that Earle Cabell was himself a "CIA asset" as well. Before anyone thinks that Mueller married into the CIA, his own great uncle was the aforementioned Richard Bissell. ..."
"... A closer review, here, shows Mueller's career covering up CIA criminal activities, to include Pan Am 103, the prosecution of Manuel Noriega, BCCI, 9/11 et al. He was promoted to handle those cases by former CIA Director GHW Bush. A week before 9/11 he took over as Director of the FBI, appointed by the son of the CIA Director, George W Bush. ..."
"... Joseph Misfud, a former ambassador for Malta, has been identified in Mueller's report as a Russian agent without proof. In fact, Misfud's career and allegiance has been to western intelligence. Mueller offers no proof to the contrary. But if in fact Misfud is an agent of Russia shouldn't he have made an attempt to interview him. Or interview Assange, who actually received the information? Or interview Craig Murray who claims to know about how the information was transferred from the DNC to Wikileaks? Or to William Binney? ..."
"... Robert Mueller is just doing what he's always done: cover up for the CIA. ..."
Special Counsel Robert Mueller Wednesday implied that he would have indicted Donald Trump if
he could have, resurrecting his saint-like status among Democrats who will now likely go for
impeachment. But who is the real Bob Mueller?, asked ex-FBI official Coleen Rowley on June 6,
2017.
By Coleen Rowley Special to Consortium News June 6, 2017
Mainstream commentators display amnesia when they
describe former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey as stellar and credible law
enforcement figures. Perhaps if they included J. Edgar Hoover, such fulsome praise could be put
into proper perspective.
Although these Hoover successors, now occupying center stage in the investigation of
President Trump, have been hailed for their impeccable character by much of Official
Washington, the truth is, as top law enforcement officials of the George W. Bush Administration
(Mueller as FBI Director and James Comey as Deputy Attorney General), both presided over
post-9/11 cover-ups and secret abuses of the Constitution, enabled Bush-Cheney fabrications
used to launch wrongful wars, and exhibited plain vanilla incompetence.
TIME Magazine would probably have not called my own disclosures a " bombshell memo
" to the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry in May 2002 if it had not been for Mueller's
having so misled everyone after 9/11. Although he bore no personal responsibility for
intelligence failures before the attack, since he only became FBI Director a week before,
Mueller denied or downplayed the significance of warnings that had poured in yet were all
ignored or mishandled during the Spring and Summer of 2001.
Bush Administration officials had circled the wagons and refused to publicly own up to what
the 9/11 Commission eventually concluded, "that the system had been blinking red
." Failures to read, share or act upon important intelligence, which a FBI agent witness termed
"
criminal negligence " in later trial testimony, were therefore not fixed in a timely
manner. (Some failures were never fixed at all.)
Worse, Bush and Cheney used that post 9/11 period of obfuscation to "roll out" their
misbegotten "war on terror," which only served to
exponentially increase worldwide terrorism .
Unfulfilled Promise
I wanted to believe Director Mueller when he expressed some regret in our personal meeting
the night before we both testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He told me he was seeking
improvements and that I should not hesitate to contact him if I ever witnessed a similar
situation to what was behind the FBI's pre 9/11 failures.
Some of the original detainees jailed at the Guantanamo Bay prison, as put on display by the
U.S. military.
A few months later, when it appeared he was acceding to Bush-Cheney's ginning up
intelligence to launch the unjustified, counterproductive and illegal war on Iraq, I took
Mueller up on his offer,
emailing him my concerns in late February 2003. Mueller knew, for instance, that Vice
President Dick Cheney's claims connecting 9/11 to Iraq were bogus yet he remained quiet. He
also never responded to my email.
Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political pressures. In the
aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the " post 9/11 round-up " of about 1,000
immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong
time. FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially
P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to
supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI "progress" in fighting terrorism. Consequently,
some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that
none turned out to be terrorists .
A History of Failure
Long before he became FBI Director, serious
questions existed about Mueller's role as Acting U.S. Attorney in Boston in effectively
enabling decades of corruption and covering up of the FBI's illicit deals with mobster Whitey
Bulger and other "top echelon" informants who committed numerous murders and crimes. When the
truth was finally uncovered through intrepid investigative reporting and persistent, honest
judges, U.S. taxpayers footed a $100 million court award to the four men framed for murders
committed by (the FBI-operated) Bulger gang.
For his part, Deputy Attorney General James Comey
, too, went along with the abuses of Bush and Cheney after 9/11 and signed off on a number of
highly illegal programs including warrantless surveillance of Americans and
torture of captives . Comey also defended the Bush Administration's three-year-long
detention of an American citizen without charges or right to counsel.
Up to the March 2004 night in Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital room, both Comey and
Mueller were complicit with implementing a form of martial law, perpetrated via secret Office
of Legal Counsel memos mainly written by John Yoo and predicated upon Yoo's singular theories
of absolute "imperial" or "war presidency" powers, and requiring Ashcroft every 90 days to
renew certification of a "state of emergency."
The Comey/Mueller Myth
What's not well understood is that Comey's and Mueller's joint intervention to stop Bush's
men from forcing the sick Attorney General to sign the certification that night was a
short-lived moment. A few days later, they all simply went back to the drawing board to draft
new legal loopholes to continue the same (unconstitutional) surveillance of
Americans.
The mythology of this episode, repeated endlessly throughout the press, is that Comey and
Mueller did something significant and lasting in that hospital room. They didn't. Only the
legal rationale for their unconstitutional actions was tweaked.
Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own
agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such
torture, and any "war crimes files" were made to disappear. Not only did "collect it all"
surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller's (and then Comey's) FBI later worked
to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.
Neither Comey nor Mueller -- who are reported to be "
joined at the hip " -- deserve their current lionization among politicians and mainstream
media. Instead of Jimmy Stewart-like "G-men" with reputations for principled integrity, the two
close confidants and collaborators merely proved themselves, along with former CIA Director
George "Slam Dunk" Tenet, reliably politicized sycophants, enmeshing themselves in a series of
wrongful abuses of power along with official incompetence.
It seems clear that based on his history and close "partnership" with Comey, called "one of
the closest working relationships the top ranks of the Justice Department have ever seen,"
Mueller was chosen as
Special Counsel not because he has integrity but because he will do what the powerful want
him to do.
Mueller didn't speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn't speak out
against torture. He didn't speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn't tell
the truth about 9/11. He is just "their man."
Coleen Rowley, a retired FBI special agent and division legal counsel whose May 2002 memo to
then-FBI Director Robert Mueller exposed some of the FBI's pre-9/11 failures, was named one of
TIME magazine's "Persons of the Year" in 2002. Her 2003 letter to Robert Mueller in opposition
to launching the Iraq War is
archived in full text on the NYT and her 2013 op-ed entitled " Questions for
the FBI Nominee " was published on the day of James Comey's confirmation hearing. This
piece will also be cross-posted on Rowley's Huffington Post page.)
The anthrax attacks of 2001 were the double-tap to follow the events of 9/11, and were
crucial to the successful passage of the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act effectively cancelled
the privacy protections of the U.S. Constitution, and reversed the onus of a presumption of
innocence in U.S. legal practice. The failure of the FBI, under the leadership of Mueller, to
provide or uncover an adequate explanation for the anthrax attacks is a signature black mark
in the FBI's history, if not the history of the republic.
Raymond Comeau , May 30, 2019 at 14:14
Mueller is another spook dredged up from the bowels of Hell, in order to fool the honest
citizens and ensure Deep State and its useful idiots continue on their way to Oblivion.
Bob In Portland , May 30, 2019 at 12:40
Some history: Robert Swan Mueller III married his childhood sweetheart Ann Cabell Standish
in 1966, three years after the JFK assassination. Her grandfather, Charles Cabell, was second
in command at the CIA during the Bay of Pigs failure and was fired, along with Allen Dulles
and Richard Bissell, for lying to him about the mission, which had been doomed to failure
before its start. Her great uncle, Earle Cabell Jr. was the mayor of Dallas when it hosted
the JFK assassination in 1963. Documents declassified in the last few years revealed that
Earle Cabell was himself a "CIA asset" as well. Before anyone thinks that Mueller married
into the CIA, his own great uncle was the aforementioned Richard Bissell.
A closer review, here, shows Mueller's career covering up CIA criminal activities, to
include Pan Am 103, the prosecution of Manuel Noriega, BCCI, 9/11 et al. He was promoted to
handle those cases by former CIA Director GHW Bush. A week before 9/11 he took over as
Director of the FBI, appointed by the son of the CIA Director, George W Bush.
Another key player in our current political show is William Barr. While Barr was getting
his law degree he was employed by the CIA. Surprise surprise. One of the main figures in
Russiagate is Paul Manafort, whose career consists of him working with world leaders who were
either put into power by the CIA, kept in power by the CIA, removed from power by the CIA or
murdered by the CIA. It should not be surprising to anyone willing to look that the current
maneuvering appears to many to be an attempt to remove Trump from office.
Joseph Misfud, a former ambassador for Malta, has been identified in Mueller's report as a
Russian agent without proof. In fact, Misfud's career and allegiance has been to western
intelligence. Mueller offers no proof to the contrary. But if in fact Misfud is an agent of
Russia shouldn't he have made an attempt to interview him. Or interview Assange, who actually
received the information? Or interview Craig Murray who claims to know about how the
information was transferred from the DNC to Wikileaks? Or to William Binney?
Robert Mueller is just doing what he's always done: cover up for the CIA.
Many Thanks Bob In Portland. I was an 18 year old soldier in the 101st. Airborne on alert
for the invasion of Cuba so I share you lifetime of frustration.
To the extent that there is "Continuity In Government", this is it. Great research and
information
Mueller's proven himself to be just another mouthpiece for power and the "respected"
establishment. He's been championing the very dangerous lie that the Kremlin interfered in
the '16 election, even though there has never been one piece of credible evidence proving
that Moscow did any such thing.
As this canard gets repeated over and over it's sinking in to the public consciousness
that the Putin administration is something to be feared.
exiled off mainstreet , May 30, 2019 at 00:00
This reveals the deplorable record of Mueller and Comey as lackeys for a corrupt
authoritarian regime.
Doggrotter , May 29, 2019 at 23:50
Can I share this article I just found. I typed into google "is Mueller a psychopath?" and
up popped this. I know next to nothing about the site or author. Will explore a bit.
Coleen. I can't thank you enough for the article. So many abuses to the system. Yet" St
Muller this and Saint Muller that". They are the kind of people that nobody with a right
would approach with barge pole.
Muller and Comie are the rabid rottweilers of the State, just hidden away behind expensive
suits and effected gravitas. They need to be chained up in their cages to keep the world
safe.
Treatment of Julian Assange.
Entrapment of hapless young men in terrorist stings and their incarceration.
The malicious and failed prosecution of Nor Salman.
Taking illegally obtained surveillance
To Crown it all "Parallel Construction" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
Andrew Nichols , May 29, 2019 at 22:47
Failures to read, share or act upon important intelligence, which a FBI agent witness
termed "criminal negligence" in later trial testimony, were therefore not fixed in a timely
manner. (Some failures were never fixed at all.) Deliberate failures
Going back, to the other guy, again would you trust him knowing that he is and has been so
close to Comey as it's being tolk and as it's coming out, be it EVER so slow, but as we go
deeper into this mess, ALL of these "OUTSTANDING Federal Law Officers", their histories WILL,
or at the very least START to show!"
Tom , May 29, 2019 at 21:20
Isn't this the same Robert Mueller who prosecuted Lyndon LaRouche in the late
eighties?
robert , June 19, 2017 at 20:43
Colleen's article or op ed here seems to be a straight forward, fact based account that
the mainstream media would do well to study and consider [of course they generally wouldnt].
I wonder what all the links she has posted in support show?
I am glad to say I voted for Jill Stein last Nov. She has proven to be too decent for
America, I suppose.
If Americans expected or wanted something better, why did 40% or so last Nov. sit back and
refuse to vote, and those that did vote vote for obvious bums like Trump and Hilary? ?
Rob Roy , May 30, 2019 at 14:41
Thanks, robert, your letter says exactly what I would write. It's not that good people
don't run for office, but the Powers That Be will not allow them to get air time and the MSM
goes along with the exclusion, in fact, strongly supports it. War is the business of the USA
and must not be stopped. Tulsi Gabbard is the one candidate that opposes war she will be
shoved aside, destroyed by lies and ignored by the MSM. I have come to realize Americans are
stupid politically and it's not going to stop. It's not just Americans people in Europe have
good candidates, but, like here, those good candidates will not be allowed to win important
positions. Corbyn comes to mind.
I used to be suggested this website by means of my cousin.
I am not certain whether this post is written through him as no one else realize such
designated about my trouble.
You are wonderful! Thanks!
Well, Mr. Comey, should be felling rather safe about now. Why, [you ask] well he is in
GOOD hands, his old friend is going to be working the case. they both were Big Shots in the
FBI and in the Justice Department. And, just like in any other "secret" unit or outfit, those
who are or were in will ALL-WAYS be IN! Mr. Comey, came off as being VERY confident in his
questioning, what is it that he is so confident about?
In a few weeks their could be a very Special hearing, and Mr. Comey will be on the block, but
yet he is or was very comfortable during the questioning on the other day. I, do think, that
this is going to be another "white wash" of the facts, and the Left, then walks away saying
."See, we knew that the GOP was doing this and or that". Mr. Comey and his old time friend
need to be watched!
Hate to say such a thing ..Both of these men, as [honest as they have been portrayed to
be], getting them both together, one "against" the other, all that means is "look, were
BROTHERS together, were both Good Guys, were both former FBI, were of that brotherhood".
Folk's that's something, that is just about as thick as Blood, visa Water. If, someone is NOT
watching, President Trump, will be in some serious crap. Would you, want to talk to Comey
about ANYTHING, knowing that he is so political, and can "turn on a dime"?. Going back, to
the other guy, again would you trust him knowing that he is and has been so close to Comey as
it's being tolk and as it's coming out, be it EVER so slow, but as we go deeper into this
mess, ALL of these "OUTSTANDING Federal Law Officers", their histories WILL, or at the very
least START to show!"
rm , June 8, 2017 at 05:24
Mueller was 911 'speed of deceit' cover-up man.
All he had to do was follow the forensics.
A safe pair of hands,
mike k , June 8, 2017 at 12:25
Voting in the US is a scam to keep people under control, and stupid. People who have an
addiction to voting remind of the old joke about the guy who was informed that the wheel of
fortune game he was losing his money on was rigged.
Asked why he continued to play the
crooked wheel, he replied, :Because it's the only game in town." <img alt=''
src='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/2dc772f58128a9b167ed2c99e9913eb1?s=60&d=identicon&r=pg'
srcset='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/2dc772f58128a9b167ed2c99e9913eb1?s=120&d=identicon&r=pg
2x' class='avatar avatar-60 photo' height='60' width='60' />
Michael Morrissey , June 7, 2017 at 12:51
Mythical heroes and real criminals. I know that Coleen was much more the hero herself in
trying to do her job at the FBI (see her Wiki) and now -- much more so -- as an activist and
member (along with Ray McGovern et al.) of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity,
but
Well, I respect her a lot, and I would not like to offend her, but I would love to see how
she would react in a detailed discussion of what is actually known about 9/11 (which for me
is collected in the work of David Ray Griffin). Ditto for Ray McGovern, though I believe he
is somewhat more receptive to what let's call for lack of a better term the "inside job"
theory. (I hope we are past the notion that the govt's laughable conspiracy theory is in any
respect less "speculative" than the solid presentation of facts and argumentation by David
Griffin -- whose work is of course based on that of many others.)
It won't happen, I know. We will all go to our graves, and maybe our children and
grandchildren will too, before the NYT or its equivalent says, "Yes, the US govt perpetrated
9/11 in order to scare the crap out of us and make us do everything we have done since."
Still, Coleen Rowley and Ray McGovern and a few more are way, way ahead of the NYT, their
former employers, and I suppose the majority of the US population, and I am glad to be
counted as among their supporters and admirers.
I think he will, I am not kidding . I really believe we are going to see some unbelievably
nasty, nasty knives out full out war ., go back to that speech he gave on the Inauguration
Day and HOW VERY INAPPROPRIATE it was viewed by all the "in" crowd sitting there, all the
"in" group, all the Bohemian Grovers like Obama was (an attendee he was, already groomed to
be President years before, so says Zachary King the ex-high Satanist priest who was there
yearly and ran into him and was told his future .) and so many of the others CFR, Trilateral
Commission etc. part of the Luciferian loony globalist creeps who truly believe they run the
show and watch out if you are not on their "team" and don't tell me when you watched that --
that there was no doubt Trump knew he was throwing it right at them, he knows who and what
they are–many on here do too from the comments I have seen –I just don't think
Trump got the fact then of how well they have the corporate media totally in the bag and how
even with a blatant lie like "Russia did it", that any idiot knows is bs, they will keep on
going and going, I think that threw him a good bit but if that Inauguration speech is not
enough of a signal that he will go to war here shortly–How about this? -- Secretary of
State Tillerson in the last day or so saying he is going forward with making things better
with Russia? If Trump was on board now believing he could make peace with the Deep Staters
–No way that statement is made by Tillerson, that is a statement of "back at ya" No,
Trump is a guy who "gets even" and he is not going to roll for them, he may head fake that
way, but he doesn't roll that way, he gets even .and why? Just because LOL, because literally
his Father growing up you to say "You're the King" and he is that guy lol this is going to go
nuclear between him and the Obama/Bush/Deep Staters .He is still getting a feel for what is
up 6 months in, I think he now basically has the picture that regardless of what he does
they, the Deep State and the corporate media and the loony left that is clueless but buys
into what they are fed, plan to skin him alive, pour salt on him, and hang him out as a
trophy -- warning any future non-insider to get their message THIS IS WHAT WE DO TO
OUTSIDERS! -- much like all future insiders got their message when JFK was shot down by them
like a dog in the street and a "lone nut" was the laughable patsy, no one believes that err
except the NYTs lol .Trump now knows there is NO MERCY coming his way, none nada, that this
is bloodsport, why do you think he is yelling at Sessions? Sessions–what a horrible
choice that was and Trump knows it now decided to recuse himself out of the war lol the
"ethics" don't you know and brought in the guy as number 2 who put a hatchet in Trump's back
bringing in the cleaner -- Mueller -- Mueller the professional hatchet man who had no problem
screwing the country as to 911, "joined at the hip" to Comey the Deep State stooge, intends
to seek out anything possible to gut and clean Trump for dinner (check out the "team" Mueller
has in place–as if going after Al Capone in a case where everyone knows there is
nothing "there" as to Russian "collusion" by Trump -- they are planning to roll Trump so
incredibly badly–no way Trump doesn't know this now thus the screaming at Sessions who
now, having rolled over with his "recusal" LOL , offers to resign like that will reverse the
damage he's done .) and destroy him completely, taxes, investments, businesses–Trump's
entire life will be microscoped for anything, ANYTHING, they can hang on him and every lying
disgruntled ex-employee and adversary will be heard from, amplified, and leaked to the
globalist corporate media that loathes him–all of which will have nothing to do with
the "Russia" collusion lie that Podesta's 2015 emails show he came up with to attack Trump bc
he was sanely suggesting that not having a war with Russia was a good idea .If you look at
Trump's history, again, he IS NOT, definitely NOT, a nice guy and he has played in the nasty,
nasty league of the big money chase almost all his life and he is, do not forget, a
billionaire several times over who has his own private security force around him at all times
and, despite what the media portrays, he has many, many allies .The country will never be the
same again by the time this is "over"–if it ever really ends fireworks are coming
beyond our imagination Trump is not going to limp off into the night and they are not going
to let him even if he wanted to he is a cornered Wolverine get some popcorn this is going to
be a wild ride .
Dave P. , June 8, 2017 at 12:31
Tomk: Well done, your analysis is breathtaking. I had flashes in my mind of some of these
things coming. I hope this dirty business of Clinton/Bush/Obama also gets aired out in Public
View, and the Whole World to look at. It blows my mind watching how "The Deep State" is going
after Trump – for almost a year now – who was duly elected President by the U.S.
Citizens. Their only vendetta against him is that he wanted to get along with Russia. A child
can tell that this whole "Russia Gate" is utterly a Fabrication by the Ruling Establishment.
Going on for a year now, these Evil Forces have turned the Country into almost a Lunatic
Asylum.
Obama is all over hatching new plots. He was with Merkel, and a few days back seen with
Justin Trudeau. What a useful tool of the Ruling Establishment Obama is. I bet Trump is
watching all this. He is not that naive as some people think of him . It seems like, either
he is going to submit and leave the scene with guarantees of not bothering him afterwards. or
He is going to fight a fight not seen before in U.S. History. It is hard to tell how it will
end.
Sleepless In Mars , June 7, 2017 at 07:31
"Let me come back again to the waking state. I have no choice but to consider it a
phenomenon of interference. Not only does the mind display, in this state, a strange tendency
to lose its bearings (as evidenced by the slips and mistakes the secrets of which are just
beginning to be revealed to us), but, what is more, it does not appear that, when the mind is
functioning normally, it really responds to anything but the suggestions which come to it
from the depths of that dark night to which I commend it." Agent Breton
The White House wants to silence the media and press. They've lost their bearings. The OCB
case is expanding. McPike won't let go. We won't be fooled again.
Pft , June 7, 2017 at 01:03
Baghdad Bob was more credible and believable than anyone in the MSM today. Its loony
tunes. Maybe that Anthrax did the trick and scares them into submission.
Drew Hunkins , June 6, 2017 at 23:20
Beyond absurdity that an ostensible hustler who ran cover for years for Boston's
ultra-violent Winter Hill Gang now has the authority to overturn the election of the
president of the United States. (Albeit a president as flawed as he is, and NOT due to
anything involving "RUSSIA!")
Tomk , June 6, 2017 at 21:51
Mueller the hatchet man for the Deep State (911 was ok by him it seems, no need to
investigate .) has one purpose and that is to take out Trump as his favorable statements as
to ending the new Cold War with Russia made him an enemy of those who believe they run the
country and who look to profit incredibly by the money they can make from an "enemy" like
Russia–much better than the "terrorism" one they created for us .Appointing Sessions AG
was a really terrible mistake by Trump given his foreseeable recusal on the most important
issue facing Trump (the phony "Russia did it" Trojan Horse to get a Mueller to go fishing to
find, or create, ANYTHING to get rid of him .) Sessions is a loser all around igniting a new
war on drugs – an incredibly unpopular issue Trump did not even run on and although the
cries of "Racist" might be unfair Sessions said some stupid "jokes" that also should have
sidelined him given all the enemies Trump knew he had coming in and what he needed at
AG–an unimpeachable ally .Trump has to know what is up and it is not his nature to sit
back and be harpooned, which is what his enemies do plan ., so this will be a fascinating
year to see what he does to stop them from doing him Don't forget Trump is not a particularly
nice guy and given he is getting some feel for what he is dealing with, and the incredible
gravity of what he is up against, I guarantee we will see some moves coming in response to
his enemies that we have never seen, or had anyone even consider, before .
When gangsters are in control, endless wars slaughter millions of souls
And countries are destroyed by the hit men of the gangster ghouls
The unethical money changers finance their dirty depredations
And corporate cannibals profit from the bloody confrontations
Government by gangsters is now "the rule of law"
And "justice" is in the hands of criminals and outlaws
The language is twisted and debased
To suit these evil demons of the "human race"
Fancy titles and Houses of ill repute
Is where these villains consort and debut
Making "laws" to screw the masses
Yet, people continue to vote for these asses
If there really was "law and order"
These gangsters would be charged with genocide and murder
Instead these war criminals parade on the world stage
When they should be in a big enormous prison cage
[read more at link below] http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/01/when-gangsters-are-in-control.html
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 16:14
And President Woodrow Wilson being blackmailed to the tune of $40,000.00 over some love
letters he had sent to a colleague's wife. Mr. Samuel Untermeyer agreed to pay the blackmail
money in return for Wilson appointing Judge Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court, which he
did.
"Justice Brandeis volunteered his opinion to President Wilson that the sinking of the S.S.
Sussex by a German submarine in the English Channel with the loss of lives of United States
citizens justified the declaration of war against Germany by the United States. Relying to a
great extent upon the legal opinion of Justice Brandeis, President Wilson addressed both
houses of Congress on April 2, 1917. He appealed to Congress to declare war against Germany
and they did on April 7, 1917."
Blackmail and threats still work. Comey always strikes me as being very matter-of-fact and
cavalier in his answers, as if nothing could ever touch him. I mean, even I would have known
not to let Clinton off. He acts as if a mafia-type organization has got his back and he
doesn't have to worry, which is probably the case.
mike k , June 6, 2017 at 17:50
Yes. The chance of the lying, corrupt cowards "representing" us really calling Comey out
on his record are nil. And Trump started a fight with the "intelligence" guys that he now
knows he can't finish, so his lawyers will treat Comey very carefully. (In my fantasy Trump's
lawyers tear Comey apart, and bring up all his rotten record, reducing him to a blubbering
mess ..) Yes I have a fantasy life, but I try not to get it mixed up too much with our
so-called reality.
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 20:22
mike k – an interesting thing about that Woodrow Wilson blackmailing (in my above
post) is that these guys, with the blackmail knowledge in hand, bankrolled and helped Wilson
get into the White House, and then they blackmailed him AFTER he got there. Of course, this
way they ensured that they had their man all sewn up. They got him there, he owed them, and
they had the damning information. They and they alone end up owning you.
Trump was bankrolled by a few powerful people. I just wonder if the same thing isn't
happening with Trump, some old pictures. Whatever it is, I'm quite sure something
happened.
Joe Tedesky , June 6, 2017 at 22:57
In our family we have a lawyer (now retired) who once worked under Peter Rodino during the
Watergate Hearings. I'll never forget how when I asked my cousin if Nixon would serve time,
she said never, because all the politicians who stood in judgement of Nixon had their own
skeletons in the closet to hide. D.C. is a nest of degenerates, and charlatan fraudsters, but
history proves that this is nothing original. The best 'we the people' can hope for, is when
these masters and mistresses of ours decide it is time to feed us, because maybe they need
our votes. Who knows? Yes blackmail will insure a trustworthy employee every time. John
Lennon had it right, everybody's got something to hide, except for me and my monkey.
evelync , June 6, 2017 at 16:13
sorry, May 2002 not 2001 (above)
evelync , June 6, 2017 at 14:44
I am so grateful to Colleen Rowley who has been my heroine, too, since 2001 when she
publicly felt, thank goodness, that she must speak out. Rowley stood up with courage, spunk,
honor, strength of character, respect for the truth, fearless determination to stand alone,
if necessary, in defiance of corruption and lies. Her loyalty was to truth, the constitution
and the people of this country, most of whom toil under challenging circumstances, get sent
to trumped up wars, get ripped off by big banks and after a lifetime of work are still
struggling. Rowley gives us strength and hope that there's something better.
I suspect Colleen Rowley unlike some of the show boaters is herself a modest person and is
just doing what's "necessary" and it's part of who she is.
Thank you, Colleen. I hate being confused by these people who lie to us and serve their
own self interests instead of the public interest.
And how else would we know?
Some of them are pretty good at taking credit and are not as obviously horrific to us as,
say, a Dick Cheney or a Donald Rumsfeld who seem to be more cartoonish characters than
people.
Thank you.
Oz , June 6, 2017 at 14:39
It should also be noted that Mueller was a key figure during the 1980s in the government's
campaign to frame and silence Lyndon LaRouche and his movement, a campaign which former AG
Ramsey Clark described as the most appalling campaign of its sort that he had seen (and
combatting such campaigns is his specialty.)
F. G. Sanford , June 6, 2017 at 14:00
Jedgar, as comedienne Lily Tomlin called him, was a career blackmailer, eavesdropper,
extortionist and enabler of organized crime dynasties. It's not a coincidence that, in her
comedic vehicle as a telephone operator, her routine suggested "listening in" as an
extracurricular activity perhaps not disdained by Jedgar himself. Sure, a warrant was needed
to use evidence gained by wiretapping in a court of law. But if the motive was blackmail, who
needs a warrant? Apparently, this reality is lost on the American public. We should certainly
realize that every phone conversation is now retrievable by electronic means. All the FISA
Court mumbo jumbo and its purported "checks and balances" is a farce designed to create a
veneer of legitimacy. What does anybody think Jedgar bothered getting a warrant to bug Martin
Luther King – then subsequently revealed the playbacks and suggested that King commit
suicide? Anyone who has spent even a modicum of time looking onto the fraudulent Warren
Commission Report must realize that Jedgar was completely complicit. On the ballistics
evidence alone, he could have blown the case wide open. At best, he was a criminal
coconspirator in a massive coverup. At worst, he ranks among the most vile traitors in our
nation's history. This, then, is the legacy of the organization to which the two
coconspirators in the present article appertain. On November 22, 1963, our government was
hijacked by "deep state" militarists, and a system of permanent war economy was installed. We
have descended deeper into that abyss with each passing year. The elected government now
serves as a mere facade. I'd suggest that doubters read Vince Salandria's book, especially
the recently added chapter on Ruth and Michael Paine at the end. Check the contents –
you'll find it. It's free online, and can be accessed from several internet addresses. Unless
this sentinel crime is addressed, there is no hope for American democracy. We're done.
ratical . org/FalseMystery
ratical . org/falsemystery
ratical . org/FM
ratical . org/fm
Take out the spaces on either side of the dots to use the links. And, I'd advise, don't be
fooled by "leaks" which bolster the "deep state" agenda, even if they arrest the leaker.
The Postal service states it photographs every piece of mail.
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 15:26
F.G. Sanford – thank you for the links. This is going to be excellent reading. That
Vince Salandria is quite the guy:
"Only by the war production of World War II were we brought out of the great depression.
It was not difficult to discern that we were artfully thrust into the war. I can recall that
at the time of Pearl Harbor I was in the 8th grade of Vare Junior High School in
Philadelphia. On December 8, 1941, in my math class, our teacher, Miss Wogan, suggested that
rather than do our math we should discuss current events.
I went to the front of the classroom and informed my classmates that I could not accept as
plausible President Roosevelt's assertion that the attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise,
sneak attack. I pointed out that all of us had known for months about the tension between the
U.S. and Japan. I asked how, in light of those months of crisis and tautly strained relations
between the two countries, could the battleships at Pearl Harbor have been lined up so
closely together, presenting perfect targets for the Japanese? How could the planes I saw in
the newspapers burning on our airfields have been positioned wing-tip to wing-tip?
I reminded the class that President Roosevelt had promised that he would not send our
troops into a foreign war. I then offered my conclusion that inviting the Pearl Harbor attack
was President Roosevelt's duplicitous device to eliminate the powerful neutralist sentiment
in our country while thrusting us into the war."
Very smart for Grade 8!
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 15:41
"On November 23, 1963 I discussed the assassination with my then brother-in-law, Harold
Feldman. I told him that we should keep our eyes focused on what if anything would happen to
the suspected assassin that weekend. I said that if the suspect was killed during the
weekend, then we would have to consider Oswald's role to be that of a possible intelligence
agent and patsy. I told him if such happened, the assassination would have to be considered
as the work of the very center of U.S. power. [ ]
When Oswald was served up on camera as disposable Dealey Plaza flotsam and jetsam and was
killed by Jack Ruby I saw a subtle signal of a high level conspiracy. There is every reason
to think that intelligence agencies, when they choose a killer to dispose of a patsy, make
that choice by exercising the same degree of care that they employ in selecting the patsy.
Their choice of Jack Ruby much later would – by providing a fall-back position for the
government – serve the interests of the assassins. As the Warren Report would unravel,
a deceased Ruby's past connections to the Mafia produced a false candidate for governmental
apologists to designate as the power behind the killing.
Immediately following the assassination I began to collect news items about Lee Harvey
Oswald. A pattern began to emerge. Oswald's alleged defection to the Soviets, his alleged
Castro leanings as the sole member of a Fair Play for Cuba chapter in New Orleans, his posing
with a rifle and a Trotskyist newspaper, his writings to the Communist Party USA, his study
of the Russian language while in the Marine Corps, told me that he was not a genuine leftist,
but rather was a U.S. intelligence agent."
Oswald was set up from the get-go. Poor kid, he didn't realize he was playing with
fire.
The Kennedy assassination, 9/11, the other false flags, color revolutions, coups are all
the work of those who possess a psychopathic mind.
Until one understands that the US government is a criminal enterprise, and that everyone
involved in it is a criminal, with extremely few exceptions – you will not understand
what goes on there. The same holds true for the main stream media, these are criminal, lying
propaganda outlets for the rich and powerful who own them. Also the US Military is a vicious
criminal enterprise pure and simple.
If you are inclined to cut any of these actors any slack whatever, and forget who they
really are, you will simply become a victim of their lies and criminal activities. Regardless
of the unceasing barrage of positive images and ideas we are soaked in from childhood, we
need to constantly remind ourselves of who these evil people really are, and the horrendous
crimes they are responsible for. The idea that James Comey, the head of the secret police is
some kind of role model is outrageous. This man deserves to be imprisoned for the rest of his
life.
Dave P. , June 6, 2017 at 13:57
mike K : Excellent. Complete rendering of Truth.
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 14:00
mike k – yep, it truly is a den of vipers and thieves, a well-oiled machine at this
point. Many are ignorant of this fact, and many are willing to turn a blind eye so long as
they get what they want.
"Hell is empty and all the devils are here."
Dave P. , June 6, 2017 at 15:50
The irony of all this is that America could be a great positive force for good and
beneficial change on the planet. It's location, between two great Oceans, it's physical
beauty, and it's resources – America has it all. There is nothing like America on this
Planet. [It makes me feel sad about American Indians, who lost it all during the last three
or four centuries]. And now, for the last five decades or so, all the best and the brightest
from top schools in India, now China, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere (and Iran too !) come to
U.S. Universities, and work here. One of the major engines of our high tech sector boom
– and leadership in the World – has been due to this foreign born talent. And
this talent has contributed a lot in other sectors as well.
And from all what I have read, after the collapse of Communism, the World was and is
willing to accept American leadership. If you watch Putin's speeches at Valdai International
Discussion Club, he acknowledges America's leadership, but not complete subservience to
U.S.
Would big countries and ancient civilizations like China and India, or big countries like
Brazil, South Africa agree to be completely subservient to U.S.? Should these countries (and
the other countries of the World) become U.S.'s vassal states. It is preposterous to think of
it. What happened to this idea of Freedom, which is drilled into masses here 24/7 by the
Media and the Ruling Establishment. As we want to live free, don't these countries would like
to live free.
And we are waging wars on the Nations to bring freedom and democracy – and American
values. What a hypocrisy?
And we are discussing about Comey and Mueller here! It is hard to comprehend to what lower
depths the country has sunk to.
Trump was not wrong when he was saying during the campaign that the whole place ( Washington)
is a swamp. The country was ready for a Populist. Unfortunately, Trump was not the right
one.
I do not have much hope that the upper echelons in this country will learn some wisdom to
change their course.
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 17:18
Dave P. – good points. I don't think Trump was the "perfect" one, but I think he
could have been the "right" one, had they laid off him, but he's had everything but the
kitchen sink thrown at him (the pussy hats, the Berkeley rioters, the media, the Democrats,
his own Republican Party). The Deep State has gone after him like crazy because they're
fighting for their very survival, and Trump was going to end it.
I think he WOULD have ended the wars, cut back on NATO, brought affordable healthcare,
enforced the border laws (without which you don't have a country, at least not for long),
brought jobs back from China/Asia, rebuilt infrastructure, and protected the citizens.
It appears people don't want that. Go figure.
Dave P. , June 6, 2017 at 17:40
backwardsevolution, I agree with you. I think Trump meant to do all these things you
mentioned. What I meant to say was that, he did not have any clue of what was to come. Trump
does not have any communication skills like Obama, and Clinton, and is not well read or any
thing like that. And I think that they – the Deep State – have a very thick
dossier on his business deals, and all that. I sometimes feel sorry for him – the guy
is caught in the nest of scorpions. When I watch him on TV sometimes, he seems like he is
scared, and will do any thing they will ask him to do. <img alt=''
src='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4ac6f9611bbc79c79ee101b1a19b95ed?s=60&d=identicon&r=pg'
srcset='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4ac6f9611bbc79c79ee101b1a19b95ed?s=120&d=identicon&r=pg
2x' class='avatar avatar-60 photo' height='60' width='60' />
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 19:41
Dave P. – re your "nest of scorpions" comment. Yes, I agree that Trump had no idea
what he'd be stepping into. We probably don't know the half of it. Could be death threats
against himself (or maybe his family) or blackmail. Something happened because all of a
sudden Trump and Tillerson both changed, seemingly overnight, and you're right, Trump has a
scared look in his eyes.
If a thick-skinned braggart like Trump can't go up against these guys, then who can?
<img alt=''
src='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e8c9fa7352dc19c959f94ff2df0e0d95?s=60&d=identicon&r=pg'
srcset='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e8c9fa7352dc19c959f94ff2df0e0d95?s=120&d=identicon&r=pg
2x' class='avatar avatar-60 photo' height='60' width='60' />
I believe the "system" is totally corrupted. We are prisoners in a so-called
"democracy."
The Prisoners of the System
By Stephen J. Gray
The prisoners of the system thought they were free
After all, they lived in a "democracy?"
Every few years they were allowed to vote
Then they got punished by the winning lot
Oh well, at least the masses are allowed to go on holiday
At the airports they are patted down and groped in the name of security
Still, their governments were keeping them all safe
As they spy on them and all the human race.
Big Brother and Big Sister are now in charge
And Orwell's "1984" is now here and at large
Computers are monitored and cell phones too
Fridges are bugged and smart meters knew
I will very likely go to my grave with the strong suspicion that the alleged Christmas
Bomber (2010) in Portland, Oregon was a case of entrapment. Assuming that kid really did have
intentions of setting off a bomb, the FBI agents should have educated him as to why setting
off a bomb as a Christmas tree lighting ceremony was a very bad thing to do instead of going
through some ritual of simulations. Of course, the FBI agents claim they gave him chances to
back out, but I suspect he was like most teenagers who didn't want to be considered as
"chicken." – http://theweek.com/articles/488966/portland-bomb-plot-entrapment
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 13:41
Bill – using entrapment in order to move public opinion in a certain direction,
steer the herd, influence their thinking, allowing them then to engage in what they want
carried out. Sickening. Heat coming down on Israel a little too much? Just create an
incident, elicit sympathy, and the whole thing blows over.
To paraphrase Shakespeare: Age has not withered Coleen Rowley nor custom faded her
infinite courage.
Bill Bodden , June 6, 2017 at 12:22
Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political
pressures.
Bending to political and other pressures is one of the rules for "success" in Washington
and Wall Street. There must be very few people who have made it to the upper echelons butting
heads with the oligarchs running the show. Lewis Lapham, a national treasure of an essayist
and author, frequently skewered the "rules of success" and those who played by them.
"... He basically said in so many words "Russians hacked Hillary & I didn't find Trump didn't collude with them, I just came up short on proof, and I never said he didn't obstruct my probe, just that I wasn't allowed to charge it. However, Congress can charge him thru impeachment" ..."
"... Russian spin is the key to maintaining Russia as a fake enemy and using their fake involvement in the election to get support to suppress alt media and censor social media. This is a bipartisan agenda. Impeachment just serves to divide and distract, exactly what they want. ..."
"... Russia like China is a fake enemy. Fake conflict with the US serves them just as well as it does with the US. The people must have an enemy lest they focus attention on the government. So they all play along. ..."
"... we get the opportunity to vote for one clown or another, two max, is a mainstay (about the only one) of our "democratic" nation. And the wrong clown won! Damned Russians. ..."
What do you expect from the master of coverup himself?
He basically said in so many words "Russians hacked Hillary & I didn't find
Trump didn't collude with them, I just came up short on proof, and I never said he didn't
obstruct my probe, just that I wasn't allowed to charge it. However, Congress can charge
him thru impeachment"
Except for the Russian involvement that's the truth. But the Russian spin is the key
to maintaining Russia as a fake enemy and using their fake involvement in the election to
get support to suppress alt media and censor social media. This is a bipartisan agenda.
Impeachment just serves to divide and distract, exactly what they want.
Russia like China is a fake enemy. Fake conflict with the US serves them just as
well as it does with the US. The people must have an enemy lest they focus attention on the
government. So they all play along.
No wonder hollywood is producing crap now and messed up GOT finale. All the good writers
are engaged in scripting our reality under the guidance of the Deep State. Trumps nothing
more than an actor following a script.
The Dems can't believe Hillary lost all on her own. It must have been the Russians who
threatened US democracy and it's too bad we don't have the truth b/c Trump obstructed the
patriotic and sacred investigation according to a powerful person.
. . .Nancy Pelosi --
"The Special Counsel's report revealed that the President's campaign welcomed Russian
interference in the election, and laid out eleven instances of the President's
obstruction of the investigation. The Congress holds sacred its constitutional
responsibility to investigate and hold the President accountable for his abuse of power.
"The Congress will continue to investigate and legislate to protect our elections and
secure our democracy. The American people must have the truth. We call upon the Senate to
pass H.R. 1, the For The People Act, to protect our election systems.
"We salute Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team for his patriotic duty to seek
the truth." . . . here
After all, the quadrennial presidential election, when we get the
opportunity to vote for one clown or another, two max, is a mainstay (about the only one)
of our "democratic" nation. And the wrong clown won! Damned Russians.
"... IMO it also became more apparent when the Deep State f*cked up by no bringing Russia on-side after the end of the Cold War while continuing to assist China's "peaceful rise". That caused the dislocation known as Trump. There's gonna be some turbulence when you turn a massive entity like USA. ..."
Mueller plays his criminal hand of innuendo until the end. Were he ever to submit to questions in a Congressional setting,
Mueller would be out-Giancana-ing Sam on taking the Fifth. The Special Counsel format is at this stage a superseded footnote.
The ball's now in Barr/Durham's court now and the theme is Hunt for Red Predicates.
Breaking news. The Russia Collusion time-zero may in fact lead to Rome as all roads are wont to do. Italy is not a Five Eyes
member. However that did not prevent Obama and Brennan from treating it like one. Both spent a lot of time there at opportune
moments.
As it turns out the oft-cited, oft-profaned Steele Dossier was the barest of predicates that was always meant to be hopped
over anyway. The Mother of all Predicates was a a failed effort on the the part of Italian intelligence and the FBI to frame
Trump in a stolen (Clinton) email scandal. How did the Italians get hold of these emails and who thwarted the frame-up attempt?
Hmm.
Just when you think the transnational plot is thick enough, it gets thickerer, and if Obama's Milan itinerary's any indication,
it may well reach the tippy-top.
Nine Days in May (2017) is where 90% of the action is.
@29 bruce... everyone here at moa is saying much the same which is why some of us are saying the cia is running the usa at this
point.. that and a confluence of other interests... mueller - ex cia... so, basically the mueller investigation was more cover
up and b.s. for the masses... it seems to have worked to a limited degree..
Some think the CIA has been running the show since the Kennedy assassination. But with the rise of the neocons and the
end of the Cold War, it became more apparent.
IMO it also became more apparent when the Deep State f*cked up by no bringing Russia on-side after the end of the Cold
War while continuing to assist China's "peaceful rise". That caused the dislocation known as Trump. There's gonna be some turbulence
when you turn a massive entity like USA.
Last thing that as become 'apparent' is this: the vast majority of people in the West (including many smart people in
alt-media) can't dislodge their thinking from the MSM narratives. Despite being skeptical of MSM and USA, they just can't bring
themselves to see the degree of manipulation that leads to the logical conclusion: "cia is running the usa".
Some think the CIA has been running the show since the Kennedy assassination. But with the rise of the neocons and the end
of the Cold War, it became more apparent.
IMO it also became more apparent when the Deep State f*cked up by no bringing Russia on-side after the end of the Cold War
while continuing to assist China's "peaceful rise". That caused the dislocation known as Trump. There's gonna be some turbulence
when you turn a massive entity like USA.
Last thing that as become 'apparent' is this: the vast majority of people in the West (including many smart people in
alt-media) can't dislodge their thinking from the MSM narratives. Despite being skeptical of MSM and USA, they just can't
bring themselves to see the degree of manipulation that leads to the logical conclusion: "cia is running the usa" .
Donald J. Trump
Verified account
@realDonaldTrump
May 23
More
"Today, at the request and recommendation of the Attorney General of the United States,
President Donald J. Trump directed the intelligence community to quickly and fully cooperate
with the Attorney General's investigation into surveillance activities....
....during the 2016 Presidential election. The Attorney General has also been delegated full
and complete authority to declassify information pertaining to this investigation, in
accordance with the long-established standards for handling classified information....
....Today's action will help ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the events that
occurred, and the actions that were taken, during the last Presidential election and will
restore confidence in our public institutions." https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1131716322369392646
While there can be multiple motivations for obstruction, Barr asserted that the president
has constitutional authority to supervise proceedings and if a proceeding was not well
founded , groundless ,based on false accusations, the president does not have to sit there
and allow it to run its course. The president can terminate the proceeding and this would not
be corrupt intent because he is being falsely accused and he would be worried about the
impact on his administration.
Barr ends with 'and we now know he was being falsely accused'.
Apart from the legal case politically it would be understood in the same way by the Trump
voters. The charge of obstruction is false if the original accusations were false.
"... Even with impeachment and a nomination challenger Trump would likely still win the election. ..."
"... There is no charismatic Democratic challenger in sight. Currently leading in the primary polls are Biden, Sanders and Warren. Neither of them can compete with the Trump's popularity. Despite Russiagate he still has a 41% approval rating which is quite high for a midterm presidency. ..."
"... Trump is also a master at playing the media. He would surely find ways to turn an impeachment circus to his advantage. ..."
"... The Democrats can only win the 2020 election if they have a real strong policy issue that is supported by a large majority of the population. 'Medicare for all' is such a winner . Health care is THE top issue for U.S. voters. Some two thirds of them support a universal government run health insurance that would cover the basic health issues and catastrophic cases. Private insurance for more cosmetic issues could be bought on top of that. ..."
"... But significant parts of the Democratic party leadership are against such a system. They fear for the large donations and other bribes the pharma and health industry throws at them. ..."
"... "If we have confidence the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so." ..."
"... Here essentially is Mueller's spin job: "Russians hacked Hillary & I didn't find Trump didn't collude with them, I just came up short on proof, and I never said he didn't obstruct my probe, just that I wasn't allowed to charge it. However,Congress can charge him thru impeachment" Mueller is likely to have his day in court along with the rest of the conspirators. How will those public hangings affect Lichtman's 13 keys? ..."
"... Impeachment PROCEEDINGS will divert attention away from Trump being an Israeli stooge. Trump is too valuable for Israeli interests to be removed from office. ..."
"... I voted for Trump based on 3 issues; Immigration, trade policy and ending futile foreign wars. As far as I am concerned, he's failed on all three and I don't care if he is removed from office. ..."
"... In addition to electing a MAGA nationalist, CIA/MI6/Mossad used the election to initiate a new McCarthyism, to smear Wikileaks, and to settle scores with Michael Flynn (who had angered them with his admission that the Obama Administration had made a "willful decision" to support ISIS) . ..."
"... At the heart of the issue are limits on the powers of the special counsel. Many legal scholars believe a sitting president can't be criminally indicted, meaning that if Mueller finds evidence of crimes by Trump, his strongest recourse might well be to make a referral to Congress for potential impeachment proceedings. But some of those experts tell TPM that under the regulation governing the special counsel's office, Mueller lacks the authority to make that referral without approval from Justice Department officials overseeing his investigation. ..."
"... After Kenneth Starr's pursuit of Bill Clinton, Congress changed the laws governing special investigations in 1999: No longer could a three-judge panel appoint an "independent counsel" acting with no direct DOJ oversight. Instead, the decision to appoint a "special counsel" had to be made by the attorney general. In Mueller's case, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself, because of meetings he had held with the Russian ambassador, leaving Rosenstein to appoint and manage Mueller and his probe. ..."
"... "Those regulations don't explicitly give the special counsel authority to make a referral," William Yeomans, a 26-year DOJ veteran who has served as an acting assistant attorney general and is now a fellow at the Alliance for Justice, told TPM. "If there is a referral, it's going to have to go through Rosenstein ..."
"... The new US "justice" system- -- "If we have confidence the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so." So sorry about that pal, you must be guilty because you can't prove you're innocent. ..."
"... Some think the CIA has been running the show since the Kennedy assassination. But with the rise of the neocons and the end of the Cold War, it became more apparent. ..."
"... IMO it also became more apparent when the Deep State f*cked up by no bringing Russia on-side after the end of the Cold War while continuing to assist China's "peaceful rise". That caused the dislocation known as Trump. There's gonna be some turbulence when you turn a massive entity like USA. ..."
"... Last thing that as become 'apparent' is this: the vast majority of people in the West (including many smart people in alt-media) can't dislodge their thinking from the MSM narratives. Despite being skeptical of MSM and USA, they just can't bring themselves to see the degree of manipulation that leads to the logical conclusion: "CIA is running the USA". ..."
"... May 9 - surprise medical bills will be outlawed ..."
"... The purpose of Russiagate was to 1) prevent any foreign policy initiative which featured rapprochement with Russia. 2) prevent or forestall any honest appraisal of why Clinton lost. ..."
"... It is obvious that the Democratic Party establishment is hostile to progressive initiatives, including a Single Payer medical system which absolutely would be a winning platform in America. Therefore the impeachment circus will continue as it keeps the Dem base focussed on the supposed national emergency which is Trump. Trump's election was probably the biggest opening for non-mainstream politics in decades in America, and its been mostly squandered by deliberate misdirection. ..."
"... Impeachment is not a conviction, it just shoves a trial over to the Senate where the Democrats are sure to lose. Its poor strategy to proceed with more nonsense. The whole Russian maneuver is going to end badly for them. They are turning Trump from a sure loser to a possible winner. ..."
"... What do you expect from the master of coverup himself? He basically said in so many words "Russians hacked Hillary & I didn't find Trump didn't collude with them, I just came up short on proof, and I never said he didn't obstruct my probe, just that I wasn't allowed to charge it. However,Congress can charge him thru impeachment" ..."
"... Except for the Russian involvement thats the truth. But the Russian spin is the key to maintaining Russia as a fake enemy and using their fake involvement in the election to get support to suppress alt media and censor social media. This is a bipartisan agenda. Impeachment just serves to divide and distract, exactly what they want. ..."
"... In any case, my view is that Bernie Sanders is the biggest factor, not Trump. Even without H. Rodham running, the DNC will do everything it can to not let Bernie be the Progressive or Liberal representative in the Presidential race - even to the point of losing again to Trump. That's what really matters in 2020. ..."
"... Clearly we see it in a similar way... everything else is the cult of political personality - trump, pelosi, clinton, mueller, brennan, barr and etc etc - sideshow to keep the kiddies entertained.. meanwhile the fox continues to run the chicken house.. ..."
"... the Constitution's provision that Congress has not only the power, but the duty, to oversee the Executive Branch ..."
"... The relevant provision you are looking for would be Article 1 / Section 8 of the US Constitution. ..."
"... Congressional oversight is implied in the US Constitution rather than stated explicitly. ..."
"... Further information and elaboration of Congress's powers of oversight are at this link. ..."
The Special counsel Robert Mueller today closed
his investigation into alleged collusion of the Trump campaign with alleged Russian interference with the 2016 election.Mueller said
nothing that goes beyond his already published report. But he
empathized that his report did not absolve Trump of obstructing his investigation. Mueller said:
"If we have confidence the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so."
and
"Charging the President with a crime was [..] not an option we could consider."
It is the long standing legal opinion of the Justice Department that it -- as part of the executive branch -- can not indict a
sitting president for a crime. The only entity which can do that is Congress through the impeachment process. Mueller had to follow
that opinion. He now punted the issue to Congress.
Even before Mueller's statement some Democrats strongly argued that such an impeachment process is warranted. Mueller's statement
today will be seen as support for that demand.
The leader of the Democratic party in the House Nancy Pelosi so far rejected to make that move. She
fears
that an impeachment process will only help Trump during the upcoming campaign season. He would certainly try to block the process.
He would play the victim and demonize the Democrats over it. The media noise during a running impeachment process would also drown
out any other policy issues the Democrats might want to highlight. Russiagate already did that throughout the last two and a half
years. It didn't help the party.
But there are also arguments that an impeachment process could damage Trump and increase the chance that he loses the 2020 election.
Professor Alan Lichtman, who correctly predicted all presidential election since 1984,
uses 13 true/false
statements to judge if the candidate of the incumbent party will get elected. His current prediction:
"Trump wins again in 2020 unless six of 13 key factors turn against him. I have no final verdict yet because much could change
during the next year. Currently, the President is down only three keys: Republican losses in the midterm elections, the lack of
a foreign policy success, and the president's limited appeal to voters."
One of Lichtman's key factors is 9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
Lichtman thinks that an impeachment process would be negative for Trump:
"Democrats are fundamentally wrong about the politics of impeachment and their prospects for victory in 2020. An impeachment and
subsequent trial would cost the president a crucial fourth key -- the scandal key -- just as it cost Democrats that key in 2000.
The indictment and trial would also expose him to dropping another key by encouraging a serious challenge to his re-nomination.
Other potential negative keys include the emergence of a charismatic Democratic challenger, a significant third-party challenge,
a foreign policy disaster, or an election-year recession. Without impeachment, however, Democratic prospects are grim."
I disagree with that take. Even with impeachment and a nomination challenger Trump would likely still win the election.
There is no charismatic Democratic challenger in sight. Currently leading in the primary polls are Biden, Sanders and Warren.
Neither of them can compete with the Trump's popularity. Despite Russiagate he still
has a 41% approval rating which is quite
high for a midterm presidency.
Trump is also a master at playing the media. He would surely find ways to turn an impeachment circus to his advantage.
His arguments would be very simply:
If I, as your all powerful president, had really wanted to obstruct the investigation, I would have succeeded.
or
Why would I have obstructed an investigation that I was sure would find me innocent - which it clearly did.
Trump would turn the impeachment process from a scandal about him into a scandal that the Democrats are to blame for.
With or without impeachment the Democrats have little chance to win the presidency. They should concentrate on keeping their House
majority and on fetching more Senate seats. An impeachment will be anyway be unsuccessful because the Republicans own the Senate
and will vote down any impeachment indictment that might pass the House.
The Democrats can only win the 2020 election if they have a real strong policy issue that is supported by a large majority
of the population. 'Medicare for all'
is such a winner
. Health care is THE top issue for U.S. voters. Some two thirds of them
support a universal government run health insurance that would cover the basic health issues and catastrophic cases. Private
insurance for more cosmetic issues could be bought on top of that.
But significant parts of the Democratic party leadership are against such a system. They fear for the large donations and
other bribes the pharma and health industry throws at them.
During the midterm election Gallup
asked voters
about their main policy issues. Despite two years of loud media noise Russiagate was the issue they named least. An impeachment process
would likewise create lots of media attention, but would have little relevance for the real problems the voters care about. It would
drown out the policy messages the Democrats need to send.
To hype Russiagate was already a mistake. The voters did not care about it. To go for impeachment over murky obstruction charges
would likely be worse.
Posted by b on May 29, 2019 at 01:57 PM |
Permalink
"If we have confidence the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so."
_____________________________________________
Mueller's statements constitute reprehensible innuendo. As B. notes, both this oblique negative "clarification" and Mueller's
implication that his hands were tied by DOJ regulations amounts to a reprehensible attempt to signal that the institutional anti-Trump
"Resistance" should vigorously pursue stitching up Trump despite Mueller's own inability to do so.
It's like a tag-team marathon lynching, and the odious Mueller is handing off the baton to his teammates in malfeasance.
It's not exactly a selfless act on Mueller's part, either. If Trump is prematurely removed from office, or sufficiently slandered
to a point that renders him unelectable, Mueller and his corrupt associates will claim vindication.
Impeachment would be another distraction that would go nowhere positive for either party so it won't happen.
Trump has as much dirt on the Dems as they do on him......it would be an ugly cat fight and the public would win....we can't
have that
I like the last paragraph of Catlin Johnstone's latest
"
All political analysis which favors either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party is inherently worthless, because both
parties are made of swamp and exist in service of the swamp. If you can't see that the entire system is one unified block of corruption
and that ordinary people need to come together and unite against it, then you really don't understand what you're looking at.
"
Here essentially is Mueller's spin job: "Russians hacked Hillary & I didn't find Trump didn't collude with them, I just
came up short on proof, and I never said he didn't obstruct my probe, just that I wasn't allowed to charge it. However,Congress
can charge him thru impeachment" Mueller is likely to have his day in court along with the rest of the conspirators. How will
those public hangings affect Lichtman's 13 keys?
Impeachment PROCEEDINGS will divert attention away from Trump being an Israeli stooge. Trump is too valuable for Israeli interests
to be removed from office.
I voted for Trump based on 3 issues; Immigration, trade policy and ending futile foreign wars. As far as I am concerned,
he's failed on all three and I don't care if he is removed from office.
The investigation should have been about Israel and Saudi Arabias collusion with US Presidents, of which Trump has just managed
to take the mask off for all to see. Since Nixon the US has guaranteed Saudi Arabias safety due to the Petro-dollar. The US to
stay in the Saudis good graces has based our foreign policy on their objectives, even willing to join them as being the largest
financiers of terrorists (such as al Qaeda) in the world and with the genocide in Yemen. The Saudi objectives also align with
Israels, as outline in their "Clean Break" policy in 1996 and thus ours.
The job of the Democratic Party is to take out progressives in the primary, for a corporate shill favorable to their donors.
Impeachment would just divert their efforts. The Democratic establishments working hard to take down Bernie and Tulsi. They would
rather have Trump than a true progressive.
The utter falsity underlying the entire Russiagate hoax makes for big D Party problems. Current R Party Senate majority would
likely negate an Impeachment Conviction; and do we really want Pence to become POTUS?! The better political move is to remove
Trump via the 2020 election. Sanders would have won handily in 2016 and will do so if given the opportunity in 2020, particularly
if it's Sanders/Gabbard. More could be said, and likely will later.
Nothing matters except results. Another dem/rep talking head lying and making promises they'll never keep. Sorry, all done with
that. My government is now something to be endured. The time is now to create our own solutions to our common problems. Enough
is enough.
Sadly Trump was only the beginning. Most people have a blind belief in our system of government and once they lose that trust
they are going to be electing people who make Trump look like the the best thing since sliced cheese. Go read the text of the
Abortion law in Kentucky. Sick stuff.
Basically I can agree with b, thou for my part, I've seen nothing from the dems in years !! They play this centralist game as
if one damn republican will ever side with anything they say ?? Also, the dems are just as to blame for this current mess, ie,
Obama's that's look forward and not backward, failure to haul all the criminal bankers to court, not to mention they never forfeited
a dollar, but make even more !! Then there is this crappy bailout of insurance companies along with the bankers and all others
that benefited from this bailout !!! Also thanks to the great Bill and paving the way for the 2008 crisis, yes Bill, we know,
you just didn't think it would turn out that way !! Straight from the liar that brings forth an even bold lair in Trump !!
All that said, I agree with the statement offered by Psychohistorian which offers the truth of Caitlin Johnstone's last paragraph
!!! In other words we're screwed !!!
Trump is not a master at playing the media. This I think is an outright falsification designed to further nonsense about Trump
the stable genius. Trump is favored by the rich people who buy advertising. If they had wanted, the TV news would have covered
Trump's business career the same way they covered Clinton's email/Benghazi/Clinton Foundation. And they would have given Sanders
the same free publicity they gave Trump in the primaries too.
Trump impeachment for emoluments clause, Trump impeachment for relations with Saudi, Trump impeachment over illegal transfer
of funds (Nixon called it impounding) Trump impeachment over yes executive privilege do indeed offer enormous opportunities to
Democrats. Impeachment over treason with Russia doesn't, but then, equally stupid nonsense about Clinton treason got endless play,
didn't it?
The Clinton impeachment did not help the Republican in the Senate, though, as near as I can tell, actually pinning a Senator
to their vote in the trial makes a difference.
Licthman is not as big a fool as many political scientists seem to be, but predicting the EC winner is not really what he's
predicting. He predicted that Trump would win. I think at this moment Trump would lose the election again, but win the EC again.
And I would say his really strong moves are in gerrymanders and vote suppression.
The economic factor does not strongly favor Trump, no more than it strongly favored Clinton. The official statistics are not
very reliable in measure the welfare of the citizens (not least because the government doesn't care.)
If Hillary and Pelosi are against impeachment, how can any progressive not be FOR impeachment?
The timeline here is telling:
1) In December 2018 - before the vote for the Speaker of the House - Trump invited Pelosi and Schumer to the oval office to
discuss the Wall. This helped Pelosi to win the vote for Speaker of the House.
4) On April 23rd, as Democrats continued to push for impeachment, Hillary came out of retirement to support Pelosi who was
beset with demands from Democrats to impeach Trump. Hillary urged caution and said that the Senate would not convict so impeachment
was essentially useless (not so!).
<> <> <> <> <> <>
The reluctance to impeach Trump is in sharp contrast to the 'Deep State' horror during the 2016 election at the prospect of
a Trump presidency and the (supposed) continuing anger at Trump since.
But it supports what I've said for at least a year now:
The 'Deep State' was shocked by Russia's determined action against their plans in Syria (2013) and Ukraine (2014).
They decided that the next President should be MAGA nationalist and overt militarist (as indicated by Kissingers WSJ
Op-Ed of August 2014) and the fact that Trump was the only MAGA nationalist candidate in the Republican Primary
(out of a field of 19!).
Hillary ran a terrible campaign that raises serious doubts that she wanted to win. Her deliberate loss is highly likely
as she is a member of the 'Deep State' that wanted a MAGA nationalist. (Other likely 'Deep State' members: Bush, McCain, Brennan,
Mueller)
In addition to electing a MAGA nationalist, CIA/MI6/Mossad used the election to initiate a new McCarthyism, to smear
Wikileaks, and to settle scores with Michael Flynn (who had angered them with his admission that the Obama Administration had
made a "willful decision" to support ISIS) .
thanks b... i pretty much agree with you and many of the comments -and tend to agree with @13 steven johnsons comments which run
counter to some of it here as well... i don't think trump is this brilliant media manipulator... israel / ksa and a few other
obvious suspects are determined to keep trump in power.. meanwhile the cia/dem russiagate story is a complete distraction that
many are not completely buying - fortunately...
no matter impeachment or not - the cia seems to be running the usa at this point, which is likely how israel/ military / financial
complex like it too... trump is the perfect fit! until the dems come up with a different strategy, trump will continue to muddle
along with all his trump fans in tow... the guy is a complete jackass - perfect alibi for those who are really running the show
here..
for an example of otherwise intelligent people getting completely distracted by russiagate, visit emptywheel.. the can see the
trees so well, they are unable to see the forest they are living in..
At the heart of the issue are limits on the powers of the special counsel. Many legal scholars believe a sitting president
can't be criminally indicted, meaning that if Mueller finds evidence of crimes by Trump, his strongest recourse might well
be to make a referral to Congress for potential impeachment proceedings. But some of those experts tell TPM that under the
regulation governing the special counsel's office, Mueller lacks the authority to make that referral without approval from
Justice Department officials overseeing his investigation.
After Kenneth Starr's pursuit of Bill Clinton, Congress changed the laws governing special investigations in 1999: No
longer could a three-judge panel appoint an "independent counsel" acting with no direct DOJ oversight. Instead, the decision
to appoint a "special counsel" had to be made by the attorney general. In Mueller's case, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused
himself, because of meetings he had held with the Russian ambassador, leaving Rosenstein to appoint and manage Mueller and
his probe.
[ Jeff Sessions and Rosenstein have left DOJ. William Barr replaced Sesssions and, AFAIK, has no reason to recuse himself
so later references to Rosenstein's authority should apply to Barr instead. ]
"Those regulations don't explicitly give the special counsel authority to make a referral," William Yeomans, a 26-year
DOJ veteran who has served as an acting assistant attorney general and is now a fellow at the Alliance for Justice, told TPM.
"If there is a referral, it's going to have to go through Rosenstein [ Barr ] . Ultimately,
it's probably his decision."
Susan Low Bloch, professor of constitutional law at Georgetown Law School, agreed. " Rosenstein [ Barr ] decides what to
do, and if he sees an impeachable offense I would say that he should send it to Congress," she said in a phone interview on
Monday. "But if he chooses not to, I don't think you can do anything."
The new US "justice" system- -- "If we have confidence the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so."
So sorry about that pal, you must be guilty because you can't prove you're innocent.
And you, over there, snickering in the corner -- I have no proof of your innocence either! . . .Get the cuffs.
I don't think impeachment will be pursued as long as Pelosi is Speaker of the House. How likely are Democrats to pursue it? They
don't have the guts or the honor to carry it off. They were complicit in the Iraq War, joining the Republicans, and brought no
impeachment against G.W. Bush for his crimes against humanity, for implementing torture as policy, and even upholding as legal
such unspeakable acts. Along the arc of the government's vile history it's clear that the Democrats have surrendered and made
accommodations for crimes as they occurred. Pelosi and her leadership surrendered at each step to the creeping fascism and the
surveillance state. They are as eager to see Assange destroyed, Venezuela invaded, and to look blithely upon a dystopian, Big
Brother state. They are quite as infamous as the republicans.
Impeachment talk is now just a way to fill time before next summer's Democratic nomination. I think B is exactly right, the resulting
circus in the Senate would give Trump 2-3 extra points in the polls, which would bring his odds up (my intuitive guess) from 1:4
now to 1:1.
A Biden candidacy would make it really hard to make anything other than "I am not Trump" to be the message. Anyway there are
other things going on.
The economy and China seem to be the wild card.
On a popular level, basic and unsophisticated hostility toward China might actually be a positive for Trump's audience, I really
don't know.
The agricultural-export states currently eating the consequences of the trade war so far will vote Republican either way, they're
irrelevant.
For Boeing to hit a pain point via China would be very significant. But their response would be to just tell the Trump admin
what to do, rather than bother changing the election.
Natural gas industry would be electorally significant, because it is centered on the most pivotal state, PA. But global natgas
flows and pricing take years to change, so the timing may prevent it from being a relevant issue in the election. (Japan's re-nuclearization,
hence reduction of LNG imports, may be a closely related subject to watch, with Trump there just now)
There is bipartisan support for Trump's targets of choice - China, Iran, Venezuela, but the mob parts ways on Russia. Trump and
the smaller faction behind him recognise that Russia needs to become a neutral if not an ally US to give the US a chance at taking
down China.
The larger part of the mob think they can take down any combination of target countries as they are the exceptional nation.
Over the last few weeks China seem to have decided that what Trump kicked off will be continuing with increasing intensity
and now going into war mode. Russia came to this point shortly after MH17. I don't think Trump would have succeeded in separating
Russia from China, but Russiagate is ensuring that Russia and China form a solid war mode alliance against the US.
The last guns and butter President was LBJ, and it ruined his presidency. Social programs like Medicare for All (single payer),
tuition free college and infrastructure are not possible with continued high military expenditures and foreign wars. Tulsi Gabbard
states this clearly and it's resonating when she's allowed to be heard. In addition, Trump has made himself vulnerable to a
real antiwar candidate with the Venezuela fiasco, delaying the withdrawal from Syria and vetoing the Yemen bill. But only
a real antiwar candidate can win unless Trump actually starts a war. I'm disappointed Bernard doesn't even mention Tulsi
as a charismatic candidate who could defeat Trump if given a fair shot at the nomination.
Unfortunately, as Jimmy Dore says, "Democrats would rather lose to a Republican than win with a progressive." Their strategy
of flooding the field with just enough "favorite son" candidates to keep anyone from winning on the first ballot will work, allowing
super delegates to nominate Biden as a "compromise," who will lose hands down to Trump unless Trump actually starts a war.
Perhaps the best outcome would be for the House to start impeachment proceedings at the same time Barr indicts both Orrs, Page,
Strzok, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Rice (Susan), Clinton, Obama and perhaps even Mueller himself. Clean out both wings of the stable
at the same time.
Copeland @ 20, well said, couldn't agree more, there's no there when it comes to the dems, a complete sellout of the people they're
supposed to or say they represent !!
I don't know for sure that b understands this country, not having grown up here. What is to oppose this juggernaut of hypocrisy,
and how much more moral accommodation will the traffic bear? It is far more than the case of justice delayed is justice denied.
The repackaging and the makeover of lies will be unendurable for another election cycle, merely going through the motions, just
sticking our nostrils into the stink of corruption one more time.
The objective of this political circus is noise, its prime manipulation is to discourage real dialogue, its methods are demagogic.
If any honor could be summoned; it would have as its objective an impeachment proceeding in which there was a determination to
talk about reality, to examine this nation's real problems. It will be easier to accept the counterfeit proceedings of the 2020
campaign.
Imagineering and propaganda are leading us straight to hell. One more season of politics where the candidates of the unreal
appear willing to bamboozle the country, on the altar of power, will put an end to us. One more wretched ambassador of the empire.
One more glad-handing sport to tell us how great we are. One more oligarch or oligarch's man/woman will be the final stroke.
Wow what a disgraced person he really is, instead of correcting that his witch hunt didnt find any collusion nor obvious obstruction,
he just doubles down before retire:
Pulling a Comey: How Mueller dog-whistled Democrats into impeachment of Trump https://on.rt.com/9vdv
US is so finished politcally, new voices, parties needs to be created.
Mueller put a great deal of emphasis on Russian interference with the election, which is being both parroted and universally interpreted
as a Russian hack of the DNC server - a hack which could not possibly have taken place.
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-evidence/
The "Russian interference" issue was ancillary to Mueller's investigation, yet it is a focal point of his comments. Why was it
so important that it merited that degree of relative emphasis? If it was a download and not a hack, the only suspect is the late
Seth Rich. The only person (I assume) who can unequivocally prove where those materials came from is Julian Assange. After years,
suddenly asylum is revoked, and suddenly the US is prosecuting for espionage. After years of disparagement, mainstream media is
suddenly rallying to Assange's case - yet truth be told nobody at CNN will ever face even administrative sanction for the same
sort of activity as Assange's. SOS Pompeo met with FM Lavrov, came back to the US and said he had warned Lavrov about interfering
with US elections...and Lavrov and Russian press reported those statements were never made. Apparently someone corrected Pompeo's
errant failure, and at the next meeting he did in fact warn Lavrov about such interference. Obviously it was a big deal - to someone
that was sufficiently powerful to tell the SOS what to do with great specificity - that this official condemnation was publicly
registered. It certainly was not Trump. Lavrov responded with not only denial, but as Aaron Mate pointed out and was noted here,
Lavrov said he had a file on it and was prepared to discuss it. Pompeo was not prepared to discuss whatever was in that file.
Although it is patently obvious the Russians did not hack the DNC server, and that the materials in question - which relate to
HRC - were downloaded, it is apparently an imperative of a very large number of powerful people to maintain the official narrative
of a Russian hack of the DNC computer. While that suits other narratives, it also buries any questions as to who might have downloaded
the materials (and someone did). Which ends any inquiry as to what might have happened from that moment in time, just as inquiry
into Whitewater ended with Vince Foster's demise and an incredibly "irregular" forensic inquiry. Boxes of documents were removed
from Foster's office that same evening - by HRC personally. Recall she wanted to drone strike Assange. All of this is happening
on the heels of the revelation that the Mueller investigation was not going to take down Trump and end all potential for inquiry
into any untoward DNC related activity. Thank you in advance to any comments in response to this comment.
After reading numerous articles on "Russia gate," the 2016 presidential election and the rise of Generalissimo Bone Spur and President
Chief Kaiser to the US presidency, Donald Trump, the 19th century British political historian and thinker Lord Acton summed it
all up best; namely "never underestimate the influence of stupidity on history." What else is there to say?
@ Bruce # 29 with the Seth Rich questions about the DNC
You are correct in pointing out that the Mueller investigation is hiding DNC and Clinton II crimes which is why I said above
that the impeachment will not proceed. Somewhere I read that Hillary is on tape having said that she/they were screwed if Trump
won.
The bottom line is that none of those folks are working in my best interest and are committing crime after crime to stay in
power.
Impeachment indeed would be a mistake. The Dems have been denigrating trump from the beginning and what has that got them?
Also, remember Trey Gowdy and his endless investigations? Adam Shiff is nearly as repugnant and should turn to other work in
Congress.
Yes, SharonM, Tulsi is charismatic, as well as calm and collected. So far, though, she is being ignored by the D.C. pundits.
We should keep an eye on her positioning with respect to the new DNC debate thresholds.
It won't take a masterful performance given the news that keeps spilling over the transom. Meanwhile Mueller plays his criminal
hand of innuendo until the end. Were he ever to submit to questions in a Congressional setting, Mueller would be out-Giancana-ing
Sam on taking the Fifth. The Special Counsel format is at this stage a superseded footnote. The ball's now in Barr/Durham's court
now and the theme is Hunt for Red Predicates.
Breaking news. The Russia Collusion time-zero may in fact lead to Rome as all roads are wont to do. Italy is not a Five Eyes member.
However that did not prevent Obama and Brennan from treating it like one. Both spent a lot of time there at opportune moments.
As it turns out the oft-cited, oft-profaned Steele Dossier was the barest of predicates that was always meant to be hopped
over anyway. The Mother of all Predicates was a a failed effort on the the part of Italian intelligence and the FBI to frame Trump
in a stolen (Clinton) email scandal. How did the Italians get hold of these emails and who thwarted the frame-up attempt? Hmm.
Just when you think the transnational plot is thick enough, it gets thickerer, and if Obama's Milan itinerary's any indication,
it may well reach the tippy-top.
Nine Days in May (2017) is where 90% of the action is.
@29 bruce... everyone here at moa is saying much the same which is why some of us are saying the cia is running the usa at this
point.. that and a confluence of other interests... mueller - ex cia... so, basically the mueller investigation was more cover
up and b.s. for the masses... it seems to have worked to a limited degree..
Some think the CIA has been running the show since the Kennedy assassination. But with the rise of the neocons and the
end of the Cold War, it became more apparent.
IMO it also became more apparent when the Deep State f*cked up by no bringing Russia on-side after the end of the Cold
War while continuing to assist China's "peaceful rise". That caused the dislocation known as Trump. There's gonna be some turbulence
when you turn a massive entity like USA.
Last thing that as become 'apparent' is this: the vast majority of people in the West (including many smart people in alt-media)
can't dislodge their thinking from the MSM narratives. Despite being skeptical of MSM and USA, they just can't bring themselves
to see the degree of manipulation that leads to the logical conclusion: "CIA is running the USA".
Regarding a candidate addressing a really important domestic issue in USA, Pres. Trump has drawn the teeth (to an extent) on that
one, and put the Democratic party in the position of either supporting the Republican initiative, or throwing sand in the wheels
of a measure which will be very popular with the American public:
May 9 - surprise medical bills will be outlawed
"...Today I'm announcing principles that should guide Congress in developing bipartisan legislation to end surprise medical
billing...we have bipartisan support, which is rather shocking..."
Whatever you may think of Trump, the people who set out to 'get him' are the scum of the Earth. I recommend listening to the two-part
interview of George Papadopoulos with Mark Steyn, where he describes the convoluted plot to use him to bring down Trump.
What they did to this guy is truly disgusting. Brennan belongs in a prison cell, and he should be sharing it with Mueller.
Papadopoulos also has written a book about his experiences called 'Deep State Target, How I got caught in the crosshairs of the
plot to bring down President Trump.
And, a final comment. Hillary Clinton proved beyond all doubt that she and not Trump was not fit to be President. To engage
in this scheme and then to raise tensions through the roof with a nuclear superpower, which can destroy this country, is about
as low and selfish as it is possible to be.
the democrats don't really have squat as far as real impeachment charges are concerned. I lived through Watergate and everyone
in college at that time enjoyed that circus daily, and there was real evidence which continued to grow as the hearings went on.....
please recall only one of the charges against nixon related at all to the war, if I recall, about the 'secret' bombings of Cambodia
- there's nothing in foreign policy they can or would indict this guy on (sad to say), without involving their own complicity
in all the wars and war crimes in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and so on... Same goes for their incredible Surveillance State. they are
all guilty.
This business against trump would be pure showmanship, and the democrats have lost nearly every single time they tried to show
up trump, who is admittedly a sorry rotten ass it's true but a more clever showman and bullshitter than any of them.
how can the Democrats win on anything other than bread and butter issues? but they haven't been strongly in favor of the working
and middle classes in 30-40 years and are a corporate party more now than ever. they fucked up so bad in 2016 and have been totally
distracting with this 'Russiagate' nonsense. nobody that makes a real living in the country gives a shit about that, it's health
care, wages, standard of living, climate catastrophe and other real things that concern people.
maybe the Russiagates make a lot of noise, but so far Pelosi and Schumer know better than to fall into that trap
As long as the US and world economy don't tank (which I believe is a very real possibility - like what gave Obama his win against
McCain in sept-nov 2008), then alas, I believe Trump will very likely win. but well over 17 months to election is a long long
time in politics and many things can happen.
b is correct in stating that the Democrats' hyping of Russiagate was a mistake, but he is wrong in believing that impeaching Trump
would be a similar mistake. That is because Trump, in rejecting Congress's efforts to investigate his administration, has gone
beyond mere obstruction of justice. He has declared that Congress has not the power to investigate his office, which is a direct
violation of the Constitution's provision that Congress has not only the power, but the duty, to oversee the Executive Branch.
If the Democrats accept such a declaration, then the United States will have officially crossed the line into authoritarianism
and fascism. Whether Trump's chances of re-election are helped or hurt is almost besides the point. The nation cannot meekly bow
to the will of a tyrant who holds himself unaccountable and above the law.
The Democrats presumably had the option of taking the high road against Trump and trying to legislate around him, but chose
the low road instead. Now find themselves spinning their wheels in the muck, with no other options on the table.
As they continue down this road, it will only show how useless the whole charade is becoming. The assumption being There Is
No Alternative. The underlying intention being true oligarchy, as this equivalent of a national home loan eventually comes due
and those with the biggest piles of treasuries intending to trade them for the remaining public assets, facilitated by those bureaucrats
who understand they are already working for their future employers.
Yet the only tool of control they will have, as all hope dies, is fear. Then the reset will start, as the scab becomes ever
more separate from the wound. The nations of the Eurasian continent will eventually thank the US for forcing them to work together,
while we and those most attached, such as England, slowly come to realize that it is all about something far deeper and more important,
than the Benjamins. We need public finance, like we needed public government and usurped monarchies. The bankers are having their
'Let them eat cake' moment and it is getting messy. They may as well wallow in the swamp.
The purpose of Russiagate was to 1) prevent any foreign policy initiative which featured rapprochement with Russia. 2) prevent
or forestall any honest appraisal of why Clinton lost.
It is obvious that the Democratic Party establishment is hostile to progressive initiatives, including a Single Payer medical
system which absolutely would be a winning platform in America. Therefore the impeachment circus will continue as it keeps the
Dem base focussed on the supposed national emergency which is Trump. Trump's election was probably the biggest opening for non-mainstream
politics in decades in America, and its been mostly squandered by deliberate misdirection.
Impeachment is not a conviction, it just shoves a trial over to the Senate where the Democrats are sure to lose. Its poor
strategy to proceed with more nonsense. The whole Russian maneuver is going to end badly for them. They are turning Trump from
a sure loser to a possible winner.
There is some talk of kicking Pence off the ticket and adding Nicky Haley if there is a sense of trouble in Trumps reelection.
They promised us a 100 years war. 4 more years of Trump and 8 years of Haley would add another 12. Probably we will have those
12 more years of war no matter who is in the office. The socialist opposition is absent of war party opposition.
Someone mentioned the economy and that could end it all for the Trump ticket. Things look lousy.
The relevant provision you are looking for would be
Article 1 / Section 8 of the US
Constitution. Congressional oversight is implied in the US Constitution rather than stated explicitly. Further information and
elaboration of Congress's powers of oversight
are at this link.
What do you expect from the master of coverup himself? He basically said in so many words "Russians hacked Hillary &
I didn't find Trump didn't collude with them, I just came up short on proof, and I never said he didn't obstruct my probe, just
that I wasn't allowed to charge it. However,Congress can charge him thru impeachment"
Except for the Russian involvement
thats the truth. But the Russian spin is the key to maintaining Russia as a fake enemy and using their fake involvement in the
election to get support to suppress alt media and censor social media. This is a bipartisan agenda. Impeachment just serves to
divide and distract, exactly what they want.
Russia like China is a fake enemy. Fake conflict with the US serves them just as well as it does with the US. The people must
have an enemy lest they focus attention on the government. So they all play along.
No wonder hollywood is producing crap now and messed up GOT finale. All the good writers are engaged in scripting our reality
under the guidance of the Deep State. Trumps nothing more than an actor following a script.
An Impeachment attempt would guarantee an already likely Trump re-election win. If there is an attempt to impeach him, he'll beat
his breast all the way back into the White House saying he is being "witch hunted". What is also interesting is how other commenters
talked about disappointment in Trump's trade policy.
Isn't free trade an ongoing gift to the multinationals and oligarchy? And
while a trade war will certainly hurt the common man - the common man doesn't vote based on the absolute cost of goods in Wal
Mart. They vote based on whether they think their interests are at least being listened to. Underestimating the anger at offshored
jobs and production is exactly the mistake the DNC and mainline Democrats have been making.
In any case, my view is that Bernie Sanders is the biggest factor, not Trump. Even without H. Rodham running, the DNC will
do everything it can to not let Bernie be the Progressive or Liberal representative in the Presidential race - even to the point
of losing again to Trump. That's what really matters in 2020.
@jackrabbit.. Clearly we see it in a similar way... everything else is the cult of political personality - trump, pelosi,
clinton, mueller, brennan, barr and etc etc - sideshow to keep the kiddies entertained.. meanwhile the fox continues to run the
chicken house..
don't get me wrong.. whether one votes for scuzball trump, or scuzball whoever from the dems - it will be business as
usual - war, war, and more war with an ongoing sideshow of political personality to keep everyone distracted.. both the repubs
and the dems have shown their true colour and it has nothing to do with small people getting a leg up.. maga my ass and all the
rest of the politically subservient tripe..
"Democrats would rather lose to a Republican than win with a progressive." Their strategy of flooding the field with just enough
"favorite son" candidates to keep anyone from winning on the first ballot will work, allowing super delegates to nominate Biden
as a "compromise," who will lose hands down to Trump unless Trump actually starts a war.
The first parts I agree with entirely, and on that account I must retreat from my earlier declaration Sanders would win. As
things stand now, I believe he has no chance to get the nomination.
The second part is where we disagree. I have a visceral feeling Trump will not be President in 2021 unless some extra-legal
things happen, for any of the Democrats in the race will defeat him - badly. Even the horrid Biden. Biden or one of the other
Hillary clones will most likely take office in 2021. I'd prefer Warren, Sanders or Gabbard, but the Democratic Big Brass aren't
likely to allow any of these.
@ Jen 49
re: Rob 44 -- the Constitution's provision that Congress has not only the power, but the duty, to oversee the Executive Branch
> The relevant provision you are looking for would be Article 1 / Section 8 of the US Constitution.
No, it isn't there.
> Congressional oversight is implied in the US Constitution rather than stated explicitly.
Implication? Come on. Rob 44's cmt is above -- "Constitution's provision..."
> Further information and elaboration of Congress's powers of oversight are at this link.
Requested Page Not Found (404).
Wow! Is it me or is the room getting a tad bit louder discussing impeachment? Do you know what it means? It means the the impeachment
distraction is working perfectly! Also, just in time to rescue the Demoncrats, the Republitards are passing anti-abortion bills
that are bad enough to increase Demoncrat voter turnout. Accordingly, for the regular voter, the wars, coups, and trade will remain
out of sight, out of mind. Congratulations, Amerikan regime! You guys are awesome!
Mueller was appointed to create a "process crime" for Trump -- obstruction of justice.
"Rosenstein gambit" which resulted in the appointment of Mueller was a part of "color revolution"
gameplan with Steele dossier and Brenna 17 intelligence agencies fake report on Russian
interference in election (a dozen of handpicked by Brannan analysts actually) as two previous
steps.
He assembled a "Dream team" of pro-Hillary prosecutors ("personal is policy") who were eager
to implement it. The problem was that there was no Russian interference and as such no crime.
That did not stop them from searching for it for two years and inventing it in best traditions of
Moscow trails (activity of Internet research agency is a prime example here). Finalk report
supports all false flag operation which Deep State launched against Trump (including Papadopolis
entrapment and staged by MI6 Vesselnitskaya meeting with Trump Jr)
That's why he dragged several former Trump associates into his net, charging them with
unrelated to this mission crimes ( Manafort is the primary example ) and process crimes (Flynn,
Papadopoulos, Roger Stone) expecting Trump coming to their defense. He also tried to interview
Trump hoping to catch him like Flynn in lies to FBI. He have has a very good life posing himself
as the Grand Inquisitor for two years, but it has come to an end.
Now he himself become a subject of investigation, as he should be. So moving to the status of
"private citizen" is an expected defensive move for this Deep State actor, who before this
investigation was involved in swiping 9/11 under the rug as well as fake Anthrax investigation.
Anthrax probably was a false flag operation designed to simplify transition of the USA into
national security state (Patriot Act and installation of the regime of total surveillance,
etc).
Notable quotes:
"... America will never be safe as long as 12 genius Slavs are able to subvert our entire election with $100 of ad phishing!!! ..."
"... Perhaps this summary works: Mueller and his totally biased team searched for evidence of a crime that did not exist while ignoring all the evidence of multiple crimes that did exist. ..."
"... He says "Everyone is presumed innocent unless proven guilty". Then, "We did not find evidence sufficient to show that the President committed a crime". Then, "We did not find evidence to prove he did not commit a crime". WTF? We couldn't prove he was innocent? That is America's legal standard? What a sleaze. This guy needs to head to Gitmo with the rest of the coup enablers. ..."
"... The problem is there is no way to obstruct collusion if it were to be proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt. ..."
"... Mueller in panic mode ..."
"... whitey bulger is screaming out from the grave ..."
"... "I was investigating a fake crime in which there was no evidence found of any wrongdoing by the President. HOWEVER, if you want to impeach him, go for it. ..."
by Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/29/2019 - 11:10 10 SHARES TwitterFacebookRedditEmailPrint Update: Mueller started his statement by affirming
that he would be resigning and closing the special counsel's office.
"It's important that the office's written work speak for itself," he said.
But the bigger takeaway: After recounting the circumstances of Russia's interference in the
vote, the special counsel said charging President Trump "was never an option" during the
investigation.
The indictments allege and describe efforts to interfere in our political system that need
to be investigated and understood. That is also a reason we decided to investigate efforts to
obstruct the investigation.
"When a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators
it strikes at the core of the government's effort to find the truth and hold that individual
accountable."
Mueller reiterated that the investigation didn't turn up sufficient evidence charge a
broader conspiracy involving other co-conspirators, meanwhile, charging the president with a
crime was "not an option we could consider." He added that he wouldn't be exploring any
hypotheticals about the president.
"We concluded that we would, would not reach a determination one way or the other about
whether the president committed a crime."
"That is the office's final position and we will not comment on any other conclusions or
hypotheticals about the president."
Mueller said he was authorized to investigate obstruction of justice, and "if we had had
confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so" but
Mueller said it wouldn't be fair to charge Trump with a crime since he would never be able to
stand trial.
Perhaps this summary works: Mueller and his totally biased team searched for evidence of a crime that did not exist
while ignoring all the evidence of multiple crimes that did exist.
He says "Everyone is presumed innocent unless proven guilty". Then, "We did not find evidence sufficient to show that the President committed a
crime". Then, "We did not find evidence to prove he did not commit a crime". WTF? We couldn't prove he was innocent? That is America's legal standard? What a sleaze.
This guy needs to head to Gitmo with the rest of the coup enablers.
See there, I told you so. He didn't say the President would be indicted. He did say that
the President couldn't be indicted. The President still COULD be indicted, if they appoint
the right person who wouldn't say he WOULDN'T indict the President. I believe the President
KNEW this and is not cooperating fully with the next Special Prosecutor who would indict him
if he can demonstrate no collusion. The problem is there is no way to obstruct collusion if
it were to be proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The fact that this prosecutor, unlike other prosecutors, cannot indict if he finds an
indictable offense may seem to put pressure on the attorney general to share the report
with Congress, which can remedy presidential misconduct through impeachment.
--So Bob, does this mean you didn't want to share indicable offenses with the Attorney
General and by extension Congress? Why?
This was like a hostage video. A LIFE of Law Enforcement....and he just pissed all over it. It was not his job to prove
trump did not commit a crime. This is a slap in the face to JUSTICE in America. Guilty until Proven innocent??? WTF???
"I was investigating a fake crime in which there was no evidence found of any wrongdoing by the President. HOWEVER, if
you want to impeach him, go for it. I'm running off to a deserted island in the South Pacific".
"... If you were a person of some authority and murdered someone, and prosecutors set out to investigate, and if you spoke publicly against the investigation, proclaiming your innocence and calling the probe a " witch hunt ," and if you worked behind the scenes to use your influence to fire the lead investigator on the murder case - that would seem to be a pretty clear case of obstruction of justice. You, as a guilty man, would be trying to stop authorities from finding out the truth. ..."
"... But imagine, on the other hand, that you are innocent - accused of a murder you didn't commit. Not only that, imagine you knew there was no murder to begin with because you saw the victim walking around after the supposed murder. Then, imagine you found yourself the target of the murder investigation by a team that included people who had declared you to be their sworn enemy and expressed strong desires to take you out. Then, imagine this team that included biased investigators began leaking false information to the national media to implicate you in this crime that you knew you didn't commit. ..."
"... Imagine that this cloud of the murder you knew was never committed hangs over you, month after month, until it drags on for years. It's distracting you from your ability and authority to do the job in the public's interests. But every time you speak publicly to defend yourself and proclaim your innocence, the media and your political enemies declare you to be a liar and say you are obstructing the investigation. ..."
"... If Mueller is right, then Trump knew from the start that he didn't conspire with Russian President Vladimir Putin . Nonetheless, he became the target of a supposedly independent investigation which, it turned out, included top team members who expressed personal disgust and hatred for him as well as a desire to take him out. ..."
"... This cloud of supposed collusion, a crime that never happened, hung over Trump month after month until it dragged on for years. For someone who's innocent, it would obviously begin to look like the fix was in. ..."
"... In the end, Trump wasn't the liar on this major point; instead, his critics were the ones who were sorely mistaken . They accused the president of the worst sort of treachery but, according to Mueller, Trump was telling the truth all along when he said there was no collusion with Russia. ..."
A friend of mine who is - I'll just say it - a devoted Trump-hater recently was talking about
President Trump 's obstruction and asked what I thought.
After listening to his views, I told him there's plenty about which to criticize the president, as is true of any political leader.
But the obstruction
charge doesn't make logical sense. I used an analogy to explain why. When I finished, this friend still hated Trump -- but surprised
me by saying, "Nobody's ever explained it that way. That makes sense. You should write about it."
Obviously, I don't kid myself that this analogy will "make sense" to everyone. But after listening to both sides and looking
at the publicly available evidence, here's how I see it :
If you were a person of some authority and murdered someone, and prosecutors set out to investigate, and if you spoke publicly
against the investigation, proclaiming your innocence and calling the probe a "
witch hunt ," and if you worked behind the scenes to use your influence to fire the lead investigator on the murder case - that
would seem to be a pretty clear case of obstruction of justice. You, as a guilty man, would be trying to stop authorities from finding
out the truth.
But imagine, on the other hand, that you are innocent - accused of a murder you didn't commit. Not only that, imagine you
knew there was no murder to begin with because you saw the victim walking around after the supposed murder. Then, imagine you found
yourself the target of the murder investigation by a team that included people who had declared you to be their sworn enemy and
expressed strong desires to take you out. Then, imagine this team that included biased investigators began leaking false information
to the national media to implicate you in this crime that you knew you didn't commit.
Imagine that this cloud of the murder you knew was never committed hangs over you, month after month, until it drags
on for years. It's distracting you from your ability and authority to do the job in the public's interests. But every time you speak
publicly to defend yourself and proclaim your innocence, the media and your political enemies declare you to be a liar and say you
are obstructing the investigation.
It begins to look like the fix is in.
Under these circumstances, you wouldn't be human if you didn't possess a desire to stop a potentially conflicted investigation
by your political enemies into a crime that was never committed - least of all by you . Since you are innocent, your attempts to
stop an unfair investigation could be fairly seen as an attempt to see justice done, not to obstruct it.
If special counsel Robert Mueller is correct and
there was no coordination of any kind between any American
and Russia, then the latter analogy seems more applicable to President Trump than the former.
If Mueller is right, then Trump knew from the start that he didn't conspire with Russian President
Vladimir Putin . Nonetheless, he became the target of a
supposedly independent investigation which, it turned out, included top team members who expressed personal disgust and hatred for
him as well as a desire to take him out.
Extensive information about the probe, some of it false, was leaked to and reported by an unquestioning national press. Every
time Trump spoke up for himself and -- according to Mueller, in the end -- rightly declared his innocence, his enemies accused him
of being a liar and cited nonexistent, secret evidence.
This cloud of supposed collusion, a crime that never happened, hung over Trump month after month until it dragged on for years.
For someone who's innocent, it would obviously begin to look like the fix was in.
Trump's alleged conversations about trying to switch out Mueller, as documented in interviews with the special counsel, could
fairly be interpreted as attempts to seek justice, not to obstruct it.
The story would be entirely different, of course, if Trump had turned out to be Putin's agent -- and for two years, I and many
others fully suspected that could be the outcome of the Mueller probe, based on all the leaks and reporting. But it wasn't the case.
Those who think Trump is unfit for office, or who otherwise oppose him, might carry more weight if they publicly acknowledge
that they chased their tails for two years and, when they finally snagged it, realized they hadn't captured the enemy. Then, they
could more credibly move forward to another focus, such as targeting the Trump policies they find objectionable.
In the end, Trump wasn't the liar on this major point; instead, his critics were the ones who
were sorely mistaken . They accused the president of the worst sort of treachery but, according to Mueller, Trump was telling
the truth all along when he said there was no collusion with Russia.
"... Perhaps what Pelosi understands is that what Americans want Congress to focus on is bread and butter issues and a forward-looking agenda. Gallup polling released in November of 2018 found that 80% of voters said health care was extremely or very important to their vote; the Russia investigation, the nexus of many of the impeachment calls against President Trump, was 12th among issues polled, sitting at just 45%. ..."
Upon taking control of Congress in 2006, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi declared that
impeachment of then-President George W Bush was " off the table
."
Her remarks dismayed many critics of Bush, who continued to press Pelosi and other
Democratic leaders to pursue impeachment against the Republican president. They pointed to the
Bush administration's warrantless surveillance, the illegal war in Iraq, and the use of
torture.
Articles of impeachment were authored by Ohio Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich, who
netted a
small group of co-sponsors for his resolution. But as we all know, no impeachment
proceedings were ever launched against Bush, and the administration's officials escaped any
accountability from its successors. President Obama
famously said he preferred to "look forward as opposed to looking backwards" when it came
to accountability on issues like torture and wiretapping.
To many onlookers, the approach by Democratic leadership towards President Donald Trump
seems to be a case of deja vu. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly rebuffed calls to
begin impeachment proceedings against the president. "I'm not for impeachment Impeachment is so
divisive to the country that unless there's something so compelling and overwhelming and
bipartisan, I don't think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he's
just not worth it,"
she said in March .
Compared to Bush, the logic of impeaching Trump is far less straightforward. There are real
concerns about whether Trump is violating the emoluments clause and his contempt of Congress,
but neither of these issues compare to Bush's illegal behavior, which severely violated the
rights of millions of Americans and others. Although House Democrats are frustrated by Trump's
attempt to block their subpoenas and investigations of his financial dealings across the world,
they do not have a clear-cut case of high crimes and misdemeanors that could set the stage for
a successful impeachment – the same way warrantless surveillance or waterboarding
presented one.
Impeachment is a sort of last resort the legislative branch has to deploy against a
president who is acting outside the boundaries of the law. It is important for Congress to
never declare that impeachment is off the table – as Pelosi did in 2006 – because
it sends a message to the executive branch that its members cannot be held legally accountable.
That sort of impunity would be antithetical to our system of checks and balances.
But what Pelosi is arguing this time around is much more reasonable. She supports
Congressional oversight and investigations into the Trump administration and the president's
personal financial dealings as a way to expose possible wrongdoing. And she is leaving the door
open to impeachment if the facts suggest that it is necessary.
These investigations can inform the American public about the way Trump is choosing to
govern and allow them to make an educated choice in the 2020 election, without setting off what
could be an extremely polarizing and contentious impeachment proceeding that is unlikely to
succeed.
It is true that the president is stonewalling some of these investigations, and that's one
reason some Democrats are warming to an impeachment inquiry that they believe would allow them
to get at information they currently can't obtain.
Yet within the halls of Congress,
the votes don't seem to be there for an impeachment, according to the House's third-ranking
Democrat, South Carolina's Jim Clyburn. Meanwhile, the US Senate is run by Kentucky Republican
Mitch McConnell, who would never go along with an effort to remove the president.
Opening an impeachment inquiry would start a process many Americans would see as an
attempt to circumvent the 2020 election – denying voters the ability to have the final
say on Trump's conduct as president. Americans simply aren't ready for as divisive a
process as trying to impeach the president; even many who are critical of Trump don't support
impeaching him. A Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted in April
found that only 37% of Americans support opening an impeachment inquiry.
Perhaps what Pelosi understands is that what Americans want Congress to focus on is bread
and butter issues and a forward-looking agenda. Gallup
polling released in November of 2018 found that 80% of voters said health care was
extremely or very important to their vote; the Russia investigation, the nexus of many of the
impeachment calls against President Trump, was 12th among issues polled, sitting at just
45%.
This doesn't mean that Congress shouldn't investigate the conduct of the Trump
administration or the president's personal financial dealings as they relate to the public
interest. It is important for the public to have all the relevant information in order to make
educated choices in the upcoming election. And if Trump continues to stonewall these
investigations, voters have every right to punish him for it.
It is also well past time for Congress to pass reforms that could prevent abuses of
presidential power in the future. While then-Judiciary Committee chair Michigan Democratic
Representative John Conyers declined to start impeachment proceedings against Bush, he did introduce
legislation to establish a commission on war powers and civil liberties; sadly, it did not
go anywhere. If Pelosi is serious about investigating and holding the executive branch
accountable, she could help set up a similar commission that could help create reforms in the
law to rein in an unaccountable executive in the future.
But ultimately it is voters who will decide President Trump's fate. The votes in Congress
aren't there for impeachment, and Americans aren't convinced that it is justified based on the
facts. Pelosi is wise to avoid invoking this nuclear option, which would only further polarize
a country that is increasingly at odds with itself over political differences. We have a
democratic process to empower Americans to choose their leaders. Attempting to short-circuit
the 2020 election would harm America's democracy, not enhance it.
"... What is remarkable is that Mueller concluded in his Report that "Russians" hacked into the DNC computer or network and then shared that with Wikileaks---and that conduct affected the 2016 election. Yet the 40 or 50 FBI agents under Mueller's control neither investigated the alleged DNC "hack" nor did they interview Julian Assange to ask him who uploaded the Hillary and Podesta emails and other DNC materials showing, among other things, "collusion" by the DNC and Hillary to sabotage Bernie Sanders. That's almost like going to trial on a breach of contract claim and not introducing the actual contract into evidence. ..."
"... There is no evidence whatsoever in the Mueller Report that Russians controlled by Putin had anything to do with the 2016 election other than some "Russians" spent $40K on Google ads. ..."
"... I believe those Google ads were the work of the CIA, to create the illusion. Its right out of their playbook. ..."
"... Ted Cruz was also illegally surveilled by Obama and BIDEN. They did that to Trump under the guise of "Russia collusion". Ted Cruz was just surveilled to help Hillary win: no Russia connection whatsoever. ..."
"... Looks like Trump forgot to include Italy in his list because Misfid is in fact an Italian spy and they concocted a scheme to download DNC material into US computers of an Italian based in the US who was their target to implicate Trump into it and make it look like his campaign was responsible. The Pundit lifted their story from Neon Revolt off of Gab. ..."
What is remarkable is that Mueller concluded in his Report that "Russians" hacked into the
DNC computer or network and then shared that with Wikileaks---and that conduct affected the
2016 election. Yet the 40 or 50 FBI agents under Mueller's control neither investigated the
alleged DNC "hack" nor did they interview Julian Assange to ask him who uploaded the Hillary
and Podesta emails and other DNC materials showing, among other things, "collusion" by the
DNC and Hillary to sabotage Bernie Sanders. That's almost like going to trial on a breach of
contract claim and not introducing the actual contract into evidence.
The foregoing is the most remarkable thing of all of this. Reaching legal conclusions
without any true "evidence" to support those conclusions. There is no evidence whatsoever in
the Mueller Report that Russians controlled by Putin had anything to do with the 2016
election other than some "Russians" spent $40K on Google ads. Woopdie doo.
If anyone in government is concerned about outsiders influencing our elections, they ought
to investigate how many illegal aliens are voting.
Have you seen the Mueller Report? The amount of redactions on my copy are far less than
1%. Get them on Amazon for 30% off. It is a joke, written by 19 angry Trump-hating democrats,
and they couldn't find anything in 2 years. Now Trump is going to have his turn, and all of the dems in DC are in a full-on panic
tonight!
Happy Memorial Day folks!! God bless our Veterans and their families!
What they say doesn't matter now... Mueller wants to testify in private? doesn't matter. Comey saying the FBI doesn't spy on people? doesn't matter
Anything Obama, Hillary, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Lynch, Rosenstein, Mueller, Rachel
Madcow , Maxine FloodWaters , lyin' Adam Schiff, crazy Pelosi, scumbag Schumer, the
House of Representatives, Paul Rino , Joyless Bayhar , CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC,
Chris-shaking leg- Mathews, Joe Scarbourough and Stinka-Mika at PMSNBC , Bill Maher, sloppy
Jerrold Nadler, AOC, the other two commie-morons with her, the entire MSM, the Washington
Post, the Washington Times, Robert de Zero , angry Alec Baldwin, the late night TV whores,
the snowflakes, and etc.
They are DONE! They will not even be able to show their faces in public after
this!
Watch this at the 26:00 min mark....the X-22 Report: Ted Cruz was also illegally surveilled by Obama and BIDEN. They did that to Trump under the guise of "Russia collusion".
Ted Cruz was just surveilled to help Hillary win: no Russia connection whatsoever. This shows
it was politically motivated. And it had nothing to do with protection our elections from
Russia. The dems whole narrative is falling apart. That is why they don't want Mueller
testifying in public. The Republicans do, however, because they will expose everything! The
dems will try to do it behind closed doors. It won't work!
: ))
"Obama surveilled over 300 people, and you will be shocked when this comes out!"- Sarah
Carter
Looks like Trump forgot to include Italy in his list because Misfid is in fact an Italian
spy and they concocted a scheme to download DNC material into US computers of an Italian
based in the US who was their target to implicate Trump into it and make it look like his
campaign was responsible. The Pundit lifted their story from Neon Revolt off of Gab.
"... The Word documents published in June 2016 by Guccifer 2 also show a "last saved as" user id written in Cyrillic. The Anglicized name is " Felix Edmundovich ", aka "Iron Felix" (the infamous director of an early Soviet spy agency). If you are a Russian cyber spy trying to conduct a covert operation, why do you sign your document with the name of one of the most infamous leaders of Russian intelligence? Robert Mueller wants you to believe that this was just Russian audacity. ..."
"... The phrase "personal beliefs about the competence or incompetence of the Russians" catches something important. Whether it was the Russians or somebody else that did this, whoever did it was pretty sloppy. What this report describes is almost as pathetic when considered a false flag operation as it is as a sabotage operation. So any theory of who stole and published the documents has to explain a capability to access the data combined with blissful obliviousness about handling them. I know of no reason to think the Russian, US, Israeli, or other intelligence communities incapable of such a combination. All of them have brilliant dedicated people but also seemingly endless supplies of mediocre time-servers. ..."
"... Scenario? Shutdown, closing of words with documents being automatically saved? Ok, otherwise there is apparently no precise saving time stamp on Winwords latest version. How much changed since 2016? ..."
"... The Vault7 leak of CIA tools also contained information on how to select any language environment. It's really a standard practice, even for normal criminals. ..."
Russia did not hack the DNC. This is not an opinion. It is a conclusion that flows from one
very specific claim made by the Special Counsel -- i.e., Guccifer 2.0 was a fictional identity
created by Russian Military Intelligence, the GRU. If Guccifer was in fact a creation or
creature of the GRU, then the forensic evidence should show that this entity was operating from
Russia or under the direct control of the GRU. The forensic evidence shows something quite
different -- the meta data in the Guccifer 2.0 documents were manipulated deliberately to plant
Russian fignerprints. This was not an accident nor an oversight due to carelessness.
What is meta data? This is the information recorded when a document is created. This data
includes things such as the date and time the document was created or modified. It tells you
who created the document. It is like the Wizard of Oz, it is the information behind the
curtain.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's is correct in stating that Guccifer 2.0 was a "fictious
online persona. " He is wrong in attributing that action to Russian Military Intelligence.
While Guccifer 2.0 was a "fictious" entity, the information recorded about when, how and who
created the document show that deliberate choices were made to present the info as if it was
created by someone Russian.
Let us first stipulate and agree that Russia and the United States engage in cyber espionage
and covert action against each other. This has been the case since computers and the internet
came into existence. Within the U.S. Intelligence Community these activities generally are
labeled with the acronym, CNO -- Computer Network Operations. The Russians and the United
States have cadres of cyber "warriors" who sit at computer terminals and engage in operations
commonly known as hacking. Other countries, such as China, Iran and Ukraine do this as
well.
CNOs are classified at the highest level in the United States and normally are handled
within special restricted categories commonly known as SAPs (i.e, Special Access Programs). A
critical element of these kinds of operations is to avoid leaving any fingerprints or clues
that would enable the activity to be traced back to the United States. But this is not unique
to the United States. All professional intelligence services around the world understand and
practice this principle -- leave no evidence behind that proves you were there.
The case implicating Russia in the hack of the DNC and Clinton emails, including those of
her campaign Manager, John Podesta, rests on suspect forensic computer evidence -- is present
in the meta data in the documents posted on line by Guccifer 2.0. According to Disobedient
Media , "the files that Guccifer 2.0 initially pushed to reporters contain Russian
metadata, a Russian stylesheet entry and in some cases embedded Russian error messages."
Why would the Russians make such a mistake, especially in such a high stake operation
(targeting a national election with covert action most certainly is a high stake operation).
Mueller and the U.S. intelligence community want you to believe that the Russians are just
sloppy and careless buffoons. Those ideologically opposed to the Russians readily embrace this
nonsenses. But for those who actually have dealt with Russian civilian and military
intelligence operatives and operations, the Russians are sophisticated and cautious.
But we do not have to rely on our personal beliefs about the competence or incompetence of
the Russians. We simply need to look at the forensic evidence contained in the documents posted
by Guccifer 2.0. We will take Robert Mueller and his investigators at their word:
Beginning in or around June 2016, the Conspirators staged and released tens of thousands
of the stolen emails and documents. They did so using fictitious online personas, including
"DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0." (p. 2-3)
The Conspirators also used the Guccifer 2.0 persona to release additional stolen
documents through a website maintained by an organization ("Organization 1") [aka WIKILEAKS],
that had previously posted documents stolen from U.S. persons, entities, and the U.S.
government. (p. 3)
Between in or around June 2016 and October 2016, the Conspirators used Guccifer 2.0 to
release documents through WordPress that they had stolen from the DCCC and DNC. The
Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, also shared stolen documents with certain individuals.
(p. 15)
An examination of those documents tells a very different story. While it does not reveal who
or what was Guccifer 2.0, it does undermine Mueller's claim that it was the Russians who did
these dastardly deeds.
One independent forensic computer investigator, who uses the name, "The Forensicator,"
examined the meta data in some of the documents posted by Guccifer 2.0 and
discovered the following :
Guccifer 2.0 published a file on 13 September 2016 that was originally copied on 5 July 2016
at approximately 6:45 PM Eastern time. It was copied and appeared as the "NGP VAN" 7zip
file.
The estimated speed of transfer was 23 MB/s. This means that this initial data transfer
could have been done remotely over the Internet. Instead, it was likely done from a computer
system that had direct access to the data. "By "direct access" we mean that the individual who
was collecting the data either had physical access to the computer where the data was stored,
or the data was copied over a local high-speed network (LAN)."
This initial copying activity was done on a system that used Eastern Daylight Time (EDT)
settings and was likely initially copied to a computer running Linux, because the file last
modified times all reflect the apparent time of the copy, which is a characteristic of the
Linux 'cp' command (using default options).
On September 1, 2016, a subset of the initial large collection of DNC related content (the
so-called NGP/VAN data), was transferred to working directories on a system running Windows.
The .rar files included in the final 7zip file were built from those working directories.
The alleged Russian fingerprints appeared in the first document "leaked" by Guccifer 2.0--
1.doc -- which was a report on Donald Trump . A forensic examination of
the documents shows thatgiven the word processor program used to create the Donald Trump
Document released by Guccifer 2.0, the author consciously and purposefully used formats that
deliberately inserted "Russian fingerprints" into the document. In other words, the meta-data
was purposely altered, and documents were pasted into a 'Russianified' word document with
Russian language settings and style headings.
Here are the key facts:
The meta data shows that Slate_-_Domestic_-_USDA_-_2008-12-20.doc was the template
for creating 1.doc , 2.doc and 3.doc . This template injected "Warren
Flood" as the author value and "GSA" as the company value in those first three Word documents.
This
template also injected the title , the watermark and header/footer fields found in the
final documents (with slight modifications).
The Word documents published in June 2016 by Guccifer 2 also show a "last saved as" user id
written in Cyrillic. The Anglicized name is " Felix Edmundovich ", aka
"Iron Felix" (the infamous director of an early Soviet spy agency). If you are a Russian cyber
spy trying to conduct a covert operation, why do you sign your document with the name of one of
the most infamous leaders of Russian intelligence? Robert Mueller wants you to believe that
this was just Russian audacity.
But the meta data tells a different story. When we examine The Revision Session Identifiers
aka 'RSID's, in the Guccifer document, we see the same Russian style-headings in 1.doc, 2.doc
and 3.doc. The document creation timestamps on docs 1, 2 and 3 also are all identical.
Given that MS word assigns a new random 'RSID' with each save when an element is added or
edited (this function allows one to track changes made to a Word document), the only way to
obtain identical creation timestamps means that someone either directly edited the source
document or that there was one empty document open and that individual documents were
copy-pasted and saved-as (1.doc), then contents deleted and new doc pasted and saved-as
(2.doc), etc. This
process also explains identical style-sheet RSIDs .
The document creation timestamps on docs 1, 2 and 3 also are all identical.
Curious, no doubt. But who of us did not consider Guccifer 2 curious. Put another way,
what experts considered him solid proof for Russian involvement?
Are you suggesting Winword templates were used for the metadata?
As IT nitwit, how can I save three *doc files or their 2016 word equivalent at the same
time? Any way to do that? Windows doesn't seem to have a solution to that.
Again: This is a nitwit user asking a question.
*******
I admittedly am not overly motivated to read the Mueller report. I'll read your contribution
again to figure out what you may suggest in or between the lines.
The phrase "personal beliefs about the competence or incompetence of the Russians" catches
something important. Whether it was the Russians or somebody else that did this, whoever did
it was pretty sloppy. What this report describes is almost as pathetic when considered a
false flag operation as it is as a sabotage operation. So any theory of who stole and
published the documents has to explain a capability to access the data combined with blissful
obliviousness about handling them. I know of no reason to think the Russian, US, Israeli, or
other intelligence communities incapable of such a combination. All of them have brilliant
dedicated people but also seemingly endless supplies of mediocre time-servers.
Equally interesting is the fact that this analysis has come from such a private source.
Surely all the major intelligence agencies have the skill to find the same indicators. And
all have comparatively endless resources to apply to the analysis. But they all seem to not
want to talk about it. For me the most suspicious thing about the handling of the theft was
the FBI's near complete lack of interest in examining the server. I have always assumed that
such indifference reflected that they already had all they needed in order to understand what
happened. Maybe even watched the theft in real time. But this report demonstrates that you
didn't need any special access to blow up the official story. (Note that the official story
may be "true". It is just not proven by the cited evidence.)
Yet, whatever actually happened, nobody seems interested in challenging the narrative that
Russians stole data and routed it through useful idiots to influence the 2016 elections. This
report indicates that a persuasive challenge would not have been hard to produce.
Perhaps the false flag was intentionally clumsy, intended to be detected. Bait for a trap
that no one wants to fall into. But I don't see where that thought leads.
This can be discovered by looking at things called 'rsid's or Revision Session
Identifiers in Guccifer's document. In order to track changes, MS word assigns a new random
'rsid' with each save upon each element added or edited. The rsids for the Russian
style-headings in 1.doc, 2.doc and 3.doc are all the same (styrsid11758497 in the raw
source).
Moreover, the document creation timestamps on 1,2, and 3.docs are all identical too.
This might imply there was one empty document open, with individual documents being
copy-pasted and saved-as (1.doc), then contents deleted and new doc pasted and saved-as
(2.doc), etc. This is the only way to go about obtaining identical creation timestamps short
of direct editing of the source, and would also explain identical style-sheet RSIDs.
Scenario? Shutdown, closing of words with documents being automatically saved? Ok,
otherwise there is apparently no precise saving time stamp on Winwords latest version. How
much changed since 2016?
Empty doc open? What would that change?
But good to see that Winword now integrated some type of automatic saving option, didn't
have it when I gave it up and shifted to Open Office. On the other hand, can I trust it to not confront me with an earlier revision version? I
admittedly asked myself lately. In a 200 page file, mind you.
As someone with a little bit of experience in that area I can assure you that language
metadata artifacts are practically worthless for attribution. You would mention it in a
report, but from it you can only conclude that
either the creator was an amateur and used his own language environment
or actually selected this particular language environment, either by running a - in this
case - Russian copy of Office, or by changing the metadata manually.
or he used his own language environment because he doesn't care, and because he knows that
this information is worthless for any forensics expert.
The Vault7 leak of CIA tools also contained information on how to select any language
environment. It's really a standard practice, even for normal criminals.
Attribution is really hard and usually amounts to a lot of guessing who might be interested
in the target of an attack, correlating information from other campaigns, and is only rarely
based on hard evidence. Big state actors probably can do a little bit better when they have
access to enough network taps. But in the end one bit looks like any other, and properties of
static documents can always be forged and made to look real. Or simply buy a copy of MS
Office in .
The document creation timestamps on docs 1, 2 and 3 also are all identical.
Ok doc creation times. Could one create a WinWord Macro? That does exactly that. ok, why
would one do this? True. Minor detail, I know. But I see we have experts around now.
*******
More generally. Guccifer 2.0 was a bit of an odd occurrence, not least due to US intelligence
considering Guccifer one or zero, if you like.
"... What he said is, 'I Donald Trump am going to be a champion of the working class I know you are working longer hours for lower wages, seeing your jobs going to China, can't afford childcare, can't afford to send your kids to college. I Donald Trump alone can solve these problems.' What you have is a guy who utilized the media, manipulated the media very well. He is an entertainer, he is a professional at that. But I will tell you that I think there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic Party does business. It is not good enough to have a liberal elite. I come from the white working class and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from." ..."
"... when the Clinton team first learned that Wikileaks was going to release damaging Democratic National Party emails in June 2016, they "brought in outside consultants to plot a PR strategy for handling the news of the hack the story would advance a narrative that benefited the Clinton campaign and the Democrats: The Russians were interfering in the US election, presumably to assist Trump." ..."
"... After losing the election, Team Clinton doubled down on this PR strategy. As described in the book Shattered (p. 395) the day after the election campaign managers assembled the communication team "to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up and up . they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument." ..."
"... A progressive team produced a very different analysis titled Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis . They did this because "the (Democratic) party's national leadership has shown scant interest in addressing many of the key factors that led to electoral disaster." The report analyzes why the party turnout was less than expected and why traditional Democratic Party supporters are declining. ..."
"... Since the 2016 election there has been little public discussion of the process whereby Hillary Clinton became the Democratic Party nominee. It's apparent she was pre-ordained by the Democratic Party elite. As exposed in the DNC emails, there was bias and violations of the party obligations at the highest levels. On top of that, it should now be clear that the pundits, pollsters and election experts were out of touch, made poor predictions and decisions. ..."
"... The 2016 election is highly relevant today. Already we see the same pattern of establishment bias and "horse race" journalism which focuses on fund-raising, polls and elite-biased "electability" instead of dealing with real issues, who has solutions, who has appeal to which groups. ..."
"... The establishment bias for Biden is matched by the bias against Democratic Party candidates who directly challenge Wall Street and US foreign policy. On Wall Street, that would be Bernie Sanders. On foreign policy, that is Tulsi Gabbard. With a military background Tulsi Gabbard has broad appeal, an inclusive message and a uniquely sharp critique of US "regime change" foreign policy. ..."
"... Blaming an outside power is a good way to prevent self analysis and positive change. It's gone on far too long. ..."
An
honest and accurate analysis of the 2016 election is not just an academic exercise. It is very
relevant to the current election campaign. Yet over the past two years, Russiagate has
dominated media and political debate and largely replaced a serious analysis of the factors
leading to Trump's victory. The public has been flooded with the various elements of the story
that Russia intervened and Trump colluded with them. The latter accusation was negated by the
Mueller Report but elements of the Democratic Party and media refuse to move on. Now it's the
lofty but vague accusations of "obstruction of justice" along with renewed dirt digging. To
some it is a "constitutional crisis", but to many it looks like more partisan fighting.
Russiagate has distracted from pressing issues
Russiagate has distracted attention and energy away from crucial and pressing issues such as
income inequality, the housing and homeless crisis, inadequate healthcare, militarized police,
over-priced college education, impossible student loans and deteriorating infrastructure. The
tax structure was changed to benefit wealthy individuals and corporations with little
opposition. The Trump administration has undermined environmental laws, civil rights, national
parks and women's equality while directing ever
more money to military contractors. Working class Americans are struggling with rising
living costs, low wages, student debt, and racism. They constitute the bulk of the military
which is spread all over the world, sustaining continuing occupations in war zones including
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and parts of Africa. While all this has been going on, the Democratic
establishment and much of the media have been focused on Russiagate, the Mueller Report, and
related issues.
Immediately after the 2016 Election
In the immediate wake of the 2016 election there was some forthright analysis. Bernie
Sanders
said , "What Trump did very effectively is tap the angst and the anger and the hurt and
pain that millions of working class people are feeling. What he said is, 'I Donald Trump am
going to be a champion of the working class I know you are working longer hours for lower
wages, seeing your jobs going to China, can't afford childcare, can't afford to send your kids
to college. I Donald Trump alone can solve these problems.' What you have is a guy who utilized
the media, manipulated the media very well. He is an entertainer, he is a professional at that.
But I will tell you that I think there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic
Party does business. It is not good enough to have a liberal elite. I come from the white
working class and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people
where I came from."
Days after the election, the Washington Post published an op-ed titled "
Hillary Clinton Lost. Bernie Sanders could have won. We chose the wrong candidate ." The
author analyzed the results saying , "Donald Trump's stunning victory is less surprising
when we remember a simple fact: Hillary Clinton is a deeply unpopular politician." The
writer analyzed why Sanders would have prevailed against Trump and predicted "there will be
years of recriminations."
Russiagate replaced Recrimination
But instead of analysis, the media and Democrats have emphasized foreign interference. There
is an element of self-interest in this narrative. As reported in "Russian Roulette" (p127),
when the Clinton team first learned that Wikileaks was going to release damaging Democratic
National Party emails in June 2016, they "brought in outside consultants to plot a PR
strategy for handling the news of the hack the story would advance a narrative that benefited
the Clinton campaign and the Democrats: The Russians were interfering in the US election,
presumably to assist Trump."
After losing the election, Team Clinton doubled down on this PR strategy. As described in
the book Shattered (p. 395) the day after the election campaign managers assembled the
communication team "to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up and up
. they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian
hacking was the centerpiece of the argument."
This narrative has been remarkably effective in supplanting critical review of the
election.
One Year After the Election
The Center for American Progress (CAP) was founded by John Podesta and is closely aligned
with the Democratic Party. In November 2017 they produced an analysis titled "
Voter Trends in 2016: A Final Examination ". Interestingly, there is not a single reference
to Russia. Key conclusions are that "it is critical for Democrats to attract more support from
the white non-college-educated voting bloc" and "Democrats must go beyond the 'identity
politics' versus 'economic populism' debate to create a genuine cross-racial, cross-class
coalition " It suggests that Wall Street has the same interests as Main Street and the working
class.
A progressive team produced a very different analysis titled Autopsy: The Democratic Party in
Crisis . They did this because "the (Democratic) party's national leadership has shown scant interest in addressing many of
the key factors that led to electoral disaster." The report analyzes why the party turnout was less than expected and why
traditional Democratic Party supporters are declining. It includes recommendations to end the party's undemocratic
practices, expand voting rights and counter voter suppression. The report contains details and specific recommendations lacking
in the CAP report. It includes an overall analysis which says "The Democratic Party should disentangle itself – ideologically
and financially – from Wall Street, the military-industrial complex and other corporate interests that put profits ahead of
public needs."
Two Years After the Election
In October 2018, the progressive team produced a follow-up report titled "
Autopsy: One Year Later ". It says, "The Democratic Party has implemented modest reforms,
but corporate power continues to dominate the party."
In a recent phone interview, the editor of that report, Norman Solomon, said it appears some
in the Democratic Party establishment would rather lose the next election to Republicans than
give up control of the party.
What really happened in 2016?
Beyond the initial critiques and "Autopsy" research, there has been little discussion,
debate or lessons learned about the 2016 election. Politics has been dominated by
Russiagate.
Why did so many working class voters switch from Obama to Trump? A major reason is because
Hillary Clinton is associated with Wall Street and the economic policies of her husband
President Bill Clinton. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), promoted by Bill
Clinton, resulted in huge decline in manufacturing jobs in
swing states such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Of course, this would influence their
thinking and votes. Hillary Clinton's support for the Trans Pacific Partnership was another
indication of her policies.
What about the low turnout from the African American community? Again, the lack of
enthusiasm is rooted in objective reality. Hillary Clinton is associated with "welfare reform"
promoted by her husband. According to this study from
the University of Michigan, "As of the beginning of 2011, about 1.46 million U.S. households
with about 2.8 million children were surviving on $2 or less in income per person per day in a
given month The prevalence of extreme poverty rose sharply between 1996 and 2011. This growth
has been concentrated among those groups that were most affected by the 1996 welfare
reform. "
Over the past several decades there has been a huge increase in prison
incarceration due to increasingly strict punishments and mandatory prison sentences. Since
the poor and working class have been the primary victims of welfare and criminal justice
"reforms" initiated or sustained through the Clinton presidency, it's understandable why they
were not keen on Hillary Clinton. The notion that low turnout was due to African Americans
being unduly influenced by Russian Facebook posts is seen as "bigoted paternalism" by blogger Teodrose
Fikremanian who says, "The corporate recorders at the NY Times would have us believe that
the reason African-Americans did not uniformly vote for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats is
because they were too dimwitted to think for themselves and were subsequently manipulated by
foreign agents. This yellow press drivel is nothing more than propaganda that could have been
written by George Wallace."
How Clinton became the Nominee
Since the 2016 election there has been little public discussion of the process whereby
Hillary Clinton became the Democratic Party nominee. It's apparent she was pre-ordained by the
Democratic Party elite. As exposed in the DNC emails, there was bias and violations of the
party obligations at the highest levels. On top of that, it should now be clear that the
pundits, pollsters and election experts were out of touch, made poor predictions and
decisions.
Bernie Sanders would have been a much stronger candidate. He would have won the same party
loyalists who voted for Clinton. His message attacking Wall Street would have resonated with
significant sections of the working class and poor who were unenthusiastic (to say the least)
about Clinton. An indication is that in critical swing states such as Wisconsin and
Michigan Bernie
Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary race.
Clinton had no response for Trump's attacks on multinational trade agreements and his false
promises of serving the working class. Sanders would have had vastly more appeal to working
class and minorities. His primary campaign showed his huge appeal to youth and third party
voters. In short, it's likely that Sanders would have trounced Trump. Where is the
accountability for how Clinton ended up as the Democratic Party candidate?
The Relevance of 2016 to 2020
The 2016 election is highly relevant today. Already we see the same pattern of establishment
bias and "horse race" journalism which focuses on fund-raising, polls and elite-biased
"electability" instead of dealing with real issues, who has solutions, who has appeal to which
groups.
Mainstream media and pundits are already promoting Joe Biden. Syndicated columnist EJ
Dionne, a Democratic establishment favorite, is indicative. In his article "
Can Biden be the helmsman who gets us past the storm? " Dionne speaks of the "strength he
(Biden) brings" and the "comfort he creates". In the same vein, Andrew Sullivan pushes Biden in
his article "
Why Joe Biden Might be the Best to Beat Trump ". Sullivan thinks that Biden has appeal in
the working class because he joked about claims he is too 'hands on'. But while Biden may be
tight with AFL-CIO leadership, he is closely associated with highly unpopular neoliberal trade
deals which have resulted in manufacturing decline.
The establishment bias for Biden is matched by the bias against Democratic Party candidates
who directly challenge Wall Street and US foreign policy. On Wall Street, that would be Bernie
Sanders. On foreign policy, that is Tulsi Gabbard. With a military background Tulsi Gabbard has
broad appeal, an inclusive message and a uniquely sharp critique of US "regime change" foreign
policy. She calls
out media pundits like Fareed Zakaria for goading Trump to invade Venezuela. In contrast
with Rachel Maddow taunting
John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to be MORE aggressive, Tulsi Gabbard has been
denouncing Trump's collusion with Saudi Arabia and Israel's Netanyahu, saying it's not in
US interests. Gabbard's anti-interventionist anti-occupation perspective has significant
support from US troops. A
recent poll indicates that military families want complete withdrawal from Afghanistan and
Syria. It seems conservatives have become more anti-war than liberals.
This points to another important yet under-discussed lesson from 2016: a factor in Trump's
victory was that he campaigned as an anti-war candidate against the hawkish Hillary Clinton. As
pointed out
here, "Donald Trump won more votes from communities with high military casualties than
from similar communities which suffered fewer casualties."
Russiagate has distracted most Democrats from analyzing how they lost in 2016. It has given
them the dubious belief that it was because of foreign interference. They have failed to
analyze or take stock of the consequences of DNC bias, the preference for Wall Street over
working class concerns, and the failure to challenge the military industrial complex and
foreign policy based on 'regime change' interventions.
There needs to be more analysis and lessons learned from the 2016 election to avoid a repeat
of that disaster. As indicated in the
Autopsy , there needs to be a transparent and fair campaign for nominee based on more than
establishment and Wall Street favoritism. There also needs to be consideration of which
candidates reach beyond the partisan divide and can energize and advance the interests of the
majority of Americans rather than the elite. The most crucial issues and especially US military
and foreign policy need to be seriously debated.
Blaming an outside power is a good way to prevent self analysis and positive change. It's
gone on far too long.
Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist who grew up in Canada but currently lives in
the San Francisco Bay Area of California. He can be reached at [email protected] . Read other articles by Rick .
"... "Instead," McConnell went on, "the previous administration sent the Kremlin a signal they could get away with almost anything, almost anything. So is it surprising that we got the brazen interference detailed in special counsel Mueller's report?" ..."
"... Yes, Russia kicked most US NGOs out of the country. With good reason. Most of them were deliberately undermining the host country (this is not limited to Russia, they do that in most of their host countries, especially those we want to mess with). The National Endowment for Democracy is a classic case in point. The counter point here isn't RT. It's a news outlet that has proven to be far more reliable than the US corporate media. Does Russia send NGOs around the world to infest other countries with their vision of government? ..."
"... It is exactly as Mr. Lazare says, Americans think that their country can do no wrong. ..."
"... Several of my late husband's FB friends fall well into these categories and they really believe, wholeheartedly, the propaganda against Russia (and to some extent against China – Huawei, 5G, and so on), almost to the point of paranoia. The Demrat politicos and their corporate-capitalist-imperialist funders together with the despicable, groupthinking Orwellian media have done a real number on these people – usually the ones who *vote.* ..."
"... Most are Democrats who embrace the 'neoliberal groupthink' you referred to. There was a time I believed one of the conclusions of a famous study on authoritarian personalities that claimed the vast majority of authoritarians (active and passive) were Republicans. Just as the Democratic Party has morphed into the 80's Republican Party, so too have these liberals. Their cognitive dissonance is more powerful than any I have encountered in my lifetime. Their core belief system now includes incrementalism, lesser-evilism and an overwhelming sense of goodness that at least they are 'doing something positive' by supporting all Democrats at all costs. ..."
"... I don't get why, supposedly intelligent, informed people are wondering why Russia is being blamed for so much. Let me remind you that the extremely powerful Israel Lobby is VERY BUSY supporting the agenda of the right wing Likud government in Israel. ..."
"... One of the goals of Likud is the Zionist agenda that includes Greater Israel which requires Israel to acquire more water and land in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, Iran is a very strong supporter of the Palestinians and Syrian President Assad and Iraqi independence from US domination. ..."
"... Why, on this good earth, does anyone pay any attention to Schumer and Schiff and McConnell? Shills, do nothing crackpots and traitors to this nation; when you see that's what they are, you have to ignore them. ..."
Russia-gate has shed any premise of being about Russian interference, writes Daniel Lazare, but the idea that America may in anyway
be responsible for its own fate is of course unthinkable.
Americans used to think that Russia-gate was about a plot to hack the 2016 election. They were wrong. Russia-gate is really about
an immense conspiracy to do four things:
No. 1: Ratchet up tensions with Russia to ever more dangerous levels;
No. 2: Show that Democrats are even more useless than people imagined;
No. 3: Persecute Julian Assange;
No. 4: Re-elect Donald Trump as president.
This was the takeaway from Mitch McConnell's devastating "
case closed " speech last week in which the Senate majority
leader jeered at President Barack Obama for mocking Mitt Romney's claim (seven years ago now) that Russia was America's "number one
geopolitical
foe
." As Obama famously replied during that presidential debate:
"The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War's been over for 20 years."
But that was so 2012. Now, says McConnell, it looks like Romney was right:
"We'd have been better off if the administration hadn't swept [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's invasion and occupation
of Georgia under the rug or looked away as Russia forced out western NGO's and cracked down on civil society. If President Obama
hadn't let Assad trample his red line in Syria or embraced Putin's fake deal on chemical weapons, if the Obama administration
had responded firmly to Putin's invasion and occupation of Ukraine in 2014, to the assassination of Boris Nemtsov in 2015, and
to Russia intervention in Syria -- maybe stronger leadership would have left the Kremlin less emboldened, maybe tampering with
our democracy wouldn't have seemed so very tempting.
"Instead," McConnell went on, "the previous administration sent the Kremlin a signal they could get away with almost anything,
almost anything. So is it surprising that we got the brazen interference detailed in special counsel Mueller's report?"
Lies and Distortions
Like so much out of Congress these days, this was a farrago of lies and distortions. It wasn't Moscow that started the 2008 Russo-Georgian
War, but Tbilisi . While
Russia has indeed cracked down on U.S.-backed NGO's, Washington has done the same by forcing Russia's highly successful news agency
RT to register as a foreign
agent and by sentencing Maria Butina, a Russian national studying at American University, to
18 months in prison
for the crime of hobnobbing
with members of the National Rifle Association. The charge that Syrian President Bashar al Assad "trampled" Obama's red line by using
chemical weapons is hardly as clear-cut as imperial propagandists like to believe –
to say the least – while the agreement between Putin and former Secretary
of State John Kerry to rid Syria of chemical weapons was not fake at all, but an example, increasingly rare unfortunately, of diplomacy
being used to prevent an international crisis from getting out of hand.
And so on ad nauseum . But what could Democrats say in response given that they've spent the last three years trying to
out-hawk the GOP? Answer: nothing. All they could do was try to turn tables on McConnell by charging him with not being anti-Russian
enough. Thus, New York's Sen. Chuck Schumer accused him of "
aiding and abetting
" Moscow while Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin
accused
him of running interference for Putin because he "feels the Russians were on the side of the Republicans in 2016 and just might be
again in 2020."
Democrats Feed the Super Hawks
The result: a Democratic consensus that Russia can't be trusted and that America must put itself on a war footing to prevent Putin
from "toppl[ing] the mighty oak that has been our republic for two hundred years," as Schumer put it. It's an across-the-board agreement
that the long-awaited Mueller report has only strengthened by regurgitating the intelligence-community line that "[t]he Russian government
interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion" and then cherry-picking the facts to fit its preconceived
thesis. (See " Top Ten
Questions About the Mueller Report ," May 6.)
Democrats claim to oppose National Security Advisor John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence,
but the anti-Russian hysteria they promote strengthens the hand of such super-hawks. It makes military conflict more likely, if not
with Russia then with perceived Russian surrogates such as Venezuela or Iran.
Schiff increasingly unhinged.
Simultaneously, it backfires on Democrats by making them look weak and foolish as they argue that even though the Mueller report
says "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government,"
somehow "significant evidence of collusion" still exists, as an increasingly unhinged Rep. Adam Schiff
maintains . In the
Alice-in-Wonderland world of congressional Democrats, no evidence does not mean no evidence. In fact, it means the opposite.
Voters are unmoved. Ten times more Americans – 80 versus 8 percent – care about healthcare than about Russia according to
a recent survey . When CNN pollsters asked a thousand people in mid-March to name the issues that matter most,
not one mentioned Russia or the Mueller
probe . If they didn't care when collusion was still an open question, they care even less now that the only issue is obstruction
plus a phony constitutional crisis that desperate Democrats have conjured up out of thin air.
Trump the Chief Beneficiary
Besides Fox News – whose ratings have
soared while Russia-obsessed CNN's have plummeted – the chief beneficiary is Trump. Post-Mueller, the man has the wind in his
sails. Come 2020, Sen. Bernie Sanders could cut through his phony populism with ease. But if Jeff Bezos's Washington Post
succeeds in
tarring him with Russia the same way it tried to tar Trump, then the Democratic nominee will be a bland centrist whom the incumbent
will happily bludgeon. Former Vice President Joe Biden – the
John McCain-loving ,
speech-slurring ,
child-fondler who was
for a wall along the Mexican border before he was against
it – will end up as a bug splat on the Orange One's windshield.
Trump ready to take on challengers. (Caricature/DonkeyHotey via Flickr)
Beto O'Rourke, the rich-kid airhead who
declared shortly before the Mueller report was released that Trump, "beyond the shadow of a doubt, sought to collude with the
Russian government," will not fare much better. Sen. Elizabeth Warren meanwhile seems to be tripping over her own two feet as she
predicts one moment that Trump is
heading
to jail , declares the next that voters
don't care
about the Mueller report because they're too concerned with bread-and-butter issues, and then
calls for dragging Congress into the impeachment morass
regardless.
Such "logic" is lost on voters, so it seems to be a safe bet that enough will stay home next Election Day to allow the rough beast
to slouch towards Bethlehem yet again.
Assange Convicted in Eyes of Press
Then there's Julian Assange, currently serving a 50-week sentence in a supermax prison outside of London after being ejected from
the Ecuadorian Embassy. By claiming that the WikiLeaks founder was "dissembling" by denying that Russia was the source of
the mammoth Democratic National Committee leak in July 2016, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has effectively convicted him in the
eyes of Congress and the press.
The New York Times thus reports that Mueller has "
revealed " that
Russian intelligence was the source while, in
a venomous piece by Middlebury College professor Allison Stanger, The Washington Post declared that Assange "is neither
whistleblower nor journalist," but someone who helped Russian intelligence interfere in "the American electoral process."
Schumer thus greeted Assange's April 11 arrest by
tweeting his "hope [that] he will soon be
held to account for his meddling in our elections on behalf of Putin and the Russian government," while, in
a truly chilling
statement , Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia declared that "[i]t will be really good to get him back on United States
soil [so] we can get the facts and the truth from him."
Now that Julian Assange has been arrested, I hope he will soon be held to account for his meddling in our elections on behalf
of Putin and the Russian government.
Assange is guiltier than ever. If Washington gets its hands on him, he'll no doubt be hauled before some sort of Star Chamber
and then clapped in a dungeon somewhere until he confesses that Russian intelligence made him do it, even though a careful reading
of the Mueller report strongly suggests the opposite. (See "
The 'Guccifer 2.0'
Gaps in Mueller's Full Report ," April 18.)
Assange languishing behind bars, war breaking out in Latin America or the Persian Gulf, Trump in the Oval Office for four years
more – it's the worst of all possible worlds, and the Democratic Party's bizarre fixation with Vladimir Putin is what's pushing it.
Ultimately, Russia-gate is yet a variation on the tired old theme of American innocence. If something goes wrong, it can't be
the fault of decent Americans who, as we all know, are too good for our deeply flawed world. Rather, it must be the fault of dastardly
foreigners trying to hack our democracy. It's a deep-rooted form of xenophobia that has fueled everything from the criminalization
of marijuana (smuggled in by evil Mexicans) to the 1950s Red Scare (a reaction to Communism smuggled in by evil Russians), and the
war on terrorism (the work of evil Muslims). The idea that America may in anyway be responsible for its own fate is of course unthinkable.
But Russia-gate may be the greatest delusion of all. After decades of celebrating Donald Trump as the essence of American flash
and hustle, the corporate media have decided that the only way he could have gotten into the White House is if Putin put him there.
The upshot is a giant conspiracy to force Americans to turn their back on reality, an effort that can only end in disaster for all
concerned, Democrats first and foremost.
Daniel Lazare is the author of "The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy" (Harcourt Brace, 1996)
and other books about American politics. He has written for a wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique
and blogs about the Constitution and related matters at D aniellazare.com .
Tick Tock , May 15, 2019 at 11:30
Sorry Folks but both Mr Lazare's text and the majority of the comments here clearly illustrate that the major problem for America
and its Citizens is that they are way too full of themselves and easily manipulated because of that. Seriously, the vast majority
of the Worlds population Could Not Give a Rat's Ass about America except when they are being attacked either with Real Bombs or
Economically.
No normal Human Being wants to be Israel's Stooge. You have to think you are are really important for someone in another Country
to want to select your leaders. Oh yes that is what the US Deep State does and now it's been clearly exposed it does the same
thing at home.. Of course if your motto is that "You are god's chosen people!", it could get you into trouble now and then with
the rest of God's People. Like Bob Dylan wrote a few years ago, "I used to care!" Only a fool would care now.
Jeff Harrison , May 15, 2019 at 11:23
This is where we learn the importance of an objective press and one that can bring all the threads of a story together. And
it's also most likely to be a disaster.
Yes, Russia kicked most US NGOs out of the country. With good reason. Most of them were deliberately undermining the host country
(this is not limited to Russia, they do that in most of their host countries, especially those we want to mess with). The National
Endowment for Democracy is a classic case in point. The counter point here isn't RT. It's a news outlet that has proven to be
far more reliable than the US corporate media. Does Russia send NGOs around the world to infest other countries with their vision
of government?
The US/EU fomented the coup in Ukraine that resulted in Crimea deciding they didn't want to be associated with Ukraine any
longer. Did the US press tell the truth here? No. They made it sound as if Crimea was a part of Ukraine when, in fact, the Turkic
Muslims of Crimea were never a part of the Christian Slavs of Ukraine. They also didn't explain the terms by which Khrushchev
administratively slapped the two together in 1957 which give the Crimeans the ability to opt out.
It is exactly as Mr. Lazare says, Americans think that their country can do no wrong. We don't see the coups we foist on other
countries. We don't see the lies and fake news we spread in other countries we wish to undermine. They don't see the consequences
of our abuse of our economic power. The myopia is powerful in this one as my representatives tried to tell me that Venezuela was
a prosperous and happy country before Chavez and that their current travails are as a result of the socialism and not two coup
attempts and a long string of sanctions from the US. We are remarkably good at blaming the victim.
There's a good chance that this will rise up and bite us in the ass and the American people will have no idea why ..
AnneR , May 15, 2019 at 08:52
Mr Lazare, while I would certainly agree with much you have written, on one point at least I am much less certain: that most
Americans care less about Russia than about health care.
While this might be true for the majority of the population who are in the lower middle, working classes and poor, I am much
less certain about the "well" educated, comfortably off, well health insured, middling and upper bourgeoisie. The sort who, even
when on Medicare, are on the upper rungs of it (paying extra for better and more expansive treatment; and I do mean Medicare here).
The sort who frequently have been privately educated.
Several of my late husband's FB friends fall well into these categories and they really believe, wholeheartedly, the propaganda
against Russia (and to some extent against China – Huawei, 5G, and so on), almost to the point of paranoia. The Demrat politicos
and their corporate-capitalist-imperialist funders together with the despicable, groupthinking Orwellian media have done a real
number on these people – usually the ones who *vote.*
These same people evince absolutely, and I mean absolutely, NO concern or interest in the constant war-making and warmongering,
the illegal invasions, electoral meddling/coups/"regime" changes, destruction of peoples that this country (and its allies) engage
in. Not happening here, therefore not anything to do with "us."
I know that my late husband would be utterly devastated knowing that some of his students, with whom he worked assiduously
to develop real critical thinking (via much difficult reading in historiography, sociology and philosophy, discussion and writing),
have fallen hook, line and sinker for the neoliberal groupthink supporting the corporate-capitalist-imperialist (and of course,
orientalist) line. One can only imagine that they were already well primed for this mindset.
MattZ , May 15, 2019 at 11:43
Anne -- your post resonates deeply with me. I would guess you and I are of similar ages and have similar friends and acquaintances.
We certainly share the exact same experiences with these people. They are proud 'liberals' (lately donning the 'progressive' robe
with equal exuberance). None are members of the elite one-percenters, but all belong to what Nader refers to as the 'contented
class', that 9% buffer zone between the elite and the increasingly miserable lower 90%-ers.
Most are Democrats who embrace the 'neoliberal groupthink' you referred to. There was a time I believed one of the conclusions
of a famous study on authoritarian personalities that claimed the vast majority of authoritarians (active and passive) were Republicans.
Just as the Democratic Party has morphed into the 80's Republican Party, so too have these liberals. Their cognitive dissonance
is more powerful than any I have encountered in my lifetime. Their core belief system now includes incrementalism, lesser-evilism
and an overwhelming sense of goodness that at least they are 'doing something positive' by supporting all Democrats at all costs.
Appallingly, their new heroes are historically-proven liars, psychopaths and Deep State organizations like the CIA and FBI.
Their Trump Derangement Syndrome has destroyed all ability to think critically or accept transparent and obvious truths. They
accept no criticism of their actions and attack those who question them. To them, the 'end' of removing Trump justifies any evil.
Gaia help us all.
Skip Scott , May 15, 2019 at 08:04
The root of the Democrats problem is they feed from the same trough as the GOP. They can't do anything substantial about health
care or the declining middle class because they'd piss off their donors. Since they can't stand for "the working man" any longer,
they are trying to cobble together "Identity Politics" and "Political Correctness" to eke out a majority. Good luck with that!
They can give us non gender specific restrooms with our Forever War! Why aren't we feeling the love?
I think the time has never been more ripe for a serious third party challenge than 2020.
Realist , May 15, 2019 at 10:42
Perfect thumbnail obituary for the Democratic Party, Skip. It got hijacked by corporatists who saw an opportunity to push the
GOP agenda from both directions. Maybe that's what Hillary meant by "stronger together."
If you want to be entertained and titillated turn on the national evening news shows. The 2020 election circus has already
begun. Don't watch that, switch channels and watch the obstruction of justice infotainment. Want news, read between the lines
of the major newspapers. Go to PBS to be rescued, good luck.
Has it always been thus. Maybe, but it's a much better show today.
If I could figure out long ago Russia-gate was going to lead to Trump's reelection (see above link), you would think Brennan/
Clinton/ Pelosi could figure it out too. Which begs the questions:
Is Trump good for business for the Democratic party financial patrons? Do they really want him impeached? Did the Pied Piper
strategy ever end? Does Bernie Sanders scare them so much they'd rather promote Trump than have Sanders in the Oval Office?
Realist , May 15, 2019 at 10:35
Your last explanation is the one that Jimmy Dore seems to favor. The party string pullers are obviously desperate when they
back one near-octogenarian (Crazy Joe Biden) for the nomination against another near-octogenarian (Sanders). Counter move by the
GOPers may be to run Tricky Dick Nixon's head-in-a-bottle for the office, like in Futurama.
Realist , May 15, 2019 at 02:05
Wow, gotta hand it to McConnell. That man can shamelessly pack multiple whoppers into every single sentence uttered in his
public speaking. Quite a tour de force of pure undiluted bullshit by the turtle. With his rhetorical skills to deliver talking
points at a newly realised zenith, there's sure to be a job for him on Madison Avenue when he's finally kicked to the curb as
happens to every politician when a better snake oil salesman inevitably comes along.
John Sanguinetti , May 15, 2019 at 00:05
I don't get why, supposedly intelligent, informed people are wondering why Russia is being blamed for so much. Let me remind
you that the extremely powerful Israel Lobby is VERY BUSY supporting the agenda of the right wing Likud government in Israel.
One of the goals of Likud is the Zionist agenda that includes Greater Israel which requires Israel to acquire more water and land
in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, Iran is a very strong supporter of the Palestinians and Syrian President Assad and Iraqi independence
from US domination.
Russia, with it's very effective support for Assad and collaboration with Iran is blocking progress on the
Zionist agenda. So, putting pressure on Russia is a way of trying to force them to back off from their support for Syria and Iran
or at least to scare them with the power of our military and a crazy unpredictable leader who might do anything. Israel has besides
it's VERY STRONG and active lobbies in the US and UK a large and VERY Active 5th column that spends a LOT of money and effort
influencing the people who run our government.
CitizenOne , May 14, 2019 at 23:43
I believe it but with some editing of the authors original four things. I have deleted the case against Assange as a sideshow
that does nor resonate with Americans any more than the nightly rumor mill about celebrities. Here goes.
Americans used to think that Russia-gate was about a plot to hack the 2016 election. They were wrong. Russia-gate is really
about an immense conspiracy to do four things:
No. 1: Ratchet up tensions with Russia to ever more dangerous levels;
No. 2: Show that Democrats are even more useless than people imagined;
No. 3: Win the 2020 elections and reelect Trump and preserve the republican majority in the Senate and win back the democrat
controlled House
No. 4: Wage wars in oil rich nations being Iran and Venezuela to fulfill the agenda of the energy companies via military action.
While McConnell rails against Obama for his weaknesses we have the historical record that Obama declared Venezuela as a national
security threat, levied massive sanctions against Russia for their presumed invasion of Ukraine, launched a war against the Syrian
government, preserved and supported our wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
We see today that Chuck Schumer is still committed to the theory that Russia is the single reason that the democrats lost the
last election which is absurd and is rejected by not only a significant number of liberal journalists but also by a majority of
Americans. Why do the democrats continue to promote conspiracy theories that the majority of Americans reject as nonsense?
The republicans have the democrats over a barrel and will push it over and watch the democrats wallow in the mud with much
amusement.
This could not have have happened to the democrats without a complete lack of foresight or even a slightest attempt to rely
on the truth to guide them.
From day one after the election, the democrats swallowed the bait hook line and sinker and now the hook is buried deep in their
gullets and they still insist that they are free swimming fish on a mission to prove Russia was responsible for the last election.
With every gulp they swallow the hook deeper apparently unaware that they are about to be reeled in and captured by their unfounded
beliefs that the bait is is a real meal they can sustain themselves on. Just like a fooled fish they are on the hook.
The announcement that the AG is launching an investigation led by republicans to investigate the Russia Gate investigation
will most certainly tarnish democrats and stain their efforts that will be seen as even more dull as the tarnish they try to put
on Trump. Even uninformed citizens will ask what is up with the democrats who are trying to bring down Trump even though their
reliable news sources tell them that Russia Gate is all a lie.
Meanwhile the democrats who have declared come up not only short on ideas but appear to be suicidal.
Elisabeth Warren has declared war on monopolies in an era where unlimited spending by corporations is legally protected as
free speech. How can she hope to win by pledging to breakup monopolies that are well equipped to outspend her in their bid for
survival?
The democrats have failed to do the math and their strategies for appealing to the masses will be shot down by the right wing
controlled "free press". It is not a liberal press. It is the enemy of liberals controlled by wealthy liberal hating, libertarian
loving billionaires. Public vows by democrats who pledge to destroy it will be met with the full force of their arsenal which
includes complete control over the microphone that steers debate and is the chief influence of elections. As Mark Twain put it,
" It is unwise to wage a war of words against men who buy ink by the barrel".
Howard Dean met his end when the major media outlets conspired to elevate "The Dean Scream" to levels questioning his sanity.
The nearly constant barrage of over 4,000 replays of the Dean Scream leading up to the democratic primaries effectively put an
end to his bid for nomination.
But why did all of the the major media outlets conspire to conduct a character assassination of the Howard Dean movement? Just
two weeks before the Dean Scream was endlessly broadcasted by the media with news commentators chiming in that he was likely an
insane man who must be exposed and stopped in his tracks he made a fatal flaw. He made a campaign speech where he said that if
he was elected he would impose regulations on the media. Boom Boom out went the lights.
How can any democrat win when they oppose corporations that include the media corporations in America? How can Elisabeth Warren
wither the name calling that she will suffer as Trump claims she has a Pocahontas syndrome while also alienating the largest campaign
contributors with her pledge to destroy them? How will her insistence that she has Indian blood possibly win her fans when the
majority of Americans will mock her. They have been honed on the strop of right wing money into believing that everything they
hear and see is factual even though it is not factual or real. Such is the suicidal gamble of the soon to be defeated democratic
party.
Why they continue to go down the path toward blind alleys where they will be trapped and defeated baffles me.
geeyp , May 15, 2019 at 11:32
Why, on this good earth, does anyone pay any attention to Schumer and Schiff and McConnell? Shills, do nothing crackpots and
traitors to this nation; when you see that's what they are, you have to ignore them.
jmg , May 14, 2019 at 19:57
Daniel Lazare: "( ) it must be the fault of dastardly foreigners trying to hack our democracy. It's a deep-rooted form of xenophobia
that has fueled everything ( ) The idea that America may in anyway be responsible for its own fate is of course unthinkable."
Yes, that's the way it is. About WikiLeaks, as they have repeated many times:
"Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims 'bullshit',
adding: 'They are absolutely making it up.'
"'I know who leaked them,' Murray said. 'I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an
insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.'"
"... Looks like Robert Mueller was a dirty cop hired to confirm fairy tales of Russian collusion peddled by a Clinton wing of Dems (DemoRats) sing Trump. And he enjoyed the full support of several intelligence agencies brass (especially FBI brass; initially Stzkok was one of his investigators) ..."
"... Before that Mueller was in charge of 9/11 and Anthrax scare investigations. So he is a card caring member of the neoliberal elite which converted the USA into what can be called the "National Security State" ..."
"... In order for a person to obstruct justice, there must be some justice to obstruct. Hence, if the alleged obstructer did not commit the underlying crime being investigated, then his so-called obstruction did not impair justice; it just impaired a fruitless investigation ..."
"... the USA squabble over Parteigenosse Mueller Final Report between two factions of neoliberal elite makes the USA a joke in the eyes of the whole world ..."
"... Hopefully, a more sound part of the USA elite, which Barr represents, will put some sand into those wheels. His decision to investigate the origin of Russiagate produced almost a heart attack for Pelosi. And the fact that he decided to skip his auto-da-fé at the House adds insult to injury. Poor Pelosi almost lost her mind. ..."
"... Out of democratic challengers IMHO only Tulsi Gabbard can probably attract a sizable faction of former Trump supporters and she is the most reviled, ignored, and slandered by DNC liberals and neocons alike candidate. ..."
"... The truth is that the color revolution against Donald Trump (a soft coup if you wish) failed. Now he badly needs to win in 2020 to avoid an indictment in NY State when he leaves the Presidency. It is just a matter of survival for him. ..."
"... Neoliberal Democrats will help him by putting their weakest pro-war candidate like the aged, apparently slightly demented neocon Joe Biden. With his rabid neoliberal past, neocon foreign policy past, Ukrainian skeletons in the closet and probably participation in the Obama administration dirty and criminal attempt to derail Trump using intelligence agencies as the leverage. ..."
"... Just like is the case with Boeing the situation for neoliberal democrats does not look promising. The world is starting to crash all around them. ..."
The F.B.I. surveillance didn't come out until after the election. Therefore it couldn't impact the election. McConnell threatened
to shriek "partisan politics!" if Obama said anything publicly about the Russian issue. Obama didn't. Claims of partisan behavior?
Bullshit.
What about proven attempts of entrapments and inserting spies into Trump campaign?
Mifsud and Halper's stories come to mind (Halper's story has an interesting "seduction" subplot with undercover FBI informant
Azra Turk). FBI and Justice Department brass acted as dirty mafia style politicians. McCabe and Brennan are two shining examples here. Probably guided personally by Obama, who being grown in a family of CIA operatives
probably know this color revolutions "kitchen" all too well.
BTW Hillary did destroy evidence from her "bathroom server" while under subpoena.
Looks like Robert Mueller was a dirty cop hired to confirm fairy tales of Russian collusion peddled by a Clinton wing of
Dems (DemoRats) sing Trump. And he enjoyed the full support of several intelligence agencies brass (especially FBI brass; initially
Stzkok was one of his investigators)
Before that Mueller was in charge of 9/11 and Anthrax scare investigations. So he is a card caring member of the neoliberal
elite which converted the USA into what can be called the "National Security State"
Which looks like classic Mussolini Italy with two guiding principles of jurisprudence applied to political enemies:
(1) To my friends, everything; to my enemies, the law (originated in 1933) .
(2) Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime (that actually comes from Stalinism period of the USSR, but the spirit is the
same) .
It was actually Barr who saved Trump from obstruction of justice charge. He based his defense on the interpretation of the
statuses the following (actually very elegant) way:
In order for a person to obstruct justice, there must be some justice to obstruct. Hence, if the alleged obstructer did
not commit the underlying crime being investigated, then his so-called obstruction did not impair justice; it just impaired
a fruitless investigation
Of course, that upset DemoRats who want President Pence to speed up the destruction of the USA and adding a couple of new wars
to list the USA is involved.
Mueller was extremely sloppy and one-sided in writing his final report. Which is given taking into account his real task: to
sink Trump. As Nunes aptly observed about his treatment of Mifsud as a Russian agent :
"If he is, in fact, a Russian agent, it would be one of the biggest intelligence scandals for not only the United States,
but also our allies like the Italians and the Brits and others. Because if Mifsud is a Russian agent, he would know all kinds
of our intelligence agents throughout the globe
likbez , May 4, 2019 10:11 pm
run75441,
Yes, of course, in the current neo-McCarthyism atmosphere merely passing the salt to a Russian guest at a dinner party makes
you "an unregistered foreign agent" of Russia bent on implementing Putin's evil plans and colliding with Russian government ;-).
It looks like you are unable/unwilling to understand the logic behind my post. With all due respect, the situation is very
dangerous -- when the neoliberal elite relies on lies almost exclusively as a matter of policy (look at Kamala Harris questioning
Barr -- she is not stupid, she is an evil, almost taken from Orwell 1984, character), IMHO the neoliberal society is doomed. Sooner
or later.
Currently, the USA squabble over Parteigenosse Mueller Final Report between two factions of neoliberal elite makes the
USA a joke in the eyes of the whole world and Democrats look like Italian Fascists in 30th: a party hell-bent of dominance
which does not care about laws or legitimacy one bit and can use entrapment and other dirty methods to achieve its goals.
Hopefully, a more sound part of the USA elite, which Barr represents, will put some sand into those wheels. His decision
to investigate the origin of Russiagate produced almost a heart attack for Pelosi. And the fact that he decided to skip his auto-da-fé
at the House adds insult to injury. Poor Pelosi almost lost her mind.
Neoliberals and neoconservatives joined ranks behind Russiagate and continue to push it because otherwise they need to be held
accountable for all the related neoliberal disasters in the USA since 1980th including sliding standard of living, disappearance
of "good" jobs, sky-high cost of university education and medical insurance, and the last but not least, Hillary fiasco.
Trump ran to the left of Clinton in foreign policy and used disillusionment of working close with neoliberal Democratic Party
to his advantage promising jobs, end of outsourcing, end of uncontrolled immigration, and increased standard of living. He betrayed
all those promises, but, still, that's why he won.
And that why the neoliberal establishment must present his election as de facto illegitimate, because otherwise they would
be forced to admit that the bipartisan consensus around both financialization driven economics (casino capitalism) and imperial,
war on terror based interventionism that are the foundation of the USA neoliberal elite politics since Clinton has been a disaster
for most ordinary Americans -- of all political persuasions.
Out of democratic challengers IMHO only Tulsi Gabbard can probably attract a sizable faction of former Trump supporters
and she is the most reviled, ignored, and slandered by DNC liberals and neocons alike candidate.
The truth is that the color revolution against Donald Trump (a soft coup if you wish) failed. Now he badly needs to win
in 2020 to avoid an indictment in NY State when he leaves the Presidency. It is just a matter of survival for him.
Neoliberal Democrats will help him by putting their weakest pro-war candidate like the aged, apparently slightly demented
neocon Joe Biden. With his rabid neoliberal past, neocon foreign policy past, Ukrainian skeletons in the closet and probably participation
in the Obama administration dirty and criminal attempt to derail Trump using intelligence agencies as the leverage.
Just like is the case with Boeing the situation for neoliberal democrats does not look promising. The world is starting
to crash all around them.
House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY) held Attorney General William Barr
in contempt on Wednesday for failing to turn over the full Mueller report and its
underlying evidence - yet not a single Democrat in Congress has elected to look at the
99.9%
unredacted 'volume 2' section of the Mueller's findings provided to Congress by the DOJ,
which specifically covers the obstruction portion of Mueller's investigation (Section "A" of
the report covering alleged conspiracy with Russia was offered 98.5% unredacted).
On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters " Not a single
Democrat has even taken the time to go and look at it ," adding " They're asking for
information they know they can't have. The attorney general is actually upholding the law,"
referring to a
recent ruling by a federal judge which requires that Barr redact grand jury material.
On Sunday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told ABC' s 'This Week' that Mueller is ready to testify
before Congress .
"The American people have a right to hear what the man who did the investigation has to say and we now know we certainly can't
rely on the attorney general who misrepresented his conclusions," sais Schiff. " So he is going to testify. "
Rand Paul calls bullshit on the whole thing
Responding later on the show to ABC 's George Stephanopoulos, Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)
said that all of the Trump investigations have all been " politically motivated. "
"One of the things that Adam Schiff and the other partisans don't understand is that if you're
accused of a crime
by a grand jury and they don't indict you, the prosecutor doesn't go all over town saying we thought he did this, we thought
he did this, this is all the evidence," said Rand, adding that "most Americans would disagree" with federal prosecutors who claim
that President Trump would be prosecuted if he weren't in office.
" People are horrified by the idea that you could put someone in jail for obstructing justice on something where you didn't commit
the crime ," said Paul.
They're getting hit from all sides. Obama White House tracking the FOIA requests? As mentioned in the report, Obama was the
gatekeeper for the Dark State on all of this and more.
I believe Roger Stone was a trick laid out to bring out the truth of full disclosure from Mueller. Through open discovery,
everything will have to be brought out. Roger Stone is becoming the nightmare that the Democrats and Mueller will beg to go away.
Mueller is trapped, and he can't drop the Roger Stone charges now. The hoax is going to be exposed.
The Democrats mascot is a donkey, i.e. a jackass. The Democratic Party is full of dumb jackasses, literally.
This guy has not slept in days. How does it feel to be running scared? To try with all your might to get in front of the truth
bombs that are about to drop? That's what all of these assholes are doing, damage control.
I sure hope Mike Flynn is fully exonerated, after listening to the Dan Bongino Podcast on what they did to entrap Mr. Flynn,
my blood has boiled ever since.
These are some slimy, crooked POS.
# 865 at about 27 minutes, is very interesting to say the least.
Bongino's overall clip was very worth the listen also imo if you haven't caught it.
Ep. 865 Mike Flynn Was Set Up! The Dan Bongino Show 12/5/2018.
"... Ukraine has been screaming for the US to start a war with Russia for the past 2 1/2 years. ..."
"... Is Ukrainian Intelligence trying to invent a reason for the US to take a hard-line stance against Russia? Are they using Crowdstrike to carry this out? ..."
"... Meet the real Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, part of the groups that are targeting Ukrainian positions for the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. These people were so tech savvy they didn't know the Ukrainian SBU (Ukrainian CIA/internal security) records every phone call and most internet use in Ukraine and Donbass. Donbass still uses Ukrainian phone and internet services. ..."
"... This is a civil war and people supporting either side are on both sides of the contact line. The SBU is awestruck because there are hundreds if not thousands of people helping to target the private volunteer armies supported by Ukrainian-Americans. ..."
"... If she was that close to the investigation Crowdstrike did how credible is she? Her sister Alexandra was named one of 16 people that shaped the election by Yahoo news. The DNC hacking investigation done by Crowdstrike concluded hacking was done by Russian actors based on the work done by Alexandra Chalupa? That is the conclusion of her sister Andrea Chalupa and obviously enough for Crowdstrike to make the Russian government connection. These words mirror Dimitri Alperovitch's identification process in his interview with PBS Judy Woodruff. ..."
"... How close is Dimitri Alperovitch to DNC officials? Close enough professionally he should have stepped down from an investigation that had the chance of throwing a presidential election in a new direction. ..."
"... According to Esquire.com , Alperovitch has vetted speeches for Hillary Clinton about cyber security issues in the past. Because of his work on the Sony hack, President Barrack Obama personally called and said the measures taken were directly because of his work. ..."
"... Still, this is not enough to show a conflict of interest. Alperovitch's relationships with the Chalupas, radical groups, think tanks, Ukrainian propagandists, and Ukrainian state supported hackers do. When it all adds up and you see it together, we have found a Russian that tried hard to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in 2016. ..."
"... According to Robert Parry's article At the forefront of people that would have taken senior positions in a Clinton administration and especially in foreign policy are the Atlantic Council. Their main goal is still a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia. ..."
"... The Atlantic Council is the think tank associated and supported by the CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition). The CEEC has only one goal which is war with Russia. Their question to candidates looking for their support in the election was "Are you willing to go to war with Russia?" Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support throughout the campaign. ..."
"... What does any of this have to do with Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? Since the Atlantic Council would have taken senior cabinet and policy positions, his own fellowship status at the Atlantic Council and relationship with Irene Chalupa creates a definite conflict of interest for Crowdstrike's investigation. Trump's campaign was gaining ground and Clinton needed a boost. Had she won, would he have been in charge of the CIA, NSA, or Homeland Security? ..."
"... Alperovitch's relationship with Andrea Chalupa's efforts and Ukrainian intelligence groups is where things really heat up. Noted above she works with Euromaidanpress.com and Informnapalm.org which is the outlet for Ukrainian state-sponsored hackers. ..."
"... When you look at Dimitri Alperovitch's twitter relationships, you have to ask why the CEO of a $150 million dollar company like Crowdstrike follows Ukrainian InformNapalm and its hackers individually . There is a mutual relationship. When you add up his work for the OUNb, Ukraine, support for Ukraine's Intelligence, and to the hackers it needs to be investigated to see if Ukraine is conspiring against the US government. ..."
"... Alperovitch and Fancy Bear tweet each other? ..."
"... Crowdstrike is part of Ukrainian nationalist hacker network ..."
"... In an interview with Euromaidanpress these hackers say they have no need for the CIA. They consider the CIA amateurish. They also say they are not part of the Ukrainian military Cyberalliance is a quasi-organization with the participation of several groups – RUH8, Trinity, Falcon Flames, Cyberhunta. There are structures affiliated to the hackers – the Myrotvorets site, Informnapalm analytical agency." ..."
"... Although OSINT Academy sounds fairly innocuous, it's the official twitter account for Ukraine's Ministry of Information head Dimitri Zolotukin. It is also Ukrainian Intelligence. The Ministry of Information started the Peacekeeper or Myrotvorets website that geolocates journalists and other people for assassination. If you disagree with OUNb politics, you could be on the list. ..."
"... This single tweet on a network chart shows that out of all the Ukrainian Ministry of Information Minister's following, he only wanted the 3 hacking groups associated with both him and Alperovitch to get the tweet. Alperovitch's story was received and not retweeted or shared. If this was just Alperovitch's victory, it was a victory for Ukraine. It would be shared heavily. If it was a victory for the hacking squad, it would be smart to keep it to themselves and not draw unwanted attention. ..."
"... Pravy Sektor Hackers and Crowdstrike? ..."
"... What sharp movements in international politics have been made lately? Let me spell it out for the 17 US Intelligence Agencies so there is no confusion. These state sponsored, Russian language hackers in Eastern European time zones have shown with the Surkov hack they have the tools and experience to hack states that are looking out for it. They are also laughing at US intel efforts. ..."
"... The hackers also made it clear that they will do anything to serve Ukraine. Starting a war between Russia and the USA is the one way they could serve Ukraine best, and hurt Russia worst. Given those facts, if the DNC hack was according to the criteria given by Alperovitch, both he and these hackers need to be investigated. ..."
"... According to the Esquire interview "Alperovitch was deeply frustrated: He thought the government should tell the world what it knew. There is, of course, an element of the personal in his battle cry. "A lot of people who are born here don't appreciate the freedoms we have, the opportunities we have, because they've never had it any other way," he told me. "I have." ..."
"... While I agree patriotism is a great thing, confusing it with this kind of nationalism is not. Alperovitch seems to think by serving OUNb Ukraine's interests and delivering a conflict with Russia that is against American interests, he's a patriot. He isn't serving US interests. He's definitely a Ukrainian patriot. Maybe he should move to Ukraine. ..."
In the wake of the JAR-16-20296 dated December 29, 2016 about hacking and influencing the
2016 election, the need for real evidence is clear. The joint report adds nothing substantial
to the October 7th report. It relies on proofs provided by the cyber security firm Crowdstrike
that is clearly not on par with intelligence findings or evidence. At the top of the report is
an "as is" statement showing this.
The difference between Dmitri Alperovitch's claims which are reflected in JAR-1620296 and
this article is that enough evidence is provided to warrant an investigation of specific
parties for the DNC hacks. The real story involves specific anti-American actors that need to
be investigated for real crimes.
For instance, the malware used was an out-dated version just waiting to be found. The one
other interesting point is that the Russian malware called Grizzly Steppe
is from Ukraine . How did Crowdstrike miss this when it is their business to know?
Later in this article you'll meet and know a little more about the real "Fancy Bear and Cozy
Bear." The bar for identification set by Crowdstrike has never been able to get beyond words
like probably, maybe, could be, or should be, in their attribution.
The article is lengthy because the facts need to be in one place. The bar Dimitri
Alperovitch set for identifying the hackers involved is that low. Other than asking America to
trust them, how many solid facts has Alperovitch provided to back his claim of Russian
involvement?
The December 29th JAR adds a flowchart that shows how a basic phishing hack is performed. It
doesn't add anything significant beyond that. Noticeably, they use both their designation APT
28 and APT 29 as well as the Crowdstrike labels of Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear separately.
This is important because information from outside intelligence agencies has the value of
rumor or unsubstantiated information at best according to policy. Usable intelligence needs to
be free from partisan politics and verifiable. Intel agencies noted back in the early 90's that
every private actor in the information game was radically political.
The
Hill.com article about Russia hacking the electric grid is a perfect example of why this
intelligence is political and not taken seriously. If any proof of Russian involvement existed,
the US would be at war. Under current laws of war, there would be no difference between an
attack on the power grid or a missile strike.
According
to the Hill "Private security firms provided more detailed forensic analysis, which the FBI
and DHS said Thursday correlated with the IC's findings.
"The Joint Analysis Report recognizes the excellent work undertaken by
security companies and private sector network owners and operators, and provides new indicators
of compromise and malicious infrastructure
identified during the course of investigations and incident response," read a statement. The
report identities two Russian intelligence groups already named by CrowdStrike and other
private security firms."
In an interview with Washingtonsblog , William Binney, the creator of the NSA global
surveillance system said "I expected to see the IP's or other signatures of APT's 28/29 [the
entities which the U.S. claims hacked the Democratic emails] and where they were located and
how/when the data got transferred to them from DNC/HRC [i.e. Hillary Rodham Clinton]/etc. They
seem to have been following APT 28/29 since at least 2015, so, where are they?"
According to the latest Washington Post story, Crowdstrike's CEO tied a group his company
dubbed "Fancy Bear" to targeting Ukrainian artillery positions in Debaltsevo as well as across
the Ukrainian civil war front for the past 2 years.
Alperovitch states in many articles the Ukrainians were using an Android app to target the
self-proclaimed Republics positions and that hacking this app was what gave targeting data to
the armies in Donbass instead.
Alperovitch first gained notice when he was the VP in charge of threat research with McAfee.
Asked to comment on Alperovitch's
discovery of Russian hacks on Larry King, John McAfee had this to say. "Based on all of his
experience, McAfee does not believe that Russians were behind the hacks on the Democratic
National Committee (DNC), John Podesta's emails, and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
As he told RT, "if it looks like the Russians did it, then I can guarantee you it was not the
Russians."
How does Crowdstrike's story part with reality? First is the admission that it is probably,
maybe, could be Russia hacking the DNC. "
Intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin
'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to Wiki Leaks."
The public evidence never goes beyond the word possibility. While never going beyond that or
using facts, Crowdstrike insists that it's Russia behind both Clinton's and the Ukrainian
losses. NBC carried the story because one of the partners in Crowdstrike is also a consultant
for NBC.
According to NBC the story reads like this."
The company, Crowdstrike, was hired by the DNC to investigate the hack and issued a report
publicly attributing it to Russian intelligence. One of Crowdstrike's senior executives is
Shawn Henry, a former senior FBI official who consults for NBC News.
"But the Russians used the app to turn the tables on their foes, Crowdstrike says. Once a
Ukrainian soldier downloaded it on his Android phone, the Russians were able to eavesdrop on
his communications and determine his position through geo-location.
In June, Crowdstrike went public with its findings that two separate Russian intelligence
agencies had hacked the DNC. One, which Crowdstrike and other researchers call Cozy Bear, is
believed to be linked to Russia's CIA, known as the FSB. The other, known as Fancy Bear, is
believed to be tied to the military intelligence agency, called the GRU."
The information is so certain the level of proof never rises above "believed to be."
According to the December 12th Intercept article "Most importantly, the Post adds that
"intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin
'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks."
Because Ukrainian soldiers are using a smartphone app they activate their geolocation to use
it. Targeting is from location to location. The app would need the current user location to
make it work.
In 2015 I wrote an article that showed many of the available open source tools that
geolocate, and track people. They even show street view. This means that using simple means,
someone with freeware or an online website, and not a military budget can look at what you are
seeing at any given moment.
Where Crowdstrike fails is insisting people believe that the code they see is (a) an
advanced way to geolocate and (b) it was how a state with large resources would do it. Would
you leave a calling card where you would get caught and fined through sanctions or worse? If
you use an anonymous online resource at least Crowdstrike won't believe you are Russian and
possibly up to something.
If you read that article and watch the video you'll see that using "geo-stalker" is a better
choice if you are on a low budget or no budget. Should someone tell the Russians they
overpaid?
According to Alperovitch, the smartphone app
plotted targets in about 15 seconds . This means that there is only a small window to get
information this way.
Using the open source tools I wrote about previously, you could track your targets all-day.
In 2014, most Ukrainian forces were using social media regularly. It would be easy to maintain
a map of their locations and track them individually.
From my research into those tools, someone using Python scripts would find it easy to take
photos, listen to conversations, turn on GPS, or even turn the phone on when they chose to.
Going a step further than Alperovitch, without the help of the Russian government, GRU, or FSB,
anyone could
take control of the drones Ukraine is fond of flying and land them. Or they could download
the footage the drones are taking. It's copy and paste at that point. Would you bother the FSB,
GRU, or Vladimir Putin with the details or just do it?
In the WaPo article Alperovitch states "The Fancy Bear crew evidently hacked the app,
allowing the GRU to use the phone's GPS coordinates to track the Ukrainian troops'
position.
In that way, the Russian military could then target the Ukrainian army with artillery and
other weaponry. Ukrainian brigades operating in eastern Ukraine were on the front lines of the
conflict with Russian-backed separatist forces during the early stages of the conflict in late
2014, CrowdStrike noted. By late 2014, Russian forces in the region numbered about 10,000. The
Android app was useful in helping the Russian troops locate Ukrainian artillery positions."
In late 2014,
I personally did the only invasive passport and weapons checks that I know of during the
Ukrainian civil war.
I spent days looking for the Russian army every major publication said were attacking
Ukraine. The keyword Cyber Security industry leader Alperovitch used is "evidently."
Crowdstrike noted that in late 2014, there were 10,000 Russian forces in the region.
When I did the passport and weapons check, it was under the condition there would be no
telephone calls. We went where I wanted to go. We stopped when I said to stop. I checked the
documents and the weapons with no obstacles. The weapons check was important because Ukraine
was stating that Russia was giving Donbass modern weapons at the time. Each weapon is stamped
with a manufacture date. The results are in the articles above.
Based on my findings which the CIA would call hard evidence, almost all the fighters had
Ukrainian passports. There are volunteers from other countries. In Debaltsevo today, I would
question Alperovitch's assertion of Russian troops based on the fact the passports will be
Ukrainian and reflect my earlier findings. There is no possibly, could be, might be, about
it.
The SBU, Olexander Turchinov, and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense all agree that
Crowdstrike is dead wrong in this assessment . Although subtitles aren't on it, the former
Commandant of Ukrainian Army Headquarters thanks God Russia never invaded or Ukraine would have
been in deep trouble.
How could Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike be this wrong on easily checked detail and
still get this much media attention? Could the investment made by Google and some
very large players have anything to do with the media Crowdstrike is causing?
According to Alperovitch, the CEO of a $150 million dollar cyber security company "And when
you think about, well, who would be interested in targeting Ukraine artillerymen in eastern
Ukraine who has interest in hacking the Democratic Party, Russia government comes to mind, but
specifically, Russian military that would have operational over forces in the Ukraine and would
target these artillerymen."
That statement is most of the proof of Russian involvement he has. That's it, that's all the
CIA, FBI have to go on. It's why they can't certify the intelligence. It's why they can't get
beyond the threshold of maybe.
Woodruff then asked two important questions. She asked if Crowdstrike was still working for
the DNC. Alperovitch responded "We're protecting them going forward. The investigation is
closed in terms of what happened there. But certainly, we've seen the campaigns, political
organizations are continued to be targeted, and they continue to hire us and use our technology
to protect themselves."
Based on the evidence he presented Woodruff, there is no need to investigate further?
Obviously, there is no need, the money is rolling in.
Second and most important Judy Woodruff asked if there were any questions about conflicts of
interest, how he would answer? This is where Dmitri Alperovitch's story starts to unwind.
His response was "Well, this report was not about the DNC. This report was about information
we uncovered about what these Russian actors were doing in eastern Ukraine in terms of locating
these artillery units of the Ukrainian army and then targeting them. So, what we just did is
said that it looks exactly as the same to the evidence we've already uncovered from the DNC,
linking the two together."
Why is this reasonable statement going to take his story off the rails? First, let's look at
the facts surrounding his evidence and then look at the real conflicts of interest involved.
While carefully evading the question, he neglects to state his conflicts of interest are worthy
of a DOJ investigation. Can you mislead the federal government about national security issues
and not get investigated yourself?
If Alperovitch's evidence is all there is, then the US government owes some large apologies
to Russia.
After showing who is targeting Ukrainian artillerymen, we'll look at what might be a
criminal conspiracy.
Crowdstrike CEO Dmitri Alperovitch story about Russian hacks that cost Hillary Clinton the
election was broadsided by the SBU (Ukrainian Intelligence and Security) in Ukraine. If Dimitri
Alperovitch is working for Ukrainian Intelligence and is providing intelligence to 17 US
Intelligence Agencies is it a conflict of interest?
Ukraine has been screaming for the US to start a war with Russia for the past 2 1/2 years.
Using facts accepted by leaders on both sides of the conflict, the main proof Crowdstrike shows
for evidence doesn't just unravel, it falls apart. Is Ukrainian Intelligence trying to invent a
reason for the US to take a hard-line stance against Russia? Are they using Crowdstrike to
carry this out?
Real Fancy Bear?
Meet the real Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, part of the groups that are targeting Ukrainian
positions for the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. These people were so tech savvy they
didn't know the Ukrainian SBU (Ukrainian CIA/internal security) records every phone call and
most internet use in Ukraine and Donbass. Donbass still uses Ukrainian phone and internet
services.
These are normal people fighting back against private volunteer armies that target their
homes, schools, and hospitals. The private volunteer armies like Pravy Sektor, Donbas
Battalion, Azov, and Aidar have been cited for atrocities like child rape, torture, murder, and
kidnapping. That just gets the ball rolling. These are a large swath of the Ukrainian
servicemen Crowdstrike hopes to protect.
This story which just aired on Ukrainian news channel TCN shows the SBU questioning and
arresting some of what they call an army of people in the Ukrainian-controlled areas. This news
video shows people in Toretsk that provided targeting information to Donbass and people
probably caught up in the net accidentally.
This is a civil war and people supporting either side are on both sides of the contact line.
The SBU is awestruck because there are hundreds if not thousands of people helping to target
the private volunteer armies supported by Ukrainian-Americans.
The first person they show on the video is a woman named Olga Lubochka. On the video her
voice is heard from a recorded call saying " In the field, on the left about 130 degrees. Aim
and you'll get it." and then " Oh, you hit it so hard you leveled it to the ground.""Am I going
to get a medal for this?"
Other people caught up in the raid claim and probably were only calling friends they know.
It's common for people to call and tell their family about what is going on around them. This
has been a staple in the war especially in outlying villages for people aligned with both sides
of the conflict. A neighbor calls his friend and says "you won't believe what I just saw."
Another "fancy bear," Alexander Schevchenko was caught calling friends and telling them that
armored personnel carriers had just driven by.
Anatoli Prima, father of a DNR(Donetsk People's Republic) soldier was asked to find out what
unit was there and how many artillery pieces.
One woman providing information about fuel and incoming equipment has a husband fighting on
the opposite side in Gorlovka. Gorlovka is a major city that's been under artillery attack
since 2014. For the past 2 1/2 years, she has remained in their home in Toretsk. According to
the video, he's vowed to take no prisoners when they rescue the area.
When asked why they hate Ukraine so much, one responded that they just wanted things to go
back to what they were like before the coup in February 2014.
Another said they were born in the Soviet Union and didn't like what was going on in Kiev.
At the heart of this statement is the anti- OUN, antinationalist sentiment that most people
living in Ukraine feel. The OUNb Bandera killed millions of people in Ukraine, including
starving 3 million Soviet soldiers to death. The new Ukraine was founded
in 1991 by OUN nationalists outside the fledgling country.
Is giving misleading or false information to 17 US Intelligence Agencies a crime? If it's
done by a cyber security industry leader like Crowdstrike should that be investigated? If
unwinding the story from the "targeting of Ukrainian volunteers" side isn't enough, we should
look at this from the American perspective. How did the Russia influencing the election and DNC
hack story evolve? Who's involved? Does this pose conflicts of interest for Dmitri Alperovitch
and Crowdstrike? And let's face it, a hacking story isn't complete until real hackers with the
skills, motivation, and reason are exposed.
In the last article exploring the
DNC hacks the focus was on the Chalupas . The article focused on Alexandra, Andrea, and
Irene Chalupa. Their participation in the DNC hack story is what brought it to international
attention in the first place.
According to journalist and DNC activist Andrea Chalupa on her Facebook page "
After Chalupa sent the email to Miranda (which mentions that she had invited this reporter
to a meeting with Ukrainian journalists in Washington), it triggered high-level concerns within
the DNC, given the sensitive nature of her work. "That's when we knew it was the Russians,"
said a Democratic Party source who has been directly involved in the internal probe into the
hacked emails. In order to stem the damage, the source said, "we told her to stop her
research."" July 25, 2016
If she was that close to the investigation Crowdstrike did how credible is she? Her sister
Alexandra was named one of 16 people that shaped the election by Yahoo news. The DNC hacking
investigation done by Crowdstrike concluded hacking was done by Russian actors based on the
work done by Alexandra Chalupa? That is the conclusion of her sister Andrea Chalupa and
obviously enough for Crowdstrike to make the Russian government connection. These words mirror
Dimitri Alperovitch's identification process in his interview with PBS Judy Woodruff.
How close is Dimitri Alperovitch to DNC officials? Close enough professionally he should
have stepped down from an investigation that had the chance of throwing a presidential election
in a new direction.
According to Esquire.com ,
Alperovitch has vetted speeches for Hillary Clinton about cyber security issues in the
past. Because of his work on the Sony hack, President Barrack Obama personally called and said
the measures taken were directly because of his work.
Still, this is not enough to show a conflict of interest. Alperovitch's relationships with
the Chalupas, radical groups, think tanks, Ukrainian propagandists, and Ukrainian state
supported hackers do. When it all adds up and you see it together, we have found a Russian that
tried hard to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in 2016.
In my
previous article I showed in detail how the Chalupas fit into this. A brief bullet point
review looks like this.
The Chalupas are not Democrat or Republican. They are OUNb. The OUNb worked hard to start
a war between the USA and Russia for the last 50 years. According to the
Ukrainian Weekly in a rare open statement of their existence in 2011, "Other statements
were issued in the Ukrainian language by the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists (B) and the International Conference in Support of Ukraine. The OUN (Bandera
wing) called for" What is OUNb Bandera? They follow the same political policy and platform
that was developed in the 1930's by Stepan Bandera. When these people go to a Holocaust
memorial they are celebrating both the dead and the OUNb SS that killed
There is no getting around this fact. The OUNb have no concept of democratic values and
want an authoritarian fascism.
Alexandra Chalupa- According
to the Ukrainian Weekly , "The effort, known as Digital Miadan, gained momentum following
the initial Twitter storms. Leading the effort were: Lara Chelak, Andrea Chalupa, Alexandra
Chalupa, Constatin Kostenko and others." The Digital Maidan was also how they raised money
for the coup. This was how the Ukrainian
emigres bought the bullets that were used on Euromaidan. Ukraine's chubby nazi, Dima
Yarosh stated openly he was taking money from the Ukrainian emigres during Euromaidan and
Pravy Sektor still fundraises openly in North America. The "Sniper
Massacre" on the Maidan in Ukraine by Dr. Ivan Katchanovski, University of Ottowa shows
clearly detailed evidence how the massacre happened. It has Pravy Sektor confessions that
show who created the "heavenly hundred. Their admitted involvement as leaders of Digital
Maidan by both Chalupas is a
clear violation of the Neutrality Act and has up to a 25
year prison sentence attached to it because it ended in a coup.
Andrea Chalupa-2014, in a Huff Post article Sept. 1 2016, Andrea Chalupa described
Sviatoslav Yurash as one of Ukraine's important "dreamers." He is a young activist that
founded Euromaidan
Press . Beyond the gushing glow what she doesn't say is who he actually is. Sviatoslav
Yurash was Dmitri Yarosh's spokesman just after Maidan. He is a hardcore Ukrainian
nationalist and was rewarded with the Deputy Director
position for the UWC (Ukrainian World Congress) in Kiev .
In January, 2014 when he showed up at the Maidan protests he was 17 years old. He became the
foreign language media representative for Vitali Klitschko, Arseni Yatsenyuk, and Oleh
Tyahnybok. All press enquiries went through Yurash. To meet Dimitri Yurash you had
to go through Sviatoslav Yurash as a Macleans reporter found out.
At 18 years old, Sviatoslav Yurash became the spokesman for Ministry of Defense of Ukraine
under Andrei Paruby. He was Dimitri Yarosh's spokesman and can be seen either behind Yarosh on
videos at press conferences or speaking ahead of him to reporters. From January 2014 onward, to
speak to Dimitri Yarosh, you set up an appointment with Yurash.
Irene Chalupa- Another involved Chalupa we need to cover to do the story justice is Irene
Chalupa. From her bio – Irena
Chalupa is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center.
She is also a senior correspondent at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), where she has
worked for more than twenty years. Ms. Chalupa previously served as an editor for the
Atlantic Council, where she covered Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Irena Chalupa is also the
news anchor for Ukraine's propaganda channel org She is also a Ukrainian
emigre leader.
According to
Robert Parry's article At the forefront of people that would have taken senior positions in
a Clinton administration and especially in foreign policy are the Atlantic Council. Their main
goal is still a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.
The Atlantic Council is the think tank associated and supported by the
CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition). The CEEC has only one goal which is war with
Russia. Their question to candidates looking for their support in the election was "Are you
willing to go to war with Russia?" Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support
throughout the campaign.
What does any of this have to do with Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? Since the
Atlantic Council would have taken senior cabinet and policy positions, his own fellowship
status at the Atlantic Council and relationship with Irene Chalupa creates a definite conflict
of interest for Crowdstrike's investigation. Trump's campaign was gaining ground and Clinton
needed a boost. Had she won, would he have been in charge of the CIA, NSA, or Homeland
Security?
When you put someone that has so much to gain in charge of an investigation that could
change an election, that is a conflict of interest. If the think tank is linked heavily to
groups that want war with Russia like the Atlantic Council and the CEEC, it opens up criminal
conspiracy.
If the person in charge of the investigation is a fellow at the think tank that wants a
major conflict with Russia it is a definite conflict of interest. Both the Atlantic Council and
clients stood to gain Cabinet and Policy positions based on how the result of his work affects
the election. It clouds the results of the investigation. In Dmitri Alperovitch's case, he
found the perpetrator before he was positive there was a crime.
Alperovitch's relationship with Andrea Chalupa's efforts and Ukrainian intelligence groups
is where things really heat up. Noted above she works with Euromaidanpress.com and Informnapalm.org which is the outlet
for Ukrainian state-sponsored hackers.
When you look at Dimitri Alperovitch's twitter relationships, you have to ask why the CEO of
a $150 million dollar company like Crowdstrike follows Ukrainian InformNapalm
and its hackers individually . There is a mutual relationship. When you add up his work for
the OUNb, Ukraine, support for Ukraine's Intelligence, and to the hackers it needs to be
investigated to see if Ukraine is conspiring against the US government.
Alperovitch and Fancy Bear tweet each other?
Crowdstrike is also following their hack of a Russian government official after the DNC
hack. It closely resembles the same method used with the DNC because it was an email hack.
Crowdstrike's product line includes Falcon Host, Falcon Intelligence, Falcon Overwatch and
Falcon DNS. Is it possible the hackers in Falcons Flame are another service Crowdstrike offers?
Although this profile says Virginia, tweets are from the Sofia, Bulgaria time zone and he
writes in Russian. Another curiosity considering the Fancy Bear source code is in Russian. This
image shows Crowdstrike in their network.
Crowdstrike is part of Ukrainian nationalist hacker network
In an interview with
Euromaidanpress these hackers say they have no need for the CIA. They consider the CIA
amateurish. They also say they are not part of the Ukrainian military Cyberalliance is a
quasi-organization with the participation of several groups – RUH8, Trinity, Falcon
Flames, Cyberhunta. There are structures affiliated to the hackers – the Myrotvorets
site, Informnapalm analytical agency."
In the image it shows a network diagram of Crowdstrike following the Surkov leaks. The
network communication goes through a secondary source. This is something you do when you don't
want to be too obvious. Here is another example of that.
Ukrainian Intelligence and the real Fancy Bear?
Although OSINT Academy sounds fairly innocuous, it's the official twitter account for
Ukraine's Ministry of Information head Dimitri Zolotukin. It is also Ukrainian Intelligence.
The Ministry of Information started the Peacekeeper or Myrotvorets website that geolocates
journalists and other people for assassination. If you disagree with OUNb politics, you could
be on the list.
Trying not to be obvious, the Head of Ukraine's Information Ministry (UA Intelligence)
tweeted something interesting that ties Alperovitch and Crowdstrike to the Ukrainian
Intelligence hackers and the Information Ministry even tighter.
Trying to keep it hush hush?
This single tweet on a network chart shows that out of all the Ukrainian Ministry of
Information Minister's following, he only wanted the 3 hacking groups associated with both him
and Alperovitch to get the tweet. Alperovitch's story was received and not retweeted or shared.
If this was just Alperovitch's victory, it was a victory for Ukraine. It would be shared
heavily. If it was a victory for the hacking squad, it would be smart to keep it to themselves
and not draw unwanted attention.
These same hackers are associated with Alexandra, Andrea, and Irene Chalupa through the
portals and organizations they work with through their OUNb. The hackers are funded and
directed by or through the same OUNb channels that Alperovitch is working for and with to
promote the story of Russian hacking.
Pravy Sektor Hackers and Crowdstrike?
When you look at the image for the hacking group in the euromaidanpress article, one of the
hackers identifies themselves as one of Dimitri Yarosh's Pravy Sektor members by the Pravy
Sektor sweatshirt they have on. Noted above, Pravy Sektor admitted to killing the people at the
Maidan protest and sparked the coup.
Going further with the linked Euromaidanpress article the hackers say" Let's understand that
Ukrainian hackers and Russian hackers once constituted a single very powerful group. Ukrainian
hackers have a rather high level of work. So the help of the USA I don't know, why would we
need it? We have all the talent and special means for this. And I don't think that the USA or
any NATO country would make such sharp movements in international politics."
What sharp movements in international politics have been made lately? Let me spell it out
for the 17 US Intelligence Agencies so there is no confusion. These state sponsored, Russian
language hackers in Eastern European time zones have shown with the Surkov hack they have the
tools and experience to hack states that are looking out for it. They are also laughing at US
intel efforts.
The hackers also made it clear that they will do anything to serve Ukraine. Starting a war
between Russia and the USA is the one way they could serve Ukraine best, and hurt Russia worst.
Given those facts, if the DNC hack was according to the criteria given by Alperovitch, both he
and these hackers need to be investigated.
According to the Esquire interview "Alperovitch was deeply frustrated: He thought the
government should tell the world what it knew. There is, of course, an element of the personal
in his battle cry. "A lot of people who are born here don't appreciate the freedoms we have,
the opportunities we have, because they've never had it any other way," he told me. "I
have."
While I agree patriotism is a great thing, confusing it with this kind of nationalism is
not. Alperovitch seems to think by serving OUNb Ukraine's interests and delivering a conflict
with Russia that is against American interests, he's a patriot. He isn't serving US interests.
He's definitely a Ukrainian patriot. Maybe he should move to Ukraine.
The evidence presented deserves investigation because it looks like the case for conflict of
interest is the least Dimitri Alperovitch should look forward to. If these hackers are the real
Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, they really did make sharp movements in international politics.
By pawning it off on Russia, they made a worldwide embarrassment of an outgoing President of
the United States and made the President Elect the suspect of rumor.
From the Observer.com , " Andrea
Chalupa -- the sister of DNC
research staffer Alexandra Chalupa -- claimed on
social media, without any evidence, that despite Clinton
conceding the election to Trump, the voting results need to be audited to because
Clinton couldn't have lost -- it must have been Russia. Chalupa hysterically
tweeted to every politician on Twitter to audit the vote because of Russia and claimed the TV
show The Americans
, about two KGB spies living in America, is real."
Quite possibly now the former UK Ambassador Craig Murry's admission of being the involved
party to "leaks" should be looked at. " Now both Julian
Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia . Do we credibly
have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access
to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access.
After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for
truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has
released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for
inconvenient truth telling."
"... As Kunstler puts it, "The Special Prosecutor's main bit of mischief, of course, was his refusal to reach a conclusion on the obstruction of justice charge. What the media refuses to accept and make clear is that a prosecutor's failure to reach a conclusion is exactly the same thing as an inability to make a case, and it was a breach of Mr. Mueller's duty to dishonestly present that failure as anything but that in his report -- and possibly an act of criminal prosecutorial misconduct" on Mueller's part. ..."
"... But this is not the only dishonesty in Mueller's report. Although Mueller's report clearly obliterates the Russiagate conspiracy theory peddled by the military/security complex, the Democrats, and the presstitutes, Mueller's report takes for granted that Russia interfered in the election but not in collusion with Trump or Trump officials. Mueller states this interference as if it were a fact without providing one drop of evidence. Indeed, nowhere in the report, or anywhere else, is there any evidence of Russian interference. ..."
"... Mueller simply takes Russian interference for granted as if endless repeating by a bunch of presstitutes makes it so. For example, the Mueller report says that the Russians hacked the DNC emails, a claim for which no evidence exists. Moreover, it is a claim that is contradicted by the known evidence. William Binney and other experts have demonstrated that the DNC emails were, according to their time stamps, downloaded much more quickly than is possible over the Internet. This fact has been carefully ignored by Mueller, the Democrats and the presstitutes ..."
"... Indictments do not require evidence, and Mueller had none. Moreover, Mueller could not possibly know the identities of the Russian intelligence agents who allegedly did the hacking. This was of no concern to Mueller. He knew he needed no evidence, because he knew there would be no trial. The indictment was political propaganda, not real. ..."
"... The myth of Russian interference is so well established that even Glenn Greenwald in his otherwise careful and correct exposition of the Russiagate hoax buys into Russian interference as if it were a fact. Indeed, many if not most of Trump's supporters are ready to blame Russia for trying, but failing, to ensnare their man Trump. ..."
"... The falsity of Russiagate and the political purposes of the hoax are completely obvious, but even Trump supporters tip their hats to the falsehood of Russian interference so that they do not look guilty of excessive support for Trump. In other words, Russiagate has succeeded in constraining how far Trump's supporters can go in defending him, especially if he has any remaining intent to reduce tensions with Russia. ..."
"... Russiagate has succeeded in criminalizing in the American mind any contact with Russia. Thus has the military/security complex guaranteed that its budget and power will not be threatened by any move toward peace between nuclear powers. ..."
"... Just as Mueller indicted Russian intelligence agents without evidence, he could have indicted Trump without evidence, but a case against a president that is without evidence is not one a prosecutor wants to take to court as it is obviously an act of sedition. ..."
"... That the Democrats and the presstitutes want Trump indicted for obstructing a crime that did not occur shows how insane they have been driven by their hatred of Trump. What is operating in the Democratic Party and in the American media is insanity and hatred. Nothing else. ..."
"... Journalists who lie for the Establishment have no need of the First Amendment. Perhaps this is why they have no concern that Washington's attack on Julian Assange will destroy the First Amendment. They are helping Washington destroy Assange so that their self-esteem will no longer be threatened by the fact that there is a real journalist out there doing real journalism. Mueller Report ..."
One is to prevent President Trump from endangering the vast budget and power of the
military/security complex by normalizing relations with Russia.
Another, in the words of James Howard Kunstler, is "to conceal the criminal conduct of US
government officials meddling in the 2016 election in collusion with the Hillary Clinton
campaign," by focusing all public and political attention on a hoax distraction.
The third is to obstruct Trump's campaign and distract him from his agenda when he won the
election.
Despite the inability of Mueller to find any evidence that Trump or Trump officials colluded
with Russia to steal the US presidential election, and the inability of Mueller to find
evidence with which to accuse Trump of obstruction of justice, Russiagate has achieved all of
its purposes.
Trump has been locked into a hostile relationship with Russia. Neoconservatives have
succeeded in worsening this hostile relationship by manipulating Trump into a blatant criminal
attempt to overthrow in broad daylight the Venezuelan government.
Hillary's criminal conduct and the criminal conduct of the CIA, FBI, and Obama Justice (sic)
Department that resulted in a variety of felonies, including the FBI obtaining spy warrants for
partisan political purposes on false pretexts from the FISA court, were swept out of sight by
the Russiagate hoax.
The Mueller report was written in such a way that despite the absence of any evidence
supporting any indictment of Trump, the report refused to clear Trump of obstruction and passed
the buck to the Attorney General. In other words, Mueller in the absence of any evidence kept
the controversy going by setting up Attorney General Barr for cover-up charges.
It is evidence of Mueller's corruption that he does not explain just how it is possible for
Trump to possibly have obstructed justice when Mueller states in his report that the crime he
was empowered to investigate could not be found. How does one obstruct the investigation of a
crime that did not occur?
As Kunstler puts it, "The Special Prosecutor's main bit of mischief, of course, was his
refusal to reach a conclusion on the obstruction of justice charge. What the media refuses to
accept and make clear is that a prosecutor's failure to reach a conclusion is exactly the same
thing as an inability to make a case, and it was a breach of Mr. Mueller's duty to dishonestly
present that failure as anything but that in his report -- and possibly an act of criminal
prosecutorial misconduct" on Mueller's part.
But this is not the only dishonesty in Mueller's report. Although Mueller's report clearly
obliterates the Russiagate conspiracy theory peddled by the military/security complex, the
Democrats, and the presstitutes, Mueller's report takes for granted that Russia interfered in
the election but not in collusion with Trump or Trump officials. Mueller states this
interference as if it were a fact without providing one drop of evidence. Indeed, nowhere in
the report, or anywhere else, is there any evidence of Russian interference.
Mueller simply takes Russian interference for granted as if endless repeating by a bunch of
presstitutes makes it so. For example, the Mueller report says that the Russians hacked the DNC
emails, a claim for which no evidence exists. Moreover, it is a claim that is contradicted by
the known evidence. William Binney and other experts have demonstrated that the DNC emails
were, according to their time stamps, downloaded much more quickly than is possible over the
Internet. This fact has been carefully ignored by Mueller, the Democrats and the
presstitutes.
One reason for ignoring this undisputed fact is that they all want to get Julian Assange,
and the public case concocted against Assange is that Assange is in cahoots with the Russians
who allegedly gave him the hacked emails. As there is no evidence that Russia hacked the emails
and as Assange has said Russia is not the source, what is Mueller's evidence? Apparently,
Mueller's evidence is his own political indictment of Russian individuals who Mueller alleged
hacked the DNC computers. This false indictment for which there is no evidence was designed by
Mueller to poison the Helsinki meeting between Trump and Putin and announced on the eve of the
meeting.
Indictments do not require evidence, and Mueller had none. Moreover, Mueller could not
possibly know the identities of the Russian intelligence agents who allegedly did the hacking.
This was of no concern to Mueller. He knew he needed no evidence, because he knew there would
be no trial. The indictment was political propaganda, not real.
The myth of Russian interference is so well established that even Glenn Greenwald in his
otherwise careful and correct exposition of the Russiagate hoax buys into Russian interference
as if it were a fact. Indeed, many if not most of Trump's supporters are ready to blame Russia
for trying, but failing, to ensnare their man Trump.
The falsity of Russiagate and the political purposes of the hoax are completely obvious, but
even Trump supporters tip their hats to the falsehood of Russian interference so that they do
not look guilty of excessive support for Trump. In other words, Russiagate has succeeded in
constraining how far Trump's supporters can go in defending him, especially if he has any
remaining intent to reduce tensions with Russia.
Russiagate has succeeded in criminalizing in the American mind any contact with Russia. Thus
has the military/security complex guaranteed that its budget and power will not be threatened
by any move toward peace between nuclear powers.
The Democratic Party and the presstitutes cannot be bothered by facts. They are committed to
getting Trump regardless of the facts. And so is Mueller, and Brennan, and Comey, and a slew of
other corrupt public officials.
A good example of journalistic misconduct is James Risen writing in Glenn Greenwald's
Intercept of all places, "WILLIAM BARR MISLED EVERYONE ABOUT THE MUELLER REPORT. NOW DEMOCRATS
ARE CALLING FOR HIS RESIGNATION." Quoting the same posse of "hang Trump high" Democrats, Risen,
without questioning their disproven lies, lets the Democrats build a case that Mueller's report
proves Trump's guilt. Then Risen himself misrepresents the report in support of the Democrats.
He says there is a huge difference between Barr's memo on the report and the report itself as
if Barr would misrepresent a report that he is about to release.
Length is the only difference between the memo and the report. This doesn't stop Risen from
writing: "In fact, the Mueller report makes it clear that a key reason Mueller did not seek to
prosecute Trump for obstruction was a longstanding Justice Department legal opinion saying that
the Justice Department can't indict a sitting president." This is something Mueller threw in
after saying he didn't have the evidence to indict Trump. It is yet another reason for not
indicting, not the reason. Risen then backs up his misreport with that of a partisan Democrat,
Renato Mariotti who claims that Mueller could have indicted Trump except it is against US
Justice Department policy. Again, there is no explanation from Risen, Mariotti, or anyone else
how Mueller could have indicted Trump for obstructing what Mueller concludes was a crime that
did not happen.
Just as Mueller indicted Russian intelligence agents without evidence, he could have
indicted Trump without evidence, but a case against a president that is without evidence is not
one a prosecutor wants to take to court as it is obviously an act of sedition.
That the Democrats and the presstitutes want Trump indicted for obstructing a crime that did
not occur shows how insane they have been driven by their hatred of Trump. What is operating in
the Democratic Party and in the American media is insanity and hatred. Nothing else.
Risen also alleges that the unproven Russian hacks were passed over by Barr in his memo on
the report. Not only is this incorrect, but also Risen apparently has forgot that the
investigation was about Trump's collusion with Russia to do something illegal and the
investigation found that no such thing occurred. Risen, like the rest of the presstitutes and
even Greenwald himself, takes for granted that the unproven Russian hacks happened. Again we
see that the longer a lie is repeated the more it becomes true. Not even Greenwald can detect
that he has been bamboozled.
At one time James Risen was an honest reporter. He won a Pulitzer prize, and he was
threatened with prison by the Department of Justice when he refused to reveal his source for
his reporting on illegal actions of the CIA. But Risen discovered that in the new world of
journalism, telling the truth is punished while lying is rewarded. Risen, like all the others,
decided that his income was more important than the truth.
Journalists who lie for the Establishment have no need of the First Amendment. Perhaps this
is why they have no concern that Washington's attack on Julian Assange will destroy the First
Amendment. They are helping Washington destroy Assange so that their self-esteem will no longer
be threatened by the fact that there is a real journalist out there doing real journalism.
Mueller Report
Paul Craig Roberts has had careers in scholarship and academia, journalism, public service,
and business. He is chairman of The Institute for Political Economy.
"... As we noted yesterday based on an earlier Hill report on the Kavalec-Steele notes, Steele was flagged for admitting that his research was political and facing an Election Day deadline, as his client was "keen to see this information come to light prior to November 8." ..."
"... Kavalec also flagged several places in her notes in which she suspected that Steele might be leaking information to the press . "June -- reporting started," she wrote. "NYT and WP have," she added, in an apparent reference to The New York Times and The Washington Post. ..."
"... She then quoted Steele as indicating that he was "managing" four priorities -- "Client needs, FBI, WashPo/NYT, source protection," - a clear indication that media outreach was part of his job. ..."
"... Except that the FBI's FISA request from October 2016 - which relied almost entirely on Steele's work - was marked "verified application" prior to the FBI's submission to the court. ..."
According to newly unearthed memos which were retroactively classified by the DOJ, a high-ranking government official who met
with Christopher Steele in October 2016 determined that information in the Trump-Russia dossier was inaccurate , and likely leaked
to the media, according to
The Hill 's John Solomon.
Ten days before the FBI used the now-discredited dossier to apply for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to
spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page, Steele met with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec, who took handwritten
notes of the encounter.
Steele told Kavalec that Russia had a "technical/human operation run out of Moscow targeting the election," which recruited US
emigres to "do hacking and recruiting. Steele added that "Payments to those recruited are made out of the Russian consulate in Miami."
Except that's a lie - as Kavalec debunked the assertion in a bracketed comment: " It is important to note that there is no Russian
consulate in Miami. "
Kavalec, two days later and well before the FISA warrant was issued, forwarded her typed summary to other government officials.
The State Department has redacted the names and agencies of everyone she alerted.
But it is almost certain the FBI knew of Steele's contact with State and his partisan motive . That's because former Assistant
Secretary of State Victoria Nuland says she instructed her staff to send the information they got from Steele to the bureau immediately
and to cease contact with the informer because "this is about U.S. politics, and not the work of -- not the business of the State
Department, and certainly not the business of a career employee who is subject to the Hatch Act." -
The Hill
What makes this particularly damning is that the FBI swore on October 21, 2016 to the FISA judges that Steele's "reporting has
been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings," and that the FBI deemed him to be "reliable" and was "unaware of any derogatory
information pertaining" to the former British spy who was working for Fusion GPS - the firm paid by the DNC and the Clinton campaign
to come up with dirt on Donald Trump.
As we
noted yesterday based on an earlier Hill report on the Kavalec-Steele notes, Steele was flagged for admitting that his research
was political and facing an Election Day deadline, as his client was "keen to see this information come to light prior to November
8."
Notes and testimony from senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr make clear Steele admitted early on that
he was "desperate" to get Trump defeated in the election, was working in some capacity for the GOP candidate's opponent, and
considered his intelligence raw and untested. Ohr testified that he alerted FBI and other senior Justice officials to these concerns
in August 2016. -
The Hill
Kavalec also flagged several places in her notes in which she suspected that Steele might be leaking information to the press
. "June -- reporting started," she wrote. "NYT and WP have," she added, in an apparent reference to The New York Times and The Washington
Post.
She then quoted Steele as indicating that he was "managing" four priorities -- "Client needs, FBI, WashPo/NYT, source protection,"
- a clear indication that media outreach was part of his job.
Those same notes suggest Steele spun some wild theories to State, including one that the Russians had a "plant in DNC" and
had assembled an "HRC dossier," apparent references to the Democratic National Committee and Clinton.
She expounded in her typed memo. "The Russians have succeeded in placing an agent inside the DNC," she quoted Steele as saying.
Steele offered Kavalec other wild information that easily could have been debunked before the FISA application -- and eventually
was, in many cases, after the media reported the allegations -- including that:
Trump lawyer Michael Cohen traveled to Prague to meet with Russians;
Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort owed the Russians $100 million and was the "go-between" from Russian President Vladimir
Putin to Trump;
Trump adviser Carter Page met with a senior Russian businessman tied to Putin;
The Russians secretly communicated with Trump through a computer system. -
The Hill
Those rumors were debunked by Special counsel Robert Mueller's April report, despite barely mentioning Steele and a passing reference
to his infamous dossier being "unverified."
Except that the FBI's FISA request from October 2016 - which relied almost entirely on Steele's work - was marked "verified
application" prior to the FBI's submission to the court.
Eventually, Steele was fired to the FBI for leaking to the media and then lying about it - however that happend after the FISA
warrant was approved - and according to The Hill , the court was not notified about it until a few months later, well after the election.
In short, the FBI undoubtedly lied to their teeth to the FISA court in order to obtain a warrant to surveil Carter Page and the
Trump campaign.
" This is no "nothingburger," and any official, pundit or Facebook friend who says otherwise is spinning, in denial, not too
bright, or James Comey. There has to be an independent investigation of the conduct of the FBI now. Every American should support
that.
The FBI..this Country's Secret Police, Gestapo, KGB...whatever you prefer. The Deep State enforcement arm. Anyone who thinks
otherwise is a complete fool.
The USA is such a shitshow right now. A month ago hillary suggested that china hack trumps tax returns, then this week they
leaked. Surprise? russia, china; america is its own worst enemy. watch.
The FBI is anti-American and completely corrupt, the entire agency should be disbanded. Nobody will ever trust it again. It
is just another corrupt arm of the DNC.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who has been awake to the truth and not listening to the Deep State propaganda on
the fake news media outlets.
Yes, what was described above is definitely treason. The real question is not Did it happen , but instead, At who's
direction did all of this conspire and occur ?
In my opinion, this goes all the way to the top in the Obama regime. The collusion angle in all of this I believe occurred
between the 5 Eyes Network of countries controlled by the Deep State. So I believe foreign allies where attempting to interfere
in US elections.
It is so unsubstantiated , that Comey and the FBI decided to use the garbage to lie to a FISA judge in the FISA court
to get a warrant to spy on citizen and candidate Trump. Then the spying was being reported back to Obama in daily FBI briefings
about his political adversary. I find it doubtful that Comey and company didn't pay Steele under the table for lies, knowing the
whole time Steele was lying.
"I've talked to the members of the Israeli government at the highest levels. I know who they want elected here. It's not
Hillary Clinton." – Former NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani
The Collusion wasn't with the Russians , but with APARTHEID Israhell.
"Ten days before the FBI used the now-discredited dossier to apply for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant
to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page, Steele met with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec, who took handwritten
notes of the encounter." Kavalec worked under Nuland, and Nuland worked under John Kerry, who has been suspiciously below the
radar in all this. I'd like to see his testimony before congress.
Robert Mueller's 448-page "Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016
Presidential Election" contains at least two major omissions which suggest that the special
counsel and his entire team of world-class Democrat attorneys are either utterly incompetent, or
purposefully concealing major crimes committed against the Trump campaign and the American
people.
First, according to The Federalist's Margot Cleveland (a former law clerk of nearly 25
years and instructor at the college of business at the University of Notre Dame) – the Mueller
report fails to consider whether the dossier authored by former MI6 spy Christopher Steele was
Russian disinformation, and Steele was not charged with lying to the FBI.
"The Steele dossier, which consisted of a series of memorandum authored by the former
MI6 spy, detailed intel purportedly provided by a variety of Vladimir Putin-connected
sources. For instance, Steele identified Source A as "a senior Russian Foreign Ministry
figure" who "confided that the Kremlin had been feeding Trump and his team valuable
intelligence on his opponents, including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton."
Other supposed sources identified in the dossier included: Source B, identified as "a
former top-level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin"; Source C, a
"Senior Russian Financial Officer"; and Source G, "a Senior Kremlin Official." -The
Federalist
As Cleveland posits: "Given Mueller's conclusion that no one connected to the Trump
campaign colluded with Russia to interfere with the election, one of those two scenarios must be
true -- either Russia fed Steele disinformation or Steele lied to the FBI about his Russian
sources."
Mueller identified only two principal ways Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential
election: "First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored
presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against
entities, employees, and volunteers working on the Clinton Campaign and then released stolen
documents."
Surely, a plot by Kremlin-connected individuals to feed a known FBI source -- Steele had
helped the FBI uncover an international soccer bribery scandal -- false claims that the Trump
campaign was colluding with Russia would qualify as a "principal way" in which Russia
interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
[..] the only lawmaker to even mention this possibility has been Sen. Chuck Grassley
(R-IA), who raised the issue with Attorney General William Barr last week: "My question," said
Grassley, "Mueller spent over two years and 30 million dollars investigating Russia interference
in the election. In order for a full accounting of Russia interference attempts, shouldn't the
special counsel have considered whether the Steele dossier was part of a Russian disinformation
and interfere campaign?" [..] Barr said that he has assembled a DOJ team to examine Mueller's
investigation, findings, and whether the spying conducted by the FBI against the Trump campaign
in 2016 was improper.
Mueller's second major oversight – which we have touched on repeatedly – is the special
counsel's portrayal of Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud as a Russian agent – when available
evidence suggests he may have been a Western agent.
Weeks after returning from Moscow, Mifsud – a self-described Clinton Foundation member –
'seeded' the rumor that Russia had 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton with Trump campaign adviser George
Papadopoulos on April 26, 2016, according to the Mueller report.
As Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) noted on Fox News on Sunday, "how is it that we spend
30-plus-million dollars on this, as taxpayers and they can't even tell us who Joseph Mifsud is?"
" this is important, because, in the Mueller dossier, they use a fake news story to describe
Mifsud. In one of those stories, they cherry- pick it," Nunes added.
[..] As conservative commentator and former US Secret Service agent Dan Bongino notes of
Mifsud, "either we have a Russian asset who's infiltrated the highest echelons of friendly
Intelligence Services, or we have a friendly who was setting up George Papadopoulos."
This poses questions about Mueller, Mifsud and Steele and many other people and
organizations involved, but the central question remains unaddressed:
did Russia truly
meddle and interfere in the 2016 election?
We don't know, we have only Mueller's word for that, and he's ostensibly based it on reports
from US intelligence, which has very obvious reasons to smear Russia. That Mifsud is presented as a
Russian agent, with all the doubts about that which we have seen presented, doesn't help this
point.
That Steele hadn't visited Russia since 1993 when he complied his dossier is not helpful either.
His information could have originated with "the Russians", or with US intelligence, and he would
never have been the wiser. That is, even IF he was a straight shooter. What are the odss of that?
And of course the strongest doubts about Russian meddling and interference, along with offers of
evidence to underline and reinforce these doubts, have been offered by Julian Assange and the
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) group.
But as I've repeatedly said before,
after Mueller had to let go of the "Russia collusion
with the Trump campaign" accusation, he was free to let the "Russian meddling aided and abetted by
Julian Assange" narrative stand, because he didn't have to provide proof for that,
as long
as he didn't communicate with either the Russians (easy), the VIPS (whom he stonewalled) or Assange
(who's been completely silenced).
https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=4855
So we have -at least- 4 major omissions in the Mueller investigation and report:
1) the Mueller report failed to consider whether the dossier authored by former MI6 spy
Christopher Steele was Russian disinformation (and Steele was not charged with lying to the
FBI).
2) Mueller's portrayal of Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud as a Russian agent – when available
evidence suggests he may have been a Western agent.
3) Mueller declined to talk to the VIPS, who offered evidence that the DNC servers were not
hacked but content was copied onto a disk at the server's location
4) Mueller refused to hear Julian Assange, who offered evidence that it was not the Russians
that had provided WikiLeaks with the emails.
Mueller was supposedly trying to find the truth about Trump's ties to Russia/Putin, and
he refused to see and hear evidence from two organizations, WikiLeaks and the VIPS,
which
he absolutely certainly knew could potentially have provided things he did not know. Why did he do
that? There's only one possible answer: he didn't want to know.
Why not? Because he feared he would have had to abandon the "Russian meddling and interference"
narrative as well. If, as both WikiLeaks and the VIPS insisted, the emails didn't come from "the
Russians", all that would have been left is an opaque story about "Russians" buying $100,000 in
Facebook ads. And that, too, is awfully shaky.
That's an amount Jared Kushner acknowledged he spent every few hours on such ads during the –
multi-billion-dollar – campaign. Moreover, many of these ads were allegedly posted AFTER the
elections. And we don't even know it was Russians who purchased the ads, that's just another story
coming from US intelligence.
It is not so hard, guys. "Omissions" or "oversight" is one way to put it, but there are others.
Assange could have cleared himself of any claims of involvement in meddling and perhaps proven
Guccifer 2.0 was not "Russian". His discussions with the DOJ, preparations for which were in an
advanced stage of development, were killed in 2017 by then-FBI head James Comey and Rep. Mark
Warner.
Mueller never wanted the truth, he wanted to preserve a narrative.
The VIPS,
too, threatened that narrative by offering physical evidence that nobody hacked the emails.
Mueller never reached out.
Mueller, the former FBI chief, who must know who these men and
women are. Here's a list, in case you were wondering:
Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis, NSA;
co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)
Bogdan Dzakovic, former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security
(ret.) (associate VIPS)
Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)
Mike Gravel, former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence
Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator
James George Jatras, former U.S. diplomat and former foreign policy adviser to Senate
leadership (Associate VIPS)
Larry Johnson, former CIA Intelligence Officer & former State Department Counter-Terrorism
Official, (ret.)
Michael S. Kearns, Captain, USAF (ret.); ex-Master SERE Instructor for Strategic
Reconnaissance Operations (NSA/DIA) and Special Mission Units (JSOC)
John Kiriakou, former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former Senior Investigator, Senate
Foreign Relations Committee
Karen Kwiatkowski, former Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense
watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003
Clement J. Laniewski, LTC, U.S. Army (ret.)
Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.)
Edward Loomis, NSA Cryptologic Computer Scientist (ret.)
David MacMichael, former Senior Estimates Officer, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA presidential briefer (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East & CIA
political analyst (ret.)
Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)
Peter Van Buren,U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (associate VIPS)
Robert Wing, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (former) (associate VIPS)
Ann Wright, U.S. Army Reserve Colonel (ret) and former U.S. Diplomat who resigned in 2003 in
opposition to the Iraq War
And then you lead a Special Counsel investigation, you spend 2 years and $30
million, you get offered evidence in what you're investigating, and you just ignore these people?
And there are still people who want to believe that Robert Swan Mueller III is a straight
shooter? They must not want to know the truth, either, then.
Here's wondering if Bill Barr does, who's going to investigate the Mueller
investigation. Does he want the truth, or is he just the next in line to push the narrative?
Is there anyone in power left in America who has any courage at all to expose this
B-rated theater?
Tulsi Gabbard has been reviled for talking to Assad. Why not talk to Assange as well, Tulsi? How
about Rand Paul? We know he wanted to talk to Assange last year. Anyone?
With Julian Assange now in the custody of the British, it is very
doubtful anyone, including Mueller, is going to get anything out
of him at this point, unless he is unconditionally guaranteed to
be released. Besides, when much of this information about the
Russian collusion started to materialize in 2016, he was already
in the Ecuadorian Embassy evading arrest since 2012. It was the
other people who worked in Wikileaks who had extracted the
information about all of this, not Julian Assange. And even if he
knew all the particulars, it would have been very foolish of him
to keep anything within the embassy, in the event of his capture,
the British would find out about who actually made the releases,
who his connections were, and the depth of what they uncovered.
Julian was smart enough to know this, and when the police did
finally arrive to haul him out of the Ecuadorian embassy, Julian
was the only thing they got.
But it was the "Russian speaking"
Ukrainians, who tried to influence the elections, and they paid
the Bidens, the Clintons, and the Podesta brothers handsomely.
Clinton alone got $26 million from the Ukrainians.
The Steele Dossier appears to have originated from the
Ukrainians too. Ukraine Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenko opened a
probe into the so-called "black ledger" files that led to
Manafort's abrupt departure from the Trump campaign. The
investigation commenced after an unearthed audio recording
showed that a senior Ukrainian anti-corruption official apparently
admitted to leaking Manafort's financial information in 2016 --
including his ties to pro-Russian actors in the Ukraine -- to
benefit Clinton.
Also, A
2017
investigation by Politico
found that Ukrainian officials not
only publicly sought to undermine Trump by questioning his fitness
for office, but also worked behind the scenes to secure a Clinton
victory.
Politico also found, the Ukrainian government worked with a DNC
consultant to conduct opposition research against Trump, including
going after Manafort for Russian ties, helping lead to his
resignation. The big question is, was that consultant happened to
be Christopher Steele, (former head of the Russia Desk for British
Intelligence himself), and Fusion GPS? Peter Strzok had to
know something about this, because he was the Chief of the
Counterespionage Section who wanted to protect Clinton and Biden,
and he was in direct contact with Michael Gaeta, head of the FBI's
Eurasian Organized Crime Squad Team, which specializes in
investigating criminal groups from Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine.
Believe it or not, the FBI actually proposed paying Steele to
continue gathering intelligence after Election Day", but Steele
"ultimately never received any payment from the FBI for any
'dossier'-related information". Strzok had to have a hand in
proposing the payment too. Strzok was apart of Mueller team,
until Mueller found out about Strzok's romantic connections with
Lisa Page. But it became obvious at that point, Mueller's
investigation was going to be railroaded by the FBI and not
thorough.
Same 'preserve the narrative' as with the 'investigation' of
9-11... C'mon... we all know this BS showtrial crap from our past,
from other empires past... not new... same with all empires based
in controlling their people thru propaganda.... and all of this is
the 'outing of the OWO', so the puppet show can end and set the
stage for the NWO... no puppets needed.. nor our 'markets'... nor
these fake 'investigations'.
there was never any russian government
interferencethe in US presdiential election
but
to repeat (again), the mueller report served two purposes.
1. to erect a smoke screen and cast doubt on trump/republicans
over the mid-terms to advatage the howler monkeys.
2. to divert attention from the crimes of the howler monkeys,
pre-eminently clinton, over the prior 15 years. (heinous crimes -
Seth Rich heinous in a conspiracy to feed at the tax payers trough
via "pay to play".
does the author really think that the alphabet soup was the
only set of agencies inflitrated, compromised and exploited by the
howler monkey cabal?
try education, immigration, health, housing, drugs, in the US
and russia, ukraine, libya, afghanistan and south america
(including haiti).
you want the bread crumbs? investigate the extent of the work
done by the clinton foundation.
you could start with the australian government donation of 25
million to the clinton foundation, orchestrated by alexander
downer (who entrapped papadopoulos in a london bar).
Occams_Razor_Trader_Part_Deux
,
25 minutes ago
link
1) the Mueller report failed to consider whether the dossier
authored by former MI6 spy Christopher Steele was Russian
disinformation (and Steele was not charged with lying to the FBI).
Hold on- whether the Steele dossier is "Russian information" or
"Russian disinformation " is irrelevant- but it is a clear case of
collusion on Hillary's part!
The problem Mueller has with the Steele dossier, is that if Russia
did feed disinformation to Steele with the goal of interfering
with US elections, then CLINTON would have been CRIMINALLY
CONSPIRING with the Russians to do what Drump was accused of,
since the Clinton CAMPAIGN PAID FOR the Steele dossier...
BUT if
Steele made it all up (likely), Clinton would have been guilty of
colluding (ie criminally conspiring) with a foreign intelligence
agency (Britain's MI6) to interfere with the US elections AND
Mueller's own narrative about GRU direct interference in the
election would be tarnished as well.
In other words, Mueller was trapped by his own lies and his
loyalty to Clinton.... Mueller should be indicted for writing a
misleading report and colluding with the Clinton camp
Its clear now- Mueller wasnt going to investigate anything that
would lead back to spying and Barr doesn't have a report that he
can use to justify an investigation into spying. Voila' - status
quo preserved- Deep State preserved!
All sane people knew that going in. Most were hoping a
narrative might emerge to prove that wrong. None were
disappointed. An utter miscarriage any sane person would say.
Nothing could exonerate Trump MORE than Mueller himself testifying under oath and answering
question from Republican lawmakers. His report is full of gaping holes and the whole
investigation can now be definitely classified like a partisan witch hunt. Mueller , for example
failed to explore the role in British intelligence in Russiagate, the role of Ukraine and
attempts to set up members of Trump team. He was laser focused on "obstruction of justice"
change.
The only unanswered question here is why Mueller did that: Trump folded to neocons and MIC in
April 2017 a month before Mueller was appointed. May be Mueller is just another pathological
narcissist who enjoy spotlight.
Robert
Mueller fought the release of former FBI Director James Comey 's memos out of fear President Trump and other witnesses
in the Russia investigation would use them to alter their stories, according to a court
transcript obtained by CNN .
Mueller's prosecutors argued in January 2018 that the memos, which were eventually made
public in April of that year, could present a conflict for their investigation if released. At
the time, Mueller's team was negotiating with Trump's legal team over a potential
interview.
"Special Counsel is attempting to determine the facts that transpired in and surrounding
those meetings," one of Mueller's prosecutors, Michael Dreeben, said at the time, according to
CNN.
"In any investigation of this kind, the recollections of one witness, if disclosed to
another potential witness, have the potential to influencing, advertently or inadvertently, the
recollections of that witness," he added.
Dreeben told the court that Comey's memos of his interactions with Trump were crucial in the
special counsel's probe and included much more detail than Comey's public statements. He added
that Mueller's office was concerned that Trump had acted to obstruct the probe.
"In this instance, a person whose conduct is within the scope of the investigation is the
President of the United States," Dreeben said in court.
Mueller ultimately interviewed several Trump associates, including then-chief of staff
Reince Priebus
, then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates , adviser Stephen Miller and others in the
administration. However, the president never agreed to meet with Mueller for a sit-down
interview and declined to submit written answers to questions about potentially obstructive
acts.
CNN and other media outlets last year fought for access to Comey's memos under a Freedom of
Information Act request. A federal judge ordered the Justice Department on Tuesday to provide a
transcript of the court hearing with Mueller's prosecutors to CNN as part of the suit.
Congress received redacted versions of Comey's memos in April that were later made public.
Mueller wrote in his report that he accumulated "substantial evidence" to support Comey's
notes, though he declined to make a prosecutorial judgement regarding obstruction of
justice.
A largely unreported footnote in Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller's final report raises immediate
questions about the Obama-era FISA warrant obtained to monitor the communications of Carter Page, a tangential
adviser to Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
Mueller's report explained that his team did not find evidence that can be used to charge anyone from the Trump
campaign as acting as an agent of a foreign government. It says the FISA warrant to spy on Page was obtained using a
"different (and lower) standard" of evidence claiming Russian involvement.
Mueller's team utilized the standards
outlined
in the
Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which "requires persons acting as agents of foreign principals in a political
or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal."
The report stated:
The investigation did not, however, yield evidence sufficient to sustain any charge that any individual
affiliated with the Trump Campaign acted as an agent of a foreign principal within the meaning of FARA or, in
terms of Section 951, subject to the direction or control of the government of Russia, or any official thereof. In
particular, the Office did not find evidence likely to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Campaign officials
such as Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and Carter Page acted as agents of the Russian Government – or at its
direction control, or request-during the relevant time period.
That paragraph contained a footnote about the FISA warrant to conduct surveillance on Page, which was obtained
based on warrant applications that cited as evidence against Page information from the infamous, largely-discredited,
Clinton-funded anti-Trump dossier.
The footnote says the Page FISA warrant was obtained from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) court
utilizing a "different (and lower) standard than the one governing" governing Mueller's office.
States the footnote:
On four occasions, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) issued warrants based on a finding of
probable cause to believe that Page was an agent of a foreign power. 50 U.S.C. §§ 1801 (b), 1805(a)(2)(A). The
FISC's probable-cause finding was based on a different (and lower) standard than the one governing the Office's
decision whether to bring charges against Page, which is whether admissible evidence would likely be sufficient to
prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Page acted as an agent of the Russian Federation during the period at issue.
Cf United States v. Cardoza, 713 F.3d 656, 660 (D.C. Cir. 2013) (explaining that probable cause requires only "a
fair probability," and not "certainty, or proof beyond a reasonable doubt, or proof by a preponderance of the
evidence").
In late October 2016, then-FBI director James Comey signed the first of three successful FISA applications to
obtain warrants to spy on Page. The second and third were renewal applications since a FISA warrant must be renewed
every 90 days.
All three applications reportedly cited as key evidence against Page the dossier produced by the controversial
Fusion GPS firm which was paid for its anti-Trump work by Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and the Democratic National
Committee via the Perkins Coie law firm.
According to Republican House
characterizations
,
the FISA applications signed by Comey withheld key information raising questions about the dossier, including that it
was financed by Clinton and the DNC and had known credibility issues.
During a Sunday interview on New York AM 970 radio's "The Cats Roundtable," Rep. Peter King (R-NY) slammed FBI
special counsel Robert Mueller for how he handled the almost two-year investigation into alleged collusion between
President Donald Trump and Russia in the 2016 presidential election.
King said it "couldn't have taken Bob Mueller that long" to find out if there was collusion.
"The reports we get are that they knew a year ago there was no collusion. Well, didn't [Mueller] have an
obligation to tell the president of the United States that? To let the world know? The president has gone off to
negotiate with Kim Jong-un. He is involved, obviously, in very sensitive negotiations all the time in the Middle
East," King told host John Catsimatidis.
He continued, "I think that the Mueller people had an obligation to tell the president, to tell the country, to
tell the world that there was no collusion whatsoever as soon as they found out there was none. This isn't like
you're dealing with some local drug dealer or something. You're talking about, whether you like him or not, he is the
leader of the country. The leader of the free world. And they let this hang over him for at least a year It was
wrong not to make it known."
In summarizing Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian election interference,
Attorney General Bill Barr said there were two major questions the investigation examined:
whether there was coordination or collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian
government, and whether President Donald Trump sought to obstruct justice. The report did not
establish coordination or collusion.
That lack of proof on collusion is one of the reasons for not pursuing an
obstruction-of-justice prosecution, Barr said: There was no underlying crime from Russia
connections for Trump to cover up.
While Barr said this wasn't the only factor that played into the decision about whether to
prosecute, he explicitly cited it as one of them.
In the 24 hours after the Barr letter was released, we noticed a lot of cable TV debate
about whether someone can or can't be tried for obstructing justice if there is no underlying
crime. Put another way, can you obstruct justice if there was theoretically nothing to
obstruct? We decided to take a closer look.
We checked with 11 legal experts to nail down answers. Essentially all of these experts
agreed that obstruction can indeed be prosecuted without an underlying crime -- and has been in
the past, notably in the case of Martha Stewart.
Several experts added, however, that there are some important distinctions between these
historical precedents and what Mueller found. So the debate (sorry) will likely
continue.
What Barr wrote
What is obstruction of justice? It refers
to "interference with the orderly administration of law and justice," including
"proceedings before departments, agencies, and committees." The relevant type
in the Trump example is likely "obstruction of criminal investigations."
Three elements are generally required for a conviction on obstruction of justice: the
existence of a pending federal judicial proceeding; the defendant's knowledge of this
proceeding; and the defendant's corrupt intent to interfere with, or attempt to interfere with,
the proceeding.
Ultimately, Barr and Rosenstein determined that the three elements that are required to
prove obstruction were not met.
"So you can, in this situation, instruct someone to lie?" Feinstein asked.
"We felt that in that episode the government would not be able to establish obstruction,"
Barr replied. "If you look at that episode . . . the instruction said 'Go to [ Rod ]
Rosenstein, raise the issue of conflict of interest and Mueller has to go because of this
conflict of interest.' So there's not question that whatever instruction was given to McGahn
had to to do with conflict of interest . . . To be obstruction of justice the lie has to be
tied to impairing the evidence in a particular proceeding. McGahn had already given his
evidence and I think it would be plausible that the purpose of McGahn memorializing what the
president was asking was to make the record that the president never directed him to fire. And
there is a distinction between saying to someone, 'go fire him, go fire Mueller' and saying
'have him removed based on conflict. '"
At this point, Feinstein, speaking for all of us, asked, "And what would that conflict
be?"
To which Barr responded, "The difference between them is that if you remove someone for
conflict of interest, another person would be presumably . . . appointed," failing to
acknowledge that had McGahn complied with Trump's request, the president would have likely
continued to find "conflicts of interest" with every new special counsel.
Maybe Barr, the nation's top law-enforcement official, just isn't qualified to judge! "I'm
not in the business of determining when lies are told to the American people," he told Senator
Richard Blumenthal at another point in the hearing. "I'm in the business of determining when a
crime has been committed." And if the lie is the crime? Look, we're splitting hairs.
Elsewhere in the hearing, Barr:
Claimed Trump's attempt to get McGahn to remove Mueller wasn't corrupt ;
Said Trump's dislike of the investigation in general was a legitimate reason to
try to
fire Mueller ;
Said that
"[Mueller's] work concluded when he sent his report to the attorney general. At that point,
it was my baby;"
"... "What if you substituted 'Israel' for 'Russia'?" (The moderator, who apparently knows me, had to look right at me with my hand raised whenever he called on someone but never called on me). ..."
"... "Has there ever been an investigation on the scale of the Mueller investigation into possible collusion with Israel?" ..."
"... The surprising thing about the Mueller report is that he found nothing. That’s impossible because when the government wants to find something, they find it. Why Mueller pulled the plug, I can’t say. ..."
Second hour: Journalist and TV host Ken Meyercord (also based in Washington, DC)
writes:
"I attended an event at the Brookings Institution yesterday on the Mueller Report. As is
sadly customary at DC think tanks, the panelists and the moderator were all of one mind.
Nevertheless, one panelist, a former US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (a
court notorious for rubber-stamping any charge the government brings against those who
disrupt the smooth functioning of our foreign policy apparatus), made a curious analogy,
arguing that the contacts Trump and his associates had with Russians would be culpable even
if the contacts were with some other, less hostile country:
His remark got me to thinking, so in the Q & A I sought to ask him "What if you
substituted 'Israel' for 'Russia'?" (The moderator, who apparently knows me, had to look
right at me with my hand raised whenever he called on someone but never called on me).
I don't know what his response would have been; but if he said it would still apply, I
would have followed up with "Has there ever been an investigation on the scale of the Mueller
investigation into possible collusion with Israel?"
"The more I think about it, the more intriguing I find Mr. Rosenberg's remark. He seemed
to think the sheer number of contacts by Trump folks with Russians proved culpability. It
might be interesting to compare Trump's contacts with the Russians during the campaign with
his contacts with Israelis. I suspect the latter were more numerous and of greater
significance. Certainly, Trump's acts as President would seem to indicate he's more
Netanyahu's puppet than Putin's: moving the embassy to Jerusalem, cutting off aid to the
Palestinians, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Imagine if Putin
proposed naming a village in Russia after Trump in appreciation, as Netanyahu has proposed
doing in the Golan Heights!
"P.S. Ueli Maurer is the President of the Swiss Confederation."
The entire Western media is the enemy of the people. The Demogangsters and the mediocrats,
Public Enemy #1, were angry that Trump won the election, so they fabricated a scam called
contacts with Russians.
They are saying that Trump and his people talked to the Russians as private citizens
before the election, so it is illegal.
What? Talking to Russians is illegal? Really? Says who?
They will not tell you the law that was allegedly broken, because the law that was
allegedly broken itself is illegal.
It is the Logan Act which “criminalizes negotiations by unauthorized persons with
foreign governments having a dispute with the United States.”
Only in America—the criminal Democrats have investigated an innocent man for a
non-existent crime of violating an unconstitutional law.
While I would not say this happens only in America, this sort of thing is actually
long-standing policy in the US. As long ago as 1944 in Wickard vs. Filburn, the Democrat
Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a man for not merely raising food on his own land, but
for failing to offer the food for sale, on the rationale that the non-sale affected
Interstate Commerce as much as if he had offered it for sale. Since then it has been
‘constitutional’ to find federal jurisdiction over even private vegetable gardens
grown exclusively for domestic consumption. Under this theory, even breathing oxygen places
one under federal jurisdiction because it is followed by exhaling CO2.
One of the most surprising things I discovered when I began to practice law was the fact
that no one is ‘innocent’. I.e, there is always some law somewhere that is being
‘broken’ no matter what one does, which means that if the government wants
someone, they can always convict him because the government can always find some law he has
broken. I’m speaking ironically, of course. Many of these laws should be
unconstitutional. Just don’t bet that SCOTUS will ever rule that way because, as
Gorsuch recently pronounced, “that’s all been settled.”
The surprising thing about the Mueller report is that he found nothing. That’s
impossible because when the government wants to find something, they find it. Why Mueller
pulled the plug, I can’t say.
There's a very easy way to pin this down. Since Halper introduced her as his "assistant",
he should have no problem telling everybody where she is now.
If he is unable to produce her or show any proof that she was his own assistant-- he's a
spy. period.
Q said tonight that this is the order of the tsunami of documents/testimony coming out
in the next few days/weeks:
AG BARR testifies in front of Congress on MAY 1,2
The Comey Investigation is coming out in less than 14 days...indictments are
coming
The FISA declass comes out after that in May. This will take down Obama and everyone
else
The Horrowitz IG Report comes out right after that....it will be devastating to all
the players in this mess
... ... ...
Here is the lineup of what happened by the traitors in the coup
- Obama led everything from the White House. He spied on everyone
- Hillary Clinton was the financier through her fake foundation
- Brennan was the instigator
- Clapper and Comey were the leakers
- Christopher Steele and Glen Simpson were facilitators who created it all and
fabricated the document with the Russians
- Comey and McCabe and Strozk and Page were driving the engine of this attempted coup
on Trump
... ... ...
-The democrats were involved in all of this...from Schiff to the rest of them in
Congress.
The FISA declass coming out Monday?...
Hannity, Tucker, and Laura Ingrahm were all out on Friday. Something BIG is up,
folks!!!
Stay tuned...!!!
Obama, Biden, and Hillary are TOAST!! OBAMA RAN THE WHOLE SHOW FROM THE WHITE
HOUSE!!!!
"IT'S HANGIN' TIME!!"
" New Spygate Revelation: The Corruption Is Leading Right Back To The
'Scandal-Free' Obama White House!!"
ObamaGate: No Misdemeanors, Only High Crimes
Sens. Charles Grassley & Ron Johnson Release Letter to Attorney General William Barr,
Demand Details About Investigation Into Obama's Illegal Spying on Trump Campaign [FULL
LETTER]
"Those that yell the loudest are the ones going down" -Q
: Schiff, Waters, BRENNAN , Comey, Hillery, etc!!
Here it is folks, for those who have not seen it...the full interview of Trump last
night where Trump himself lays it all out. "When do birds sing? Springtime!" - Q
These people are going to hang. The coup has been stopped. The deep state is surrounded.
OUR BORDER IS BEING MANNED WITH OUR MILITARY EVEN AS YOU READ THIS! Trump is building
the Wall! The entire thing is going to be seen on public TV this summer. Trump said you will
see:
The FISA declass...which will take down the House! That means Obama, Hillary, Comey,
Lynch, Rosenstein, Biden, all of the perps who you already know in the FBI, Brennan ,
Clapper, McCabe, Mueller, the democrats, Waters, Schiff, Nadler, Swalowswell, Nadler, Pelosi,
the lousy lying MSM...all of them! And lots more!
Trump said he is going to declass everything! The FISA, AND A WHOLE LOT MORE!!!
Everything! Trump is going after them, and they are surrounded. No place to hide, Hillary!
No place to hide, Obama and all of your creeps. You are going to jail, or the hanging tree.
One way or another, you are done!
FISA declass.
OIG Report Horrowitz.
302's
*HUGE COMEY REPORT COMING OUT IN TWO WEEKS! INDICTMENTS COMING!!- Prosecutor Joe
Digenova! Leaking classified information to the press, lying to the FISA COURT!!
Gang of 8 documents
Documents and testimony from 53 closed door investigations.
Senate Intel investigations
House Intel investigations
The AG Barr report
Huber's leaking report and the 90,000 sealed indictments
3 large prison barges are going back and forth from New York to Gitmo... WHY?
Barr's testimony on March 1, 2 that will be a bombshell
Q was right all along!
The FISA court Judges have just turned over the documents showing that they were lied to
by Comey, Rosenstein, etc.
New Spygate Revelation: The Corruption Is Leading Right Back To The 'Scandal-Free' Obama
White House
Trump is closing every avenue of escape, money laundering, pedo stuff, criminal CEO's,
politicians, etc.
Trump has ALL of Hillary's emails, including those that Obama had
Trump will declass 911, JFK, aliens, who Obama really is, his citizenship status of the
country he was born in, everything!
Trump has Wikileaks sources....; )) ...soon he will have Assange
Trump has all of their communications....; )) ALL OF THEM!
Obama had thousand of Hillary's emails (49,000) and ran the entire op from his office in
the White House
Hillary-"if Trump gets in we will all hang!", as she screamed at everybody on election
night!
Trump has the NSA and the other 17 intel orgs that nobody knows about that have
everything.... ; )))
Trump has it all! Trump also has clawed back $Trillions of stolen funds they took
The dems will be retiring en masse soon...Trump will take back the House in 2020
Court TV is coming back this summer. Hillary wanted that. Now you will be watching HER
being indicted!
The libtard morons are going to go berserk folks! The show is beginning officially as of
last night. There is no place to hide for them. The MSM is in full meltdown and the perps are
panicking all over the planet!
*Bill Maher just turned on Adam Schiff....says "he is stalking Trump!"...
*Washington Times reporter Bob Woodward says "the Steele Dossier is a bunch of
garbage!"
... ... ...
Proud-Christian-White-American-Man , 1 minute ago
link
Real Estate Guru: Great compilation of really bad news for the globalist traitors who sold
the US out to the Chicoms and really good news for the Patriots!
The war on Zero Hedge against the Chicom trolls will soon go to the next level On a gut
level the Steverino999's , his other screen names and the reset of the trolls know that when
Patriots fully regain control of the US government it won't be pretty for them
Yes, Real Estate Guru and other fellow Patriots it is wonderful to see the battle turning
for liberty and against globalist chicom tyranny ( and their henchmen) but Please do not be
complacent there is much yet to be done before these sewer rats are flushed away from body
politic of the US
"... That report is going to be a bombshell. It is going to open up the investigation on a very high note, and there are going to be criminal referrals in it. ..."
"... The FISA court abuse is the center of this entire abuse of governmental power, and the chief judge in that court has already ruled that the FBI broke the law and that the people at the head of the justice department, Sally Yates, John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security all knew about it and lied to the FISA court about it... ..."
"... He [Rogers] discovered the illegal spying. He went personally to the FISA court and briefed the Chief Judge and worked with her for months to uncover the people who did it. The FISA court has already told the Justice Department who lied to that court and that has been given to [Attorney General] Bill Barr already. ..."
It is about the rule of law and privacy. The Obama administration for more than four years
before the 2016 election allowed four contractors working for the FBI to illegally surveil
American citizens -- illegally. The FISA court has already found that. There is the Horowitz
report coming out in May or possibly early June. There's another report that everyone has
forgotten about involving James Comey alone. That will be out in two weeks. That report is
going to be a bombshell. It is going to open up the investigation on a very high note, and
there are going to be criminal referrals in it.
The FISA court abuse is the center of this entire abuse of governmental power, and the chief
judge in that court has already ruled that the FBI broke the law and that the people at the
head of the justice department, Sally Yates, John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for
national security all knew about it and lied to the FISA court about it...
There's a hero in this story and it is not a lawyer. There is a hero. His name is Admiral
Mike Rogers. He was the head of the National Security Agency.
He [Rogers] discovered the illegal spying. He went personally to the FISA court and briefed
the Chief Judge and worked with her for months to uncover the people who did it. The FISA court
has already told the Justice Department who lied to that court and that has been given to
[Attorney General] Bill Barr already.
In June 2018, Bill Barr, then in private practice at Kirkland & Ellis, wrote a detailed
legal memorandum to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. This memo came to light in December, when Barr was nominated for
Attorney General.
Reading Barr's June 2018 memo alongside the last twenty pages of the
Mueller Report is a curious experience.
Together, they read like dueling legal briefs on the meaning of
18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) ; the type of material one would
expect to see from adversarial appellate litigators.
So-why did Robert Mueller dedicate 20 pages of his report to a seemingly obscure question of statutory interpretation? Why did
Bill Barr write a detailed legal memorandum to Rod Rosenstein about that very same statute?
And how, exactly, did Bill Barr know that that § 1512(c)(2) was central to Mueller's obstruction theory – in June 2018, when he
was still in private practice at Kirkland?
After some consideration, I arrived at a theory that I believe answers these three questions, and others as well. For example
– why was AG Jeff Sessions asked for his resignation the day after the midterms? Why was Bill Barr the only name ever seriously floated
for AG? And is it merely a coincidence that six weeks after Barr's confirmation, the Mueller probe came to an end?
...
This is a story about a legal chess match played for the highest stakes imaginable: Trump's Presidency – and whether it would
be under the cloud of an endless special counsel investigation – hinged on the result.
John Dowd, Ty Cobb, Jay Sekulow, and the rest of President Trump's personal legal team were on one side. Mueller, Andrew Weissmann,
and the Special Counsel's office were on the other.
The dispute was a year-long struggle over the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2).
No judge ever ruled on who was right about the meaning of this obstruction statute. No formal decision was ever rendered.
All the same, Trump's legal team prevailed on February 14, 2019.
That's the day William Pelham Barr was confirmed as United States Attorney General.
So why, exactly, was the interpretation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) so contested?
Let's start by looking the statute, excerpted here:
(c) Whoever corruptly --
(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to
impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or
(2) otherwise obstructs, influences or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so [is guilty of the crime of obstruction].
(Emphasis added).
Why was this so important to Mueller?
...
In hindsight, however, it's clear that Barr was the assassin Democrats feared.
Within six weeks of his confirmation, the Mueller probe was over...
Here is my take, on this entire Sh*tshow, running in Washington DC, for the last two
years.
1. All the evidences are pointing the most likely scenario that Donald Trump is a
Manchurian Candidate ordered by the Kremelin to run for Office, in 2016.
2. Then, Donald Trump COLLUDED with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service to win the
Presidency of United States, with shocking easy.
3. This was because Hitlery Clinton and Joe Biden , was bribed by Putin, through the
Ukrainians, with hundred of millions of dollars, so she would purposely lose the "sure win"
race, to a political nobody, Donald Trump.
4. Then, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, produced the Steele Dossier, a
political disinformation tool, in collaboration with Britain's Mi6 and CIA.
5. Then the Russians leaked the COLLUSION story to the CIA controlled MSM such as New York
Time, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, etc . . ., so they would predictably kicked a storm of
controversy over the COLLUSION, and demand the DOJ to appoint a Special Prosecutor to initial
an investigation.
6. This diabolically devilish Special PsyOps by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service
has succeeded in tying up Washington DC, in a Sh*tshow, for the last two years, and divided
the Country in bitter controversy.
7. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and Chinese Communists' Intelligence Service
have thoroughly infiltrated America's Department of Justice, FBI, and CIA, and NSA, and use
their high levels agents, such as O'bomer, Hitlery, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, Strozk, Page,
and rosenstein to stirred up this COLLUSION storm, to paralyze America's political system
for as long as possible.
In Summary, the entire sh*tshow is a production of a Special PsyOps by the Russkies and
ChiComs' Intelligence Services. It has nothing to do with America's dysfunctional government,
called DemoCrazy .
Why the cryptic wording on the Steele Dossier? Why wasn't Trump given an opportunity to defend himself in
court?
•
May 1, 2019
CreativeCommonsFlickr/RyanReilly
and
ActionSportsPhotography/Shutterstock
You know that
movie
with Bruce Willis and the kid who says "I see dead people"? In the end, it turns out everyone is already dead. Now
imagine there are people who don't believe that. They insist the story ends some other way. Spoiler alert: the Mueller
Report ends with no collusion. No one is going to prosecute anyone for obstruction. That stuff is all dead. We all saw
the same movie.
Yet there seem to still be questions from those who don't get
it. And while it's doubtful that the stoic Robert Mueller will ever write a tell-all book, or sit next to Seth Meyers
and Trevor Noah to dish, he may be called in front of Congress. If he is, here's some of what he should be asked.
1) You didn't charge President Donald Trump with "collusion," obstruction, or any
other new crime. Tell us why. If the answer is "the evidence did not support it," please say so.
2) Your Report did not refer any crimes to Congress, the SDNY, or anyone else. Again,
tell us why. If the answer is "the evidence did not support it," please say so again.
3) Despite making no specific referrals, the Report does state, "The conclusion that
Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President's corrupt exercise of the powers of the office accords with our
constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law." Why did you include
such a restating of a known fact? Many have read that line to mean you could not indict a sitting president and so you
wanted to leave a clue to Congress. Yet you could have just spelled it out -- "this is beyond my and the attorney general's
constitutional roles and must/can only be resolved by Congress." Why didn't you?
4) Similarly, many believe they see clues (a
footnote
looms as the grassy knoll of your work) that the only reason you did not indict Trump was because of Department of
Justice and Office of Legal Counsel guidance against indicting a sitting president. Absent that, would you have
indicted? If so, why didn't you say so unambiguously and trigger what would be the obvious next steps?
5) When did you conclude there was no collusion, conspiracy, or coordination between
Trump and the Russians such that you would make no indictments? You must have closed at least some of the subplots -- the
Trump Tower meeting, the Moscow Hotel project -- months ago. Did you consider announcing key findings as they occurred? You
were clearly aware that there was inaccurate reporting, damaging to the public trust. Yet you allowed that to happen.
Why?
6) But before you answer that question, answer this one. You made a pre-Report public
statement saying Buzzfeed's story that claimed Trump ordered Michael Cohen to lie to Congress was false. You restated
that in the Report, where you also mentioned that you privately told Jeff Sessions' lawyer in March 2018 that Sessions
would not be charged. Since your work confirmed that nearly all bombshell reporting on Russiagate was wrong (Cohen was
never in Prague, nothing criminal happened in the Seychelles, and so on), why was it only that single instance that
caused you to speak out publicly? And as with Sessions, did you privately inform any others prior to the release of the
Report that they would not be charged? What standard did you apply to those decisions?
7) A cardinal rule for prosecutors is to not publicize negative information that does
not lead them to indict someone -- "the decision does the talking." James Comey was criticized for doing this to Hillary
Clinton during the campaign. Yet most of your Report's Volume II is just that, descriptions of actions by Trump that
contain elements of obstruction but that you ultimately did not charge. Why did you include this information so
prominently? Some say it was because you wanted to draw a "road map" for impeachment. Why didn't you just say that? You
had no reason to speak in riddles.
8) There is a lot of lying documented in the Report. But you seemed to only charge
people with perjury (traps) early in your investigation. Was that aimed more at pressuring them to "flip" than at
justice per se? Is one of the reasons several of the people in the Report who lied did not get charged with perjury
later in the investigation because by then you knew they had nothing to flip on?
9) In regard to the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, where derogatory information on
Hillary Clinton was offered (but never given), you declined prosecution. You cited in part questions over whether such
information constituted the necessary "thing of value" that would have to exist,
inter alia
, to make its proffering a campaign
finance violation. You don't answer the question in the Report, but you do believe information could be a "thing of
value" (the thing of value must exceed $2,000 for a misdemeanor and $25,000 for a felony). What about withholding
information? Could someone saying they would not offer information publicly be a "thing of value" and thus potentially
part of a campaign finance law violation? Of course I'm talking about Stormy Daniels, who received money not to offer
information. Would you make the claim that silence itself, non-information, is a "thing" of value?
10) You spend the entire first half of your Report, Volume I, explaining that "the
Russians" sought to manipulate our 2016 election via social media and by hacking the Democratic National Committee.
Though there is a lot of redacted material, at no point in the clear text is there information on whether the Russians
actually did influence the election. Even trying was a crime, but given the importance of all this (some still claim the
president is illegitimate) and the potential impact on future elections, did you look into the actual effects of Russian
meddling? If not, why not?
11) Everything the Russians did, according to Volume I, they did on Obama's watch. Did
you investigate anyone in the Obama administration in regard to Russian meddling? Did you look at what they did, what
was missed, whether it could have been stopped, and how the response was formed? Given that Trump's actions towards
Russia followed on steps Obama took, this seems relevant. Did you look? If not, why not?
12) Some of the information gathered about Michael Flynn was picked up inadvertently
under existing surveillance of the Russian ambassador. As an American, Flynn's name would have been routinely masked in
the reporting on those intercepts in order to protect his privacy. The number of people with access to those intercepts
is small, and the number inside the Obama White House with the authority to unmask names is even smaller. Yet details
were leaked to the press and ended Flynn's career. Given that the leak may have exposed U.S. intelligence methods, that
it had to have been done at a very high level inside the Obama White House, and that the leak violated Flynn's
constitutional rights, did you investigate? If not, why not?
13)
The
New York Times
wrote
that
"some of the most sensational claims in the [Steele] dossier appeared to be false, and others were impossible to prove.
Your report contained over a dozen passing references to the document's claims but no overall assessment of why so much
did not check out." Given the central role the Steele Dossier played in your work, and certainly in the investigation
that commenced as Crossfire Hurricane in summer 2016, why did you not include any overall assessment of why so much did
not check out inside such a key document?
14) Prosecutors do not issue certificates of exoneration. The job is to charge or drop
a case. That's what constitutes exoneration in any practical sense. Yet you have as your final line that "while this
report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him." Why did you include
that, and so prominently?
15) You also wrote, "if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts
that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state." You argue elsewhere in the Report
that because Trump is a sitting president, he cannot be indicted, so therefore it would be unjust to accuse him of
something he could not go to court and defend himself over. But didn't you do just that? Why did you leave the taint of
guilt without giving Trump the means of defending himself in court? You must have understood that such wording would be
raw meat to Democrats, and would force Trump to defend himself not in a court with legal protections, but in an often
hostile media. Was that your intention?
Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of
We
Meant Well
: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People and
Hooper's
War
: A Novel of WWII Japan.
My guess is that he didn't go to the wall with this gig because he knew that his appointment was illegal to
start with. He did just enough to keep himself on the beat for 2 years.
To trigger the appointment of a special counsel, federal regulations require the Justice Department to
identify the crimes that warrant investigation and prosecution -- crimes that the Justice Department is too
conflicted to investigate in the normal course; crimes that become the parameters of the special counsel's
jurisdiction.
Mueller's good friend Comey deliberately leaked government information to someone outside the Department of
Justice in order to get revenge for being fired and to prompt a Special Counsel. Comey knew his friend Mueller
would be appointed!
Mueller spent over two years and Thirty Million Dollars of taxpayers money trying to create a crime to
undermine President Trump!
Mueller simply cannot be trusted and should be thoroughly investigated!
"while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
I've heard several legal experts opine that the above was a gratuitous and vexatious "coda", if you will, which
served only to illustrate Mueller's sore loser attitude.
In the meantime the question of who these "Russians" were who allegedly tried to subvert the election
process remains blissfully unanswered. And it says here that we probably never will find out the answer either.
Mueller didn't make a "referral to Congress" because the statue under which he operated called for him to make
a confidential report to the AG, you dope. Congress doesn't need a "referral" to take action. They now have the
evidence on the record, or most of it. What else would a referral constitute anyway, other than the literal
words "I refer to the following facts to Congress for their consideration"?
If anyone in the world knew or should have been able to find obstruction it was Mueller who after two years
knew Trump better than both his accountant and proctologist, If Mueller could or did not find obstruction or
collusion it was not there if it was there he would have so said. What Mueller did was to leave landmines and
boobytraps and sully Trumps man. Mueller says that he could not find incriminating evidence because he could
not find it but he therefore thinks it existed, as every first year law student knows "If you don't have the
evidence then you can't prove your criminal case".
The burden is on the prosecutor to prove the case the
prosecutor does not exonhorate or "clear" a target nor does the prosecutor release information that does not
reach an indictment, this is important to all people who could otherwise be harmed by such a release.
It's funny as all get out (TAC doesn't like it when I swear) watching Russiagate cultists keep pushing their
conspiracy theory, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that there is nothing there.
But they cannot let it
go, cannot admit that they were duped, and by many of the same crew who sold us the "Iraq is chock a block with
WMDs", the "Assad gassed his own people ZOMG!" and the "Libyan rape rooms" lies.
The *really* funny and ironic part is that if they want evidence that Trump is working on behalf of foreign
governments, the cultists need look no further than Israel and Saudi Arabia.
It's as if Melania were trying to catch Donald cheating. To prove it, she comes up with elaborate and absurd
conspiracy theories involving body doubles, fake credit card receipts and a supposed secret Twitter code that
Donald uses to communicate with his alleged lover.
While she's doing all that, and ignoring all the evidence that obliterates her theory, Mistress Bibi and
Mistress Salman have the chains and whips and bondage gear on full display as they make Donald perform the most
obscene and humiliating sexual services, right in front of Melania and everyone else, and with video footage to
boot.
Of course, the rest of Team D and Team R would very much like to take Trump's place as Mistress Salman's
slaveboi, so they pretend not to notice any of that.
The author's question was "Why did you leave the taint of guilt without giving Trump the means of defending
himself in court?"
Headlines are not written by the authors of the articles but are prepared by people who have a focus fitting
an attention getting statement into a limited amount of space.
BTW, Connecticut Farmer nailed it – no prosecutor exonerates anyone. They either act or they don't and
Mueller was unethical in making such an absurd statement
In American law potential defendants are not exonerated. There is a presumption of innocence to start. They are
found guilty or not guilty in court or, a prosecutor declines to prosecute because he thinks there is
insufficient evidence.
Let Congress initiate impeachment proceedings. A crime isn't necessary, only a
majority in Congress. Removing him from office is unlikely. They will guarantee Trump a second term.
Watching these hysterical haters of Trump is like watching lunatics descend into madness. Before long their
ravings will include insidious plots by Free Masons, International Jews and the Trilateral commission.
While we're playing these stupid games, I got some questions for Mueller to answer, yo.
1. When are you going
to examine the DNC's servers?
2. Why did you rely solely upon the analysis produced by the DNC's hired consultants for the conclusion the DNC
servers were hacked by Russians?
3. When are you planning to question Assange or Craig Murray? Did you not know their whereabouts for the last
two years, or were you choosing only that evidence that fit your preordained conclusion, like you did when you
testified before Congress about Iraqi WMDs?
Enjoyed all the comments. The one howler that stands out in all this is Mr. Van Buren's notion that Trump was
denied the opportunity to defend himself. No competent lawyer would ever put Trump on the stand in any trial,
but particularly one in which he was the accused. Meanwhile, three cheers for Mr. McGhan and note-takers
everywhere. Anyone not believing that Trump instructed that Mueller be fired has to have spent the last three
years on Neptune.
Looks like Ukrainization of US politics. a good fist fight might make the hearing even more watchable. Everybody was fake
in this hearing like in World Championship Wrestling
matches. But you can admire the skill of the players. Barr is a real pro. Both Senators and Barr understand that his was a color revolution against Trump launched by the US
intelligences agencies with the support of MSM and Clinton wing of the Democratic Party.
The key fact that Obama just did not warn Trump campaign about supposed Russian effort (aka 'defensive briefing"), but instead
launch dirty surveillance campaign actually speak for itself. This failure is extraordinary failure. Senator Durbin
actually wiped the floor with Mueller with his questions. It was clear that Obam used intellingce againces as a political tool. Look
at 2:05
As a side effect this color revolution might be instrumental in Trump selling himself to Zionist interests as the only protection
available for him against onslaught. In this context Chuck Schumer laments looks somewhat hypocritical.
Looks like Russiagate which started with twin goals to whitewash Hillary fiasco and instill hatred to Russia and to serve
as a pretext for the imposition of additional suctions morphed into attempt to protect intelligence agencies from the fallout of
failed color revolution.
Democrats does not understand that boomerang always return. And the appointment of the Special Prosecutor gambit became a
fixture of both Parties.
Notable quotes:
"... Lee asked Barr if there is any evidence that Vladimir Putin "has something" on Trump. "None that I am aware of," he said. ..."
Update 16: And here are the key takeaways from Wednesday's hearing, courtesy of
Bloomberg .
The Democrats on the committee were harsh, calling Barr a liar and Senator Mazie Hirono told him he should resign. Other senators,
like Warren and Van Hollen, as well as several House members, including Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, also called
for Barr to step down.
The Republicans were ready to defend the attorney general. Chairman Lindsey Graham said Barr was slandered from top to bottom,
while Ted Cruz praised Barr for his transparency.
Barr, meanwhile, was firm in his defense of the president. ``Evidence is now that the president has been falsely accused''
of colluding with Russians and even of treason, Barr told the panel.
Much of the focus of the hearing was a letter Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrote in March, complaining that Barr's summary
of his report was misleading and urging him to release more information immediately. Barr called the letter ``a bit snitty,''
in his testimony.
Barr is scheduled to appear before the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow, but whether he does remains up in the air.The attorney
general has objected to Democratic plans to have staff lawyers question him. No one on the Senate panel asked Barr if he would
appear before the House.
* * *
Update 15: After Harris, Graham said he was going to one last go-round and give lawmakers a chance to ask follow-ups before calling
the hearing to a close, which he did around 3:15 pm ET.
First, it appears all the Senators running for president who weren't present at the hearing (or at least those who aren't polling
near the top of the pack), felt obligated to call on Barr to resign via Twitter.
And even some of Barr's interlocutors joined in the fun.
During the second round, Dick Durbin, Amy Klobuchar and - of course - Richard Blumenthal decided to ask follow-up questions including
lobbing questions about whether Mueller probed President Trump's taxes (Barr couldn't say), to whether Barr should recuse himself
from DoJ's prosecution of Goldman Sachs over its involvement in the 1MDB scandal.
Asked by Blumenthal about his conversation with Mueller after the letter was received, Barr said he called Mueller with Rod Rosenstein
and others in the room and asked him 'Bob, what's up with the letter'? Barr ended up dismissing the complaint as "a little
bit snitty." And with that, the more than 5 hour hearing - which included a lengthy break in the middle of the day - came to
a close.
* * *
Update 14: Finally, it was Kamala Harris's turn. As the presidential candidate with the highest poll numbers, Harris certainly
succeeded in securing some clips for her campaign ads.
For a second, Barr appeared to be thrown off by Harris's first question: "Has the president or anyone else asked you to open an
investigation into anyone?" She added "suggested" or "inferred" as qualifiers. He ended up replying that he didn't know.
Later, when Barr interrupted her, she snapped "Sir I am asking a question." After questioning whether Barr should recuse himself
from overseeing the 14 criminal referrals from the Mueller probe, Harris concluded that it appeared Barr wasn't familiar with the
underlying evidence.
Here's the full exchange.
* * *
Update 13: After patiently biding his time, Spartacus finally got his chance to speak. Unfortunately for the Senator, whose presidential
bid is floundering, Barr easily parried his rhetorical thrusts, making the senator look almost inept.
Booker went all in on Russia, accusing Barr of protecting an administration that had "hundreds" of documented contacts with foreign
adversaries, and of "normalizing" deceit and lies.
"You're giving sanction to behavior in language you used at your press conference, and in your summary, that stimulated Mueller
to write such a strong rebuking letter. You're adding normalcy to a point where we should be sounding alarms."
Barr replied that it's not unusual for foreign governments to reach out to presidential campaigns, and avoided answering most
of Booker's other questions by asking Booker to elaborate or saying he didn't know what Booker was talking about.
Booker's question about whether the American people should be 'grateful' for campaign contacts with the Russians.
* * *
Update 12: In another highlight from the Democrats' lineup, 'Da Nang Dick' Blumenthal (a former AG from the state of Connecticut)
sparred with Barr over whether he should recuse himself from overseeing some of the seed investigations that resulted from Mueller's
work (Barr said he won't), with Blumenthal insinuating that Barr has been acting like a mole for the White House and keeping the
president apprised of developments in all the ongoing investigations.
Blumenthal said to Barr after bashing him for neglecting to disclose the Mueller letter: "I think history will judge you harshly.
After Barr excoriated the Dems for trying to weaponize the DOJ as a political tool, Barr said "I'm not in the business of determining
if lies were told to the American people,'' Barr says. "I'm in the business of determining if crimes were committed."
Here are the highlights from the exchange.
* * *
Update 11: The first Democrat up after the break was Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota senator and presidential contender whose campaign
has been marred by allegations that she was an abusive, vindictive boss. She was the first of the presidential candidates in the
room to ask a question.
Unsurprisingly, she didn't hold back, and offered basically a 'greatest hits' of the Democrats' gripes so far: Accusing Barr of
misleading Congress during his prior testimony, questioning whether Trump's statements would amount to perjury and accusing Barr
of misrepresenting himself during his last appearance before Congress.
To sum up, she did everything short of chucking a stapler at Barr.
* * *
Update 10: Though she isn't in the room today, Sen. Elizabeth Warren felt she needed to communicate a very important message to
Barr: That she would like him to resign.
Update 9: Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana kicked off the second leg of Barr's testimony by asking probing questions about investigating
what lead to the start of the Mueller report, and the source of leaks inside the FBI.
Kennedy also asked Barr to look into the Mueller team as well.
* * *
Update 8: Lindsey Graham has called for an hour-long break in the hearing to accommodate a few Senate votes (and a lunch break
for the Senators and Barr).
Here's a summary of the first half of the hearing (per BBG):
While Republicans are delving into why an FBI investigation was launched into the Trump campaign, and why Hillary Clinton
wasn't investigated further, Democrats have been focusing on a letter Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrote Barr in March, complaining
about the way his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election was summarized.
Barr told the committee he didn't want to release the report in a piecemeal fashion, but put it out in full with appropriate
redactions.
Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham says as far as he's concerned the Mueller probe is over and he wants to focus on the beginning
of the FBI investigation.
For Democrats it's not over though, and they pressed Barr on his refusal to rule that the president obstructed justice, despite
at least 10 instances of that cited in Mueller's report.
Barr said he was surprised Mueller didn't reach a conclusion on obstruction, suggesting that was his job. But after reviewing
the evidence, he and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, concluded the president lacked the corrupt intent necessary to find he obstructed
justice.
Barr said he has no objection to Mueller testifying before Congress.
But the Attorney General said it'd be up to the president to decide whether former White House Counsel Don McGahn can testify.
Meanwhile, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, desperate for attention considering it's looking extremely likely that Barr
is going to blow him off tomorrow, told reporters that Barr has threatened not to appear tomorrow if staff attorneys are allowed
to question him. The Committee just voted to allow staff attorneys to ask questions.
* * *
Update 7: In response to questioning from Mike Lee about FBI and DOJ overreach, Barr said he believes it was a few people in senior
positions who are 'no longer there'.
Following that, Lee asked Barr if there is any evidence that Vladimir Putin "has something" on Trump. "None that I am aware
of," he said.
* * *
Update 6: Dick Durbin, a member of the Democratic leadership, is up, and he's laying into Barr, accusing the Republicans on the
committee of trying to distract from Mueller's findings by bringing up the Clintons, and pressing him on his testimony on April 9
and April 10.
Republicans on the panel and Barr were engaging in a "coordinated" response to focus on Hillary's emails instead of the Mueller
report...what he called a "lock 'er up" defense.
* * *
Update 5: Asked by John Cornyn about whether the Steele Dossier was a disinformation campaign, Barr said he couldn't say that
it wasn't, and that this is something he is actively looking into.
That's not "entirely speculative," Barr said.
* * *
Update 4: Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, was predictably hostile, accusing Barr of "filibustering" and misleading Congress with his
testimony on April 9 and April 10, when he said he hadn't heard any concerns from Mueller.
"I believe your answer was purposefully misleading, and others do, too."
* * *
Update 3: Chuck Grassley, who had been chairman of the Judiciary Committee until this year, when he took on another committee
leadership role and left the leadership of the Judiciary campaign, jumps right into it: He asked Barr whether Mueller should have
looked into whether the Steele Dossier was a Russian disinformation campaign.
He also asked whether Mueller should have looked into the origins of the FBI probe into Russian collusion that ultimately morphed
into the Mueller probe.
Barr said he would look into whether Mueller explored this avenue.
* * *
Update 2: In his opening statement, Barr told Congress that he had spoken to Mueller and that the special counsel said press reporting
on the letter that the special counsel had written to Barr complaining about certain aspects of Barr's summary was inaccurate.
BARR SAYS MUELLER SAID PRESS REPORTING ON LETTER WAS INACCURATE
BARR SAYS MUELLER DIDN'T SAY DOJ MISREPRESENTED HIS REPORT
Barr added that he was 'surprised' when Mueller didn't rule on obstruction, though he also told said that Comey's firing didn't
amount to obstruction of justice: Comey's refusal to tell public what he was telling the president warranted firing.
During his questioning by Feinstein, which focused on what Trump told former White House counsel Donald McGahn II, Barr more than
held his own, arguing that it would be impossible to prove the president ever actually directed the firing of Mueller, and it would
also be difficult to show corrupt intent beyond a reasonable doubt.
Barr went on to describe Trump as "falsely accused" of Russian conspiracy "and he felt this investigation was unfair and propelled
by political opponents."
"That is not a corrupt motive."
* * *
Update: As the Barr hearing began, Jerry Nadler, apparently uncomfortable with being out of the spotlight, told reporters that
talks with Mueller to appear before Congress had made progress, and that the two sides just needed to agree on a date for the hearing.
Right now, it's looking like that hearing - which could be the biggest Washington media circus since Comey's testimony in June 2017
- will happen in May.
NADLER: AGREEMENT ON MUELLER TESTIFYING SUBJECT TO SETTING DATE
During his opening statement, Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, defended Mueller and his conclusions,
and blasted the FBI (even reading off some of Peter Strzok's text messages) for its bias toward Trump, and for failing to hold Hillary
Clinton accountable.
GRAHAM SAYS CLINTON E-MAIL PROBE DONE BY ANTI-TRUMP PEOPLE
GRAHAM SAYS `FOR ME IT IS OVER'
And as is his custom, President Trump reminded voters that Mueller found 'no collusion and no obstruction' shortly before the
hearing began.
Diane Feinstein, the ranking member, excoriated Barr for his purported biases and dissembling, and demanded that the panel must
hear from Mueller as well.
FEINSTEIN SAYS SENATE PANEL NEEDS TO HEAR FROM MUELLER
Of note: Barr has handed over the full Mueller letter. Read it below:
* * *
Last night's deep-state 'leak' of a letter penned by Robert Mueller to AG (and longtime friend and colleague) William Barr complaining
that Barr's summary of Mueller's findings, released several weeks before the redacted report, didn't capture the full "context, nature
and substance" of the report was of course conveniently timed to hand Democrats plenty of ammunition to tear into Barr during Wednesday
morning's hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
(Of course, as we've pointed
out , when Barr pressed Mueller about whether Barr's summary was inaccurate, the special counsel demurred, and affirmed that
he didn't think it was. Mueller's letter was reportedly dated March 27. Barr released the summary on March 24.)
But the fact Barr insisted during back-to-back Congressional testimony on April 9 & April 10 that he didn't know where the special
counsel stood regarding the AG's characterization of the report has already prompted some Democratic senators to demand Barr's resignation,
per
the Washington Post.
Chris Van Hollen, the Senator who asked Barr about what he knew about Mueller's feelings about the summary, demanded Barr resign
and once again accused him of being a 'propaganda chief' for the president.
He labeled his position "the most recent example of the attorney general acting as the chief propagandist for the Trump administration
instead of answering questions in a straightforward and objective manner."
In a prepared statement for the committee, Barr defended his handling of the special counsel's investigation.
"As Attorney General, I serve as the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States, and it is my responsibility to ensure
that the Department carries out its law-enforcement functions appropriately. The Special Counsel's investigation was no exception."
Pelosi seized on the reports about the Mueller letter to demand that Barr release the full Mueller report and all the underlying
docs that the Demos have subpoenaed.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler demanded that Barr appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday for another hearing,
as the Dems have requested.
And Chuck Schumer demanded that Barr bring the full Mueller letter with him to Wednesday's hearing, and also demanded that Mueller
appear before Congress to testify.
The Dems lapdogs in the press have also piled on, with
CNN's Chris
Cilizza warning that "William Barr is in deep trouble" in an editorial published Wednesday morning shortly before the hearing
was set to begin.
With all the drama, Wednesday's hearing is bound to be a lively one. Watch live below:
"Russiagate without Russia" actually means "Isrealgate". This individual points that he mentions below does not matter. Russiagate was a carefully planned and
brilliantly executed false flag operation run by intelligences
agencies (with GB agencies playing an important in some episodes decisive role) and headed probably by Obama himself via Brennan. There
were two goals: (1) to exclude any possibility of detente with Russia and (2) to block any Trump attempts to change the USA foreign
policy including running foreign war that enrich Pentagon contractors and justify supersized budget for intelligence agencies. As such
is was a great success.
The fact that no American was indicted and that Mueller attempt to prosecute Russian marketing agneces failed does not matter. The
atmosphere is now posoned for a generation. Americans are brainwashed and residue of Russiagate will stay for a long, long time. Neocons
Bolton and Pompeo now run Trump administration foreign policy with Trump performing most ceremonial role in foreign policy domain.
In this sense Skripals poisoning was another false flag operation, which was the logical continuation of Russiagate. And Magnitsky
killing (with Browder now a primary suspect) was a precursor to it. Both were run from Great Britain.
It is actually interesting how Mueller report swiped under the carpet the role of Great Britain in unleashing the Russiagate hysteria.
Two important foreign forces in the 2016 US Presidential elections was the Israel lobby and Great Britain. Trump proved to be a
marionette not of Russia but of Israeli lobby. so sad...
Notable quotes:
"... Mueller's report does answer that question: There were effectively no "Kremlin intermediaries." The report contains no evidence that anyone from the Trump campaign spoke to a Kremlin representative during the election, aside from conversations with the Russian ambassador and a press-office assistant, both of whom were ruled out as having participated in a conspiracy (more on them later). ..."
For more than two years, leading US political and media voices promoted a narrative that Donald Trump conspired with or was compromised
by the Kremlin, and that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would prove it. In the process, they overlooked countervailing evidence and
diverted anti-Trump energies into fervent speculation and prolonged anticipation. So long as Mueller was on the case, it was possible
to believe that " The Walls Are Closing In " on the
traitor /
puppet / asset in the
White House
.
The long-awaited completion of Mueller's probe, and the release of his redacted report, reveals this narrative -- and the expectations
it fueled -- to be unfounded. No American was indicted for conspiring with Russia to influence the 2016 election. Mueller's report
does lay out extensive evidence that Trump sought to impede the investigation, but it declines to issue a verdict on obstruction.
It presents no evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with an alleged effort by the Russian government to defeat Hillary Clinton,
and instead renders this conclusion: "Ultimately, the investigation did not establish that the [Trump] Campaign coordinated or conspired
with the Russian government in its election-interference activities." As a result, Mueller's report provides the opposite of what
Russiagate promoters led their audiences to expect: Rather than detailing a sinister collusion plot with Russia, it presents what
amounts to an extended indictment of the conspiracy theory itself.
1. Russiagate Without Russia
The most fundamental element of a conspiracy is contact between the two parties doing the conspiring. Hence, on the eve of the
report's release, The New York
Times noted that among the "outstanding questions" that Mueller would answer were the nature of "contacts between Kremlin
intermediaries and the Trump campaign."
Mueller's report does answer that question: There were effectively no "Kremlin intermediaries." The report contains no evidence
that anyone from the Trump campaign spoke to a Kremlin representative during the election, aside from conversations with the Russian
ambassador and a press-office assistant, both of whom were ruled out as having participated in a conspiracy (more on them later).
It should be no surprise, then, to learn from Mueller that, when "Russian government officials and prominent Russian businessmen
began trying to make inroads into the new administration" after Trump's election victory, they did not know whom to call. These powerful
Russians, Mueller noted, "appeared not to have preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with senior officials around the President-Elect."
If top Russians did not have "preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with" the people that they supposedly conspired with,
perhaps that is because they did not actually conspire.
To borrow a phrase from Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen, when it comes to the core question of contacts between
Trump and the Russian government, we are left with a "Russiagate without Russia." Instead we have a series of interactions where
Trump associates speak with Russian nationals, people with ties to Russian nationals, or people who claim to have ties to
the Russian government. But none of these "links," "ties," or associations ever entail a member of the Trump campaign interacting
with a Kremlin intermediary. Russiagate promoters have nonetheless fueled a dogged media effort to track
every
known instance in which someone in Trump's orbit
interacted with " the Russians ," or
someone who can be linked
to them . There is nothing illegal or inherently suspect about speaking to a Russian national -- but there is something xenophobic
about implying as much.
2. Russiagate's Predicate Led Nowhere
The most glaring absence of a Kremlin intermediary comes in the case that ostensibly prompted the entire Trump-Russia investigation.
During an April 2016 meeting in Rome, a London-based professor named Joseph Mifsud reportedly informed Trump campaign aide George
Papadopoulos that "the Russians" had obtained "thousands of emails" containing "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. That information made its
way to the FBI, which used it as a pretext to open the "Crossfire Hurricane" probe on July 31, 2016. Papadopoulos was later indicted
for lying to FBI agents about the timing of his contacts with Mifsud. The case stoked speculation that Papadopoulos acted as an
intermediary between
Trump and Russia
.
But Papadopoulos played no such role. And while the Mueller report says that Papadopoulos "understood Mifsud to have substantial
connections to high-level Russian government officials," it never asserts that Mifsud actuall y had those connections.
Since Mifsud's suspected Russian connections were the purported predicate for the FBI's initial Trump-Russia investigation, that
is a conspicuous non-call. Another is the revelation from Mueller that
Mifsud made false statements to FBI investigators
when they interviewed him in February 2017 -- but yet, unlike Papadopoulos, Mifsud was not indicted. Thus, even the interaction that
sparked the Russia-collusion probe did not reveal collusion.
3. Sergey Kislyak Had "Brief and Non-Substantive" Interactions With the Trump Camp
Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak's conversations with Trump campaign officials and associates during and after the 2016 election
were the focus of intense controversy and speculation, leading to the recusal of
Jeff Sessions, then attorney
general, and to the indictment of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
After an exhaustive review, Mueller concluded that Kislyak's interactions with Trump campaign officials at public events "were
brief, public, and non-substantive." As for Kislyak's
much –
ballyhooed meeting which Sessions in September 2016, Mueller saw no reason to dispute that it "included any more than a passing
mention of the presidential campaign." When Kislyak spoke with other Trump aides after the August 2016 Republican National Convention,
Mueller "did not identify evidence in those interactions of coordination between the Campaign and the Russian government."
The same goes for Kislyak's post-election conversations with Flynn. Mueller indicted Flynn for making "false statements and omissions"
in an interview with the FBI about his contacts with Kislyak during the transition in December 2016. The prevailing supposition was
that Flynn lied in order to hide from the FBI an
election-related payoff or "
quid pro quo
" with the Kremlin. The report punctures that thesis by reaffirming the facts in Flynn's indictment: What Flynn hid from agents
was that he had "called Kislyak to request Russian restraint" in response to sanctions imposed by the outgoing Obama administration,
and that Kislyak had agreed. Mueller ruled out the possibility that Flynn could have implicated Trump in anything criminal by noting
the absence of evidence that Flynn "possessed information damaging to the President that would give the President a personal incentive
to end the FBI's inquiry into Flynn's conduct."
4. Trump Tower Moscow Had No Help From Moscow
The November 2018 indictment of Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was widely seen as damning, possibly impeachment-worthy,
for Trump. Cohen admitted to giving false written answers to Congress in a bid to downplay Trump's personal knowledge of his company's
failed effort to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. To proponents of the collusion theory, Cohen's admitted lies were proof that "
Trump is compromised by
Russia ," " full stop ."
But the Mueller report does not show any such compromise, and, in fact, shows there to be no Trump-Kremlin relationship. Cohen,
the report notes, "requested [Kremlin] assistance in moving the project forward, both in securing land to build the project and with
financing." The request was evidently rejected. Elena Poliakova, the personal assistant to Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov,
spoke with Cohen by phone after he e-mailed her office for help. After their 20-minute call, the report says, "Cohen could not recall
any direct follow-up from Poliakova or from any other representative of the Russian government, nor did the [Special Counsel's] Office
identify any evidence of direct follow-up."
5. and Trump Didn't Ask Cohen to Lie About It
The Mueller report not only dispels the notion that Trump had secret dealings with the Kremlin over Trump Tower Moscow; it also
rejects a related impeachment-level "bombshell." In January, BuzzFeed News
reported that Mueller had evidence that Trump "directed" Cohen to lie to Congress about the Moscow project. But according to
Mueller, "the evidence available to us does not establish that the President directed or aided Cohen's false testimony," and that
Cohen himself testified "that he and the President did not explicitly discuss whether Cohen's testimony about the Trump Tower Moscow
project would be or was false." In a de-facto retraction, BuzzFeed updated its story with an
acknowledgment
of Mueller's conclusion .
6. The Trump Tower Meeting Really Was Just a "Waste of Time"
The June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower was
widely
dubbed
the
" Smoking
Gun ." An e-mail chain showed that Donald Trump Jr. welcomed an offer to accept compromising information about Clinton as "part
of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." But the pitch did not come from the meeting's Russian participants, but instead
from Rob Goldstone, a British music publicist acting on their behalf. Goldstone said that he invented "publicist puff" to secure
the meeting, because in reality,
as he told NPR , "I had no idea what I was talking about."
Mueller noted that Trump Jr.'s response "showed that the Campaign anticipated receiving information from Russia that could assist
candidate Trump's electoral prospects, but the Russian lawyer's presentation did not provide such information [emphasis mine]."
The report further recounts that during the meeting Jared Kushner texted then-Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort that it was a "waste
of time," and requested that his assistants "call him to give him an excuse to leave." Accordingly, when "Veselnitskaya made additional
efforts to follow up on the meeting," after the election, "the Trump Transition Team did not engage."
7. Manafort Did Not Share Polling Data to Meddle in the US Election
In January, Mueller accused Manafort of lying to investigators about several matters, including sharing Trump polling data and
discussing a Ukraine peace plan with a Ukrainian-Russian colleague, Konstantin Kilimnik, during the 2016 campaign. According to Mueller,
the FBI "assesses" that Kilimnik has unspecified "ties to Russian intelligence." To collusion proponents, the revelation was dubbed
" the closest we've seen yet to real, live, actual
collusion " and even the "
Russian collusion smoking gun ."
Mueller, of course, reached a different conclusion: He "did not identify evidence of a connection between Manafort's sharing polling
data and Russia's interference in the election," and, moreover, "did not establish that Manafort otherwise coordinated with the Russian
government on its election-interference efforts." Mueller noted that he "could not reliably determine Manafort's purpose in sharing"
the polling data, but also acknowledged (and bolstered) the explanation of his star witness, Rick Gates, that Manafort was motivated
by proving his financial value to former and future clients.
Mueller also gave us new reasons to doubt the assertions that Kilimnik himself is a Russian intelligence asset or spy. First,
Mueller did not join
media pundits in asserting such about
Kilimnik. Second, to support his vague contention that Kilimnik has, according to the FBI, "ties to Russian intelligence," Mueller
offered up a list of " pieces of the Office's
Evidence" that contains no direct evidence. For his part, Kilimnik has repeatedly stated that he has no such ties, and recently
told The Washington Post that Mueller never attempted to interview him.
8. The Steele Dossier Was Fiction
The Steele dossier -- a collection of Democratic National Committee-funded opposition research alleging a high-level Trump-Russia
criminal relationship -- played a critical role in the Russiagate saga. The FBI relied on it for leads and evidentiary material in
its investigation of the Trump campaign ties to Russia, and prominent
politicians ,
pundits , and
media
outlets promoted it as
credible .
The Mueller report,
The New York Times
noted last week , has "underscored what had grown clearer for months some of the most sensational claims in the dossier appeared
to be false, and others were impossible to prove." Steele reported that low-level Trump aide Carter Page was offered a 19 percent
stake in the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft if he could get Trump to lift Western sanctions. In October 2016 the FBI, citing
the Steele dossier, told the FISA court that it "believes that [Russia's] efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other
individuals associated with" the Trump campaign. The Mueller report, however, could "not establish that Page coordinated with the
Russian government in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election."
The Steele dossier claimed that Michael Cohen visited Prague to meet Russian agents in the summer of 2016. In April 2018, McClatchy
reported to much fanfare that Mueller's team "has evidence" that placed Cohen in Prague during the period in question. Cohen later
denied the claim under oath, and Mueller agreed, noting that Cohen "never traveled to Prague."
After reports emerged in August 2016 that the Trump campaign had rejected an amendment to the Republican National Committee platform
that called for arming Ukraine, Steele claimed that it was the result of a quid pro quo. The Mueller report "did not establish that"
the rejection of the Ukraine amendment was "undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia."
9. The Trump Campaign Had No Secret Channel to WikiLeaks
In January, veteran Republican operative and conspiracy theorist Roger Stone caused a stir when he was indicted for lying to Congress
about his efforts to make contact with WikiLeaks. But Mueller's indictment actually showed that Stone
had no communications with WikiLeaks
before the election and no privileged information about its releases . Most significantly, it revealed that Trump officials were
trying to learn about the WikiLeaks releases through Stone -- a fact that underscored that the Trump campaign neither worked with
WikiLeaks nor had advance knowledge of its e-mail dumps.
Mueller's final report does nothing to alter that picture. Its sections on Stone are heavily redacted, owing to Stone's pending
trial. But they do make clear that Mueller conducted an extensive search to establish a tie between WikiLeaks, the Trump campaign,
and Stone -- and came up empty. New
reporting from The Washington Post underscores just how far their farcical efforts went. The Mueller team devoted
time and energy to determine whether far-right conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, best known for promoting the false claim that Barack
Obama was born outside the United States, served as a link between Stone and WikiLeaks. Mueller's prosecutors "spent weeks coaxing,
cajoling and admonishing the conspiracy theorist, as they pressed him to stick to facts and not reconstruct stories," the Post
reports. "At times, they had debated the nature of memory itself." It is unsurprising that this led Mueller's prosecutors to
ultimately declare, according to Corsi's attorney, "We can't use any of this."
10. There Was No Cover-Up
The Mueller report does not just dispel the conspiracy theories that have engulfed political and media circles for two years;
it puts to rest the most popular, recent one: that Attorney General William Barr engaged in a
cover-up . According to the dominant narrative, Barr was
somehow concealing Mueller's damning evidence
, while Mueller, even more improbably, stayed silent.
One could argue that Barr's summary downplays the obstruction findings, though it accurately relays that Mueller's report does
"not exonerate" Trump. It was Mueller's decision to leave the verdict on obstruction to Barr and make clear that if Congress disagrees,
it has the power to indict Trump on its own. Mueller's office assisted with Barr's redactions, which proved to be, as Barr had pledged,
extremely limited. Despite containing numerous embarrassing details about Trump, no executive privilege was invoked to censor the
report's contents.
In the end, Mueller's report shows that the Trump-Russia collusion narrative embraced and evangelized by the US political and
media establishments to be a work of
fiction . The American public
was presented with a far different picture from what was expected, because leading pundits, outlets, and politicians ignored the
countervailing facts and promoted maximalist interpretations of others. Anonymous officials also leaked explosive yet uncorroborated
claims, leaving behind many stories that were subsequently discredited, retracted, or remain unconfirmed to this day.
It is too early to assess the damage that influential Russiagate promoters have done to their own reputations; to public confidence
in our democratic system and media; and to the prospects of defeating Trump, who always stood to benefit if the all-consuming conspiracy
theory ultimately collapsed. The scale of the wreckage, confirmed by Mueller's report, may prove to be the ultimate Russiagate scandal.
"... The truth is, that a foreign government did indeed meddle in the American Presidential election, in a failed attempt to fix the outcome, but it was not Russia. It was the City of London, and the Five Eyes imperial intelligence services of the British Commonwealth, along with treasonous, "Tory" American elements. If that admission is forced to the surface, through the vigorous actions of all that oppose the presently dominant Big Lie tyranny, that revelation will shock and liberate people all over the world. The mental stranglehold of "fake news" media outlets can be permanently broken. That is the task of the next days and weeks. ..."
"... Apart from documenting the presence of "former" British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove, and former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan at the center of the Russiagate campaign against President Trump for the past several years, we must, in order to expose this successfully, identify not only what was actually done and who was doing it, but the deeper policy motivation: why it was done. ..."
"... President Donald Trump has no vested interest in protecting the British "special relationship." From his second day in office, Trump declared that he would clean out the intelligence agencies. If Trump were to do that, however, the real, tragic history of America's last 50 years would be exhumed from that swamp. Shining a light into that darkness would illuminate the world. The American people would stop playing Othello to the City of London's Iago. They would denounce the British "special relationship," never again to fight imperial wars for the greater glory of the British Empire. They would learn the true story of Vietnam, of Iraq 1991 and Iraq 2003, of Libya 2011, and many other conflicts, special operations, and assassinations. The American people would know the truth, and the truth would set them free. ..."
"... The current insurrection against the United States Presidency is part of a global strategic battle: will a conspiracy of republican forces overcome the modern day British imperial system, centered in the hot money centers of the City of London and Wall Street, or will the oligarchical system once again triumph, immiserating all but the very wealthy? That is the real issue of the insurrection against the maverick American president being conducted by the London and NATO-centered enforcers of the old world. To paraphrase the American Declaration of Independence, ..."
"... According to CIA Director John Brennan's Congressional testimony, the British began complaining loudly about candidate Trump and Russia in late 2015. Brennan's statements were echoed in articles in The Guardian . According to Brennan, intelligence leads about Trump and Russia had been forwarded to Brennan from both British intelligence and from Estonia. ..."
"... This task force targeted Trump campaign volunteers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in entrapment operations on British soil, using British agents, during the spring and summer of 2016. ..."
"... Hannigan abruptly resigned from GCHQ shortly after the election, sparking widespread speculation that the British were making an attempt at damage control. ..."
"... In 2016, the Manafort investigation migrated to the Democratic National Committee with direct assistance provided by Ukrainian state intelligence. This effort was led by Alexandra Chalupa, an admirer of Stepan Bandera and other heroes of Nazi history in Ukraine. Chalupa also had deep connections to British-oriented networks at the U.S. State Department. ..."
"... The final nail in this case has been provided by The Hill 's John Solomon. He says that Steele told former Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr about the sources for the dirty dossier. According to Solomon, Ohr's notes reveal one main source, a former senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States. But, as anyone familiar with the territory would know, there is no such retired senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States whose entire life is not controlled by the CIA. ..."
"... As a result of Congressional investigations of Russiagate, it has become abundantly clear that the British operation against Trump was aided and abetted by the Obama White House, the State Department, the CIA, the FBI, and personalities associated with the National Endowment for Democracy. ..."
"... Out of the Ukraine coup, an entire military-centered propaganda apparatus arose, first through NATO, and then out from there to military units and diplomatic centers in the U.S., Europe, and Britain, to run low intensity operations, and black propaganda, against Russia. ..."
"... The British end of the operation includes the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, and NATO's Strategic Communications Center. In the United States, the Integrity Initiative has been integrated into the Global Engagement Center at the U.S. State Department. Most certainly, this operation is poised again to intervene in the U.S. elections; the British House of Lords have stated explicitly, in their December 2018 report, British Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order, that Donald Trump must not be re-elected. ..."
"... This is why the British are yelping that under no circumstances can the classified documents concerning their role in the attempted coup against Donald Trump be declassified. It would end their leverage over the United States and much of Europe. That is why these documents must indeed be declassified, and parallel investigations by citizens and government officials concerned with ending the imperial system, otherwise known as the current "war party," must begin in earnest. ..."
"... Why did the DNC not allow the FBI to investigate the so-called" Russian hacked" emails? Rather, they hire CrowdStrike did you know: ..."
"... War with Afghanistan was Obama's payoff to the MIC, just as Russia is now Trump's payoff. ..."
"... The important truth about the emails is in their authenticity and in the contents. No one has even attempted to claim that they are not authentic or that the contents we've seen are other than the actual contents of the authentic messages. ..."
"... That is what i think. People should not concentrate on how, who and where. This is just a smokescreen to avoid talking about the content of the emails and Hillary Clinton's disgusting actions. She is a criminal and a murderess just like Obama and Tony Blair are lyers and mass murderers. ..."
The British Role in 'Russiagate' Is About to Be Fully Exposed April 8, 2019
20190408-russiagate-exposed-brits.pdf
The "fake news" media has now dropped its pretense of having ever had any intention of allowing the truth -- as documented in
U.S. Attorney General Barr's summary of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's report, exonerating President Donald Trump of having
"conspired or coordinated with the Russian government" -- to thoroughly refute the Russiagate "Big Lie." Soon, however, it is certain
that the deliberate, British Intelligence-originated, military-grade disinformation campaign carried out against the United States,
including to this day, will be exposed.
The truth is, that a foreign government did indeed meddle in the American Presidential election, in a failed attempt to fix
the outcome, but it was not Russia. It was the City of London, and the Five Eyes imperial intelligence services of the British Commonwealth,
along with treasonous, "Tory" American elements. If that admission is forced to the surface, through the vigorous actions of all
that oppose the presently dominant Big Lie tyranny, that revelation will shock and liberate people all over the world. The mental
stranglehold of "fake news" media outlets can be permanently broken. That is the task of the next days and weeks.
"It's hard to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat," says the Chinese proverb. Yet, although the Mueller
report was called a "nothing burger," it was not: it still presented the potentially lethal lie that twelve Russian gremlins, code-named
Guccifer 2.0, hacked the DNC. Sundry media meatheads thus continue to blog and broadcast about "what else is really there."
The false Russian hack story, still being repeated, marches on, undeterred, like the emperor without any clothes. One lame-brained
variation, promoted in order to cover up the British role, states that Hillary Clinton, rather than Trump, colluded with the Russians.
It is being repeated by Republicans and Democrats alike, some of them malicious, some of them confused, and all of them completely
wrong. The media, such as the failed New York Times and various electronic media, must be forced to either admit the truth,
or be even more thoroughly discredited than they already have been. They must stop their constant repetition of this Joseph Goebbels-like
Big Lie. There must be a vigorous dissemination of the truth by all those journalists, politicians, activists and citizens that love
truth more than their own assumptions, including about President Trump, or other dearly-held systems of false belief.
Apart from documenting the presence of "former" British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, former MI6 head Sir Richard
Dearlove, and former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan at the center of the Russiagate campaign against President Trump for the past several
years, we must, in order to expose this successfully, identify not only what was actually done and who was doing it, but the deeper
policy motivation: why it was done.
A New Cultural Paradigm
The world is actually on the verge of ending the military conflicts among the major world powers, such as Russia, China, the United
States, and India. These four powers, and not the City of London, are the key fulcrum around which a new era in humanity's future
will be decided. A new monetary and credit system brought into being through these four powers would foster the greatest physical
economic growth in the history of humanity. In addition, discussions involving Italy working with China on the industrialization
of the African continent (discussions which could soon also involve the United States) show that sections of Europe want to join
China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and leave the dying trans-Atlantic financial empire behind.
The recent announcement of a United States commitment to return to the Moon by 2024 can, in particular, become the basis for a
proposal to other nations -- for example, China, Russia, and India, all of whom are space powers of demonstrated capability -- to
resolve their differences on Earth in a higher, joint mission. As Russia's Roscosmos Director Dmitry Rogozin said in a recent interview:
"I am a fierce proponent of international cooperation, including with Americans, because their country is big and technologically
advanced, and they can make good partners Especially since personal and professional relations between Roscosmos and NASA at the
working level are great."
There is also the possibility of ending the danger of thermonuclear war. President Trump, speaking on April 4 of the prospects
for world peace, stated:
"Between Russia, China, and us, we're all making hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons, including nuclear, which is
ridiculous. I think it's much better if we all got together and didn't make these weapons those three countries I think can come
together and stop the spending and spend on things that are more productive toward long-term peace."
This is a statement of real importance. Such an outlook is a rejection of the "perpetual crisis/perpetual war" outlook of the
Bush-Obama Administration, a four-term "war presidency" which was abruptly, unexpectedly ended in 2016. The British were not amused.
It is to stop this new cultural paradigm, pivoted on the Pacific and the potential Four Powers alliance, that British imperial
forces have deployed. The 2016 election of President Trump, and his personal friendship with President Xi Jinping and desire to work
with President Putin, are an intolerable strategic threat to the eighteenth-century geopolitics of the British empire. They have
repeatedly used Russiagate to disrupt the process of deliberation among Presidents Xi, Trump, and Putin, thus increasing the danger
of war. Russiagate, in the interest of international security, must be ended by exposing it for the utter fraud that it is.
The Truth Set Free
President Donald Trump has no vested interest in protecting the British "special relationship." From his second day in office,
Trump declared that he would clean out the intelligence agencies. If Trump were to do that, however, the real, tragic history of
America's last 50 years would be exhumed from that swamp. Shining a light into that darkness would illuminate the world. The American
people would stop playing Othello to the City of London's Iago. They would denounce the British "special relationship," never again
to fight imperial wars for the greater glory of the British Empire. They would learn the true story of Vietnam, of Iraq 1991 and
Iraq 2003, of Libya 2011, and many other conflicts, special operations, and assassinations. The American people would know the truth,
and the truth would set them free.
The current insurrection against the United States Presidency is part of a global strategic battle: will a conspiracy of republican
forces overcome the modern day British imperial system, centered in the hot money centers of the City of London and Wall Street,
or will the oligarchical system once again triumph, immiserating all but the very wealthy? That is the real issue of the insurrection
against the maverick American president being conducted by the London and NATO-centered enforcers of the old world. To paraphrase
the American Declaration of Independence,
"The history of the present Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the
undermining of the United States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world."
DOCUMENTATION
While Robert Mueller found that there was "no collusion" between Donald Trump or the Trump Campaign and Russia, he also filed
two indictments regarding alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. The first alleges that 12 members of Russian Military
Intelligence hacked the DNC and John Podesta and delivered the purloined files to WikiLeaks for strategic publication before the
July 2016 Democratic National Convention and in October 2016, one month before the election. The second indictment charges the Internet
Research Agency, a Russian internet merchandising and marketing firm, with running social media campaigns in the U.S. in 2016 designed
to impact the election. When the fuller version of the Mueller report becomes public, it is certain to recharge the claims of Russian
interference based on the so-called background "evidence" supporting these indictments.
The good news, however, is that investigations in the United States and Britain, have unearthed significant contrary evidence
exposing British Intelligence, NATO, and, to a lesser extent, Ukraine, as the actual foreign actors in the 2016 U.S. presidential
election. We provide a short summary of the main aspects of that evidence to spark further investigations of the British intelligence
networks, entities, and methods at issue, internationally. More detailed accounts concerning specific aspects of what we recite here
can be found on our website.
The Russian Hack That Wasn't
The Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, an association of former U.S. intelligence officials, have demonstrated that
the Russian hack of the DNC alleged by Robert Mueller, was more likely an internal leak,
rather than a hack conducted
over the internet. William Binney, who conducted the main investigations for the VIPS, spent 30 years at the National Security Agency,
becoming Technical Director. He designed the sorts of NSA programs that would detect a Russian hack if one occurred. Binney conducted
an actual forensic examination of the DNC files released by WikiLeaks, and the related files circulated by the persona Guccifer 2.0,
who Robert Mueller claims is a GRU creation. Binney has demonstrated that the calculated transfer speeds and metadata characteristics
of these files are consistent with downloading to a thumb drive or storage device rather than an internet-based hack. This supports
the account by WikiLeaks of how it obtained the files. According to WikiLeaks and former Ambassador Craig Murray, they were obtained
from a person who was not a Russian state actor of any kind, in Washington, D.C. WikiLeaks offered to tell the Justice Department
all about this, and actual negotiations to this effect were proceeding in early 2017, when Senator Mark Warner and FBI Director James
Comey acted to sabotage and end the negotiations.
Further, as opposed to the hyperbole in the media and in Robert Mueller's indictment, analysis of the Internet Research Agency's
alleged "weaponization" of Facebook in 2016 involved
a paltry total of $46,000 in Facebook
ads and $4,700 spent on Google platforms . In an election in which the major campaigns spend tens of thousands of dollars every
day on these platforms, whatever the IRA thought it was doing in its amateurish and juvenile memes and tropes was like throwing a
stone in the ocean. Most of these activities occurred after the election and never mentioned either candidate. The interpretation
that these ads were designed to draw clicks and website traffic, rather than influence the election, must be considered.
The "evidence" for Mueller's GRU hacking indictment was provided, in part, by CrowdStrike, the DNC vendor that originated the
claims that the Russians had hacked that entity. CrowdStrike is closely associated with the Atlantic Council's Digital Research Lab
(DRL), an operation jointly funded by NATO's Strategic Communications Center and the U.S. State Department, to counter Russian "hybrid
warfare." CrowdStrike has been caught more than once falsely attributing hacks to the Russians and the Atlantic Council's DRL is
a font of anti-Russian intelligence operations.
The British Target Trump
According to CIA Director John Brennan's Congressional testimony, the British began complaining loudly about candidate Trump
and Russia in late 2015. Brennan's statements were echoed in articles in The Guardian . According to Brennan, intelligence
leads about Trump and Russia had been forwarded to Brennan from both British intelligence and from Estonia. The former head
of the Russia Desk for MI6 and protégé of Sir Richard Dearlove, Christopher Steele, fresh from working for British Intelligence,
the FBI, and U.S. State Department in the 2014 Ukraine coup, assembled in 2016 a phony dossier called Operation Charlemagne, claiming
widespread Russian interference in European elections, including in the Brexit vote. By the spring of 2016, Steele was contributing
to a British/U.S. intelligence task force on the Trump Campaign which had been convened at CIA headquarters under John Brennan's
direction.
This task force targeted Trump campaign volunteers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in entrapment operations on British
soil, using British agents, during the spring and summer of 2016. The personnel employed in these operations all had multiple
connections to the British firm Hakluyt, to Steele's firm Orbis, and to the British military's Integrity Initiative. Sometime in
the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, then head of GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief John Brennan personally. Hannigan abruptly
resigned from GCHQ shortly after the election, sparking widespread speculation that the British were making an attempt at damage
control.
Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort were already on the radar and under investigation by the same British, Dearlove-centered intelligence
network and by Christopher Steele specifically. Flynn had been defamed by Dearlove and Stefan Halper, as a possible Russian agent
way back in 2014 because he spoke to Russian researcher Svetlana Lokhova at a dinner sponsored by Dearlove's Cambridge Security Forum.
Or, at least that was the pretext for the targeting of Flynn, who otherwise defied British intelligence by exposing Western support
for terrorist operations in Syria and sought a collaborative relationship with Russia to counter ISIS. Manafort was under FBI investigation
throughout 2014 and 2015, largely in retaliation for his role in steering the Party of the Regions to political power in Ukraine.
In 2016, the Manafort investigation migrated to the Democratic National Committee with direct assistance provided by Ukrainian
state intelligence. This effort was led by Alexandra Chalupa, an admirer of Stepan Bandera and other heroes of Nazi history in Ukraine.
Chalupa also had deep connections to British-oriented networks at the U.S. State Department.
In or around June 2016, Christopher Steele began writing his dirty and bogus dossier about Trump and Russia. This is the dossier
which claimed that Trump was compromised by Putin and that Putin was coordinating with Trump in the 2016 election. The main "legend"
of this full-spectrum information warfare operation run from Britain, was that Donald Trump was receiving "dirt" on Hillary Clinton
from Russia. The operations targeting Page and Papadopoulos consisted of multiple attempts to plant fabricated evidence on them which
would reflect what Steele himself was fabricating in the dirty dossier. At the very same time, the infamous June 2016 meeting at
Trump Tower was being set up. That meeting involved the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who, it was alleged in a series of
bizarre emails written by British publicist Ron Goldstone to set up the meeting, could deliver "dirt" on Hillary Clinton direct from
the Russian government. Veselnitskaya didn't deliver any such dirt. But the entire operation was being monitored by State Department
intelligence agent Kyle Parker, an expert on Russia. Parker's emails reveal deep ties to the highest levels of British intelligence
and much chatter between them about Trump and Russia.
A now-changed version of the website for Christopher Steele's firm, Orbis, trumpeted an expertise in information warfare operations,
and the networks in which Steele runs are deeply integrated into the British military's Integrity Initiative. The Integrity Initiative
is a rapid response propaganda operation using major journalists in the United States and Europe to carry out targeted defamation
campaigns. Its central charge, according to documents posted by the hacking group Anonymous, is selling the United States and Western
Europe on the immediate need for regime change in Russia, even if that involves war.
Much has been made by Republicans and other lunkheads in the U.S. Congress of Steele's contacts with Russians for his dossier.
They claim that such contacts resulted in a Russian disinformation operation being run through the duped Christopher Steele. Nothing
could be further from the truth.
MI6's Dirty Dossier on Donald Trump: Full-Spectrum Information Warfare
On its face, Steele's dossier would immediately be recognized as a complete fabrication by any competent intelligence analyst.
He cites some 32 sources inside the Russian government for his fabricated claims about Trump. What they allegedly told him is specific
enough in time and content to identify them. To believe that the dossier is true or that actual Russians contributed to it, you must
also believe that that the British government was willing to roll up this entire network, exposing them, since the intention was
for the dossier's wild claims to be published as widely as possible. By all accounts, Britain and the United States together do not
have 32 highly placed sources inside the Russian government, nor would they ever make them public in this way or with this very sloppy
tradecraft. Steele's fabrication also uses aspects of readily available public information, such as the sale of 19% of the energy
company Rosneft, (the alleged bribe offered to Carter Page for lifting sanctions) to concoct a fictional narrative of high crimes
and misdemeanors.
Other claims in the dossier were published, publicly, in various Ukrainian publications. The famous claim that Trump directed
prostitutes to urinate on a bed once slept upon by Barack Obama seems to be plagiarized from similarly fake 2009 British propaganda
stories about Silvio Berlusconi spending the night with a prostitute in a hotel room in Rome, "defiling" Putin's bed. According to
various sources in the United States, this outrageous claim was made by Sergei Millian. George Papadopoulos has stated that he believes
Millian is an FBI informant, recounting in his book how a friend of Millian's blurted this out when Millian, Papadopoulos and the
friend were having coffee.
The final nail in this case has been provided by The Hill 's John Solomon. He says that Steele told former Associate
Attorney General Bruce Ohr about the sources for the dirty dossier. According to Solomon, Ohr's notes reveal one main source, a former
senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States. But, as anyone familiar with the territory would know, there is
no such retired senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States whose entire life is not controlled by the CIA.
Despite its obvious fake pedigree, Steele's dossier was laundered into the Justice Department repeatedly, by the CIA and State
Department and the Obama White House. It was used to obtain FISA surveillance warrants turning key members of the Trump Campaign
into walking microphones. It was circulated endlessly by the Clinton Campaign to a network of reporters in the U.S. known to serve
as scribes for the intelligence community. John Brennan used it to conduct a special emergency briefing of the leading members of
the U.S. Congress charged with intelligence responsibilities in August of 2016 and to brief Harry Reid, who was Senate Majority Leader
at the time. All of this activity meant that the salacious accusation that Trump was a Putin pawn and the FBI was investigating the
matter, leaked out and was used by the Clinton Campaign to defame Trump for its electoral advantage. When Trump won, Steele's nonsense
received the stamp of the U.S. intelligence community and official currency in the campaign to take out the President.
As a result of Congressional investigations of Russiagate, it has become abundantly clear that the British operation against
Trump was aided and abetted by the Obama White House, the State Department, the CIA, the FBI, and personalities associated with the
National Endowment for Democracy. The individuals involved might be named Veterans of the 2014 Ukrainian Coup, since all of
them also worked on this operation. It is no accident that Victoria Nuland, the case agent for the Ukraine coup, played a major role
in bolstering Steele's credentials for the purpose of selling his dirty dossier to the media and to the Justice Department. This
went so far as Steele giving a full scale briefing on his fabricated dossier at the State Department in October 2016.
Out of the Ukraine coup, an entire military-centered propaganda apparatus arose, first through NATO, and then out from there
to military units and diplomatic centers in the U.S., Europe, and Britain, to run low intensity operations, and black propaganda,
against Russia.
The British end of the operation includes the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, and NATO's Strategic Communications
Center. In the United States, the Integrity Initiative has been integrated into the Global Engagement Center at the U.S. State Department.
Most certainly, this operation is poised again to intervene in the U.S. elections; the British House of Lords have stated explicitly,
in their December 2018 report, British Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order, that Donald Trump must not be re-elected.
This is why the British are yelping that under no circumstances can the classified documents concerning their role in the
attempted coup against Donald Trump be declassified. It would end their leverage over the United States and much of Europe. That
is why these documents must indeed be declassified, and parallel investigations by citizens and government officials concerned with
ending the imperial system, otherwise known as the current "war party," must begin in earnest.
"in a post-Iraq invasion world, only herd-minded human livestock believe"
Perhaps add mainstream media to the list of such sincere believers, they will fire their own real journalists.
David Walters , April 24, 2019 at 13:14
"This doesn't mean that Russia would never use hackers to interfere in world political affairs or that Vladimir Putin is some
sort of virtuous girl scout, it just means that in a post-Iraq invasion world, only herd-minded human livestock believe the unsubstantiated
assertions of opaque and unaccountable government agencies about governments who are oppositional to those same agencies."
Absolutely correct.
Anyone who still believes what the IC says if a moron. As Pompeo recently said to the student body of Texas A&M University,
my alma matta, the CIA's job is to lie, cheat and steel. He went on the explain that the CIA has courses to teach their agent
that dark "art".
Right, David Walters, and see Pompous Pompeo now. The only truths he's told was to a student body of Texas A&M University –
his own alma mater – the CIA's job is to lie, cheat and steal.
Even though he's left his post as CIA Director and assumed his current post of Secretary of State. Pompous Pompeo continues his
CIA traits of lying, cheating, and stealing. It's in a way similar to a phrase, "A leopard never changes its spots". This is why
the DPRK govt issued a Persona Non Grata on Pompous Pompeo – that he isn't a bona fide diplomat, but a CIA official.
CWG , April 22, 2019 at 17:15
Here's my take on the 'Russian Collusion Deep State LIE.
There was NO Russian Collusion at all to get Trump in the White House. Most probably, Putin would have favored Clinton, since
she could be bought. Trump can't.
What did happen was illegal spying on the Trump campaign. That started late 2015, WITHOUT a FISA warrant. They only obtained
that in 2016, through lying to the FISA Court. The basis for that first warrant was the Fusion GPS Steele Dossier.
Ever since Trump won the election, they real conspirators knew they had a problem. That was apparent ever after Devin Nunes
did the right thing by informing Trump they were spying on him.
Since they obtained those FISA warrant through lying to the FISA Court (which is treason) they needed to cover that up as quickly
as possible.
So what did they do? Instead of admitting they lied to the FISA Court they kept on lying till this very day. The same lie through
which they obtained the FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign was being pushed openly.
The lie is and was 'Trump colluded with the Russians in order to win the Presidential Election'.
They knew from day one Trump didn't do anything wrong. They did know they spied on Trump through lying to the FISA Court, which
again, is treason. According to the Constitution, lying to the FISA court= Treason.
In order to avoid being indicted and prosecuted, they somehow needed to 'take down' the Attorney General. At all costs, they
needed to try and hide what really happened.
So there they went. 'Trump colluded with the Russians. Not just Trump, but the entire Trump campaign!'.
'Sessions should recuse himself', the propaganda MSM said in unison. 'Recuse, recuse'.
Sessions, naively recused himself. Back then, even he probably didn't know the entire story. It was only later on that Sarah
Carter and Jon Solomon found out it had been Hillary who ordered and paid the Steele Dossier.
The real conspirators hoped that through the Special Counsel rat Mueller they might be able to achieve three main objectives.
1: Convince the American people Russia indeed was meddling in the Presidential Election.
2: Find any sort of dirt on Trump and/or people who helped him win the Election in order to 'take them down'.
Many people were indicted, some were prosecuted. Yet NONE of them were convicted for a crime that had ANYTHING to with with
the elections. NONE.
They stretched it out as long as possible. 'The longer you repeat a lie, the more people are willing to believe the lie'.
So that is what they did. They still do it. Mueller took TWO years to brainwash as many people as possible. 'Russian Collusion,
Russian Collusion. Russia. Russia. Russia. Russia. Rusiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh ..
Why did they want to make sure they could keep telling that lie as long as possible?
Because they FEAR people will learn the truth. There was NEVER any Russian Collusion with the Trump campaign.
There was spying on the Trump campaign by Obama in order to try and make Hillary win the Presidential Election.
That is the actual COLLUSION between the Clinton Campaign and a weaponized Obama regime!!
So what did 'Herr Mueller' do?
He took YEARS to come up with the conclusion that the Trump campaign did NOT collude with Russia.
The MSM tried to make us all believe it was about that. Yet it was NOT.
His conclusive report is all about the question 'did or didn't the Trump campaign collude with the Russians'.
Trump exonerated, and the MSM only talks about that. Trump, Trump, Trump.
They still want us all to believe that was what the Mueller 'investigation' was all about. Yet it was not.
The most important objective of the Mueller 'investigation' was not to 'investigate'.
It was to 'instigate' that HUGE lie.
The same lie which they used to obtain the FISA warrant on the Trump campaign.
"Russia'.
So what has 'Herr Mueller' done?
A: He finds ZERO evidence at all which proves the Trump campaign colluded with ANY Russians.
And now the huge lie, which after all was the main objective right from the get go. (A was only a distraction)
B: Russians hacked the DNC.
That is what they wants us all to believe. That Russia somehow did bad stuff.
Now it was not Russia who did bad stuff.
It was Obama working together with the Clinton campaign. Obama weaponized his entire regime in order to let Clinton win the
Presidency.
That is the REAL collusion. The real CRIME. Treason!
In order to create a 'cover up' Mueller NEEDED to instigate that Russia somehow did bad things.
That's what the Mueller Dossier is ALL about. They now have 'black on white' 'evidence' that Russia somehow did bad things.
Because if Russia didn't do anything like that, it would make us all ask the fair question 'why did Obama spy on the Trump
Campaign'.
Let's go a bit deeper still.
Here's a trap Mueller created. What if Trump would openly doubt the LIE they still push? The HUGE lie that Russia did bad things?
After all, they NEED that LIE in order to COVER UP their own crime.
If Trump would say 'I do not believe Russia did anything to influence the elections, I think Mueller wrote that to COVER UP
the real crime', what would happen?
They would say 'GOTCHA now, see Trump is colluding with Russia? He even refuses to accept Russia hacked the DNC, this ultimately
proofs Trump indeed is a Russian asset'.
They believe that trap will work. They needed that trap, since if Russia wasn't doing anything wrong, it would show us all
THEY were the criminals.
They NEED that lie, in order to COVER UP.
That is the 'Insurance Policy' Stzrok and Page texted about. Even Sarah Carter and Jon Solomon still don't seem to see all
that.
They should have attacked the HUGE lie that Russia was somehow hacking the DNC. That is simply not true. It's a Mueller created
LIE.
That LIE = the Insurance Policy.
What did they need an Insurance Policy for? They want us all to believe that was about preventing Trump from being elected.
Although true, that is only A.
They NEEDED an Insurance Policy in the unlikely case Trump would become President and would find out they were illegally spying
on him!
The REAL crime is Obama weaponized the American Government to spy on even a duly elected President.
What's the punishment for Treason?
About Assange and Seth Rich.
Days after Mueller finishes his 'mission' (Establish the LIE Russia did bad things) which seems to be succesfull, the Deep
State arrest the ONLY source who could undermine that lie.
Assange Since he knows who is (Seth Rich?) and who isn't (Russia) the source.
If Assange could testify under oath the emails did not come from Russia, the LIE would be exposed.
No coincidences here. I fear Assange will never testify under oath. I actually fear for his life.
Deniz , April 23, 2019 at 13:48
While I wholeheartedly agree with you that Obama and Clinton are criminals, the far less convincing part of your argument is
that Trump is not now beholden to the same MIC interests. Bolton, Abrahams, Pompeo, Pence his relationship with Netanyahu, the
overthrow of Madura are all glaring examples that contradict the Rights narrative that he is some type of hero. Trump may not
have colluded with Russia, but he does seem to be colluding with Saudia Arabia, Israel, Big Oil and the MIC.
Whether one is on the Right or Left, the house is still made of glass.
boxerwars , April 22, 2019 at 17:13
RE: "A Russian Agent Smear"
:::
Was Pat Tillman Murdered?
JUL 30, 2007
I don't know, but it seems increasingly conceivable. Just absorb these facts:
O'Neal said Tillman, a corporal, threw a smoke grenade to identify themselves to fellow soldiers who were firing at them. Tillman
was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat [expletive] Tillman, damn it!" again and again when he was killed,
O'Neal said
In the same testimony, medical examiners said the bullet holes in Tillman's head were so close together that it appeared the
Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.
The motive? I don't know. It's still likeliest it was an accident. But there's some mysterious testimony in the SI report about
nameless snipers. A reader suggests the following interpretation:
News this weekend said that there were "snipers" present and the witnesses didn't remember their names. I believe that's code
in the Army–these guys were Delta. In the Tillman incident, these snipers weren't part of the unit and they were never mentioned
publicly before. That's a key indicator that they weren't supposed to be acknowledged.
If you've ever read Blackhawk Down, Mark Bowden explains how he grew frustrated because interviewed Rangers kept referring
to "soldiers from another unit" while claiming they didn't know the unit ID or the soldiers' names. It took him months to crack
the unit ID and find people from Delta who were present at the fight.
Randy Shugart and Gary Gordon, the Delta operators who earned Medals of Honor in Mogadishu, have always been identified as
snipers, too.
If my theory is correct, the Delta guys could have fired the shots – a three-round burst to the forehead from 50 yards is impossible
for normal soldiers and Rangers, but is probably an easy shot for those guys. But because Delta doesn't officially exist and Tillman
was a hero, nobody in the Army would want to have to explain exactly how the event went down. Easier just to claim hostile fire
until the family forced them to do otherwise.
This makes some sense to me, although we shouldn't dismiss the chance he was murdered. Tillman was a star and might have aroused
jealousy or resentment. He also opposed the Iraq war and was a proud atheist. In Bush's increasingly sectarian military, that
might have stirred hostility. I don't know. But I know enough to want a deeper investigation. My atheist readers will no doubt
admire the way Tillman left this world, according to the man who was with him:
As bullets flew above their heads, the young soldier at Pat Tillman's side started praying. "I thought I was praying to myself,
but I guess he heard me," Sgt. Bryan O'Neal recalled in an interview Saturday with The Associated Press. "He said something like,
'Hey, O'Neal, why are you praying? God can't help us now."'
(Maybe the Congress can )
////// The USA is aghast with "smears" and "internal investigations" and promised but never produced "White Papers" 'as the
world turns' and circles continents Dominated by American Military Power / Predominantly Barbarous / Uncivilized Use of Force
/ and Arrogantly Effective in it's use of Dominating Military Power.
\\\\ The Poorer Peoples of the World accept their lots-in-life with some acceptance of reality vis-a-vis the "lot-in-life"
they've been alleged/assigned.
/// But How Do We Accept The Fact that our Self-Sacrificiing Hero,Pat Tillman, was slaughtered in Afghanistan,
(WITH POSITIVE PROOF) – by his own Fellow American soldiers – ???
!!!! What i'm say'n is, if Tillman represents the Life Surrendering "American Hero"
WHY DID HIS FELLOW "AMERICAN SOLDIERS" ASSASSINATE & MURDER HIM ???????
AND WHY IS THIS STORY BURIED ALONG WITH MANY OTHER SMEAR Stories
that provide prophylactic protection for all the Trump pianist prophylaxis cover
Up for the Right Wing theft of American Democracy under FDR
In favor of Ayn Rand's prevalent OBJECTIVISM under Trump.
"Capitalism and Altruism
are incompatible
capitalism and altruism
cannot coexist in man,
or in the same society".
President Trump represents
Stark & Total Capitalism
Just as "Conservative Party"
Core is in The Confederacy
AKA; The RIGHT WING
The Right Wing of US Gov't
Is All About PRESERVING
Confederate States' Laws
Written by Thomas Jefferson
Prior to The Constitution, which
became the Received/Judicial
Constitutional Law of the Land in
The Republic of the "United States"
It's not enough that Trump is clearly a classic narcissist whose behavior will continue to deteriorate the more his actions
and statements are attacked and countered? You know what happens when narcissists are driven into a corner by people tearing them
down? They get weapons and start killing people.
There is already more than ample evidence to remove Donald Trump from office, not the least being he's clearly mentally unfit.
Yet the Democrats, some of whom ran for office on a promise to impeach, are suddenly reticent to act without "more investigation".
Nancy Pelosi stated on the record prior to release of the Mueller report impeachment wasn't on the agenda "for now". She's now
making noises in the opposite direction, but that's all they are: noise.
The bottom line is the Clintonite New Democrats currently running the party have only one issue to run on next year: getting
rid of Donald Trump. They still operate under the delusion they will be able to use him to draw off moderate Republican voters,
the same ones they were positive would come out for Hillary Clinton in '16. Their multitude of candidates pay lip service to progressive
policy then carefully walk back to the standard centrist positions once the donations start coming, but the common underlying
theme was and continues to be "Donald Trump is evil, and we need to elect a Democrat."
In short, without Donald Trump in the Oval Office, the Democrat Party has no platform. They need him there as a target, because
Mike Pence would be impossible for them to beat. They are under orders, according to various writers who've addressed the Clinton
campaign, to block Bernie Sanders and his platform at all costs; and they will allow the country to crash and burn before they
disobey those orders. That means keeping Donald Trump right where he is through next November.
Eddie S , April 24, 2019 at 21:14
Exactly right, EKB -- - you can't ballroom dance without a partner! Also reminds me of the couples you occasionally run into
where one partner repeatedly runs-down the other, and you get the feeling that the critical partner doesn't have much going on
in his/her life so they deflect that by focusing on the other partner
Johnny Ryan S , April 22, 2019 at 13:38
Why did the DNC not allow the FBI to investigate the so-called" Russian hacked" emails? Rather, they hire CrowdStrike did
you know:
1)Obama Appoints CrowdStrike Officer To Admin Post Two Months Before June 2016 Report On Russia Hacking DNC
2) CrowdStrike Co-Founder Is Fellow On Russia Hawk Group, Has Connections To George Soros, Ukrainian Billionaire
3) DNC stayed that the FBI never asked to investigate the servers – that is a lie.
4) CrowdStrike received $100 million in investments led by Google Capital (since re-branded as CapitalG) in 2015. CapitalG is
owned by Alphabet, and Eric Schmidt, Alphabet's chairman, was a supporter of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. More than just
supporting Clinton, leaked emails from Wikileaks in November 2016 showed that in 2014 he wanted to have an active role in the
campaign.
-daily caller and dan bongino have been bringing these points up since 2016.
Deniz , April 22, 2019 at 12:36
The Right is currently salivating over the tough law enforcement rhetoric coming out of Barr and Trump.
It reminds me of when Obama was running for office in 2008 when everyone, including myself, was in awe of him. What kept slipping
into his soaring anti-intervention speeches, was a commitment to the good war in Afghanistan, which seemed totally out of place
with the rest of his rhetoric. The fine print was far more reflective of his administration actions as the rest of it his communications
turned out to be just telling people what they wanted to hear.
War with Afghanistan was Obama's payoff to the MIC, just as Russia is now Trump's payoff.
The argument about not inserting Rich and the download is a good one as a defense strategy but doesn't help with finding the
truth about the emails. We can only hope that pursuing the truth and producing it will have a cumulative effect and the illusory
truth effect will include this truth.
Red Douglas , April 22, 2019 at 16:00
>>> ". . . doesn't help with finding the truth about the emails."
The important truth about the emails is in their authenticity and in the contents. No one has even attempted to claim that
they are not authentic or that the contents we've seen are other than the actual contents of the authentic messages.
Why should we much care how they were acquired and provided to the publisher?
Lily , April 22, 2019 at 17:55
That is what i think. People should not concentrate on how, who and where. This is just a smokescreen to avoid talking about
the content of the emails and Hillary Clinton's disgusting actions. She is a criminal and a murderess just like Obama and Tony
Blair are lyers and mass murderers.
All three of them are free, earning millions with their publicity whereas two brave persons who were telling the truth have
been tortured and are still in jail. Reality has become like the most horrible nightmare. Everything simply seems to have turned
upside down. No writer would invent such a primitive plot. And yet it is the unbelievable reality.
Dump Pelousy , April 23, 2019 at 13:21
I totally agree with you, and in fact believe that this whole 22month expensive and mind numbing circus has been played out
JUST to keep the public from knowing what the emails actually said. Can you imagine Madcow focusing with such ferocity on John
Pedesta as she has on Putin, by discussing what he wrote during a presidential campaign to "influence the election" ? We'd be
a different country now, not fighting our way thru the McCarthite Swamp she helped create.
It's a dog & pony show. Trump folded very quickly, in april 2017 or three moth after inauguration. He proved
to be no fighter, a weakling, a marionette. Appointment of Bolton and Pompeo just added insult to injury. this is classic bait and
switch similar to what was executed by Obama after then election. In a way Trump is a Republican version of Obama.
I wonder if he did not want to fight to the death and sacrifice himself for the course, why he entered the Presidential race at
all ? He is not stupid enough not to understand the he will be covered with dirt and all skeletons in his closet will be dug
out for display by the US intelligence agencies, which protect that interest of Wall Street and MIC (Israel is a part of the
US MIC -- its biggest lobbyist and beneficiary) , not the USA as a sovereign state.
Notable quotes:
"... Mueller did none of these things which simply proves that his final report was what many people had expected from the very beginning; a purely political document that twists the truth to achieve Mueller's particular objectives. But to understand what those objectives are, we need to determine what the real goals of the investigation were. ..."
"... To help sabotage Trump's political agenda ..."
"... To create a cloud of illegitimacy over Trump's election ..."
"... And to prevent Trump from implementing his plan to normalize relations with Russia. ..."
"... These were the real objectives of the investigation, to create a forth branch of government (Special Counsel) that had the power to keep Trump permanently on the defensive while the media made him out to be either an unwitting accomplice in Russian espionage or, even worse, a traitor. ..."
"... The aim was to reign him in and keep the pressure on until a case could be made for his impeachment. Mueller played a key role in this travesty. His assignment was undermine Trump's moral authority by brandishing the cudgel of criminal indictment over his head. This is how a D.O.J. appointee, who had never held public office in his life, became the most powerful man in Washington. ..."
"... "We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments . Our goal is stability not chaos, because we want to rebuild our country [the United States] We will partner with any nation that is willing to join us in the effort to defeat ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism In our dealings with other countries, we will seek shared interests wherever possible and pursue a new era of peace, understanding, and good will." ..."
"... Imagine how terrified the foreign policy establishment must have been when they heard Trump utter these words. No more regime change wars? Are you kidding me? That's what we do: Regime-Change-Is-Us., ..."
"... Interesting, isn't it? Here's Hillary, the "liberal" Democrat, pushing for a no-fly zone in Syria even though the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, stated clearly that "Right now for us to control all of the airspace in Syria would require us to go to war against Syria and Russia." In other words, if Hillary had been elected, she was all ready to flip the switch and start WW3 ASAP. Is it any wonder why the establishment loved her? ..."
"... War, war and more war, that's the Hillary Doctrine in a nutshell. It was Hillary's relentless hawkishness that pushed leftists into the Trump camp, not that they ever believed that Trump was anything more than what he appeared to be, an unprincipled narcissist with an insatiable lust for power. But they did hope that his dovish comments would steer the country away from nuclear annihilation. That was the hope at least, but then everything changed. And after it changed, Mueller released his report saying: "Trump is not guilty after all!" ..."
"... Think about it: In mid December 2018, Trump announced the withdrawal of all U.S. troops in Syria within 30 days. But instead of withdrawal, the US has been sending hundreds of trucks with weapons to the front lines. The US has also increased its troop levels on the ground, the YPG (Kurdish militia, US proxies) are digging in on the Syria-Turkish border, and the US hasn't lifted a finger to implement its agreements with NATO-ally Turkey under the Manbij Roadmap. The US is not withdrawing from Syria. Washington is beefing up its defenses and settling in for the long-haul. But, why? Why did Trump change his mind and do a complete about-face? ..."
"... Trump made these outrageous demands knowing that they would never be accepted. Which was the point, because the foreign policy establishment doesn't want a deal. They want regime change, they've made that perfectly clear. But wasn't Trump supposed to change all that? Wasn't Trump going to pursue "a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past"? ..."
"... There are other signs of capitulation too; like providing lethal weapons to the Ukrainian military, or nixing the short-range nuclear missile ban, or joining the Saudi's genocidal war on Yemen, or threatening to topple the government of Venezuela, or stirring up trouble in the South China Sea. At every turn, Trump has backtracked on his promise to break with tradition and "stop toppling regimes and overthrowing governments." ' At every turn, Trump has joined the ranks of the warhawks he once criticized. ..."
"... Trump is now marching in lockstep with the foreign policy establishment. In Libya, in Sudan, in Somalia, in Iran, in Lebanon, he is faithfully implementing the neocon agenda. Trump "the peacemaker" is no where to be found, while Trump the 'madman with a knife' is on the loose. ..."
Why did Robert Mueller end the Russia investigation when he did? He could have let it drag it out for another year or so and severely
hurt Trump's chances for reelection. But he didn't do that. Why?
Of course, we're assuming that the investigation was never intended to uncover the truth. If it was, then Mueller would have interviewed
Julian Assange, Craig Murray and retired members of the Intelligence Community (Ray McGovern, Bill Binney) who have shown that the
Podesta emails were leaked by an insider (on a thumbdrive) not hacked by foreign agents. Mueller would have also seized the servers
at DNC headquarters and done the necessary forensic investigation, which he never did.
He also would have indicted senior-level agents
at the FBI and DOJ who improperly obtained FISA warrants by withholding critical information from the FISA court. He didn't do that
either.
Mueller did none of these things which simply proves that his final report was what many people had expected from the very
beginning; a purely political document that twists the truth to achieve Mueller's particular objectives. But to understand what those
objectives are, we need to determine what the real goals of the investigation were. So, here they are:
To help sabotage Trump's political agenda
To create a cloud of illegitimacy over Trump's election
And to prevent Trump from implementing his plan to normalize relations with Russia.
These were the real objectives of the investigation, to create a forth branch of government (Special Counsel) that had the power
to keep Trump permanently on the defensive while the media made him out to be either an unwitting accomplice in Russian espionage
or, even worse, a traitor.
The aim was to reign him in and keep the pressure on until a case could be made for his impeachment. Mueller
played a key role in this travesty. His assignment was undermine Trump's moral authority by brandishing the cudgel of criminal indictment
over his head. This is how a D.O.J. appointee, who had never held public office in his life, became the most powerful man in Washington.
My question is simply this: Why did Mueller give up all that power when he did?
I think I can answer that, but first, we need a little more background. Check out this quote from candidate Trump in 2016:
"We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past We will stop looking to topple regimes
and overthrow governments . Our goal is stability not chaos, because we want to rebuild our country [the United States] We will
partner with any nation that is willing to join us in the effort to defeat ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism In our dealings
with other countries, we will seek shared interests wherever possible and pursue a new era of peace, understanding, and good will."
Imagine how terrified the foreign policy establishment must have been when they heard Trump utter these words. No more regime
change wars? Are you kidding me? That's what we do: Regime-Change-Is-Us., and now this upstart, New York real estate tycoon is promising
to do a complete 180 and move in another direction altogether. No more destabilizing coups, no more bloody military interventions,
instead, we're going to work collaboratively with countries like Russia and China to see if we can settle regional disputes and fight
terrorism together? Really?
At the same time Trump was promising this new era of "peace, understanding, and good will," Hillary Clinton was issuing her war
whoop at every opportunity. Here's candidate Hillary trying to drum up support for taking on the Russians in Syria:
"The situation in Syria is catastrophic. And every day that goes by, we see the results of the Assad regime in partnership
with the Iranians on the ground, and the Russians in the air When I was Secretary of State, I advocated and I advocate today a
no-fly zone and safe zones."
Interesting, isn't it? Here's Hillary, the "liberal" Democrat, pushing for a no-fly zone in Syria even though the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, stated clearly that "Right now for us to control all of the airspace in Syria
would require us to go to war against Syria and Russia." In other words, if Hillary had been elected, she was all ready to flip the
switch and start WW3 ASAP. Is it any wonder why the establishment loved her?
"We have to work more closely with our partners and allies on the ground," boomed Hillary, meaning that she fully supported
the continued use of jihadist proxies in the fight against Assad. "I do think the use of special forces, the use of enablers and
trainers in Iraq, which has had some positive effects, are very much in our interests, and so I do support what is happening."
War, war and more war, that's the Hillary Doctrine in a nutshell. It was Hillary's relentless hawkishness that pushed leftists into the Trump camp, not that they ever believed that Trump was anything
more than what he appeared to be, an unprincipled narcissist with an insatiable lust for power. But they did hope that his dovish
comments would steer the country away from nuclear annihilation. That was the hope at least, but then everything changed. And after
it changed, Mueller released his report saying: "Trump is not guilty after all!"
So, what changed? Trump changed.
Think about it: In mid December 2018, Trump announced the withdrawal of all U.S. troops in Syria within 30 days. But instead of
withdrawal, the US has been sending hundreds of trucks with weapons to the front lines. The US has also increased its troop levels
on the ground, the YPG (Kurdish militia, US proxies) are digging in on the Syria-Turkish border, and the US hasn't lifted a finger
to implement its agreements with NATO-ally Turkey under the Manbij Roadmap. The US is not withdrawing from Syria. Washington is beefing
up its defenses and settling in for the long-haul. But, why? Why did Trump change his mind and do a complete about-face?
The same thing happened in Korea. For a while it looked like Trump was serious about cutting a deal with Kim Jong un. But then,
sometime after the first summit, he began to backpeddle. He never honored any of his commitments under the Panmunjom Declaration
and he never reciprocated for Kim's cessation of all nuclear weapons and ballistic missile testing. Trump has made no effort to "build
a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula" or to strengthen trust between the two leaders. Then, at the Hanoi Summit,
Trump blindsided Kim by making demands that had never even been previously discussed. Kim was told that the North must destroy all
of its chemical and biological weapons as well as its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs before the US will take reciprocal
steps. In other words, Trump demanded that Kim completely and irreversibly disarm with the feint hope that the US would eventually
lift sanctions.
Trump made these outrageous demands knowing that they would never be accepted. Which was the point, because the foreign policy
establishment doesn't want a deal. They want regime change, they've made that perfectly clear. But wasn't Trump supposed to change
all that? Wasn't Trump going to pursue "a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past"?
Yes, that was Trump's campaign promise. So, what happened?
There are other signs of capitulation too; like providing lethal weapons to the Ukrainian military, or nixing the short-range
nuclear missile ban, or joining the Saudi's genocidal war on Yemen, or threatening to topple the government of Venezuela, or stirring
up trouble in the South China Sea. At every turn, Trump has backtracked on his promise to break with tradition and "stop toppling
regimes and overthrowing governments." ' At every turn, Trump has joined the ranks of the warhawks he once criticized.
Trump is now marching in lockstep with the foreign policy establishment. In Libya, in Sudan, in Somalia, in Iran, in Lebanon,
he is faithfully implementing the neocon agenda. Trump "the peacemaker" is no where to be found, while Trump the 'madman with a knife'
is on the loose.
Is that why Mueller let Trump off the hook? Was there a quid pro quo: "You follow our foreign policy directives and we'll make
Mueller disappear?
It sure looks like it. play_arrow 2 Reply reply Report flag
the report was finished last august. hed got all the juice in that squeeze. but i also guess he got a call from somebodys in
the GOG mafia[continuity of .gov] deepstate after all is their little bitch
He had to stop before he implicated himself. For instance, still waiting on "the why" he never put Steele or McCabe or Hillary
or Perkins Coie or Rosenstein or Comey etc under oath when it was...THEY... who supplied false evidence to a FISA court
, "evidence gathered" (according to Steele) from...ta daaah!...Russians ;-)
You can drive yourself crazy wondering whether it was all theater from the start, or whether they put a gun to the head of
the guy who was going to expose it was theater until he started playing along. End result, theater.
exactly. Just like you can wonder why Justice John Roberts turned on Obamacare and **** on conservatives. Was he sincere or
did he get a 3:00 am phone call that if he didn't uphold it, his wife and kids would die in an unfortunate accident?
Oh, I dunno...maybe because even with a crack team of demoncraft operatives, Deep State Hillary deadenders and a limitless
supply of federal funding even they couldn't come up with "Russian collusion" because...none ever existed? ;-)
While I knew about Nellie Ohr and her DOJ husband , what I didn't know was that while she
worked for Fusion GPS , fusion was a FBI contractor that had access to NSA database until
Admiral Rogers shut it down .
Sounds Like Brennan's CIA laundered information to EX-CIA Nellie Ohr when she was working
for Fusion GPS who then laundered this info to Steele , another person employed by Fusion who
then gave this back to Bruce Ohr of DOJ who then gave it to the FBI . And they all got paid
for their " research " . This then was used to deceive the FISA court . But Admiral Rogers
went to this court and warned Trump of the spying and violations of constitutional rights .
Shortly after Obama fired admiral Rogers . Sounds fishy to me ? what do you think ?
"... Significantly, Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing on December 11th, 2018 that "ad accounts linked to Russia" spent about $4,700 in advertising" to politically influence Americans during the 2016 presidential election season. ..."
The Mueller Report is now public, and our Mainstream Media have filled the airways with all sorts of commentaries and interpretations.
We know that - despite the very best efforts of the dedicated Leftist attorneys on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's staff - there
was absolutely no coordination between members of the Trump campaign, or any of his staffers, with Russians. No additional charges
have come as a result, other than accusations made earlier of "process crimes" (e.g. failure to report earnings on tax forms, failure
to report lobbying work, or not telling investigators what they demanded to hear -- "crimes" that practically every politician in
Washington has been guilty of at one time or another and would normally not cause much of a stir). None of these involved Russia.
Of course, that finding has not satisfied many Democrats or the unhinged Leftist crazies in the media, who continue to have visions
of "collusion" -- a kind of communications Alzheimers that has poisoned our media now for years. Thus, Representative Eric Swalwell
(who is one of nearly two dozen Democrats running for president) continues to assert that there was "collusion," as does the irrepressible
(and irresponsible) Adam Schiff: "it's there in plain sight," they insist, "if you just look hard enough, and maybe squint just a
bit -- or maybe have those specialized 3-D Russia glasses!"
Such political leaders -- along with those further out in the Leftist loonysphere like Representatives Maxine Waters and Alexandra
Ocasio-Cortes -- continue down their Primrose path of post-Marxist madness.
But beyond the collusion/coordination issue, the past couple of weeks have been filled with a swirling controversy concerning
what is called "obstruction of justice." And once again, the fundamental issues have been incredibly politicized. Special Counsel
Robert Mueller had an obligation, if he and his minions discovered "obstruction of justice," that is, concerted and illegal attempts
to obstruct the investigations by the president or his staff, to present charges to the Department of Justice. Yet, all he was able
to do was assemble a farrago of "he said/she said" instances, none of which rose to the level of criminal activity. Apparently President
Trump told a subaltern "I wish would you fire Mueller," or he wished in a speech in his joking style that "if the Russians had Hillary's
emails, they would release them," or he had a private conversation with Vladimir Putin when they met (as all national leaders do!),
or his son met with a Russian attorney who supposedly had some "dirt" on the Hillary Clinton campaign (which did not turn out to
be the reason for the Trump Tower meeting at all).
None of the ten or eleven cited instances came anywhere close to being actionable or criminal under settled law. In each instance
cited, the president's actions (or desires) fell within his purview and authority under Article II of the Constitution. And regarding
Trump's desire to fire Mueller, he was on solid legal ground; the Supreme Court in its 1997 decision, Edmonds vs. the United States
, declared that "inferior" officials, including an independent counsel, could be removed by presidential action as part of
his delegated powers . And, in any case, Mueller
was not dismissed.
Mueller had an obligation after examining these situations to make a finding; he did not. By so doing, by avoiding decisions and
stringing out such instances in an obviously political sense, he abdicated his responsibility and did his best to impugn Donald Trump
and his administration and thus offer grist for continued Democrat attacks on the president all the way through the 2020 election.
Mueller left it up to the Attorney General William Barr and Congress to decide how to proceed. And that is where we are today.
The one issue that both Democrats and most Republicans seem to agree on, the issue which both say is "proven conclusively" by
Mueller is that the Russians "attempted to interfere and did interfere" in our 2016 election.
Interesting, is it not, that the Republicans who zealously defend the president and attack the obviously political nature of the
Mueller Report would accept, as if on faith and without question, the accusations of Russian interference, also contained in the
report?
Turn on Fox and watch, say, Martha MacCallum (e.g., "The Story," April 24, 2019) declare "we all know now without doubt that the
Russians tried to interfere" in our elections, or listen to most any GOP congressman repeat that same narrative with unquestioning
certitude.
But that assertion - is it truly backed up factually? Where is the evidence, other than largely questionable information sourced
from our largely discredited intelligence agencies which, as we know, had a determined goal of overthrowing the president by any
means possible?
Almost three years have passed from the first fake news that appeared in the media on the subject of "Russian collusion," a concerted
effort launched to discredit at first the Donald Trump candidacy and then sabotage his presidency, including his efforts to stabilize
Russian-American relations.
As proof of Russian actions, the Mueller Report cites the indictments against twenty-five Russian citizens who were indicted for
attempted "interference" (those Russians are, let us add, quite conveniently out of the country and thus not prosecutable). When
those indictments were issued, Russia pointed out the flimsy, unsupported and transparently made-up nature of the charges, and demanded
that American authorities provide conclusive proof. Such requests were rebuffed.
In order to evaluate the evidence, the Russian government proposed reestablishing the bilateral expert group on information security
that the Obama Administration had terminated, which could have served as a platform for conversation on these matters. The American
side was also invited to send Justice Department officials to Russia to attend the proposed public questioning of the Russian citizens
named by Mueller. Additionally, Russia offered to publicize the exchanges between the two countries following the publication of
the accusations of cyberattacks, exchanges which were conducted through existing channels between October 2016 and January 2017.
Our government refused every offer.
A careful analysis, in fact, fails to show any substantial evidence of Russian cyberattacks and attempts to "subvert democracy."
By some estimates, possibly $160,000 -- a paltry sum -- was spent by the Russians during 2016 on social media activities in the United
States. Does anyone wish to discover and compare the amount the Chinese Communists or the Saudis would have expended during the same
period, for their continued influence and power in Washington and inside-the-Beltway?
It is helpful to examine the charges that have been made, some included in the Mueller Report and accepted blindly by most pundits
and politicians, both on the Left and by establishment conservatives.
The Russian government, via their embassy in Washington, has published
a 120 page "white paper,"
The Russiagate Hysteria: A Case of Severe Russiaphobia , responding to the accusations made against them since 2016. Obviously,
the Russian document has a particular viewpoint and very specific goal, but that should not deter us from examining it and evaluating
its arguments. (I have written on Russia and its relations with the United States on a number of occasions since 2015 and had pieces
published by The Unz Review , Communities Digital News , and elsewhere.
On my blog , "MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey," I have authored
a dozen columns addressing this question).
Here following I list twenty-one claims made regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election and in American domestic affairs.
I follow each claim with the Russian response and how others, as noted, have also responded. In most cases I retain the original
text, at times with my editing, but, in every case, with all the referenced sources.
These twenty-one claims should be examined more closely and more calmly, and the "Russophobic" hysteria we have experienced during
the past several years needs to be put aside for the sake of rational investigative inquiry -- and discovering how the Managerial
State and global elites have attempted a "silent coup" against what's left of our republic.
These claims and the responses deserve respectful consideration and detailed responses:
CLAIM: Russia "meddled" in the U.S. elections by conducting influence operations, including through social media.
FACT
All of the claims of Russian trolls that surfaced over the last few years (such as Russians using the Pokémon Go mobile
game and sex toy ads
to meddle in the elections
– ) are so preposterous and contradictory that they virtually disprove themselves.
Not to mention the absurdity of the whole notion of 13 persons and 3 organizations (whichever country they might represent)
charged on February 16, 2018, by Robert Mueller with criminally interfering with the elections, affecting in any way electoral
processes in a country of more than 300 million people.
It is telling that when pressed about the scope of the alleged influence campaign, representatives of American social media
companies give numbers, that even if they were valid (and there's no evidence of a connection to the Russian government), are
so minuscule as to be basically non-existent. For example, Facebook has identified 3,000 Russia-linked ads costing a total
of about $100,000. That's a
miniscule number of ads
and a fraction of Facebook's revenues, which totaled $28 billion. Facebook estimates that 126 million people might – the
emphasis is on the word "might" – have seen this content. But this number represents just 0.004% of the content those people
saw on the Facebook platform.
Significantly, Google CEO Sundar Pichai
testified
to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing on December 11th, 2018 that "ad accounts linked to Russia" spent
about $4,700 in advertising" to politically influence Americans during the 2016 presidential election season.
To further cast doubt on the allegations, an American watchdog group "Campaign for Accountability" ("CFA") admitted on September
4th, 2018, that it deliberately posted propaganda materials on Google disguised as "Russian hackers from the Internet Research
Agency" to check how they would be filtered for "foreign interference". Google officials then accused the CFA as having ties
to a rival tech company "Oracle". In other words,
corporate intrigues disguised
as "Russian interference".
As American media has admitted, out of several dozen pre-election rallies supposedly organized by Russians, Special Counsel
Mueller mentions in his indictment that only a couple actually appear to have successfully attracted anyone, and those that
did were sparsely attended and, almost without exception, in deep-red enclaves that
would have voted for Trump anyway
.
Amidst all the hysteria about the alleged Russian meddling it is worth reading various research studies which show, quoting
"The Washington Post", that it is Americans, in particular our intelligence service,
that peddle disinformation
and hate speech.
According to Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, the scale and scope of domestic
disinformation is much larger than any foreign influence operation. And academics from the Harvard's Shorenstein Center on
Media, Politics and Public Policy document in their study that there had been major spikes in outright fabrication and misleading
information proliferating online before the 2018 U.S. election. A "significant portion" of the disinformation appeared to come
from Americans, not foreigners, the Harvard researchers said.
CLAIM:Russian hackers accessed computer servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and leaked materials through Wikileaks
and other intermediaries
FACT
As President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin noted in his interview with NBC on June 5, 2017, when flatly denying
any allegations of Russia interfering in internal affairs of the U.S., that today's technology is such that the final internet
address can be masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one will be able to understand the origin of that address. It is possible
to set up any entity that may indicate one source when, in fact,
the source is completely different .
No evidence has been presented linking Russia to leaked emails. In fact, there are credible studies arguing that DNC servers
are much more likely to have been breached by someone with immediate and physical access. In 2017 a group of former officers of
the U.S. intelligence community, members of the "Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity" (VIPS), met with then-CIA Director
Mike Pompeo to present their findings.
Another counterargument to the "Russian hackers" claim is that the DNC files published by Wikileaks were initially stored under
the FAT (File Allocation System) method which is not related to internet transfers and can only be forwarded to an external device
such as a thumb drive.
It is also suspicious that the DNC prohibited the FBI from examining the servers. Instead, a third-party tech firm was hired,
"Crowd Strike", which is known for peddling the "Russian interference" claims. And soon enough it, indeed, announced that "Russian
malware" has been found, but again no solid evidence was produced.
According to the respected former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter,
the indictment by the Mueller
team on July 13, 2018 of the 12 supposed Russian operatives was
a politically motivated fraud . As Ritter explains, Mueller seems to have borrowed his list from an organizational chart of
a supposed Russian military intelligence unit, contained in a classified document from the NSA titled "Spear-Phishing Campaign
TTPs Used Against U.S. And Foreign Government Political Entities", which
was published by The Intercept online. As stated in that document, this is just a subjective judgement, not a known fact.
Ritter concludes, that this is a far cry from the kind of incontrovertible proof that Mueller's team suggests as existing to support
its indictment.
Moreover, it is telling that the indictment
was released just before the
meeting between President Putin and Trump in Helsinki on July 16, 2018, seemingly as if the aim was to intentionally derail the
bilateral summit.
CLAIM: Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections.
FACT
As concluded in the summary of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report, the investigation did not find that the Trump campaign
or anyone associated with
it conspired
or coordinated with Russia
If the Mueller team, having all the resources of the U.S. government, after 22 months of work,
many millions
of dollars spent , more than 2800 subpoenas issued, nearly 500 search warrants and 500 witness interviews, didn't find any
evidence of "collusion", it is simply because there was never any. The whole claim of collusion was launched and peddled by the
same group of Democrats, liberal-leaning media and the so-called "Never Trump Republicans", as it became clear that Donald Trump
had real chances of winning the election. And later it morphed into a campaign to derail the newly-elected President agenda, including
his efforts to mitigate the damage done to U.S.-Russian relations.
CLAIM: Hacking of American political institutions was personally ordered by the Russian President Vladimir Putin.
FACT
This claim is based on nothing else but the infamous fraudulent
"Steele Dossier" , paid for by political opponents [i.e., the Hilary Clinton campaign] of Donald Trump, and
wild conjectures that "nothing in Russia happens without Putin's approval" .
Needless to say, zero proof is presented. By the same logic, nothing in the U.S. happens without the President's approval.
For example, is he also responsible for Edward Snowden? After all, Mr. Snowden was doing work for the U.S. intelligence services.
Or the deaths of all the civilians killed abroad by U.S. drone strikes? Every minute detail approved by the President?
CLAIM: Russia did not cooperate with the U.S. in tracing the source of the alleged hacking.
FACT
Russia has repeatedly offered to set up a professional and de-politicized dialogue on international information security only
to be rebuffed by the U.S. State Department. For instance, following the discussion between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald
Trump in Hamburg on July 7, 2017, Russia forwarded to the U.S. a proposal to reestablish a bilateral working group on cyber threats
which would have been a perfect medium to discuss American concerns. Moreover, during his meeting with Donald Trump in Helsinki
on July 17, 2018, Vladimir Putin offered to allow U.S. representatives to be present at an interrogation of the Russian citizens
who were previously accused by the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller of
being guilty of electoral interference.
Furthermore, in February 2019 the Russian government suggested publishing bilateral correspondence on the subject of unsanctioned
access to U.S. electronic networks, which was conducted between Washington and Moscow through the Nuclear Threat Reduction Centers
in the period from October 2016 to the end of January 2017.
Needless to say, all Russian offers were rejected. A conclusion is naturally reached that American State Department officials
have little interest in hearing anything that contradicts their own narrative or the discredited version of the CIA.
CLAIM: Russia is interfering in elections all over the world
FACT
No credible evidence has been produced not only of Russia's supposed meddling in the U.S. political processes, but to support
similar allegations made by the U.S. in respect to other countries. For example, former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster
insinuated that Russia was interfering in
the Mexican presidential elections of 2018. However, Mexican officials,
including
the president of the Mexican Senate Ernesto Cordero Arroyo, and Ambassador to Russia Norma Pensado
during a press conference in Moscow in February, 2018, debunked
this baseless claim.
Another example of fake news were reports saying that U.S.
was increasingly convinced that Russia hacked French election on May 9, 2017. However, on June 1, 2017, the head of the French
government's cyber security agency said no trace
was found of the claimed Russian hacking group behind the attack. On the other hand, the history of U.S. interfering in other
countries' elections
is well documented by American sources (see: ).
For example, a Carnegie Mellon scholar, Dov H. Levin, has scoured the historical record and
found 81 examples of U.S. election influence operations from 1946- to 2000. Often cited examples include Chile in 1964, Guyana
in 1968, Nicaragua in 1990, Yugoslavia in 2000, Afghanistan in 2009, Ukraine in 2014, not to mention Russia in 1996! And how else
could the current situation in Ukraine and Venezuela be described, with U.S. representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker openly pressuring
Ukrainian voters
to support the incumbent , and Washington
possibly plotting a
coup in Caracas?
CLAIM: The lawsuit of the Democratic National Committee against the Russian Federation related to "interference in the election"
has a legal standing.
FACT
The DNC filed a civil lawsuit on April 20, 2018 against the Russian Federation and other entities and individuals. Named as
defendants in the lawsuit are the Russian Federation; the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU); the
GRU operative using the pseudonym "Guccifer 2.0"; Aras Iskenerovich Agalarov; Emin Araz Agalarov; Joseph Mifsud; WikiLeaks; Julian
Assange; the Trump campaign (formally "Donald J. Trump for President, Inc."); Donald Trump, Jr.; Paul Manafort; Roger Stone; Jared
Kushner; George Papadopoulos; Richard W. Gates; and unnamed defendants sued as John Does 1–10. The DNC's complaint accuses the
Trump campaign of engaging in a racketeering enterprise in conjunction with Russia and WikiLeaks.
Even irrespective of the fact that there was no "interference" in the first place, the case has no legal standing. Exercise
of U.S. jurisdiction over the pending case with respect to the Russian Federation is a violation of the international law, specifically,
violation of jurisdictional immunities of the Russian Federation arising from the principle of the sovereign equality of states.
CLAIM: Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak was a spy.
FACT
In March of 2017 U.S. media
began libeling
Sergey Kislyak a "top spy and spy-recruiter" This preposterous claim was based on nothing but his contacts with Trump confidant
Senator Jeff Sessions – carrying out work any ambassador would do. Per the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961,
among core diplomatic functions is ascertaining
by all lawful means conditions
and developments in the receiving state, and that certainly includes openly meeting leaders of Congress on Capitol Hill. Even
former CIA Director John McLaughlin
noted that Mr. Kislyak is an experienced diplomat, not a spy.
CLAIM: Russian Embassy retreat in Maryland was an intelligence base
FACT.
Among the unlawful acts that U.S. administrations undertook was the expropriation of a legal Russian property in Maryland,
a summer retreat near the Chesapeake Bay under the pretext
it was used for intelligence gathering. But where is the supposed-treasure trove of alleged spy equipment that U.S. authorities
reportedly found there? Why not show them publicly to back up the claim? After the expropriation and the claims, not a word –
silence.
The retreat, "dacha" as Russians would call it, was bought by the former Soviet Union in 1972. Since then, it was used for
recreation, including hosting a children's summer camp and regularly entertaining American visitors. One of the more popular events
was the stop-over during the annual Chesapeake Regatta, completed with an expansive tour of the property. Presumably U.S. intelligence
services could have used this for years to inspect the property. Why was nothing ever mentioned before the Obama Administration
action?
CLAIM: The meeting in Trump Tower in New York on June 9, 2016 between Trump campaign officials and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya
was to discuss compromising materials that Russian had on Hillary Clinton.
FACT
According
to testimony provided to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Ms. Veselnitskaya focused on explaining the illicit activities
of U.S.-British investor Bill Browder, wanted in Russia for crimes, and brought attention to the adverse effects of the so-called
"Magnitskiy Act", adopted by U.S. Congress in 2012 and lobbied for by Browder.
CLAIM: Donald Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, met with Russians in Prague to "collude".
FACT
It was reported in American media that the Justice Department special counsel had evidence that Donald Trump's personal lawyer,
Michael Cohen, secretly made a trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign to meet with Russian representatives,
a fact also mentioned
in the discredited "Steele Dossier". This was given as further evidence of "collusion". But Cohen vehemently denied this –
under oath. Passport records
indicate
that he never was in Prague. He was actually on vacation with his son at the supposed time. Given that he publicly turned
on his former boss and still denied the fact of ever going to Prague disproves this claim further.
CLAIM: Former member of the Trump campaign team Carter Page was a Russian intelligence asset.
FACT
According to members of Congress and journalistic investigations, the redacted declassified documents of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court (FISC, also called the FISA Court)
show that the main source used by U.S. counterintelligence to justify spying on Mr. Page was the fraudulent so-called "Steele
Dossier".
Thus, Mr. Page for obvious reasons was not accused by the team of Robert Mueller of being involved in a "Russian conspiracy".
CLAIM: On August 22, 2018, The Democratic National Committee filed a claim with the FBI, accusing the "Russian hackers" of
infiltrating its electoral database.
FACT
Several days later members of the Democratic Party
admitted that it was a "false alarm", as it was simply a security check-up performed at the initiative of the Democratic Party's
affiliate in Michigan.
CLAIM: On August 8, 2018 U.S. Senator Bill Nelson accused Russia of breaching the infrastructure of the voter registration
systems in several local election offices of Florida.
FACT
Florida's Department of State spokesperson, Sarah Revell, stated on August 9, 2018, that Florida's government had not received
any evidence from competent authorities that Florida's voting systems or election records had been compromised. The U.S. Department
of Homeland Security and the FBI also
could not confirm in any manner the accusations.
CLAIM: In September, 2017 the U.S. media, referring to the Department of Homeland Security, accused Russia of "cyberattacks"
on electoral infrastructure in 21 states during the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections.
FACT
On September 27, 2017, Wisconsin and California authorities stated that their electoral systems were not targeted by cyberattacks.
On November 12, 2017, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said in a CBS interview that the "hackers' activity" had
no significant consequences and did not influence the outcome of the elections. And, indeed, the
source of those attacks was not clear.
CLAIM: Russia meddled in the Alabama 2017 Senate elections to help the Republican candidate.
FACT
Despite
the initial claims , it turned out that a group of Democratic tech experts decided to imitate so-called "Russian tactics"
in the fiercely contested Alabama Senate racе. Even more jarring is the fact that one participant in the "Alabama project", Jonathon
Morgan, is chief executive of "New Knowledge", a cyber security firm that
wrote a scathing account
of Russia's social media operations in the 2016 election that was released in 2018 by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Once
again, we have one of the main private sector players in hyping the Russian threat caught red-handed.
CLAIM: Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's presidential campaign chairman, was a secret link to Russian intelligence.
FACT
Trump's former campaign chairman was hit with two indictments from Mueller's office. However, even as American media notes,
both cases have nothing to do with Russia and stemmed from his years as a political consultant for the Ukrainian government and
his failure to pay taxes on the millions he earned, his failure to report the foreign bank accounts he used to stash that money,
and his failure to report his work to the US government. In his second case in Virginia,
he was also charged with committing bank fraud to boost his assets when the Ukraine work dried up.
In fact, serious concerns have been raised in the U.S. that it was Ukrainian officials who tried to influence the 2016 elections
by leaking compromising
materials on Mr. Manafort.
The Ukrainian connection is also prevalent in the case of money transferred to accounts of American politicians. For instance,
according to a "New York Times" article, Ukrainian billionaire Viktor Pinchuk
donated over
10 million dollars to the "Clinton Foundation while just 150 thousand dollars to the "Trump Foundation".
CLAIM: Russia compromised the Vermont power grid.
FACT
On December 31, 2016, "The Washington Post", accused "Russian hackers" of compromising the Vermont power grid. The local company,
"Burlington Electric", allegedly traced a malware code in a laptop of one of its employees. It was stated that the same "code"
was used to hack the Democratic Party servers in 2016. However, the "Wordfence" cybersecurity firm checked "Burlington Electric"
for hacking, and said that the malware code was openly available, for instance, on a web-site of Ukrainian hackers . The attackers
were using IP-addresses from across the world. "The Washington Post"
later admitted that conclusions on Russia's involvement were false.
CLAIM: Russian Alfa Bank was used as a secret communication link with the Trump campaign .
FACT
In October 2016 a new "accusation" appeared,
alleging that a message exchange between the Alfa Bank server and Trump organizations indicated a "secret" Trump – Russia
communication channel.
CLAIM: Russia cracked voter registration systems during the 2016 U.S. elections.
FACT
In July 2016 the U.S. Department of Homeland Security accused Russia of gaining unauthorized access to electronic voter registration
systems in Arizona. But on April 8, 2018, "Reuters",
referring to a high-ranking U.S. administration official, wrote there was no proof Russia had anything to do with the mentioned
cyberattack.
CLAIM: Russian Embassy bank transactions were linked to "election interference".
FACT
American publication "Buzzfeed"
repeatedly claimed that U.S. authorities flagged Russian Embassy financial transfers as suspicious, many of them dated around
the 2016 election. In reality, the media outlet, by twisting the facts and placing them out of context, made routine banking transactions
– salary transfers, payments to contractors – look nefarious.
It is not
uncommon for embassy personnel to receive larger payouts, transfer or withdraw larger sums of money at the end of their work.
Furthermore, leaking of confidential banking information of persons and organizations protected by diplomatic immunity raised
concerns about the likely involvement of security services.
The
arrest in October 2018 of a U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network official, charged with leaking
information both about the Russian Embassy accounts and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, provides further proof to
the theory of political skullduggery.
* * *
Most of these responses have not been fully examined or addressed by major media, nor, for that matter, by Fox News, dominated
as it is by an almost instinctive Neoconservative Russophobia (the one possible exception being Tucker Carlson).
For the American Left, since the collapse of Communism and the growth of a traditionalist nationalism (under Vladimir Putin),
Russia has become a convenient target. When the Soviets were in power prior to 1991, the USSR was seen as a "progressive" presence
in the world, even if by the requirements of American politics the Left was forced to make ritualistic condemnations of the more
extreme elements of Soviet statecraft. Now that post-Communist Russia bans same sex marriage, glorifies the traditional family,
and the conservative Russian Orthodox Church occupies a special position of esteem and prominence, that admiration has turned
to fear and loathing. And that Russia and its president have been viewed as favorable to the hated Donald Trump doubly confirms
that hostility and targeting.
For the dominant Neoconservatives and many Republicans, contemporary Russia is seen as "anti-democratic," "reactionary," and
a threat to American world hegemony (and the refusal to bow to that hegemony, whether economically, politically, or culturally).
Indeed, as a major intellectual force, Neoconservatism owes much of its origins to Eastern European and Russia Jews, many of whose
ancestors were at direct odds with the old pre-1917 Tsarist state. That animus, those nightmares of pogroms and oppression, have
never completely subsided. A modern traditionalist, Orthodox Russia is viewed as antithetical to their more liberal, even Leftwing
ideas (e.g., increasing "conservative" acceptance of same sex marriage, "moderate" feminism, and a whole panoply of "forward looking"
views on civil rights issues -- all of which are present on Fox News.)
Memory of "the bad old days" has never disappeared.
None of this history should prevent a close examination of the current accusations against Russia, nor our search for the truth.
Much -- perhaps the future of Western civilization itself -- depends on it.
In case after case, Maddow and others in corporate media used crafted language that was
speculation designed to appear as cold hard facts to the the viewer. This was no only bad
reporting, It was a conspiracy of sorts. Maddow regularly would say, "If Russia did this, it
would be an attack on the US..." Leaving the viewer with the impression that "Russia did
this!". Then she would go to stir the cauldron for war.. This rises to the level of a
crime.
Since when is Hilary Clinton on the left? Since when are the are e-mails of the democratic
party protected government secrets? Are the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs important? Is it
strange that after 18 long years of war there is no anti-war movement? Are the people
reporting on Cable News real journalists? Well done Aaron and Chris!
democrats would rather Turmp be president than Bernie, they will throw the election before
they let Bernie create change... but then even if he is elected, it wont do much good with
corporate shills in congress in senate
I enjoy listening to Aaron, a person of integrity and also a down to earth, interesting
journalist who has worked hard to uncover the truth on this subject and knows it backwards
and forwards. I like when he can't help but laugh at certain absurdities in mainstream media
coverage of Russiagate.
I've got to admit,I get a massive dopamine rush hearing these two
sane, intelligent, critical thinkers, skillfully dissect this convoluted quadrafuck that has
wasted some much of our precious time. I literally feel washed clean for a
moment.
You can count the number of real journalists left in the US on two hands. Here are two of
the best and the bravest. Thank you, RT, for providing us with a platform for real
journalists.
as an outsider.....i view the whole thing as a smokescreen...........keeping people
occupied while planning & carrying out worse things that are being done in the
dark..........
Aaron Mate's courageous stance regarding Palestinians deserves all my respect and support.
His analysts of Rusiagate and all the fanfare associated with the so called investigations
seems most accurate.
"... Russia, and specifically President Putin, were presented as the ultimate global bogeyman after Crimea's 2014 reunification and Moscow's 2015 anti-terrorist military intervention in Syria changed the balance of power around the world and unquestionably ushered in the multipolar era after two and a half decades of American unipolarity. ..."
"... It was therefore thought by the ruling anti-Trump faction of the US' permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies ("deep state") at the time that they could easily convince the electorate to vote against the seemingly "anti-systemic" political insurgent by implying that he's a "Russian puppet" and then later, after that didn't work, manufacturing so-called "evidence" purporting to prove this through unverified fake news claims designed to defame him. ..."
Mueller report proved that Russiagate was one long series of hoaxes designed to discredit
Trump and pave the way for his impeachment
It's finally official -- Trump and his team didn't "collude" with Russia like the Democrats
and their supporters incessantly claimed for nearly the past three years. Positive coverage of
candidate Trump's promising foreign policy platform by Russian international media and truthful
reporting about Clinton's aggressive one don't amount to "hacking" an election, nor do some
internet researchers from Russia supposedly sharing some political memes on Facebook. It's now
been revealed that Russiagate was one long series of hoaxes designed to discredit Trump and
pave the way for his impeachment after it first failed to stop him from winning the presidency.
Like the American leader himself has said on several occasions already, Russiagate was an
unconstitutional coup attempt against the country's democratically elected leadership, which
deserves to be analyzed more in depth.
Russia, and specifically President Putin, were presented as the ultimate global bogeyman
after Crimea's 2014 reunification and Moscow's 2015 anti-terrorist military intervention in
Syria changed the balance of power around the world and unquestionably ushered in the
multipolar era after two and a half decades of American unipolarity.
It was therefore thought by the ruling anti-Trump faction of the US' permanent military,
intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies ("deep state") at the time that they could easily
convince the electorate to vote against the seemingly "anti-systemic" political insurgent by
implying that he's a "Russian puppet" and then later, after that didn't work, manufacturing
so-called "evidence" purporting to prove this through unverified fake news claims designed to
defame him.
"... Deerlove was also directly involved in setting up several Trump Campaign operatives for fake links to Russia (George Papadopolous, Carter Page, Gen. Flynn), together with British intelligence assets Joseph Mifsud and CIA asset Stefan Halper, a close ally of Deerlove at Cambridge. ..."
"... Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox News Tuesday that he will immediately investigate three cases of suspected "set ups," efforts to create fake connections between the Trump campaign and the Russians, all directly run by British operatives: the Mifsud role with Australian Ambassador Alexander Downer in falsely connecting George Papadopoulos to Russian spies; Halper and Deerlove setting up Gen. Flynn with fake Russian connections; and the infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer, set up by the slimy British operative Rob Goldstone. ..."
On Thursday morning, Attorney General William Barr is scheduled to release the Mueller
report, with redactions, according to laws regarding security and the privacy of Grand Jury
proceedings. While the Trump haters and conspirators are preparing various operations to keep
Russiagate going, despite the report's exoneration of Trump's imagined "collusion," the reality
that the British ran the entire operation, as identified from the beginning by EIR, is now
bursting out into the open, and is threatening to be the subject of criminal investigations in
the Department of Justice and in the Congress.
The Daily Caller's Chuck Ross on Tuesday ran an article titled: "Former British Spymaster
Has Flown Under the Radar in Russia Probe, Despite Links to Key Figures." He names Richard
Deerlove, MI6 chief from 1999 to 2004, as a key operative working with fellow MI6 operative
Christopher Steele, the author of the now discredited dossier on Trump's supposed collusion
with Russia. Deerlove was also directly involved in setting up several Trump Campaign
operatives for fake links to Russia (George Papadopolous, Carter Page, Gen. Flynn), together
with British intelligence assets Joseph Mifsud and CIA asset Stefan Halper, a close ally of
Deerlove at Cambridge.
Meanwhile, Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, told
Fox News Tuesday that he will immediately investigate three cases of suspected "set ups,"
efforts to create fake connections between the Trump campaign and the Russians, all directly
run by British operatives: the Mifsud role with Australian Ambassador Alexander Downer in
falsely connecting George Papadopoulos to Russian spies; Halper and Deerlove setting up Gen.
Flynn with fake Russian connections; and the infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian
lawyer, set up by the slimy British operative Rob Goldstone.
What's more, the VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity) issued a public
Memorandum for President Trump on Tuesday, called "The Fly in the Mueller Ointment," warning
him that the Mueller report, despite finding no evidence of collusion, maintains the lie that
the Russians hacked leading Democratic Party computers and provided their emails to Wikileaks,
falsely described as a Russian front. Detailing their forensic proof that the emails were
downloaded, not hacked, the VIPS warn the President that if these lies are allowed to stand,
the idea that Trump was elected due to Russian "interference" in the election will remain, "and
that melody will linger on for the rest of your presidency, unless you seize the moment.... You
are the President, and there may be no better time than now to face them down." (see Bill Binney interview with
LPAC.)
"... As Attorney General Barr has pointed out, including in his testimony on Capitol Hill, investigating an American presidential candidate is "a very big deal" and the Mifsud/Papadopoulos/Australian Ambassador hearsay hardly serves as adequate justification or predication. This is particularly egregious since the FBI knew that Papadopoulos never repeated to anyone in the Trump Campaign what Mifsud told him. And Mifsud is also a British intelligence asset, not a Russian intelligence asset, as suggested by Mueller's rambling legal partisans. ..."
"... Mueller, of course, never references the fact that Russiagate actually started way back in late 2015 when the British government started demanding Donald Trump's head because of his sane view of Russia, a fact acknowledged by Obama CIA chief John Brennan in his Congressional testimony ..."
"... MI6's Christopher Steele's dirty dossier was the driver of Russiagate and that Steele was a joint MI6, U.S. State Department, and FBI asset dating back to collaboration on the 2014 Ukraine coup conducted jointly by the Obama State Department, CIA, and British intelligence ..."
"... the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, were transparent British/State Department operations designed to plant and fabricate evidence, namely, Russian generated "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... Mueller completely avoided the real story, despite its public availability, in order to concoct his hit job. Each of these operations involved British intelligence personnel collaborating with Obama White House, the CIA and State Department. These entrapment efforts were designed as the pretext for creating and maintaining an FBI investigation. The FBI investigation in turn made the preposterous claims in Christopher Steele's dirty dossier, that Donald Trump had been compromised by the Russians, palatable to the journalists who repeated Steele's claims both before and after the election ..."
"... The Moscow Trump Tower project also consumes hundreds of words in Mueller's screed. It was created by long-time FBI and CIA informant Felix Sater and his childhood friend, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, and was presented in emails by Sater in September of 2015 as a Russian project which would help elect Donald Trump President with Putin's assistance. ..."
"... Instead, Mueller's argument is essentially this: "if you take all of this together, maybe it amounts to something, but I can't decide, so Congress should just stick the knife in already." There is not sufficient evidence to charge a crime, Mueller says, but Trump has also not proved his innocence. ..."
"... Here's the CliffsNotes summary of the entire 448 pages: The President was under constant attack, including from within his own White House, in an obvious attempt to frame him up while claiming he was committing treason. He got angry and didn't sit silently by while Mueller and his minions tried to frame him up. He complained loudly. Sometimes he even asked his staff to figure out how to proclaim his innocence. Under no conceivable construction is that obstruction of justice. ..."
"... When Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia in the waning days of his Administration, in retaliation for what his intelligence chiefs claimed was Russian "interference" in the 2016 election, the sanctions included implantation of a Stuxnet type worm in Russian state infrastructure. This might be considered by the Russians as a very hot potential act of war. ..."
"... First, someone from a tight circle who had viewed these transcripts, leaked the classified transcripts to the Washington Post's David Ignatius who wrote a loud column about Flynn colluding with the Russians to undermine Obama. That leak was a felony. McCabe then called Flynn as the article hit, saying that he was sending over two agents to talk to him about what this was about and telling him that involving any lawyers would be an encumbrance to a relaxed conversation. ..."
"... each time Comey met with the President he returned to compose contemporaneous memos of his conversations and to plan future encounters with a close group of associates who he characterized as a "murder board." Such activities clearly indicate that Comey was engaged in attempting to set the President up. ..."
"... Furthermore, the firestorm following Comey's firing illuminated the level of plotting against the President at the top levels of the Department of Justice -- Rod Rosenstein seriously offered to wear a wire to record the President and participated in discussions centered on organizing the cabinet to orchestrate the President's removal. ..."
"... Trump called White House Counsel Don McGahn and told him to raise Mueller's conflicts of interest with the Department of Justice and -- according to McGahn -- that Mueller could not be Special Counsel. ..."
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has written a 448-page fictional novel, grounded in treason, about the British/Obama Administration
intelligence hoax known as Russiagate. It is intended to preoccupy your mind for the next two years, at least through the 2020 elections.
It is intended to stir your passions to support your absolutely mad Representative or Senator in enacting further sanctions and supporting
the British drive to overthrow Putin's government in Russia based on fictional events which, for the most part, never happened.
The British sponsored and oriented intelligence services that sponsored this hoax have also started a campaign to ensure that
the same mad passions will destroy Donald Trump's quest for new and peaceful relationships with China. Congressional investigations
based on the "road map" provided by Robert Mueller are supposed to provide, on your taxpayer dollar, possible impeachment and, at
the very least, opposition research for the 2020 Presidential campaign. This would fulfill the British vow, openly set forth in the
December 2018 House of Lords Report,
"British Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order," that Donald Trump must not have a second term.
But, most of all, it is intended to get you to doubt what is coming next. The President's allies have promised an investigation
of the investigators and a full accounting of how this sordid affair came to be. As
Conrad Black explains in
the National Interest , what is now known is that
"senior intelligence and FBI and Justice Department officials lied under oath to Congress, or lied to federal officials in
order to influence the result, and then reverse the result, of a presidential election. In terms of subversion of the highest
constitutional process, the selection of the president and vice president of the United States, this sort of activity, that Brennan,
Clapper, Comey, McCabe, former attorney general Loretta Lynch and others appear to have engaged in, is the last stop before there
are tanks on the White House lawn and military control of the media outlets. Mueller, having failed to do anything to address
the real crisis that threatened the country, failed altogether, and compounded his failure by his sadistic entrapment of General
Michael Flynn, and hounding of Paul Manafort and others, far beyond what was necessary or excusable, in an effort to extort a
false inculpation of the president."
As most know by now, the first part of the Mueller report concludes that there was no collusion between the Russian government
and Donald Trump's campaign to swing the election to Donald Trump. This conclusion occurred despite thousands upon thousands of hours
of fake media claims, fed by British and American intelligence leaks, which made it an article of fanatical religious faith to many,
that Donald Trump was a Putin dupe. According to Mueller's report, while the Russians tried endlessly to infiltrate and steer the
Trump Campaign, they didn't succeed. Undaunted, Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper appeared on television on April
18 to claim that Mueller found "passive collusion." That is not an unfair characterization of the McCarthyite premises of Mueller's
report. According to Mueller, investigation of an American Presidential campaign was justified because Trump refused to toe the British
line on Putin and Russia.
Here is how Mueller blithely reports it:
"On June 16, 2015 Donald J. Trump declared his intent to seek nomination as the Republican candidate for President.
By early 2016, he distinguished himself among Republican candidates by speaking of closer ties with Russia, saying he would get
along well with Russian President Vladimir Putin, questioning whether the NATO alliance was obsolete, and praising Putin as a
'strong leader.' The press reported that Russian political analysts and commentators perceived Trump as favorable to Russia."
Beginning in February 2016, the Report continues, the "press" began to report the connections of various campaign figures
with Russia, namely, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Carter Page. According to Mueller's report, Trump pursued WikiLeaks during
the campaign regarding the timing of further releases of Clinton Campaign and State Department documents, he said that he doubted
that the Russians hacked the DNC and John Podesta, he falsely claimed that he had no business dealings in Russia, and the Campaign
was involved in changing a plank in the Republican Party platform about providing lethal assistance to Ukraine. Contrary to this
lying account by Saint Mueller, we know that the "press" were being steered by a British intelligence originated propaganda campaign
aimed at preventing any U.S. accommodation with Russia.
Now that we know that the President is not a traitor, can we move on to address the thousands of opioid deaths, adolescent and
other suicides, flooded farmlands, and crumbling infrastructure which have been pushed aside as we were trapped within the walls
of this British created delusion? Well, no, according to Mueller and his Congressional toadies, Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff. Nadler,
who looks and acts like a venomous toad, stuffing himself into over-sized suits which have that oh so subtle Manhattan mafia cut,
vows to spend from now until 2020 redoing the Russiagate investigation. Schiff, who has constantly propounded the most fictitious
crap possible about Russiagate, is just too invested to ever be sane, if he ever was. Thus, the second part of Mueller's report attempts
to seamlessly switch the anti-Trump political narrative by presenting an entirely novel theory of obstruction of justice in which
the President knew he was innocent, while those investigating him, knowing he was innocent, sought to exploit Trump's emotions as
they rolled a full scale coup right over him, hoping he would cross the line into illegal acts. He did not, according to both Attorney
General Barr and Mueller's boss throughout this escapade, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Mueller also acknowledges this
by saying he can't charge Trump with obstruction of justice. But Mueller also takes a cheap shot, designed to inflame the Congress
and the public, saying he cannot "exonerate" the President either. In doing so, he impermissibly shifts the burden of proof, under
our Constitution, to imply that Trump must now prove his innocence. This is, of course, reminiscent of the Star Chamber.
When Donald Trump was informed by Jeff Sessions that a Special Counsel was being appointed, he said, according to Mueller,
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I'm fucked. Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent
counsels it ruins your presidency. It takes years and years and I won't be able to do anything. This is the worst thing that ever
happened to me."
Perversely, this absolutely true statement by the President, borne out by months of an insane inquisition which crippled his ability
to act, is cited by Robert Mueller's crew of biased prosecutors for the proposition that the President repeatedly skirted obstructing
justice. On April 17, Attorney General Barr said that Donald Trump confronted an unprecedented situation at the beginning of his
presidency. The President was attempting to form an administration, while his own intelligence community was investigating him as
an agent of a foreign power. Barr might have added that Trump knew -- and everyone else knew -- that "collusion" nonsense was just
that. They knew it all along. In such circumstances, there was never any ability, in reality, to charge obstruction of justice, which
requires a corrupt intent or motive. There can be no corrupt intent or motive where a President believes, rightly, that he is innocent,
that he is being framed up, and that a coup is underway. He fights back, to preserve both the Presidency and the Constitution itself,
breaking the rules of what Saint Robert Mueller considers to be appropriate conduct by those he targets – don't say or do anything,
just let us slice you up. All the while, the Mueller report makes clear, Trump's emotions about the coup are being recorded and/or
falsely portrayed, minute by minute by those who would sell him out -- some as traitors within, others, if only to save themselves.
That is the reality. It was never obstruction of justice. It was a psyop against the President attempting to drive him mad.
The British, Not the Russians, Tried to Swing the 2016 Election
Mueller makes three significant claims about Russian interference in the 2016 election. First, page after page of his report attempts
to paint an amateurish and small bore social media campaign conducted by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian internet marketing
and click bait operation, as exercising a hugely powerful lure on the American mind. Despite Mueller's indictment of the IRA, which
is pending now in Washington, D.C., and despite British intelligence's five year fixation on the IRA as the essence of newfound Russian
powers in hybrid warfare, this is a hoax.
Aaron Maté ,
Gareth Porter and others have demonstrated, conclusively, that the IRA spent minimal amounts of money on Facebook and Google
in 2016, for a campaign which barely mentioned either candidate. Only 11% of the IRA activity even occurred during the election period.
The IRA effort spent a grand total of $46,000 on Facebook Ads, compared to $81 million by the Trump and Clinton campaigns combined,
and $4,700 on Google platforms. Its most liked Facebook post was a gun-toting image of Yosemite Sam; its most shared Instagram post
said, "Click here if you like Jesus." Another favored meme featured Jesus counseling a young man how to stop masturbating. Otherwise,
the IRA's campaign was dedicated to creating revenue from themed t-shirts and LGBT positive sex toys. Mueller never explains how
this ad content impacted the election in any way, nor could he.
Mueller next focuses on the alleged Russian military intelligence hacks of the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta,
for which he has indicted 12 Russian GRU officers, secure in the knowledge that they will never appear in a U.S. courtroom to contest
the charges. The first fact lost in the sauce here is the fact that the files the Russians allegedly sent to WikiLeaks for publication
demonstrated, truthfully, that Hillary Clinton was a craven tool of Wall Street and that her campaign was illegally rigging the Democratic
primaries against Bernie Sanders's insurgent campaign. Further, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, led by former
NSA Technical Director William Binney and former NSA cryptologist Ed Loomis, have exploded Mueller's entire theory that the Russians
hacked the DNC.
They conducted forensic studies demonstrating that what Mueller says about Guccifer 2.0 is fraudulent and that the claim that
a GRU hack of the DNC computers resulted in the WikiLeaks releases does not square with any science known currently to man. The download
speeds and file metadata point to a thumb drive or similar storage device and a human source, rather than a Russian cyber attack
conducted over the internet.
You might also ask
why Julian Assange and/or WikiLeaks were not indicted in Mueller's grand GRU conspiracy indictment . Instead, Assange was indicted
on a highly dubious charge involving the 2010 Chelsea Manning leaks which may not even survive a challenge under the statute of limitations.
Obviously, Mueller's proof of his indicted Russiagate conspiracy falls short. Indicting Assange for the claimed DNC and Podesta hack
conspiracy would necessarily allow Assange to prove that the Russian hack never happened, as he has long contended. It would expose
how James Comey and Senator Mark Warner intervened in Assange's early 2017 negotiations with the Justice Department, to ensure that
the truth would never come out. It was Comey, after all, who never secured the DNC servers for FBI forensic analysis, relying instead
on the forensics provided to him by Atlantic Council's Russia-hating CrowdStrike, the unreliable vendor to the DNC and the Clinton
Campaign. And it was Comey, it is reliably claimed, who relentlessly pushed the Russiagate narrative even after his lead case agent
told him after months of investigation, "there is no there, there." If Mueller pursued the logic of his own indictment and included
Assange in his fabricated GRU conspiracy, it would also have exposed exactly what happened after Bill Binney met with then CIA Director
Mike Pompeo at Donald Trump's direction on October 24, 2017, explaining exactly how the intelligence community was lying to the American
President. Binney's offer to collaborate in demonstrating what actually happened with the DNC and John Podesta has been successfully
blocked to date.
The last prong of Mueller's Russiagate plot involves all sorts of contacts with Russians who allegedly unsuccessfully reached
out to the Trump campaign, in order to seduce them. Here the report just lies egregiously. We are told that Russiagate started as
the result of a July 2016 report by the Australian Ambassador to London, Alexander Downer, to the FBI about a conversation he had
with a 28 year old Trump campaign volunteer, George Papadopoulos, in London. According to Mueller, Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor
with "connections to Russia" told Papadopoulos that the Russians had thousands of Hillary Clinton's State Department emails, and
Papadopoulos repeated this information in a meeting initiated by Downer. According to Mueller, when the DNC's computers were hacked,
the former Australian Ambassador to London remembered his early 2016 meeting with Papadopoulos in which Papadopoulos recounted Mifsud's
claim about Clinton's emails. This tidbit, according to Mueller, launched a full scale FBI counterintelligence investigation of a
U.S. presidential nominee. As Attorney General Barr has pointed out, including in his testimony on Capitol Hill, investigating
an American presidential candidate is "a very big deal" and the Mifsud/Papadopoulos/Australian Ambassador hearsay hardly serves as
adequate justification or predication. This is particularly egregious since the FBI knew that Papadopoulos never repeated to anyone
in the Trump Campaign what Mifsud told him. And Mifsud is also a British intelligence asset, not a Russian intelligence asset, as
suggested by Mueller's rambling legal partisans.
Mueller, of course, never references the fact that Russiagate actually started way back in late 2015 when the British government
started demanding Donald Trump's head because of his sane view of Russia, a fact acknowledged by Obama CIA chief John Brennan in
his Congressional testimony.
Nor does Mueller reference the fact that MI6's Christopher Steele's dirty dossier was the driver of Russiagate and that Steele
was a joint MI6, U.S. State Department, and FBI asset dating back to collaboration on the 2014 Ukraine coup conducted jointly by
the Obama State Department, CIA, and British intelligence. The Ukraine coup began a British march toward regime change in Russia,
risking nuclear war, a march which was rudely interrupted by the Brexit vote in Britain and by the candidacy and election of Donald
Trump.
The real story, the one now being promised by Trump's allies and others, is that many of the alleged Russian outreach efforts
cited in Mueller's report, such as multiple entrapment efforts conducted against Papadopoulos and Carter Page, as well as the
June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, were transparent British/State Department operations
designed to plant and fabricate evidence, namely, Russian generated "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.
Mueller completely avoided the real story, despite its public availability, in order to concoct his hit job. Each of these
operations involved British intelligence personnel collaborating with Obama White House, the CIA and State Department. These entrapment
efforts were designed as the pretext for creating and maintaining an FBI investigation. The FBI investigation in turn made the preposterous
claims in Christopher Steele's dirty dossier, that Donald Trump had been compromised by the Russians, palatable to the journalists
who repeated Steele's claims both before and after the election.
Like the Steele dossier itself, the dirt and allegedly Russian-sourced information about Putin and Trump did not originate with
actual Russian "dirt" or with actual Russian sources. According to well-placed Congressional sources, Christopher Steele's main source
for his dodgy dossier is a former Russian intelligence officer living in the United States. But, no former Russian intelligence officer
lives in the United States without reporting to the CIA. That is just a simple fact. There is also evidence that the Trump Campaign
was being flooded with FBI informants acting as "pretend" Russian agents as early as May. Mike Caputo has documented just such as
approach by FBI informant and Russian criminal Henry Greenberg to himself and Roger Stone offering "dirt on Hillary Clinton." Papadopoulos
claims that Sergei Millian, the alleged source of the infamous Ritz Hotel prostitute claim in Steele's dirty dossier, sat silently
as Millian's friend told Papadopoulos that Millian was working for the FBI.
The Moscow Trump Tower project also consumes hundreds of words in Mueller's screed. It was created by long-time FBI and CIA
informant Felix Sater and his childhood friend, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, and was presented in emails by Sater in September of
2015 as a Russian project which would help elect Donald Trump President with Putin's assistance. It was pushed, and pushed,
and pushed by Sater, whose agreement to become an informant, was signed by none other than Andrew Weissman, Mueller's chief henchman.
Former CIA and State Department analyst Larry Johnson
has fully demonstrated this chain of fabrications .
As for the last portion of Part I of Mueller's Report, portraying efforts to secure peace with Russia and in Ukraine during the
transition as some sort of diabolical plot -- wow, just think about that. Can you seriously join Grand Inquisitor Robert Mueller
in treating efforts to establish the foundations for peace with Russia, as some form of criminal act? Or, as crazy former DNI Jim
Clapper calls it, "passive collusion"? This is, of course, the same Jim Clapper who claims that Russians are genetically predisposed
to attack the United States. As Professor Stephen Cohen, of NYU and Princeton, continues to reiterate, there are
immense nuclear dangers in stoking hatred of Russia rather than seeking
a just accommodation. Professor Cohen noted recently that in the history of election interventions by the United States into Russia,
even if you accept all of Mueller's preposterous claims, what the Russians are accused of doing here is equivalent to jay-walking.
Compare the publication of truthful information about Hillary Clinton rigging the Democratic primaries, a juvenile and largely ineffective
social media campaign, and numerous attempts to improve U.S. Russian relations, with the $10 billion the Clinton Administration provided
to re-elect Boris Yeltsin, in 1996, for example.
Obstruction of Justice
Mueller's 250 page plus screed about obstruction of justice focuses on 10 "episodes" where he says the President almost crossed
the line into what he considers to be obstructive conduct. Mind you, he admits that as opposed to most obstruction cases, there was
no underlying crime which the President was trying to cover up. There were also never ever any acts like those Hillary Clinton's
crew committed, such as smashing cell phones with hammers and BleachBitting computers. In fact, the White House gave the Special
Counsel everything he asked for, including notes of President Trump's discussions with White House Counsel Don McGahn, over which
Executive Privilege could rightly have been claimed -- and many lawyers believe such privilege should have been exercised. Mueller
interviewed just about everyone in the White House and on the Trump Campaign, with the President's blessing and his urging them to
"cooperate." From this cooperation, Mueller's minions concocted a hit job, designed to portray the President as unstable and irrational
and out solely to protect himself, concealing derogatory facts from the American people in statements on his Twitter account and
to the press. Nowhere, however, even in this entire rabid prosecutor's screed is there any act which the courts have recognized as
obstruction of justice.
Instead, Mueller's argument is essentially this: "if you take all of this together, maybe it amounts to something, but I can't
decide, so Congress should just stick the knife in already." There is not sufficient evidence to charge a crime, Mueller says, but
Trump has also not proved his innocence.
Here's the CliffsNotes summary of the entire 448 pages: The President was under constant attack, including from within his
own White House, in an obvious attempt to frame him up while claiming he was committing treason. He got angry and didn't sit silently
by while Mueller and his minions tried to frame him up. He complained loudly. Sometimes he even asked his staff to figure out how
to proclaim his innocence. Under no conceivable construction is that obstruction of justice.
Three incidents make the fraud in Mueller's tedious novel very clear. First, Mueller babbles on about the President's conduct
concerning Michael Flynn's firing, but he never references that Michael Flynn had been targeted by the British authors of the Russiagate
hoax, the circles of Sir Richard Dearlove and his friend Stefan Halper, way back in 2014. They falsely accused Flynn of a dalliance
with Russian historian Svetlana Lokhova at a Cambridge event both attended. What really flipped the British out about Flynn, however,
was his exposure of support for Al Qaeda and similar groups in Syria by both the U.S. and British governments. Flynn had been a target
of FBI investigation and surveillance based on British demands for his head since early 2016, if not much earlier.
When Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia in the waning days of his Administration, in retaliation for what his intelligence
chiefs claimed was Russian "interference" in the 2016 election, the sanctions included implantation of a Stuxnet type worm in Russian
state infrastructure. This might be considered by the Russians as a very hot potential act of war. Flynn, the incoming National
Security Adviser, had conversations with Russian Ambassador Kislyak to the effect that the Russians should not overreact to Obama's
sanctions, among other things. These conversations were intercepted, and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and Mary McCord of the
National Security Division at DOJ, along with Deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, plotted how to set Flynn up for undermining Obama's
dangerous threats and actions.
First, someone from a tight circle who had viewed these transcripts, leaked the classified transcripts to the Washington
Post's David Ignatius who wrote a loud column about Flynn colluding with the Russians to undermine Obama. That leak was a felony.
McCabe then called Flynn as the article hit, saying that he was sending over two agents to talk to him about what this was about
and telling him that involving any lawyers would be an encumbrance to a relaxed conversation. Flynn couldn't remember certain
things the agents asked him about. They had the transcript of Flynn's conversation and never showed it to him. In the course of the
interview, Flynn made statements at variance with what he was known to have said in the transcripts. Nonetheless, the agents themselves
said that Flynn had not deliberately lied to them when they reported back to the FBI.
After Flynn was fired for lying to Vice President Pence and others about the Kisylak conversations, FBI Director James Comey claims
that President Trump pulled him aside and said he "hoped" Comey would let the Flynn thing go because Flynn was a good guy. The maniacal
Comey insists that the President's "hope" was an "order." Comey, the fabricator, had previously insisted that the President's alleged
request for "loyalty," at a point where all of Washington was talking about RESIST members covertly acting against the President
from within his Administration, was somehow equivalent to a mafia induction ceremony. Michael Flynn was subsequently convicted by
Mueller of lying to the FBI in his White House interview despite the fact that the original agents concluded that no such lying even
occurred. This was part of a coerced plea deal resulting from the fact that Flynn was bankrupted by the legal fees necessary to defend
himself against Mueller's inquisition, and threats by Mueller to indict Flynn's son.
Then there is the Comey firing itself. Comey's Congressional testimony, which Mueller never mentions, lays out that each time
Comey met with the President he returned to compose contemporaneous memos of his conversations and to plan future encounters with
a close group of associates who he characterized as a "murder board." Such activities clearly indicate that Comey was engaged in
attempting to set the President up. Comey told Congress and Trump that he was not under investigation in Russiagate but refused
to tell the public that, knowing full well that the President felt it was completely hindering his ability to act, particularly with
respect to Russia.
Mueller does disclose that, from the beginning, Trump railed against Comey because he was blocking what Trump he wanted to do
with Russia on trade and ISIS. In fact, Trump dictated a letter to Steven Miller firing Comey because he would not tell the public
the truth about Russiagate and because it was hindering his ability to deal with Russia. Trump's letter was rejected by White House
staff, including White House Counsel Don McGahn, who came up with the idea of firing Comey based on Comey's misconduct in the Clinton
investigation. The President repeated the real reasons he was firing Comey publicly and almost immediately after Rod Rosenstein's
letter detailing Comey's misconduct in the Clinton investigation was released, and did so again, in an oval office meeting with Russian
Foreign Minister Lavrov and Ambassador Kislyak. This is hardly the concealment associated with obstruction of justice.
Furthermore, the firestorm following Comey's firing illuminated the level of plotting against the President at the top levels
of the Department of Justice -- Rod Rosenstein seriously offered to wear a wire to record the President and participated in discussions
centered on organizing the cabinet to orchestrate the President's removal. Mueller never mentions any of this in his report.
Instead he adopts, wholesale, James Comey's claim that Trump fired him to hinder the Russia investigation, despite the fact that
the investigation was never hindered. Mueller also never references Comey's leaks of classified materials to a friend for media publication,
in order to trigger Mueller's own appointment as Special Counsel, or that everyone already knew, at that point, that there was "no
there, there" with respect to collusion with Russia.
Instead, the game was on to frame the President, to build the case Comey had not been able to make about obstruction of justice.
This proceeded through a series of calculated provocations and media leaks all designed to provoke the President into overreaction.
One of these is found in the episode involving the so-called attempt to "fire Mueller" which the media and Congress are salivating
about. According to Mueller's report, Trump called White House Counsel Don McGahn and told him to raise Mueller's conflicts of
interest with the Department of Justice and -- according to McGahn -- that Mueller could not be Special Counsel.
This call occurred soon after the Washington Post published a leak that the President himself was under investigation by Mueller
for obstruction of justice. McGahn construed Trump's words as an order to fire Mueller, even though, by his own account, no such
order to fire Mueller was stated. McGahn claims that he immediately decided to resign, although he never informed the President of
this. No call was ever placed to the Justice Department, Mueller was not fired, and Trump never repeated what he allegedly said on
one heated occasion to Don McGahn. Based on his drama queen account of this alleged aborted attempt at some undetermined act of obstruction,
however, McGahn is being hailed by the anti-Trump media as a modern Sir Thomas More.
The President denies ever saying anything like this and there is considerable evidence in the Mueller report itself demonstrating
that Trump's repeatedly pronounced distrust of McGahn was fully justified. The kicker here is that even if Trump had followed through
and fired Mueller, he would have been within his Constitutional powers to do so. There would have been plenty of political heat,
but no obstruction of justice, despite McGahn's ridiculous fantasy that he was being asked to re-enact Nixon's Saturday night massacre.
Mueller's report otherwise shows White House Counsel McGahn, a total creature of the Washington Republican establishment who attached
himself to Trump early in the campaign, keeping book on the President and taking notes on everything the President allegedly said
-- hardly something typical of normal lawyering.
So, despite this weekend's huffing and puffing of the Democrats and the media about the Mueller Report, it is important to remember,
first and foremost, that they suffered a bone-crushing defeat when Saint Robert Mueller's magical curtain was pulled back, revealing
a tale, full of sound and fury, but signifying absolutely nothing. Attorney General Barr will conduct a seminar for the children
in Congress when he testifies about the actual law shortly.
The real story, the one about the attempted coup and treason against this President and its perpetrators is coming, and it will
come fast. A big opportunity is presenting itself to crush the British apparatus which has haunted this country since the end of
World War II.
Act now, don't get confused by the heat of battle, and we can take the country back.
"... UK interference with the US elections is the real foreign interference, not the Russian one. The same goes for UK collusion. How about sanctions against the UK? ..."
President Trump on Thursday renewed his vow to declassify a wide swath of "
devastating
"
documents related to the Russia probe "and much more" - adding that he's
glad he waited
until the Mueller investigation was complete.
In a Thursday night phone interview on
Fox
News,
host Sean Hannity asked "will you declassify the FISA applications, gang of 8 material,
those 302s - what we call on this program 'the bucket of five'?"
To which Trump replied: "Yes, everything is going to be declassified - and more, much more than
what you just mentioned.
It will all be declassified
, and I'm glad I waited
because i thought that maybe they would obstruct if I did it early - and I think I was right. So
I'm glad I waited, and now the Attorney General can take a look - a very strong look at
whatever it is
, but it will be declassified and more than what you just mentioned."
https://www.youtube.com/embed/WTCDXmWo0yQ
Last September 17th, Trump vowed to release all text messages related to the Russia
investigation
with no redactions
, as well as specific pages from the FBI's FISA
surveillance warrant application on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, and interviews with the
DOJ's Bruce Ohr.
Four days later, however, Trump said over Twitter that the Justice Department - then headed by
Attorney General Jeff Sessions (while the Russia investigation was headed up by Deputy AG Rod
Rosenstein) - told him that it might have a negative impact on the Russia probe, and that key US
allies had asked him not to release the documents.
"I met with the DOJ concerning the declassification of various UNREDACTED documents," Trump
tweeted. "They agreed to release them but stated that so doing may have a perceived negative impact
on the Russia probe. Also,
key Allies' called to ask not to release
. Therefore,
the Inspector General has been asked to review these documents on an expedited basis
.
I believe he will move quickly on this (and hopefully other things which he is looking at). In the
end I can always declassify if it proves necessary. Speed is very important to me - and everyone!"
That key ally
turns out to have been the
UK
, according to the
New
York Times
.,
which reported last September that their concern was over material which
"includes
direct references to conversations between American law enforcement officials and Christopher
Steele,"
the former MI6 agent who compiled the infamous "Steele Dossier."
We now know, of course, that Steele had
extensive contact with Bruce and Nellie Ohr in
2016, while Bruce was the #4 official at the Obama DOJ, and Nellie was working for Fusion GPS
- the opposition research firm hired by Hillary Clinton and the DNC to produce the infamous Steele
Dossier.
Last August, emails turned over to Congressional investigators revealed that
Steele was
much closer to the Obama administration than previously disclosed
, and his DOJ contact
Bruce Ohr reported directly to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates -
who approved at least
one of the FISA warrants to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Steele and the Ohrs would have breakfast together on July 30, 2016 at the Mayflower
Hotel in downtown Washington D.C.
, while Steele turned in installments of his infamous
"dossier" on July 19 and 26. The breakfast also occurred one day before the FBI formally launched
operation "Crossfire Hurricane," the agency's counterintelligence operation into the Trump
campaign.
Bruce Ohr was a key contact inside the Justice Department for ex-British spy
Christopher Steele
, who authored the anti-Trump dossier, which was commissioned by
Fusion GPS and funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee
through law firm Perkins Coie.
The FBI relied on much of Steele's work to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA) warrants against the Trump campaign -- specifically Carter Page, redacted versions of the
FISA warrants released last year revealed. -
Fox
News
And who could forget that much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was
conducted on
UK soil throughout 2016
. Recall that Trump aid George Papadopoulos was
lured to
London
in March, 2016, where Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud fed him the rumor that Russia
had dirt on Hillary Clinton. It was later
at a London bar
that Papadopoulos would
drunkenly pass the rumor to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer (who Strzok flew to London to meet
with).
Also recall that CIA/FBI "informant" (spy) Stefan Halper met with both Carter Page
and
Papadopoulos
in London.
Halper, a veteran of four Republican administrations, reached out to Trump aide George
Papadopoulos in September 2016 with an offer to fly to London to write an academic paper on
energy exploration in the Mediterranean Sea.
Papadopoulos accepted a flight to London and a $3,000 honorarium.
He claims
that during a meeting in London, Halper asked him whether he knew anything about Russian hacking
of Democrats' emails.
Papadopoulos had other contacts on British soil that he now believes were part of a
government-sanctioned surveillance operation. -
Daily
Caller
In total, Halper received over $1 million from the Obama Pentagon for "research," over $400,000
of which was granted before and during the 2016 election season.
No wonder the British government has "grave concerns."
UK interference with the US elections is the real foreign
interference, not the Russian one. The same goes for UK
collusion. How about sanctions against the UK?
"That key ally
turns out to have been the
UK
, according to the
New
York Times
.,
which reported last September that their
concern was over material which
"includes direct references to
conversations between American law enforcement officials and
Christopher Steele,"
the former MI6 agent who compiled the
infamous "Steele Dossier."
And there you have the REAL collusion
to sway the elections and then sink a new Administration.
"... Hells teeth, we skipped from Catch 22 to Catch 53 and missed most of the numbers in between. Great work, it makes the scene in Catch 22 where Bob Newhart tells his adjutant he is out, look shabby by comparison. ..."
"... Trump's not authorized? Huh? The globalist capitalist being the crony capitalist swamp monster he is isn't authorized by "the powers that be"? Oh yes, yes I almost forgot. The Deep State hates him, right? I mean the way you get on the bad side of the Deep State is to shove more money to the MIC, suck up to Israel, pile on Obama's "nuclear modernization", get the prison industrial complex back in full swing, and the list goes on and on and on. ..."
U.S. Attorney General William Barr, flanked by Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, speaks at a news conference to discuss
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential race, in Washington, U.S., April 18,
2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
I owe the corporate media an apology. For the last few years, I've been writing all these essays explaining how they were perpetrating
an enormous psyop on the American public a psyop designed to convince the public that Donald Trump "colluded" with Russia to steal
the presidency from Hillary Clinton. Up until a few days ago, I would have sworn that they had published literally thousands of articles
and editorials, and broadcast countless TV segments, more or less accusing him of treason, and being a "Russian intelligence asset,"
and other ridiculous stuff like that. Also, and I'm still not sure how this happened, I somehow got the idea in my head that the
investigation that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was meticulously conducting had something to do with Donald Trump conspiring or
"colluding" with Russia, or being some kind of "Manchurian president," or being blackmailed by Putin with a pee-tape, or something.
In any event, the publication of the Mueller report has cleared things up for me. I get it now. The investigation was never about
Trump colluding with Russia. It was always about Trump obstructing the investigation of the collusion with Russia that the investigation
was not about. Mueller was never looking for collusion. It was not his job to look for collusion. His job was to look for obstruction
of his investigation of alleged obstruction of his investigation of non-collusion, which he found, and detailed at length in his
report, and which qualifies as an impeachable offense.
Not that he proved that there was no collusion! On the contrary, as
professional hermeneuticists
have been repeatedly pointing out on Twitter, given that Mueller wasn't looking for collusion, and that collusion could never have
been legally established, and isn't even a legal term, Mueller's failure to find any actual evidence of collusion is evidence of
collusion, notwithstanding the fact that he couldn't prove it, and wasn't even looking for it, except to the extent it allowed him
to establish a case for the obstruction he was actually investigating.
In other words, his investigation was launched in order to investigate the obstruction of his investigation. And, on those terms,
it was a huge success. The fact that it didn't prove "collusion" means nothing -- that's just a straw man argument that Trump and
his Russian handlers make. The goal all along was to prove that Trump obstructed an investigation of his obstruction of that investigation,
not that he was "colluding" with Putin, or any of the other paranoid nonsense that the corporate media were forced to report on,
once an investigation into his obstruction of the investigation was launched.
See, and this is why I owe the media an apology. All those thousands of hysterical articles, editorials, and TV segments accusing
Donald Trump of treason, and of literally being a Russian agent, and probably
Putin's homosexual lover , were not just ridiculous propaganda. The corporate media were not engaged in a concerted campaign
to convince the public that Trump conspired with a foreign adversary to
brainwash millions of African Americans into refusing to vote for Hillary Clinton with some emails and a handful of Facebook
posts. No, the media were simply covering the story of his obstruction of the investigation of the made-up facts the intelligence
agencies got them to relentlessly disseminate to generate the appearance of a story, which, once it was out there, had to be reported
on, regardless of how it came into being, or whose nefarious purposes it served.
Moreover, regardless of whether Mueller did or did not establish obstruction (or attempted obstruction, which is just as impeachable)
of his non-investigation of collusion, he absolutely established that Russia attacked us by brainwashing all those African Americans
who were definitely going to vote for Clinton until they saw those divisive Facebook ads and those DNC emails that Putin personally
ordered Trump to order Paul Manafort to
personally deliver to Julian Assange , who was hunkered down in the Ecuadorean embassy poking holes in King-size condoms, abusing
his cat, and
smearing invisible poo all over the walls of his kitchen.
Now, these are all indisputable facts, which Mueller establishes in his report by referencing the repeated assertions of a consensus
of U.S. intelligence agencies, and the corporate media's relentless repetition of those agencies' assertions, and the feeling a lot
of people have that they must be factual to some extent, given how often they have been repeated, and referenced, and authoritatively
asserted, and how familiar they sound when they hear them, again. The fact that there exists no evidence whatsoever of any "Russian
attack," and that all we're actually talking about is the publication of a bunch of emails that DNC members actually wrote, and some
ridiculous social media posts, should not in any way detract from the fact that the Russians launched a totally devastating, virtually
Pearl Harbor-scale attack on the fabric of American democracy, which Trump obstructed an investigation of, or attempted to obstruct
an investigation of, or conspired to attempt to obstruct an investigation of obstruction of.
Or whatever. The point is, now they've got him! His justice obstructing days are numbered! Break out the pussyhats and vuvuzelas,
because next stop is Impeachment City! So what if he's not a Russian agent and didn't conspire or collude with anyone? He got elected
without permission, and insulted a lot of powerful people, and well, who cares what they impeach him for, as long as they impeach
him for something!
They kind of have to do it, at this point, don't they? They just spent most of the last three years rolling out
an official narrative in which the Russians
are running around attacking democracy,
poisoning ducks with Novichok perfume , fomenting populist uprisings in France, and just generally being the evil enemies that
the Islamic terrorists used to be, before they turned into freedom fighters and helped us try to take over Syria.
If the Democrats don't impeach Donald Trump, that official narrative might fall apart. Liberals might have to face the fact that
Americans elected Donald Trump president, not because they were brainwashed by Russians, or had any illusions about what a thuggish,
self-aggrandizing buffoon he is, but because they were so disgusted with the neoliberal Washington establishment, and the global
capitalist elites that own it, that they leapt at the chance to vote against it, and probably would have elected anyone who promised
to even marginally disrupt it but there I go drifting off into my crazy conspiracist thinking again.
Anyway I'm really sorry about all that stuff I wrote about the corporate media. Rest assured, that won't happen again. Admittedly,
I blew the Russiagate thing, but I promise to do better with Obstructiongate, or Tax-Returnsgate, or Whatevergate. It doesn't really
matter what we call it, right? The important thing is to teach the masses what happens when they vote for unauthorized candidates.
We're only halfway through that lesson. Stay tuned there's much, much more to come!
CJ . So, Russiagate is finally done and dusted? Kaput? Finito? Never to be heard of again? Hurrah! I honestly didn't know how
much more of the turgid, twisted, mind numbing crap I could take. Was thinking of buying a one way ticket to Easter Island! (
Do they have corporate media on Easter Island?). So now we have .. Obstructiongate. Oh Joy. Something else the ethical, unbiased,
truth telling journalists at The Guardian, ABC, BBC, et al can sink their teeth into. Been as crook as a dog with rabies and bubonic
plague (combined) the last week, but your words are a tonic, and your satire is bang on, Cheers.
Thank you for an article that exposes the fascinating Rabbit hole through rabbit hole into rabbit hole syndrome. And so concisely
and wittily.
We must all take measures to avoid contamination with this virus. It now seams to have become an unstoppable raving
epidemic within the weirdly deranged, and manipulative world of the controllers and gate keepers of the official narrative.
Hells teeth, we skipped from Catch 22 to Catch 53 and missed most of the numbers in between. Great work, it makes the scene
in Catch 22 where Bob Newhart tells his adjutant he is out, look shabby by comparison.
Love it
I'm confused CJ, So Putin is not as omnipotent as we were led to believe by our forth estate buddies at the Graun et.al? It was
obstruction of justice like the FBI not checking or investigating the DNC hard drives? Operation hard drive worked well for the
Graun, you might have thought that MI5/6 would have tipped off CIA/FBI regarding Hillery's compromat rather than producing a completely
fact free dossier.
Either way it just goes to show that now in Ukraine real democracy reigns and apparently Putin doesn't like that according
to the Graun either.
How can anyone possibly assert that Trump is anything BUT representative of the swamp of crony capitalism and the rest. CJ, have
you noticed the Austerity on steroids wrecking ball the Trump Administration is swinging around? Of course not. You are a leftist
who just loves his Trump, but of course you don't nudge nudge. A truly bizarre phenomenon. Perhaps it's the nationalism you relate
to, or his golf swing? Penchant for the "strong man"?
I despise Bill and Hillary, and every other corporate servicing schmuck that makes up the leadership of the Democratic Party.
I especially despise Obama, Feinstein, and Pelosi for driving the getaway car for the war criminals in the Bush Administration
in addition to his own Administration piling on. What I don't get are leftists that give Trump a pass on everything they rightly
detest Obama, Clinton, et al for.
Trump's not authorized? Huh? The globalist capitalist being the crony capitalist swamp monster he is isn't authorized by
"the powers that be"? Oh yes, yes I almost forgot. The Deep State hates him, right? I mean the way you get on the bad side of
the Deep State is to shove more money to the MIC, suck up to Israel, pile on Obama's "nuclear modernization", get the prison industrial
complex back in full swing, and the list goes on and on and on.
But what derision does CJ have for the fascist in the White House? Nada.
It's not a question of "loving" Trump. It's a question of realising that the whole Trump fiasco blows a hole in the phoney political
spectrum i.e. that fraudulent arena which has now been revealed as – in the words of Gore Vidal – a bird with two right wings.
Yes Trump is an arsehole. But I'm damned if I'm going to enter into that putrid game of denouncing him just to swing over to the
"better option" of supporting the Democrats.
"... FARA requires all individuals and organizations acting on behalf of foreign governments to registered with the Department of Justice and to report their sources of income and contacts. Federal prosecutors have claimed that Butina was reporting back to a Russian official while deliberating cultivating influential figures in the United States as potential resources to advance Russian interests, a process that is described in intelligence circles as "spotting and assessing." ..."
"... Selective enforcement of FARA was, ironically, revealed through evidence collected and included in the Mueller Report relating to the only foreign country that actually sought to obtain favors from the incoming Trump Administration. That country was Israel and the individual who drove the process and should have been fined and required to register with FARA was President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. As Kushner also had considerable "flight risk" to Israel, which has no extradition treaty with the United States, he should also have been imprisoned. ..."
"... Kushner reportedly aggressively pressured members of the Trump transition team to contact foreign ambassadors at the United Nations to convince them to vote against or abstain from voting on the December 2016 United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements. The resolution passed when the US, acting under direction of President Barack Obama, abstained, but incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn did indeed contact the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice and asked for Moscow's cooperation, which was refused. Kushner, who is so close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the latter has slept at the Kushner apartment in New York City, was clearly acting in response to direction coming from the Israeli government. ..."
"... Another interesting tidbit revealed by Mueller relates to Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos's ties to Israel over an oil development scheme. Mueller "ultimately determined that the evidence was not sufficient to obtain or sustain a conviction" that Papadopoulos "committed a crime or crimes by acting as an unregistered agent of the Israeli government." Mueller went looking for a Russian connection but found only Israel and decided to do nothing about it. ..."
The Mueller Special Counsel inquiry is far from over even though a
final report on its findings has been issued. Although the investigation had a mandate to
explore all aspects of the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election, from the start
the focus was on the possibility that some members of the Trump campaign had colluded with the
Kremlin to influence the outcome of the election to favor the GOP candidate. Even though that
could not be demonstrated, many prominent Trump critics, to include Laurence Tribe of the
Harvard Law School,
are demanding that the investigation continue until Congress has discovered "the full facts
of Russia's interference [to include] the ways in which that interference is continuing in
anticipation of 2020, and the full story of how the president and his team welcomed, benefited
from, repaid, and obstructed lawful investigation into that interference and the president's
cooperation with it."
Tribe should perhaps read the report more carefully. While it does indeed confirm some
Russian meddling, it does not demonstrate that anyone in the Trump circle benefited from it or
cooperated with it. The objective currently being promoted by dedicated Trump critics like
Tribe is to make a case to impeach the president based on the alleged enormity of the Russian
activity, which is not borne out by the facts: the Russian role was intermittent, small scale
and basically ineffective.
One interesting aspect of the Mueller inquiry and the ongoing Russophobia that it has
generated is the essential hypocrisy of the Washington Establishment. It is generally agreed
that whatever Russia actually did, it did not affect the outcome of the election. That the
Kremlin was using intelligence resources to act against Hillary Clinton should surprise no one
as she described Russian President Vladimir Putin as Hitler and also made clear that she would
be taking a very hard line against Moscow.
The anti-Russia frenzy in Washington generated by the vengeful Democrats and an
Establishment fearful of a loss of privilege and entitlement claimed a number of victims. Among
them was Russian citizen Maria Butina, who has a court date and will very likely be
sentenced tomorrow .
Regarding Butina, the United States Department of Justice would apparently have you believe
that the Kremlin sought to subvert the five-million-member strong National Rifle Association
(NRA) by having a Russian citizen take out a life membership in the organization with the
intention of corrupting it and turning it into an instrument for subverting American democracy.
Maria Butina has, by the way, a long and well documented history as an advocate for gun
ownership and was a co-founder in Russia of Right to Bear Arms, which is not an intelligence
front organization of some kind. It is rather a genuine lobbying group with an active
membership and agenda. Contrary to what has been reported in the mainstream media, Russians can
own guns but the licensing and registration procedures are long and complicated, which Right to
Bear Arms, modeling itself on the NRA, is seeking to change.
Butina, a graduate student at American University, is now in a federal prison, having been
charged with collusion and failure to register as an agent of the Russian Federation. She was
arrested on July 15, 2018. It is decidedly unusual to arrest and confine someone who has failed
to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) , but she has not been granted bail because, as a
Russian citizen, she is considered to be a "flight risk," likely to try to flee the US and
return home.
FARA requires all individuals and organizations acting on behalf of foreign governments to
registered with the Department of Justice and to report their sources of income and contacts.
Federal prosecutors have claimed that Butina was reporting back to a Russian official while
deliberating cultivating influential figures in the United States as potential resources to
advance Russian interests, a process that is described in intelligence circles as "spotting and
assessing."
Maria eventually pleaded guilty of not registering under FARA to mitigate any punishment,
hoping that she would be allowed to return to Russia after a few months in prison on top of the
nine months she has already served. She has reportedly fully cooperated the US authorities,
turning over documents, answering questions and undergoing hours of interrogation by federal
investigators before and after her guilty plea.
Maria Butina basically did nothing that damaged US security and it is difficult to see where
her behavior was even criminal, but the prosecution is asking for 18 months in prison for her
in addition to the time served. She would be, in fact, one of only a handful of individuals
ever to be imprisoned over FARA, and they all come from countries that Washington considers to
be unfriendly, to include Cuba, Saddam's Iraq and Russia. Normally the failure to comply with
FARA is handled with a fine and compulsory registration.
Butina was essentially convicted of the crime of being Russian at the wrong time and in the
wrong place and she is paying for it with prison. Selective enforcement of FARA was,
ironically, revealed through evidence collected and included in the Mueller Report relating to
the only foreign country that actually sought to obtain favors from the incoming Trump
Administration. That country was Israel and the individual who drove the process and should
have been fined and required to register with FARA was President Donald Trump's son-in-law
Jared Kushner. As Kushner also had considerable "flight risk" to Israel, which has no
extradition treaty with the United States, he should also have been imprisoned.
Kushner reportedly aggressively
pressured members of the Trump transition team to contact foreign ambassadors at the United
Nations to convince them to vote against or abstain from voting on the December 2016 United
Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements. The resolution passed
when the US, acting under direction of President Barack Obama, abstained, but incoming National
Security Adviser Michael Flynn did indeed contact the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice
and asked for Moscow's cooperation, which was refused. Kushner, who is so close to Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the latter has slept at the Kushner apartment in New York
City, was clearly acting in response to direction coming from the Israeli government.
Another interesting tidbit revealed by Mueller relates to Trump foreign policy adviser
George Papadopoulos's ties to Israel over an oil development scheme. Mueller "ultimately
determined that the evidence was not sufficient to obtain or sustain a conviction" that
Papadopoulos "committed a crime or crimes by acting as an unregistered agent of the Israeli
government." Mueller went looking for a Russian connection but found only Israel and decided to
do nothing about it.
As so often is the case, inquiries that begin by looking for foreign interference in
American politics start by focusing on Washington's adversaries but then comes up with Israel.
Noam Chomsky
described it best "First of all, if you're interested in foreign interference in our
elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as
compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Netanyahu
goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with
overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president's policies -- what happened with Obama
and Netanyahu in 2015. Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress
trying to -- calling on them to reverse US policy, without even informing the president? And
that's just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence."
Maria Butina is in jail for doing nothing while Jared Kushner, who needed a godfathered
security clearance due to his close Israeli ties, struts through the White House as senior
advisor to the president in spite of the fact that he used his nepotistically obtained access
to openly promote the interests of a foreign government. Mueller knows all about it but
recommended nothing, as if it didn't happen. The media is silent. Congress will do nothing. As
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi put it "We in Congress stand by
Israel. In Congress, we speak with one voice on the subject of Israel." Indeed.
Please explain what Trump is doing to break America.
The defense budgets are up, sequestration has been lifted so they can go up faster. US
spending is at and above "Reagan build up" levels and 4 or 5 times the sum of China and
Russia war budgets.
Trump is doing fractionally more than Obama (Obama was $1T over 30 years) to build up
US' offensive thermonuclear capacity, he sold anti tank systems to Ukraine (maybe the new
Ukraine president who was not installed by the US will not use them), he pulled out of
Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty of 1987, and is placing anti ballistic missile systems
in Poland and keeping the system in Rumania, etc ..
Also link how the Russians effect his tactics to break America.given the incomplete
list of muscular military things Trump is doing in and around expanded NATO.
Being called soft on Russia is/was both not true, and motivated by the neoconservative
members of the democratic party.
I am impressed Mueller and his spies can read Russian minds, as well as the minds of
the GOP operatives spied on during the campaign, such perpetrators Mueller could not get
indicted!
Jeff Fisher , April 23, 2019 5:30 pm
"collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code,
nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law."
That is what Meuller's report says about "collusion". Basically that it isn't a thing in
this context. It's too nebulous to be useful.
But nebulous terms are very useful for liars.
With regard to Russia. The Russian elite are basically fossil fuel oligarchs. The Republican
party is extremely pro-fossil-fuel-oligarch. There are, as Trump is involved, surely highly
shameful elaborations, but fundamentally the Republican Party and Russian Oligarchs share key
interests in fossil fuel dependence, lax financial regulation, policy favorable to the
ultra-wealthy, etc.
pgl , April 23, 2019 6:35 pm
ILSM refuses to read the Mueller report:
"Please explain what Trump is doing to break America."
Lord this comment is almost as dumb as what Jared Kushner said – there were only 2
Facebook ads.
OK Jared is a traitor. So is ILSM.
ilsm , April 23, 2019 9:15 pm
pgl,
all you got is ad hom.
explain what I asked.
You read Mueller, his report is affirmation for your Trump Derangement Syndrome..
Mueller's report is babbling appealing to Clinton followers ultra nationalist far right wing
views disguised as a democratic.
Read the rest. Lester Holt and Clinton could be Petro Poroshenko the strong man Obama's
state dept imposed on Ukraine in 2014.
The Whittington thing on Mueller no indictment report which mind reads the Russians and
trump aides.
Is it liberal to complain about not being hard enough on Russia?
Interesting that Hillary Clinton said Trump was a "Russian puppet" (probably after Obama
sent the FBI after the GOP campaign) and NBC's Holt (Nov 9 2016) said the US election was a
Russian coup. Since when (except maybe if Joe McCarthy were a democrat).
A parallel maybe. In Ukraine since 2004 the popularly elected president was deposed twice by
extreme right wing ultra nationalists. In 2014 the popular Yanukovych was deposed in the Maidan
revolution with help from the US replaced with no election by Petro Poroshenko.
Sunday we hear that a comedian Zelenskiy soundly beat Poroshenko in a popular vote.
To this Poroshenko: "Poroshenko said on social media he thought Zelenskiy's win would spark
celebrations in the Kremlin."
"They believe that with a new inexperienced Ukrainian president, Ukraine could be quickly
returned to Russia's orbit of influence," he wrote.
Clinton and Holt could be writing for Poroshenko, a far right wing ultra nationalist!
I worry a lot about Obama's spying on the Trump campaign and the supposed liberals in this
country sounding like far right, ultra nationalist, looking for a new, expensive cold war!
"... The end of the the Mueller probe doesn't in the least mean that it's over. All over the msm you see claims that Russia hacked the election, that Putin swung the election in Trump's favor, that is was the Russians to blame for Trump's win. ..."
The end of the the Mueller probe doesn't in the least mean that it's over. All over the
msm you see claims that Russia hacked the election, that Putin swung the election in Trump's
favor, that is was the Russians to blame for Trump's win.
Like you, I was born yesterday, and I believe that when entrenched interests tell me
something, that it's the truth, as pure as the driven snow, purer even.
Besides, this story squares with logic, doesn't it? Trump's voters are uneducated, they
are sub-normal intellectually, they are toothless cretins that don't want to work, that don't
want to study, that can't reason, that can barely read, that chase their sisters, that fear
progress, that hate those dad-gum im-grunts that steal jobs and inflict un-American ways and
godless religions.
So it would be such an easy thing, with some well-placed fake-news, to put Putin's man
over the top. How many hundreds of millions of American voters did Russian-sourced propaganda
reach? I remember Judy Woodruff looking into my eyes, via the medium of the TV screen mind
you, and saying that it could be 126 million.
One Hundred And Twenty Six Million. One-third of the US population sez NBC News. This you
can take to the bank.
And so surely that proves the case, that the Russians connived and contrived to get their
chosen man, that Donald J Trump is the illegitimate president, that he should not be stinking
up the Oval office, that his gold-digging wife should be nowhere near the exalted title of
First Lady, that his money-grubbing daughter and her shifty husband should be banished from
the corridors of power, that this whole thing is at best one of those black-swan pranks that
this prankish cosmos inflicts on us.
Surely Evelyn is right, that the ends justify the means, that this human dreck, this
charlatan should be removed, in hand-cuffs, at bayonet point, by whatever means, because the
future of the republic demands it.
"Carnage needs to destroyed" mentality is dominant among the USA neoliberal elite and drives the policy toward Russia.
They all supported neoconservative extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda directed on weakening Russian and
establishing of world dominance. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this
Notable quotes:
"... There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this. ..."
"... This agenda has involved hopes for 'régime change' in Russia, whether as the result of an oligarchic coup, a popular revolt, or some combination of both. Also central have been hopes for a further 'rollback' of Russia influence in the post-Soviet space, both in areas now independent, such as Ukraine, and also ones still part of the Russian Federation, notably Chechnya. ..."
"... And, crucially, it involved exploiting the retreat of Russian power from the Middle East for 'régime change' projects which it was hoped would provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. ..."
"... Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky. ..."
"... it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep.. ..."
"... I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields. Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence". ..."
"... It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of defiance which they will not tolerate. ..."
"... And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear. That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that. ..."
"... Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ..."
"... They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040 ..."
"... In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. ..."
"... State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis" and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union ..."
"... About relation Steele-MI6, well, you never leave your IS. Or to put it in another way, you are never out of the scope of your past IS ..."
"... No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming. ..."
"... Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons. ..."
"... Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing. ..."
"... Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before any Steele's Dossier. This was a program. ..."
"... IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war. ..."
"... The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem for regular people, to worry about. ..."
"... A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario Scaramella. ..."
"... Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality? Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear. ..."
Steele, Shvets, Levinson, Litvinenko and the 'Billion Dollar Don.'
In the light of the suggestion in the Nunes memo that Steele was 'a longtime FBI source' it seems worth sketching out some background,
which may also make it easier to see some possible reasons why he 'was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate
about him not being president.'
There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion
GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this.
This agenda has involved hopes for 'régime change' in Russia, whether as the result of an oligarchic coup, a popular revolt, or
some combination of both. Also central have been hopes for a further 'rollback' of Russia influence in the post-Soviet space, both
in areas now independent, such as Ukraine, and also ones still part of the Russian Federation, notably Chechnya.
And, crucially, it involved exploiting the retreat of Russian power from the Middle East for 'régime change' projects which it
was hoped would provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the
area.
Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which
clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander
Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on
your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky.
The question of what links these had, or did not have, with elements in U.S. intelligence agencies is thus a critical one.
In making some sense of it, the fact that one key figure we know to have been involved in this network was missing at the Inquiry
– the former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared on the Iranian island of Kish in March 2007 – is important.
Unfortunately, I only recently came across a book on Levinson published in 2016 by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier,
which is now hopefully winging its way across the Atlantic. From the accounts of the book I have seen, such as one by Jeff Stein
in 'Newsweek', it seems likely that its author did not look at any of the evidence presented at Owen's Inquiry.
Had he done so, Meier might have discovered that his subject had been, as it were, 'top supporting actor' in the first fumbling
attempt by Christopher Steele et al to produce a plausible-sounding scenario as to the background to Litvinenko's death. A Radio
4 programme on 16 December 2006, presented by the veteran BBC presenter Tom Mangold, had been wholly devoted to an account by Shvets,
backed up by Levinson. Both of these were, like Litvinenko, supposed to be impartial 'due diligence' operatives.
The notion that any of them might have connections with Western intelligence agencies was not considered. The – publicly available
– evidence of the involvement of Shvets, whose surname means 'cobbler' or 'shoemaker' in Ukrainian, in the processing of the tapes
of conversations involving the former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma supposedly recorded by Major Melnychenko, which had played
a crucial role in the 2004-5 'Orange Revolution' was not mentioned.
Still less was it mentioned that claims that the – very dangerous – late Soviet Kolchuga system, which made it possible the kind
of identification of incoming aircraft which radar had traditionally done, without sending out signals which made the destruction
of the facilities doing it possible, had been sold by Kuchma to Iraq had proven spurious.
What Shvets had done had been to take – genuine – audio in which Kuchma had discussed a possible sale, and edit it to suggest
a sale had been completed.
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
As a former television current affairs producer, I can talk to you of the marvels which London audio editors can produce, very
happily. Unfortunately, the days when not all BBC and 'Guardian' journalists were corrupt stenographers for corrupt and incompetent
spooks, as Mangold and his like have been for Steele and Levinson, are long gone.
All this has become particularly relevant now, given that Simpson has placed the notorious Jewish Ukrainian mobster Semyon Mogilevich
and the 'Solntsevskaya Bratva' mafia group centre stage in his accounts not simply of Trump and Manafort, but also of William Browder.
For most of the 'Nineties, Levinson had been a, if not the, lead FBI investigator on Mogilevich.
(On this, see the 1999 BBC 'Panorama' programme 'The Billion Dollar Don', also presented by Tom Mangold, which has extensive interviews
both with Mogilevich and Levinson at
In the months leading up to Levinson's disappearance, a key priority for the advocates of the strategy I have described was to
prevent it being totally derailed by the patently catastrophic outcome of the Iraqi adventure.
Compounding the problem was the fact that this had created the 'Shia Crescent', which in turn exacerbated the potential 'existential
threat' to Israel posed by the steadily increasing range, accuracy and numbers of missiles available to Hizbullah in hardened positions
north of the Litani.
These, obviously, provided both a 'deterrent' for that organisation and Iran, and also a radical threat to the whole notion that
somehow Israel could ever be a 'safe haven' for Jews, against the supposedly ineradicable disposition of the 'goyim' sooner or later
to, as it were, revert to type. The dreadful thought that Israel might not be necessary had to be resisted at all costs.
What followed from the disaster unleashed by the – Anglo-American – 'own goal' in toppling Saddam was, ironically, a need on the
part of key players to 'double down.' Above all, it was necessary for many of those involved to counter suggestions from the Russian
side that going around smashing up 'régimes' that one might not like sometimes blew up in one's face.
Even more threatening were suggestions from the Russian side that it was foolish to think one could use jihadists without risking
'blowback', and that there might be an overwhelming common interest in combating Islamic extremism.
Another priority was to counter the pushback in the American 'intelligence community' and military, which was to produce the drastic
downgrading of the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear programme in the November 2007 NIE and then the resignation of Admiral William
Fallon as head of 'Centcom' the following March.
So in 2005 Shvets came to London. He and his audio editors had another 'bite at the cherry' of the Melnychenko tapes, so that
material that did in fact establish that both the SBU and FSB had collaborated with Mogilevich could be employed to make it seem
that Putin had a close personal relationship with the mobster.
All kinds of supposedly respectable American and British academics, like Professors Karen Dawisha and Robert Service, have fallen
for this, hook, line and sinker. It gives a new meaning to the term 'useful idiot.'
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
In a letter sent in December that year by Litvinenko to the 'Mitrokhin Commission', for which his Italian associate Mario Scaramella
was a consultant, this was used in an attempt to demonstrate that Mogilevich, while acting as an agent for the FSB and under Putin's
personal 'krysha', had attempted to supply a 'mini atomic bomb' – aka 'suitcase nuke' – to Al Qaeda. Shortly after the letter was
sent Scaramella departed on a trip to Washington, where he appears to have got access to Aldrich Ames.
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
At precisely this time, as Meier explains, Levinson was in the process of being recruited by a lady called Anne Jablonski who
then worked as a CIA analyst. It appears that she was furious at the failure of the operational side at the Agency to produce evidence
which would have established that Iran did indeed have an ongoing nuclear programme, and she may well have hoped would implicate
Russia in supplying materials.
There are grounds to suspect that one of the things that Berezovsky and Shvets were doing was fabricating such 'evidence.' Whether
Levinson was involved in such attempts, or genuinely looking for evidence he was convinced must be there, I cannot say. It appears
that he fell for a rather elementary entrapment operation – which could well have been organised with the collaboration of Russian
intelligence. (People do get fed up with being framed, particular if 'régime change' is the goal.)
It also seems likely that, quite possibly in a different but related entrapment operation, related to propaganda wars in which
claims and counter claims about a polonium-beryllium 'initiator' as the crucial missing part which might make a 'suitcase nuke' functional,
Litvinenko accidentally ingested fatal quantities of polonium. A good deal of evidence suggests that this may have been at Berezovsky's
offices on the night before he was supposedly assassinated.
It was, obviously, important for Steele et al to ensure that nobody looked at the 'StratCom' wars about 'suitcase nukes.' Here,
a figure who has played a key role in such wars in relation to Syria plays an interesting minor one in the story.
Some time following the destruction of the case for an immediate war by the November 2007 NIE, a chemical weapons specialist called
Dan Kaszeta, who had worked in the White House for twelve years, moved to London.
In 2011, in addition to founding a consultancy called 'Strongpoint Security', he began a writing career with articles in 'CBRNe
World.' Later, he would become the conduit through which the notorious 'hexamine hypothesis', supposedly clinching proof that the
Syrian government was responsible for the sarin incidents at Khan Sheikhoun, Ghouta, Saraqeb, and Khan Al-Asal, was disseminated.
Having been forced by the threat of a case being opened against them under human rights law into resuming the inquest into Litvinenko's
death, in August 2012 the British authorities appointed Sir Robert Owen to conduct it. (There are many honest judges in Britain,
but obviously, if one sets out to find someone who will 'cover up' for the incompetence and corruption of people like Steele, as
Lord Hutton did before him, you can find them.)
That same month, a piece appeared in 'CBRNe World' with the the strapline: 'Dan Kaszeta looks into the ultimate press story: Suitcase
nukes', and the main title 'Carry on or checked bags?' Among the grounds he gives for playing down the scare:
'Some components rely on materials with shelf life. Tritium, for example, is used in many nuclear weapon designs and has a twelve
year half-life. Polonium, used in neutron initiators in some earlier types of weapon designs, has a very short halflife. US documents
state that every nuclear weapon has "limited life components" that require periodic replacement (do an internet search for nuclear
limited life components and you can read for weeks).'
What Kaszeta has actually described are the reasons why polonium is a perfect 'StratCom' instrument. In terms of scientific plausibility,
in fact there were no 'suitcase nukes', and in any case 'initiators' using polonium had been abandoned very early on, in favour of
ones which lasted longer.
For 'StratCom' scenarios, as experience with the 'hexamine hypothesis' has proved, scientific plausibility can be irrelevant.
What polonium provides is a means of suggesting that Al Qaeda have in fact got hold of a nuclear device which they could easily
smuggle into, say, Rome or New York, or indeed Moscow, but there is a crucial missing component which the FSB is trying to provide
to them. By the same token, of course, that missing component could be depicted as one that Berezovsky and Litvinenko are conspiring
to suppl to the Chechen insurgents.
In addition, the sole known source of global supply is the Avangard plant at Sarov in Russia, so the substance is naturally suited
for 'StratCom' directed against that country, which its intelligence services would – rather naturally – try to make 'boomerang.'
According to Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele is a 'boy scout.' This seems to me quite wrong – but, even if it were true, would
you want to unleash a 'boy scout' into these kinds of intrigue?
As it is not clear why Kaszeta introduced his – accurate but irrelevant – point about polonium into an article which was concerned
with scientific plausibility, one is left with an interesting question as to whether he cut his teeth on 'StratCom' attempting to
ensure that nobody seriously interested in CBRN science followed an obvious lead.
In relation to the question of whether current FBI personnel had been involved in the kind of 'StratCom' exercises, I have been
describing, a critical issue is the involvement of Shvets and Levinson in the Alexander Khonanykhine affair back in the 'Nineties,
and the latter's use of claims about the Solntsevskaya to prevent the key figure's extradition. But that is a matter for another
day.
A corollary of all this is that we cannot – yet at least – be absolutely confident that the account in the Nunes memo, according
to which Steele was suspended and then dismissed as an FBI source for what the organisation is reported to define as 'the most serious
of violations' – the unauthorised disclosure of a relationship with the organisation – is necessarily wholly accurate.
Who did and did not authorise which disclosures to the media, up to and including the extraordinary decision to have the full
dossier, including claims about Aleksej Gubarev and the Alfa oligarchs, in flagrant disregard of the obvious risks of defamation
suits, and who may be trying to pass the buck to others, remains I think less than totally clear.
thanks david... fascinating overview and conjecture..
it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy
and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep..
Thank you very. As ever you have illuminated a few more things for me. Kaszeta's involvement is interesting. He is someone
I am in the middle of researching in relation to Higgins and Bellingcat.
I think the English are using you, they are unsentimental empirical people that only do these that benefit the Number One.
The chief beneficiary of the Coup in Iran was England and not US.
That Newsweek piece about Levinson is very superficial to me.
Re: Levinson
# Who suggested to who 'first' the Iran caper...Anne Jablonski to Levinson or Levinson to Jablonski? It was reported earlier
by Meier that in December 2005, when Levinson was pitching Jablonski on projects he might take on when his CIA contract was approved
he sent her a lengthy memo about Dawud's potential as an informant.
# Ira Silverman, the Iran hating NBC guy, pitched a Iraq caper to Levinson with Dawud Salahuddin, as his Iran contact and Levinson
went to Jablonski with it.
# And what was with Boris Birshstein, a Russian organized crime figure who had fled to Israel and Oleg Deripaska, the "aluminum
czar" of Russia whose organized crime contacts have kept him from entering the United States jumping in to help find Levinson?
The FBI allowed Deripaska in for two visits in 2009 in exchange for his alleged help in locating Levinson but obviously nothing
came of it.
I think there were more little agents/agendas in this than Levinson and Jablonski and US CIA.
As usual a wonderful analysis. I admire your insight, integrity and courage. I wish you could write more on why the Borg
is so much against Trump, even though they have Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference for them.
I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive
solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that
the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields.
Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have
been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence".
"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time. "
David as usual fascinating work connecting the dots. One question that comes to my mind is about the above point you are making.
Is it your understanding or believe that these IC individuals on both side of Atlantic, are pursuing/forcing their (on behalf
of the Borg) foreign policy agenda outside of their respected seating governments? If not, why is it that incoming administration
cannot stop them? So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but
not fundamentally.
I am not David Habakkuk, obviously. But I will venture a little opinion anyway. It is not enough that the Borgists get their
policy preferences. If it were, then Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference would be enough for them.
It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing
themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace
to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of
defiance which they will not tolerate.
And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear.
That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to
defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that.
So that is why the Borg cares so much. They view the Trump election as an insurgency, and they view themselves as waging a
counterinsurgency, which they dare not lose.
Thanks for your analysis. I always enjoy and learn from your posts. I wish you would post more often.
In my non-expert opinion, the Borg and the media were all in for Hillary. They were convinced that she was gonna win. To curry
favor with the Empress who would be certainly crowned after the election they were eager and convinced that their lawlessness
would become a badge for promotion and plum positions in her administration. In their conceit, they believed they could kill two
birds with one stroke. They could vilify Putin and create the mass hysteria to checkmate him, while at the same time disparage
and frame Trump as The Manchurian Candidate to seal their certain electoral victory.
Unfortunately for them voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin didn't buy their sales pitch despite the overwhelming
media barrage from all corners. Even news publications who have only endorsed Republican candidates for President for over a century
endorsed her.
Trump's election win caused panic among the political establishment, the media and the Deep State. They were already all-in.
Their only choice was to double down and get Trump impeached. Now their conspiracy is beginning to unravel. They are doing everything
possible to forestall their Armageddon. Of course they have many allies. This battle is gonna be interesting to watch. Trump is
clearly getting many Congressional Republicans on side as his base of Deplorables remains solidly behind him. That is what's befuddling
the Borg pundits.
So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but not fundamentally.
Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called
consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda
in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp.
This swamp (Borg, deep state, etc.) still thinks that it can use Cold War 1.0 Playbook and address very real and dangerous
American economic issues. They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with.
They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress
West's posture; say 2040.
You are right CWII is very much desired and on agenda, but i am not sure of setup, the setup/board has been changed tremendously
and IMO benefits the Asian side of Bosphorus, for one thing technology is no longer exclusive, and financial burden is heavier
on atlantic side.
''Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ''
The locust keep trying and trying, destruction is their life's work.
'1977-1981: Nationalities Working Group Advocates Using Militant Islam Against Soviet Union'
In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG)
dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. The Islamic populations are regarded
as prime targets. Richard Pipes, the father of Daniel Pipes, takes over the leadership of the NWG in 1981. Pipes predicts that
with the right encouragement Soviet Muslims will "explode into genocidal fury" against Moscow. According to Richard Cottam, a
former CIA official who advised the Carter administration at the time, after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1978, Brzezinski
favored a "de facto alliance with the forces of Islamic resurgence, and with the Republic of Iran." [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 241,
251 - 256]
'November 1978-February 1979: Some US Officials Want to Support Radical Muslims to Contain Soviet Union'
State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used
against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the
Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task
force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition
of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization
of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis"
and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union
"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time."
Yes, that is what appears to be just what is coming to light. I wonder just what position Trey Gowdy is going to have since
he won't be running for re-election. The rage from the left is palpable. I'm sure the next outraged guy on the left will know
how to shoot straighter than the ones who shot up Congressman Scalise or the concert goers at Mandalay Bay.
"They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with."
-- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders."
Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.
England preferred NAZI Germany to USSR, this is well known. As to what would have happened, the outcome of the war, in my opinion,
did not depend on US participation in the European Theatre. All of Europe would have become USSR satellite or joined USSR.
"unsentimental empirical people"? Absolutely disagree with you. Now the Iranians, they strike me as a singularity unsentimental
people. Just general impressions, mind you.
Yes, US was the first country to proudly deliver Manpads to be used by "rebels" (Mojahadin later Taleban) against USSR in Afghanistan
back in 80s. And, as per the architect of support for the rebels (Zbigniew Brzezinski) very proud of it with no regret. With that
in mind, I don't see how western politicians, the western governments and their related proxy war planers, will be regretting,
even sadden, once god forbid we see passenger planes with loved ones are shot down taking off or landing at various western airports
and other places around the word. Just like how superficialy with crocodile tears in their eyes they acted in aftermath of the
terrorist events in various western cities in this past 16 years. Gods knows what will happens to us if the opposite side start
to supply his own proxies with lethal anti air weapons. "Proudly", I don't think anybody in west cares or will regret of such
an escalation.
I think it likely that what Meier produces is only a 'limited hangout', and am hoping that when the book arrives it will contain
more pointers.
It is important to be clear that one is often dealing with people playing very complicated double games.
An interesting document is the 'Petition for Writ of Habeus Corpus' made on behalf of Khodorkovsky's close associate Alexander
Konanykhin back in 1997,when the Immigration and Naturalization Service were – apparently at least – cooperating with Russian
attempts to get hold of him. An extract:
'During the immigration hearing FBI SA Robert Levinson, an INS witness, confirmed that in 1992 Petitioner was kidnapped and
afterwards pursued by assassins of the Solntsevskaya organized criminal group. This organized criminal group is reportedly the
largest and the most influential organized criminal group in Russia, and operates internationally.'
Note the similarities between the 'StratCom' that Khonanykin and his associates were producing in the 'Nineties, and that which
Simpson and his associates have been producing two decades later.
Another useful example is provided by a 2004 item in the 'New American Magazine', reproduced on Konanykhin's website:
'One of those who testified on behalf of Konanykhine was KGB defector Yuri Shvets, who declared: "I have a firsthand knowledge
on similar operations conducted by the KGB." Konanykhine had brought trouble on himself, Shvets continued, when he "started bringing
charges against people who were involved with him in setting up and running commercial enterprises. They were KGB people secretly
smuggling from Russia hundreds of millions of dollars . This is [a] serious case, and I know that KGB ... desperately wants to
win this case, and everybody who won't step to their side would face problems."'
So – 'first hand knowledge', from a Ukrainian nationalist – look at what the Chalupas have been doing, it seems not much has
changed.
For a rather different perspective on what Konanykhin had actually been up to, from someone in whose honesty – if not always
judgement – I have complete confidence, see the testimony of Karon von Gerhke-Thompson to the House Committee on Banking and Financial
Services hearings on Russian Money Laundering. In this, she described how she had been approached by him in 1993:
'"Konanykhine alleged that Menatep Bank controlled $1.7bn [£1bn] in assets and investment portfolios of Russia's most prominent
political and social elite," she recalled. She said he wanted to move the bank's assets off shore and asked her to help buy foreign
passports for its "very, very special clients".
'In her testimony to the committee Ms Von Gerhke-Thompson said she informed the CIA of the deal, and the agency told her that
it believed Mr Konanykhine and Mr Khodorkovsky "were engaged in an elaborate money laundering scheme to launder billions of dollars
stolen by members of the KGB and high-level government officials".
Coming back to Steele's 'StratCom', in July 2008, an item appeared on the 'Newnight' programme of the BBC – which some of us
think should by then have been rechristened the 'Berezovsky Broadcasting Corporation' – in which the introduction by the presenter,
Jeremy Paxman, read as follows:
'Good evening. The New Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev, was all smiles and warm words when he met Gordon Brown today. He
said he was keen to resolve all outstanding difficulties between the two countries. Yada yada yada. Gordon Brown smiled, but he
must know what Newsnight can now reveal: that MI5 believes the Russian state was involved in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko
by radioactive poisoning. They also believe that without their intervention another London-based Russian, Boris Berezovsky, would
have been murdered. Our diplomatic editor, Mark Urban, has this exclusive report.'
When Urban repeated the claims on his blog, there was a positive eruption from someone using the name 'timelythoughts', about
the activities of someone she referred to as 'Berezovsky's disinformation specialist' – when I came across this later, it was
immediately clear to me that she was Karon von Gerhke, and he was Shvets.
She then described a visit by Scaramella to Washington, details of which had already been unearthed by my Italian collaborator,
David Loepp. Her claim to have e-mails from Shvets, from the time immediately prior to Litvinenko's death, directly contradicting
the testimony he had given, fitted with other evidence I had already unearthed.
Later, we exchanged e-mails over a quite protracted period, and a large amount of material that came into my possession as
a result was submitted by me to the Inquest team, with some of it being used in posts on the 'European Tribune' site.
What I never used publicly, because I could only partially corroborate it from the material she provided, was an extraordinary
claim about Shvets:
'He was responsible for bringing in a Kremlin initiative that was walked Vice President Cheney's office on a US government
quid pro quo with the Kremlin FSB SVR involving the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky – a cease and desist on allegations of a politically
motivated arrest of Khodorkovsky, violations of rules of law and calls from Russia's expulsion from the G 8 in exchange for favorable
posturing of U.S. oil companies on Gazprom's Shtokman project and intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq,
Iran and Syria, all documented in reports I submitted to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and MI6.
'Berezovsky's DS could not be on both sides on that isle. His Kremlin FSB SVR sources had been vetted by the CIA and by the
National Security Council. They proved to be as represented. As we would later learn, however, he was on Berezovsky's payroll
at same time. The FSB SVR general he was coordinating the Kremlin initiative through was S. R. Subbotin, the same FSB SVR general
who was investigating Berezovsky's money laundering operations in Switzerland during the same timeframe. His FSB SVR sources surrounding
Putin were higher than any Lugovoy could have ever hoped to affiliate with.
'R. James Woolsey (former CIA DCI), Marshall Miller (former law partner of the late CIA DCI William Colby), who I coordinated
the Kremlin initiative through that Berezovsky's DS had brought in were shocked to learn that he was affiliated with Berezovsky
and Litvinenko. He was in Berezovsky's inner circle and engaged in vetting Russian business with Litvinenko. He operated Berezovsky's
Ukraine website, editing and dubbing the now infamous Kuchma tapes throughout the lead up to the elections in the Ukraine. Berezovsky
contributed $41 million to Viktor Yushchenko's campaign, which he used in an attempt to force Yushchenko to reunite with Julia
Tymoschenko. It failed but would succeed later after Berezovsky orchestrated a public relations initiative through Alan Goldfarb
in the U.S. on behalf of Tymoschenko.'
Having got to know Karon von Gerhke quite well, and also been able to corroborate a great deal of what she told me about many
things, and discussed these matters with her, it is absolutely clear to me that she was neither fabricating nor fantasising. What
later became apparent, both to her and to me, was that in the 'double game' that Shvets was playing, he had succeeded in fooling
her as to the side for which he was working.
It seems likely however that the reason Shvets could do what he did was that quite precisely that many high-up people in the
Kremlin and elsewhere were playing a 'double game.' In this, Karon von Gerhke's propensity for indiscretion – of which I, like
others, was both beneficiary and victim – could be useful.
An exercise in 'positioning', which could be used to disguise the fact that Shvets was indeed 'Berezovsky's disinformation
specialist', could be used to make it appear that 'intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq, Iran and Syria'
was actually credible.
This could have been used to try to rescue Cheney, Bush and their associates from the mess they had got into as a result of
the failure of the invasion to provide any evidence whatsoever supporting the case which had been made for it. It could also have
been used to provide the kind of materials justifying military action against Iran for which Levinson and Jablonski were looking,
and for similar action against Syria.
Among reasons for bringing this up now is that we need to make sense of the paradox that Simpson – clearly in collusion with
Steele – was using Mogilevich and the 'Solnsetskaya Bratva' both against Manafort and Trump and against Browder.
There are various possible explanations for this. I do not want to succumb to my instinctive prejudice that this may have been
another piece of 'positioning', similar to what I think was being done with Shvets, but the hypothesis needs to be considered.
A more general point is that people in Washington and London need to 'wise up' to the kind of world with which they are dealing.
This could be done quite enjoyably: reading some of Dashiell Hammett's fictions of the United States in the Prohibition era, or
indeed buying DVDs of some of the classics of 'film noir', like 'Out of the Past' (in its British release, 'Build My Gallows High')
might be a start.
Very much of the coverage of affairs in the post-Soviet space since 1991 has read rather as though a Dashiell Hammett story
had been rewritten by someone specialising in sentimental children's, or romantic, fiction (although, come to think of it, that
is really what Brigid O'Shaughnessy does in 'The Maltese Falcon.')
The testimony of Glenn Simpson seems a case in point. The sickly sentimentality of these people does, rather often, make one
feel as though one wanted to throw up.
"They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress
West's posture; say 2040.}
No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the
fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian
Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy
of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were
spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming.
- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders."
Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.
My coming book is precisely about that. Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George
Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons.
Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it
is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat
it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing.
Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered
a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving
forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before
any Steele's Dossier. This was a program.
I think the failure of Deciders is nothing new - Fath Ali Shah attacking Russia, or the abject failure of the Deciders in 1914.
Europe is still not where she was in 1890.
I read the post and responses early on, so forgive me if this point has been addressed in the meantime. If the memo information
on non-disclosure of material evidence to the warrant issuing court is accurate, as soon as that information came to the attention
of the authorities (clearly some time ago) there was a duty on them (including the judge(s) who issued the warrants) to have the
matter brought back before the court toot sweet. If that had happened it would surely be in the public domain, so on the assumption
the prosecutors and maybe even the judge didn't see the need to review the matter, even purely on a contempt/ethics basis, the
memo information only seems convincing if the FISA system is a total sham. I really doubt that.
IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and
dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war.
The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem
for regular people, to worry about. As I remember that wasn't the case at the end of VN war when i first landed here. At
that time even though the war was on the other side of the planet and away from homeland, still people, especially young ones
in colleges were paying more attention to the cost of war.
Diana West has uncovered some interesting "Red Threads" (6 part article at dianawest-dot-net) on all the Fusion GPS folks. Seems
ole Russian speaking Nellie Ohr got herself a ham radio license recently. Wonder why she would suddenly need one of those? They
are all Marxists with potential connections back to Russia.
Been there. I am also a latecomer to SST. You have to read the back numbers. How? My IT expertise dates from the dawn of the internet
and was lamentable then but I find Wayback sometimes allows easier searches than the SST search engine. A straight search on google
also allows searches with more than one term. This link -
- gets you to a chronological list and for recent material is sometimes quicker than fiddling around with search engines. "Categories"
on the RH side is useful but then you don't get some very informative comments that cross-refer.
If those sadly elementary procedures fail resort to the nearest infant. There's a blur of fingers on the keyboard and what
you want then usually appears. Never ask them how they did it. They get so fed up when you ask them to explain it again.
"Who is David Habakkuk?" That's a quantum computer sited, from internal evidence you pick up from time to time, somewhere in
the Greater London area. Cross references like you wouldn't believe and over several fields, so maybe he's two quantum computers.
The "Borg"?. Try Wittgenstein. Likely a prog but you can't be choosy these days. Early on in "Philosophical Investigations"
(hope I get this right) he discusses the problem of how you can view as an entity something that has ill-defined or overlapping
boundaries. The "Borg" is that "you know it when you see it" sort of thing. A great merit of this site is that the owner and many
of the contributors know it from inside.
In general you may regard your new found site as a microcosm of the great battle that is raging in the West. It's a battle
between the (probably apocryphal but adequately stated) Roveian view of reality that regards truth as an adjunct to or as a by-product
of ideology and Realpolitik and the objective view of reality as something that is damned difficult to get at, and sometimes impossible,
but that has a truth in it somewhere that is independent of the views and convictions of the observer. It's a battle that's never
going to be won but unless it tilts back closer to common sense it can certainly be lost and the West with it.
Clearly the Labor Party in the UK preferred the USSR to Nazi Germany. (cepting that short interlude where the Soviets signed the
Agreement with Hitler, and the Left Organized Leadership all across Europe, for the most part, lined up with Hitler). But for
the most part, Labor was Left.
Elements (the ones that won out in the end) of the Conservative Party loathed both Hitler and Stalin. An element of the Conservative
Party was sympathetic, but only up to a certain point, with the Nazis. This ended in 1939, sept.
So I don't think it fair, or accurate, to say 'England prefered the Nazis....and even if it not those things, it certainly
not "well known", except to the people who have used the false premise to butter their wounds from supporting Stalin in his Pact
with Hitler. Or are inclined to bash the British in general.
All right, perhaps I should have said "The English Government". Google "Litvinov", you may discover how the English Government
pushed Stalin to make a deal with Hitler to buy USSR time.
Witness the infamous State Department protest memo calling for more war on Syria.
The State Department employees that signed that memo were sure that HRC would win and that their diligent work in pushing the
Deep State agenda would sure be rewarded.
Since entering office, Trump appears to have taken the line that if he gives the Deep State everything it demands, he will
be allowed to remain in office, even if he is not allowed to remain in power.
jonst That's broadly accurate, but specifically Attlee brought the motion of no confidence in Chamberlain, which the conservative
appeasers won but which led to Churchill's opportunity. Attlee was essential in cabinet to Churchill's resistance after the retreat
of the BEF.
FM
What are you doing here? You said you dislike the military. Are you really in the Spanish Basque country? Bilbao maybe? break
- David Habakkuk is a private scholar of the Litvinenko murder and Soviet/Russian politics and intelligence affairs. His surname
comes from Wales where in the 18th (?) Century the ancestral village were all "chapel" and changed their surnames to Old Testament
names. His father was master of one of the Cambridge colleges and David is himself a graduate of Cambridge. pl
The hard, blinding truth:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/05/will-conspiracy-trump-american-democracy-go-unpunished/
"In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it,
and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting
their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations." – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
This troll showed up recently at b's place doing the same accusations. There is group that is running sacred and pulling out
all the stops in "info ops" side of the spectrum. The damn fools don't or, most probably, won't get thru their thick heads and
even thicker hearts that it is a failed strategy that turns bystanders into their opponents.
Here for your edification is the definitive analysis of the GOP memo by Alexander Mercouris over at The Duran.
And it is a masterpriece - and quite long, possibly his longest analysis of anything so far. He buries the counterarguments
being passed around by the Democratic opposition and the anti-Trump media.
Mercouris writes on legal affairs alongside his foreign policy stuff and he writes with a lawyer's precision. And in this article
he points out that the GOP memo is writter as a legal document - probably by Trey Gowdy - with additional political insertions
by Nunes. So it should properly be referred to as the "GOP memo" or the "Gowdy memo", not the Nunes memo."
Why this is important is that the GOP memo is basically written as a defense lawyer would in contesting a case -- this case
being the FISA warrant application. Which means its orientation is proving failure to disclose relevant and material information
to the FISA court and in some cases rising to the point of contempt of court.
"Seeking transparency and cooperation should not be this challenging," Grassley said in a statement after posting a heavily
redacted version of the criminal referral that he and GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina sent to the Justice Department
last month. " The government should not be blotting out information that it admits isn't secret. "
I suppose DOJ/FBI believe that by obstructing, stalling and obfuscating they can buy time and that the Republicans in Congress
will get tired of the games and go home. This seems like a pretty straightforward memo, highlighting the discrepancy between Steele's
court filings and the FBI's version of Steele's discussions with them. Grassley is pointing out that either Steele or the FBI
is lying.
What is interesting is the difference in process and ability between the House & Senate. The House can release their memos
on its own, even if not declassified by the Executive, whereas the Senate requires the Executive to declassify it's memos that
are based on classified documents.
We have not had a self declared communist on SST before although LeaNder in her youth may have come close to that exalted status.
You might want to read the wiki on me and the CV I have posted on the blog to avoid tedious accusations of this or that. I am
thought by some to have some knowledge of the ME so please do not try to lecture me about how much you love the Arabs. I speak
their language and have lived with them for a long time. There are people who write to SST who are pro-Trump and some who are
anti-Trump. I seek a mixture of views so long as personal insult and invective are eschewed. Personally, I do not belong to a
political party and would describe myself as an original intent, strict constructionist.
Trump is the constitutionally and legally elected president of the United States. Your descriptors with regard to him are,
in my opinion, only plausible if seen from the point of view of various kinds of leftist including Marxist-Leninists like you.
You sound very smug and self-satisfied but we will see if you can have an open mind at all. pl
Found him, Ali Babacan XVPM, XFM and M of finance. Yes god forbid, if he is a decendent of Ardisher Babakan and another claimant
to Iranian throne, which CIA and Soros can jump on. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Babacan MBA from
Northeestern
I do not believe Trump is a misogynists - he stated publicly that he likes beautiful women. I also do not think he is a racist.
I think he is the first US leader in many decades who has been willing to publicly talk about US problems. For most other US politicians
- they largely live in "the best of all possible worlds".
Colonel - sincere apologies if my comment above disrupted the discussion on a fascinating article.
David Habakkuk - I should say that "Quantum Computer" referred solely to the ability to gather and collate great amounts of
material. It's an ability I admire. On Steele, you are among other things setting out something that is unfamiliar to me though
not to most others here, I imagine, and that is the milieu in which he is or was working as a UK Intelligence operative. That
you have also done in previous articles; it doesn't seem to be a particularly savoury milieu. As far as Steele's US activities
are concerned, from you I'm not getting the picture of a lone operative, all ties with MI6 neatly severed, working solo in the
States on some chance assignment in 2016. I'm getting the picture of someone still very much in the swim and selected because
of that.
The only problem with that second picture is the dossier, or the 30% or so of it - what Comey, I think it was, described as
"salacious and unverified". Surely that's got to be amateur night. Not something that a practised professional working with other
professionals would put his hand to. Does that not support the picture of an ex-operative who's gone off the rails and is fumbling
around unsupervised?
The Steele affair touched a nerve. One is always I suppose aware that IC professionals are getting up to all sorts and it doesn't
seem improbable that "all sorts" includes political stuff and smear campaigns. But it's not heaps of corpses in Syria or farm
boys being sent to certain death in the Ukraine. And even within the UK Intelligence Community and their contractors or whatever
they're called, compared with what our IC people have done in the ME or compared with what one fears Hamish de Bretton Gordon
might have got himself involved in, Christopher Steele's just a choirboy. Nevertheless there's something deeply repellent about
what he did. Whatever your view of Trump there he was, newly elected, obviously wanting to make a go of it, and already faced
with difficulties. Then some chancer throws "Golden Showers" in his face and makes his position, not maybe for the insiders but
for the general public, that bit more untenable.
So from a UK perspective the question of whether Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK becomes important. If he
was truly working solo then that from a UK point of view is regrettable but one of those things. In that case MI6 would just have
to tighten up its controls on what ex-operatives get up to, put out the appropriate disclaimers, and that's the end of it as far
as the UK is concerned. But if Golden Showers and the rest of it was a "Welcome Mr President" from UK IC professionals as a group
then those professionals should be hung drawn and quartered together with whoever set them on.
I've read your article several times now and apart from the fact that much of what you pull together isn't material I'm up
on, it doesn't seem to me that you're definitely coming to one conclusion or the other. There are many more facts to come out
so perhaps this question is premature, but do you think Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK or was he, at least
as far as the UK is concerned, working solo?
Most Iranian females Named Fatima/ Fatimah after prophet' daughter, call themselves Fati, and if they are of aristocrat type,
they are called Bibi Fati Khanam, which is honorable lady Fati and if they are westernized they become Fay or Fifi.
Much of your commentary seems directed to David Habakkuk and PT rather than I. I don't think the FBI would have started to
pay him until he left UK service. pl
Colonel - Further apologies - I should have submitted comment 79 as two items.
Yes, the question about Steele was in response to DH's article. The UK side of the affair is I suppose only a small part of
the question you and your Committee are examining but it's a dubious part however one looks at it. Although it's early days yet
I was hoping DH, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the UK intelligence scene, might feel able to cast more light on that UK
side.
Cortes - " ... where, exactly, do you expect the great public to look beyond the initial scabrously defamatory storytelling about
the "golden showers"? "
I don't think one can expect the public, at least in the UK, to look very far beyond the initial scandal. The investigations
and enquiries presently under way in the US are complex and are taking place in a different system. This member of the UK public
wouldn't be able to give you a coherent account of those enquiries and I doubt many of my fellows could.
So we have to take on trust, most of us, what we're told. As far as I can tell the underlying theme from the BBC and the media
is generally that Trump is subverting the American Justice system in order to ensure his own misdemeanours aren't investigated.
Some of us take that as gospel. Others of us assume that the politicians and the media are untrustworthy and ignore them. I
doubt many of us go into much more detail than that. Therefore the original story will stick in our minds.
But for some in the UK there are questions in there as well. How come the UK got mixed up in all this? How much did the UK
get mixed up in it?
When I belatedly started looking at the Litvinenko mystery, as a result of a strange email provoked by comments of mine on
SST which arrived in my inbox in March 2007 from someone who turned out to be a key protagonist, it was rather obvious that improvised
and chaotic 'StratCom' operations had been put into place on both the Russian and British sides to cover up what had happened.
A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played
a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact
that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario
Scaramella.
When I started delving, I came across some very interesting pieces on Scaramella and related matters posted on the 'European
Tribune' website by a Rome-based blogger using the name 'de Gondi' in the period after the story broke.
His actual name is David Loepp, by profession he is an artisan jeweller specialising in ancient and traditional goldsmith techniques,
and I already knew and respected his work from his contributions to the transnational internet investigation into the Niger uranium
forgeries – an earlier MI6 clusterf**ck.
So in May 2008 I posted a longish piece on that site, setting out the problems with the evidence about the Litvinenko case
as I saw them, in the hope of reactivating his interest. This paid off in spades, when he linked to, and translated a key extract
from, the request from Italian prosecutors to use wiretaps of conversations with Senator Paolo Guzzanti in connection with their
prosecution of Scaramella for 'aggravated calumny.'
The request, which up to not so long ago was freely available on the website of the Italian Senate, was denied, but the extensive
summaries of the transcripts provided a lot of material.
The extract from the wiretap request which David Loepp posted, which like Litvinenko's letter containing the claims he and
Yuri Shvets had concocted about Putin using Mogilevich to attempt to supply Al Qaeda with a 'mini nuclear bomb' is dated 1 December
2005, contains key pointers to the conspiracy. It concludes:
'A passage on Simon Moghilevic and an agreement between the camorra to search for nuclear weapons lost during the Cold War
to be consigned to Bin Laden, a revelation made by the Israeli. According to Scaramella the circle closes: camorra, Moghilevic-
Russian mafia- services- nuclear bombs in Naples.'
Subsequent conversations make clear that Scaramella left on 6 December 2005 for Washington, on a trip where he was to meet
Shvets. The summary of a report on this to Guzzanti reads:
'12) conversation that took place on number [omissis] on December 18, 2005, at 9:41:51 n. 1426, containing explicit references
to the authenticity of the declarations of Alexander Litvinenko acquired by Scaramella, to the trustworthiness of the affirmations
made by Scaramella in his reports to the commission and to the meetings Scaramella had with Talik after having denounced them
[presumably Talik and his alleged accomplices]. (They can talk with HEIMS thanks to the help of MILLER. SHVEZ says that he had
been a companion of CARLOS at the academy; SHVEZ has already made declarations and is willing to continue collaboration. Guzzanti
warns that a document in Russian arrived in commission in which the name of SCARAMELLA appears several times, these [sic] say
that directives to the contrary had been given to Litvinenko. Scaramella says that he went to the meeting with TALIK in the company
of two treasury [police] and a cop, Talik spoke of a person from the Ukrainian GRU who would be willing to talk and a strange
Chechen ring in Naples. Assassination attempt against the pope, CASAROLI was a Soviet agent.)'
The summary of a later conversation also refers to 'MILLER':
'conversation that took place on number [omissis] on January 13, 2006, at 11:22:11 n. 2287, containing references to Scaramella's
sources in relation to facts referred in the Commission, the means by which they were obtained by Scaramella from declarations
made abroad, the role of Litvinenko, also on the occasion of declarations made by third parties and the credibility of the news
and theses given by Scaramella to the commission (Scaramella reads a text in English on the relation between the KGB and PRODI.
Guzzanti asks if its credibility can be confirmed and if the taped declarations can be backed up; Scaramella answers that there
were two testimonies, Lou Palumbo and Alexander (Litvinenko), and that the registration made in London at the beginning of the
assignment [Scaramella's?] had been authenticated by a certain BAKER of the FBI. As he translates the text from English, Scaramella
notes that the person testifying does not say he knows Prodi but only that he thinks that Prodi ...; all those who worked for
the person testifying in Scandinavia said that Prodi was "theirs." The affair in Rimini, Bielli is preparing the battle in Rimini.
Meetings with MILLER for the three things that are needed. Polemic about Pollari over the pressure exerted on Gordievski.)'
In the exchanges on my May 2008 post, I mentioned and linked to some extraordinary comments on a crucial article by Edward
Jay Epstein, in which Karon von Gerhke claimed that his sceptical account fitted with what her contacts in the British investigation
had told her. When that July I came across her equally extraordinary claims in response to the BBC's Mark Urban piece of stenography
– which Steele may also have had a hand in organising – I found she was referring to precisely that visit to Washington by Scaramella
which had been described in the wiretap request.
As you can perhaps imagine, the fact that 'Miller' had featured in the conversations with Guzzanti both as a key contact, who
could introduce Scaramella to Aldrich Ames (which is who 'Heims' clearly is), and with whom there had been meetings about 'the
three things that are needed' made me inclined to take seriously what Karon von Gerhke said about his role.
In December 2008, I put up another post on 'European Tribune', putting together the material from David Loepp and that from
Karon von Gerhke – but not discussing the references to 'Miller.' As I had hoped, this led to her getting in touch.
Among the material with which she supplied me, which I in turn supplied to the Solicitor to the Inquest, were covers of faxes
to John Rizzo, then Acting General Counsel of the CIA. From a fax dated 23 October 2005.
'John: See attached email to Chuck Patrizia. Berezovsky alleges he is in possession of a copy of a classified file given to
the CIA by Russia's FSB, which he further alleges the CIA disseminated to British, French, Italian and Israeli intelligence agencies
implicating him in business associations with the Mafia and to ties with terrorist organizations. Yuri Shvets was authorised/directed
by Berezovsky to raise the issue with Bud McFarlane scheduled for Thursday. McFarlane is unaware the issue will be raised with
him.'
From a fax dated 7 November 2005:
'John: I am attaching an email exchange between Yuri Shvets and me re: 1) article he published on his Ukraine website on alleged
sale of nuclear choke to Iran, which I reproached him on as having been planted by Berezovsky and 2 the alleged FSB/CIA document
file that Berezovsky obtained from Scaramella, which Yuri acknowledges in his e-mail to me. Like extracting wisdom teeth to get
him to put anything on paper, especially in an e-mail! [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is the source McFarlane referred Yuri to re:
Berezovsky's visa issue. She proposed meeting Berezovsky in London. Alleged it would take a year to clear up USG issues and even
then could not guarantee him a visa. She too has access to USG intelligence on Berezovsky. Open book.'
From a fax dated 5 December 2005:
'John. From Mario Scaramella to Yuri Shvets to my ears, the DOJ has authorised Mario Scaramella to interview Aldrich Ames with
regard to members of the Italian Intelligence Service agent recruited by Ames for the KGB. Scaramella, as you may recall, is who
gave Boris Berezovsky's aide, a former FSB Colonel [LITVINENKO – DH], that alleged document number to the FSB file that the CIA
disseminated on Berezovsky – a file that Bud McFarlane's "Madam Visa" [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is alleged is totting off to
London for a meeting with Berezovsky, who has agreed to retain her re: his visa issue. Quid pro quo's with Berezovsky and Scaramella
on the CIA agent currently facing kidnapping charges for the rendition of the Muslim cleric? Scott Armstrong has a most telling
file on Scaramella. Not a single redeeming quality.'
In the course of very extensive exchanges with Karon von Gerhke subsequently, we had some rather acute disagreements. It was
unfortunate that her filing was a shambles – a crucial hard disk failed without a backup, and the 'hard copies' appeared to be
in a chaotic state.
However, the only occasion when I can recall having reason to believe that was deliberately lying to me was when David Loepp
unearthed a cache of documentation including the full Italian text of the letter from Litvinenko containing the 'StratCom' designed
to suggest that Putin had attempted to supply a 'mini nuclear bomb' to Al Qaeda. Having been asked to keep this between ourselves
for the time being, Karon insisted on immediately sending it to her contacts in Counter Terrorism Command, and then produced bogus
justifications.
Time and again, moreover, I found that I could confirm statements that she made – see for example the two posts I put up on
the legal battles following the death in February 2008 of Berezovsky's long-term partner Arkadi 'Badri' Patarkatsishvili in June
and July 2009, which were based on careful corroboration of what she told me.
(I should also say that I acquired the greatest respect for her courage.)
And while Owen and his team suppressed all the evidence from her, and almost all of that from David Loepp, which I had I provided
to them, the dossier about Berezovsky is described in a statement made by Litvinenko in Tel Aviv in April 2006, presented in evidence
in the Inquiry.
Other evidence, moreover, strongly inclines me to believe that there were overtures for a 'quid pro quo', purporting to come
from Putin, but that this was a ruse orchestrated by Berezovsky.
Part of the purpose of this would almost certainly have been to supply probably bogus 'evidence' about arms sales in the Yeltsin
years to Iraq, Iran and Syria. Moreover, I think there was an article on the second 'Fifth Element' site run by Shvets about the
supposed sale of a nuclear 'choke' – whatever that is – to Iran.
The likelihood of the involvement of elements in the FBI in these shenanigans seems to quite high, given what has already emerged
about the activities of Levinson. Also relevant may be the fact that the 'declaration' which was part of the attempt to frame
Romano Prodi was authenticated, in London, by 'a certain BAKER of the FBI.')
I know something of spectroscopy. The critical issue here is the provenance of the samples and not the sophistication of the techniques used in the analysis
itself or its instrumentation. The paragraph that you have quoted:
"To figure out signatures based on various synthetic routes and conditions, Chipuk says that the synthetic chemists on his
team will make the same chemical threat agent as many as 2,000 times in an ..." reeks of intellectual intimidation - trying to
brow-beat any skeptic by the size of one's instrument - as it were."
And then there is a little matter of confidence level in any of the analysis - such things are normally based on prior statistics
- which did not and could not exist in this situation.
David, it's no doubt interesting to watch how attention on Victor Ivanov in another deficient inquiry on the British Isles, was
managed in that inquiry. If I may, since he pops up again in the Steele dossier. You take what's available? Is that all there
is to know?
I know its hard to communicate basics if you are deeply into matters. Usually people prefer to opt out. It's getting way too
complicated for them to follow. You made me understand this experience. But isn't this (fake) intelligence continuity "via" Yuri
Svets what connects your, no harm meant I do understand your obsession with the case, with what we deal with now in the Steele
Dossier? Again, one of the most central figures is Ivanov.
Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality?
Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear.
By the way, babbling mode, I found your Tom Mangold transcription. It felt it wasn't there on the link you gave. I used the
date, and other search terms. Maybe I am wrong. Haven't looked at what the judge ruled out of the collection. Yes, cozy session/setting.
why California, Kooshy #18? California among other things left this verbal trace, since I once upon time thought a luggage storage
in SF might be free/available now: this is my home, lady.
Tourists from many -- but not all -- foreign nations wishing to enter Kish Free Zone from legal ports are not required to
obtain any visa prior to travel. For those travelers, upon-arrival travel permits are stamped valid for 14 days by Kish officials.
Who are the not all? Can we assume Britain is not one of those? The German link is different. How about the Iranian? or isn't this the Kish we are talking about?
another Ivanov. I struggled with names (...) in Russian crime novels, admittedly. But that's long ago from times Russian crime
and Russian money flows and rogues getting hold of its nuclear material surfaced more often in Europe. 90s
That's a great interview that summarizes Russiagate in a very assessable way. This is exactly repetition of Iraq WDM and
subsequent cover up. The consequence is a new higher level of discreditation of neoliberal MSM, at least by Trump supporters They
will just ignore those bottomfeeders like Clapper and Brennan.
Endemic of Russophobia is the biggest net result of Russiagate. This is also a big election gift to Trump.
The Deep State did not view Trump as a reliable steward of neoliberal empire and that's why Russiagate was unleashed. And Trump
is an embarrassment to the empire, no questions about it.
MadCow spend two year rabidly promoting Russiagate nonsense and she still has her job. That's suggest whom she
serves. In other cased she would be discarded like used condom.
Chris Hedges discusses with Nation reporter Aaron Mate how despite the categorical statement in Robert Mueller's report that Donald
Trump and his campaign did not collude with Russia, the conspiracy theories by the nation's mainstream media show little sign of
diminishing.
We're all still waiting for MSDNC to bring on Aaron, Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Michael Tracey and others on any of their
programs. MSDNC has not had on one single lefty who got this fraudulent and disgraceful Stalinesque political investigation right
from day one since December of 2016. Not one.
I've got to admit, I get a massive dopamine rush hearing these two sane, intelligent,critical thinkers, skillfully dissect
this convoluted quadrafuck that has wasted some much of our precious time. I literally feel washed clean for a moment.
Now, with special counsel
Robert Mueller's
exhaustive investigation over and no Trump official charged with taking part in any Russki scheme,
Russian election interference may turn out to be the most persistent scandal of the Obama era.
To date, it's also one of the most puzzling.
Obama also
infamously
mocked
Republican nominee
Mitt Romney
in 2012 when Romney suggested Russia was a foe to be reckoned with. This begs the question of
whether problems could have been staved off if the president had taken Russia more seriously.
Inadequate response
. Actions that President Obama and his top intel
officials did take to mitigate Russian interference proved woefully inadequate. After telling
reporters that Russian intelligence operatives attacked Democrats' computer systems, then-CIA
Director
John Brennan
and his colleagues "privately warned their Russian counterparts not to persist with their active
measures" and "Obama himself told Russian President Vladimir Putin not to interfere in the
election." CNN
notes
: "These warnings did not work."
Failure to disclose. Obama intel officials secretly told the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court that Russia was targeting the Trump campaign, but paradoxically
kept the information secret from the Trump campaign. Experts say legitimate efforts to protect
national security typically would include notifying the supposed target of the spying. Intel
officials arguably should have alerted all the political campaigns and warned them to be on the
lookout, asking if any suspicious contacts had been made.
Recall the FBI had notified the DNC earlier, after determining it had been targeted by Russians.
The decision not to likewise loop in the Trump campaign regarding the supposed targeting suggests
intel officials were not focused on protecting national security but hoping to entrap Trump
campaign officials.
Targeting Trump. Instead of going after the Russians and working to protect
the Trump campaign from possible infiltration, intel officials targeted the Trump campaign. They
applied for numerous secret wiretaps to surveil Trump associates. In the process, they
apparently violated strict FBI
Woods Procedures
designed to prevent false or unverified information from being used to
obtain wiretaps.
Suspicious timing. Russia's election interference certainly was not new on
election day. Yet only after Trump was elected (instead of
Hillary Clinton did President Obama assign his intel officials to issue a public report about Russia's scheme.
And only then did he pursue punishment, including
sanctions
and expulsion of some Russian diplomats from the United States.
Blame game. After Trump was elected, some of the very Obama officials who
failed to prevent Russian interference began a campaign of media leaks and deflection, pointing
to
Donald Trump
and his associates. These officials included FBI Director Comey, CIA Director Brennan, Director
of National Intelligence
James Clapper,
national security adviser Susan Rice and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
Samantha Power.
Ignorance. As they investigated foreign interference, intel officials
apparently overlooked the role of interests besides the Russians, including Russia's adversary
Ukraine
and the British. Ex-British spy Christopher Steele built and peddled the anti-Trump
"dossier." Former U.K. ambassador to Russia Sir Andrew Wood had a November 2016
meeting
with Sen.
John McCain
in Nova Scotia, where Wood told him about Steele's anti-Trump dossier.
Russia's link to FBI and Democrats. The FBI overlooked the apparent,
admitted "collusion" between Steele and Kremlin-connected Russians who provided opposition
research against Trump -- some of it false -- for the dossier. Then, the FBI used the
Kremlin-connected Russian research, in part, to obtain wiretaps against Trump campaign adviser
Carter Page.
Why will Russia election interference in 2016 prove to be more enduring than other scandals? A
great deal of money and effort has been spent to dismiss other scandals along partisan lines. In
this case, people in both political parties agree the interference happened -- and that it happened
on Obama's watch. His intel officials appear to have been either distracted, conflicted or asleep
at the switch.
Whatever the case, they were inarguably ineffective.
Sharyl Attkisson (
@SharylAttkisson
)
is an Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist, author of The New York Times best-sellers "The
Smear" and "Stonewalled," and host of Sinclair's Sunday TV program, "
Full
Measure
."
Those neoliberal MSM bottomfeeders were just doing their paid jobs prompting Russiagate
hysteria... They continue to live in a bizarre and perverted Russiagate fantasy land because they
are unable to admit that you was completely wrong. And that destroyed thier credibility.
It also exposed neoliberal MSM as completely subservient to intelligence services and raises
that question of the second Church Committee hearing on influence of CIA on the USA media.
I am sure the Brennan and Clapper will not be fired without some hearings about their role in
unleashing the current neo-McCarthyism complain. They will continue to poison the atmosphere. And
it is pipe dream to expect that they will be prosecuted.
Robert
Mueller 's report is "genuinely stunning," accusing the press of continuing to promote the
"conspiracy" that President
Trump 's campaign conspired with Russia in 2016.
"I find that genuinely stunning as somebody who's been a pretty harsh media critic for more
than a decade," Greenwald, co-founding editor at The Intercept, told hosts Krystal Ball and
Buck Sexton. "My bar for their behavior is, I think, rather low, and yet they somehow descended
beneath it.
"The reality is that for three years there has been a conspiracy theory that has dominated
our political and media discourse, which is that Donald Trump conspired with Russia over the
2016 election and that he's an agent of the Russian government along with many of his
associates," he continued.
"In the Mueller report in one section after the next said either they couldn't establish
that or there was no evidence for it, and yet they're acting as though it said exactly the
opposite, that this conspiracy theory was demonstrated and proven and vindicated," he said.
"They're living in some bizarre fantasy land because they're worried that admitting that they
got this story wrong will damage their credibility."
"Pretending they got it right is just worsening the problem," he added.
Mueller's inclusion of information on obstruction of justice that portrays unbecoming conduct by the president that nonetheless
doesn't rise to the level of indictable crime allows Democrats to decide where to take this next. Mueller has not tossed the ball
to a Democratic Congress to play out its check and balance role so much as handed dirt to Democratic politicians to use as they see
fit. It's an odd end for the righteous Robert Mueller, twisting the tools of justice and state to slander.
And as with collusion, we already know the ending on obstruction. Mueller did not indict because the evidence did not support
it. Attorney General Bob Barr and his deputy Rod Rosenstein, by law the actual intended recipients of the report, agreed with Mueller.
Trump's actions were lawful. Though some of them were troublesome and even immoral, they were not criminal. Most significantly, Mueller
could not indict on obstruction because it was not possible to determine that Trump had showed the legally required corrupt intent.
All of that precedes any consideration given to Department of Justice and Office of Legal Counsel advice that a sitting president
cannot be indicted.
If Mueller had an obstruction case, he would have made it. He could have specifically recommended indictment and made explicit
that the complex legal issues around presidential obstruction meant a decision was beyond his and the attorney general's constitutional
roles and must be addressed by Congress via impeachment. He could have indicted any number of people in Trump's inner circle,
or issued a sealed indictment against post-White House Trump himself. He could have said that he couldn't indict solely because of
DOJ/OLC rules and therefore explicitly created a road map for impeachment to guide the next step.
None of that happened. Mueller had no reason to speak in riddles, show restraint, send signals, embed
hidden messages
, or hint at things that others should do. He could have swung in any number of ways but instead found reason to leave the bat on
his shoulder. Volume II should have ended there.
But it seems obvious from reading the report that
stories alleging that members of Mueller's team saw evidence of obstruction that they found "alarming and significant" were true.
Barr did a great disservice in omitting at least mention of this from his summary, as it forms the bulk of Volume II and will fuel
nearly everything that happens next.
Despite no indictment, the report outlines
10 instances containing elements of obstructed justice by Trump, with a suggestion (volume II, page 8) that someone may want
to look again. Apparently not everyone on Mueller's team agreed with the boss's conclusion that the evidence was insufficient, and
Mueller chose to allow what is essentially dissent Talmudically contradicting his major Volume II conclusion to be baked into his
own work.
Mueller was tasked with making an unambiguous decision: either to prosecute or not. He made it, and then included pages of reasons
suggesting he might be wrong even as he also found space to say that the dissent might also be missing the key element of corrupt
intent. There is no explanation for this confusing, ambiguous, and jumbled departure from traditional prosecutorial judgment. The
final line (volume II, page 182) reads like a Twilight Zone script: "while this report does not conclude that the President
committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
One focus of the dissent is on Trump firing former FBI director James Comey. For this to be obstruction, Trump would have had
to have fired Comey with the corrupt intent to impede the investigation. The Mueller report is clear that this was not what happened.
Despite the public messaging, the firing was related to Comey's mishandling of the Clinton email case. The report shows that the
president was angry at Comey for telling him privately that he was not under investigation but refusing to say so publicly, as Comey
had done (once) for Hillary Clinton. Volume II, page 75: "Substantial evidence indicates that the catalyst for the president's decision
to fire Comey was Comey's unwillingness to publicly state that the president was not personally under investigation." That's not
obstruction of justice; it's presidential rage.
So no Russia conspiracy after all. After all that.
One can't help wondering how it might have gone had Israel rather than Russia been the foreign target of the investigation.
After all, the FBI tells us that Israeli spying against America is as intense as Russian and Chinese spying. The Israelis are
more advanced in some ways. There is no Russia-America Political Action Committee, for example. No Russian Sheldon Adelson either.
After the Mueller fracas dies down, we can expect Russia and China to develop methods and mechanisms that parallel those Israel
uses to meddle in our elections and threaten our politicians. It's safer, and far more effective.
This lefty tends to agree with you. There are so many issues where Trump can legitimately be described as awful and on a personal
level he is awful. On some of the issues (and on his personality), some of the TAC conservatives around here would agree with
me. Larison rips into Trump almost every day.
So what do our wonderful Democratic progressive leaders and journalists (with rare exceptions) do? They zero in on a McCarthyite
conspiracy theory where Trump is innocent.
Freaking geniuses.
Still, Trump is a sleaze and I leave it to the lawyers to determine if the "obstruction" charge will go anywhere.
Mueller's performs malpractice as a prosecutor by stating:
"While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
Mueller could not give the Democrats and the deep state the president's head. But he did encourage them to continue the quest.
The chances of Trump's reelection are thereby greatly enhanced. The left won't have anything better to do than impeach the president
for another six years.
the report very specifically and literally does not exonerate the president for all his conduct covered in the report
The report DOES NOT exonerate Trump; it says explicitly that "If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts,
that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal
standards, we are unable to reach that judgment."
I agree that's not an indictment, but it's decidedly not an exoneration either. So it seems like *Boland is disgracing herself,*
trying to spin the Mueller Report into something favorable to the president.
Have you looked at the report? It explicitly
"While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
Seriously, folks, stop grasping at straws. It looks pathetic. Ever heard of "innocent unless proven guilty"? One of the basic
legal principles – ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat – if y'all haven't. If something assumed to be an evidence
or a testimony cannot indict, it *automatically* exonerates. Grow up and face it. And start actually campaigning if you wanna
have even the smallest chance in 2020. I can assure you that your collusion delusion is among the last things voters of any social,
racial, ethnic, religious or regional backgrounds care about.
Reading the comments here it is clear that Trump derangement syndrome is alive and well at TAC.
There are two possible outcomes in a legal inquiry, indictment and exoneration. The fact that Mueller could not indict on collusion
means Trump was exonerated. Mueller punted on the issue of obstruction of justice because he could not prove that either and for
him to imply otherwise is dishonest and borders and prosecutorial misconduct.
A trace of common sense would lead one to ask why Trump would obstruct an investigation into a crime that he surely knew he
did not commit?
One doesn't have to be a Trump fan to marvel at the mendacity and stupidity that liberal elite's have displayed in refusing
to face reality.
Ken Starr's effort cost 120 million and was just as stupid as this one. So the Republicans
got a taste of their own medicine, the really bad thing to come out of this is the
possibility of nuclear war with Russia.
Another adept of the Hanlon's Razor who is forgetting that the Republicans started all
kinds of investigations against the Clintons not because Bill screwed somebody in the Oval
Office, but because Hillary cheated in 1992 presidential elections by using a spoiler Ross
Perot, which violated all gentlemen's agreements of the American elite.
They appointed Ken Starr to be the most powerful prosecutor in the U.S. with unlimited
money, manpower and time based on not even speculation. They had nothing, if it were not for
Linda Tripp's backstabbing of her friend Monica Lewinsky the whole thing would of ended much
earlier.
Ken Starr threatened Monica and everyone within 100 miles of her with long prison
sentences if she did not reveal every detail, which he leaked to the press on a daily basis.
It was dirty politics at its finest.
Of course. Because a serial philanderer, womanizer, and/or rapist getting oral sex from a
very young intern in a government office and then lying about is is not serious. A me-too
moment. Now imagine if Trump did that.
There are people that are willfully ignorant. You are willfully stupid, but you're
intensely partisan, which perhaps explains your conundrum.
There are severe grounds for punishment in the federal workplace for having sex with your
subordinate. In your office. On government time.
Even more severe if found lying about it during the course of an investigation/review.
You can blame a vast rightwing conspiracy, a witch-hunt, or your melodramatic claim of
"coup", but it is a settled conclusion that Bill Clinton is a womanizer, serial philander,
and accused rapist.
But he is a D, which is all that matters for the useful voting idiots.
"... "Russia's interference in the campaign was the core issue that Mr. Mueller was appointed to investigate," the Times writes, "and if he stopped short of accusing the Trump campaign of overtly cooperating with the Russians -- the report mercifully rejects speaking of 'collusion,' a term that has no meaning in American law -- he was unequivocal on Russia's culpability: 'First, the Office determined that Russia's two principal interference operations in the 2016 US presidential election -- the social media campaign and the hacking-and-dumping operations -- violated US criminal law." ..."
"... In the key passage, the Times complains that Trump has failed to take this supposed interference in American politics seriously. "Culpable or not," the editors write, "he must be made to understand that a foreign power that interferes in American elections is, in fact, trying to distort American foreign policy and national security." ..."
"... "Distort foreign policy " By this is meant the CIA-backed imperialist operations in Syria and the campaign against Russia itself. ..."
"... In addition to the conflicts over foreign policy, the anti-Russia campaign has been aimed at criminalizing domestic opposition and justifying an unprecedented attack on free speech, including the censorship of the internet, utilizing Google, Facebook, and other social media companies, under the absurd pretext that the online operations of Russia are responsible for social conflict within the United States. ..."
The release of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller on allegations of Russian
interference in the US election and alleged collusion with the Trump administration has
reignited the ferocious factional warfare within the American ruling class.
An editorial published Friday evening by the New York Times very clearly reveals,
after two years, what this conflict was all about. As the World Socialist Web Site has
repeatedly insisted, dominant factions of the military-intelligence apparatus, whose demands
have been channeled by the Democratic Party and the media, will not accept any retreat from an
intensification of the conflict with Russia.
The editorial board statement is published under the headline, "The Mueller Report and the
Danger Facing American Democracy," with the subhead, "A perceived victory for Russian
interference poses a serious risk for the United States."
It begins, "The report of the special counsel Robert Mueller leaves considerable space for
partisan warfare over the role of President Trump and his political campaign in Russia's
interference in the 2016 election. But one conclusion is categorical: 'The Russian government
interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.'"
This statement is a backhanded acknowledgement that the Mueller report fails to substantiate
many of the wild claims, promoted by the media including the Times , of collusion or
direct coordination between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russian government. However, what
the Times is more concerned with is the underlying -- and no less unfounded -- claim,
that Russia has attacked "American democracy" and that an aggressive response is necessary.
"Russia's interference in the campaign was the core issue that Mr. Mueller was appointed to
investigate," the Times writes, "and if he stopped short of accusing the Trump campaign
of overtly cooperating with the Russians -- the report mercifully rejects speaking of
'collusion,' a term that has no meaning in American law -- he was unequivocal on Russia's
culpability: 'First, the Office determined that Russia's two principal interference operations
in the 2016 US presidential election -- the social media campaign and the hacking-and-dumping
operations -- violated US criminal law."
In the key passage, the Times complains that Trump has failed to take this supposed
interference in American politics seriously. "Culpable or not," the editors write, "he must be
made to understand that a foreign power that interferes in American elections is, in fact,
trying to distort American foreign policy and national security."
"Distort foreign policy " By this is meant the CIA-backed imperialist operations in Syria
and the campaign against Russia itself.
In addition to the conflicts over foreign policy, the anti-Russia campaign has been aimed at
criminalizing domestic opposition and justifying an unprecedented attack on free speech,
including the censorship of the internet, utilizing Google, Facebook, and other social media
companies, under the absurd pretext that the online operations of Russia are responsible for
social conflict within the United States.
Regurgitating the unsubstantiated assertions of the intelligence agencies, which the Mueller
report also accepts, the Times denounces "a social media campaign [by Russia] intended
to fan rifts in the United States." Significantly, this same assertion was accepted by Trump's
attorney general, William Barr, who proclaimed upon releasing the report Thursday that it
proved that Russia had engaged in a systematic campaign to "sow social discord among American
voters."
As if the growing wave of social unrest in the United States, propelled by unprecedented
levels of social inequality, is the product of the nefarious intervention of Vladimir Putin!
This is simply the resurrection of hysterical McCarthyite red-baiting, with capitalist Russia
assuming the place of the Soviet Union.
A particularly noxious expression of the attack on democratic rights is the agreement,
across all factions of the US ruling elite, to target WikiLeaks. The Mueller report was issued
only days after British police seized WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the US government
revealed that it was seeking his extradition, to face indefinite detention or worse.
The Times editorial repeats the allegation -- again, never substantiated, but
asserted by the Mueller report -- that the Russian government was involved in hacking "the
Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee and releasing reams of damaging
materials through the front groups DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, and later through WikiLeaks."
"The real danger that the Mueller report reveals," the Times repeats, "is not of a
president who knowingly or unknowingly let a hostile power do dirty tricks on his behalf, but
of a president who refuses to see that he has been used to damage American democracy and
national security."
It adds, "A perceived victory for Russian interference poses a serious danger to the United
States. Already, several American agencies are working, in partnership with the tech industry,
to prevent election interference going forward." That is, Google and Facebook have already
instituted far-reaching measures to censor the internet. "But the Kremlin is not the only
hostile government mucking around in America's cyberspace -- China and North Korea are two
others honing their cyber-arsenals, and they, too, could be tempted to manipulate partisan
strife for their ends." That is, further measures are needed.
Here we have combined the twin and interrelated aims of all factions of the ruling class --
to intensify war, not only against Russia, but also against China, and suppress social
opposition.
The Times ends with an olive branch to Trump and the Republicans. "The two parties
may not agree on Mr. Trump's culpability," the editors write, "but they have already found a
measure of common ground with the sanctions they have imposed on Russia over its interference
in the campaign. Now they could justify the considerable time and expense of the special
counsel investigation, and at the same time demonstrate that the fissure in American politics
is not terminal, by jointly making clear to Russia and other hostile forces that the democratic
process, in the United States and its allies, is strictly off limits to foreign clandestine
manipulation, and that anyone who tries will pay a heavy price."
Thus we have it, as they say, straight from the horse's mouth. The opposition of the
Democrats and their affiliated media outlets to the Trump administration was never about its
right-wing and fascistic policies, its illegal and unconstitutional agenda, or its
authoritarian methods of rule, but over concerns that he has undermined what are considered key
geostrategic interests of American imperialism.
As far as the ruling class is concerned -- and here we speak of both the Democrats and the
Trump administration -- the "heavy price" is to be borne not only by the foreign policy rivals
of the American ruling class abroad, but also by the working class at home.
"... Makes me wonder if this started out as a standard operation by the FBI to gain leverage over a presidential contender. That would explain Sater's early attempts at apparent entrapment. Since that didn't work, a different strategy had to be devised to deny the presidency to someone over whom the intelligence services lacked sufficient leverage. ..."
"... Hillary gladly cooperated and raised the specter of collusion with Russia, which she trumpeted in the debates, downplaying other issues that could have resonated more with voters. Since she thought she was a slam dunk, she thought she could afford to cooperate. It could only help ingratiate her with the borg. ..."
"... On the other hand, Brennan and others in the borg used their allies in the media to promote and propagate the story, which mushroomed when Trump defied the odds and won. Hillary was eager to play the victim as a way to excuse her failure. And the borg began hyping the story to cripple Trump unless he heeled. Initially Trump resisted, firing Comey. But with Bolton now ensconced as the National Security Advisor, it is clear that the borg has won, and the lack of any conspiracy could now be revealed. ..."
"... IMO the FBI leadership, Clapper, Brennan and his flunkies were working with the Brits at some senior level of their IO apparatus to screw Trump. Mueller's testimony before the Congress should be revelatory of his true position. ..."
"... Don't hold your breath .The so called deep state which in reality are our plutocratic oligarchical class that win. Look at the new boss same as the old boss. ..."
"... Look at all the hair triggers that have been laid out with the TRUMP regime since he became POTUS with regards to the ME and the Russian Federation. ..."
"... both Dems and Repub are trying to introduce a bill that labels the Russian Federation as a sponsor of terrorism. You just can't make this stuff up. Least we forget replacing the meme of ASSAD HAS TO GO TO MADURRO HAS TO GO. War is a racket and as per usual we the sheeple just fall for it. Ret. Col Wilkerson lays all out at last years Israeli influence conference. ..."
"... It appears that Bill Barr's light editing may have been intended to expose the bias and sloppiness of Mueller and his team. ..."
"... The most farcical thing in the Mueller report is that he did not fill obstruction charges or even recommend that it should be filled, but yet he did not "exonerate" Trump. ..."
"... In other words, Mueller did not think that he had enough to make an obstruction case in the courts of justice, and keep in mind that an indictment requires only "probable cause", not the "beyond a reasonable doubt" required for a criminal conviction, but nevertheless he went out of his way to leave the obstruction sword hanging over Trump`s head so the political infighting does not end. ..."
Makes me wonder if this started out as a standard operation by the FBI to gain leverage over a presidential contender. That would
explain Sater's early attempts at apparent entrapment. Since that didn't work, a different strategy had to be devised to deny
the presidency to someone over whom the intelligence services lacked sufficient leverage.
Hillary gladly cooperated and raised the specter of collusion with Russia, which she trumpeted in the debates, downplaying
other issues that could have resonated more with voters. Since she thought she was a slam dunk, she thought she could afford to
cooperate. It could only help ingratiate her with the borg.
On the other hand, Brennan and others in the borg used their allies in the media to promote and propagate the story, which
mushroomed when Trump defied the odds and won. Hillary was eager to play the victim as a way to excuse her failure. And the borg
began hyping the story to cripple Trump unless he heeled. Initially Trump resisted, firing Comey. But with Bolton now ensconced
as the National Security Advisor, it is clear that the borg has won, and the lack of any conspiracy could now be revealed.
Such a scenario would explain why Sater, Mufid, Steele and apparent attempts at entrapment got buried. And, with obstruction
still hanging over Trump's head, the borg's leverage is still there if needed.
IMO the FBI leadership, Clapper, Brennan and his flunkies were working with the Brits at some senior level of their IO
apparatus
to screw Trump. Mueller's testimony before the Congress should be revelatory of his true position.
Don't hold your breath .The so called deep state which in reality are our plutocratic oligarchical class that win. Look at the
new boss same as the old boss.
It was obvious from way back in June 2016 when most of the fabricated /novella known as the
Steele Dossier was floating around and the role Fusion GPS played in the Clinton POTUS machine. There is a lot out there but as
per usual smokey mirrors and deception.
I live you with this one thought.
Look at all the hair triggers that have been laid out with the TRUMP regime since he became POTUS with regards to the ME and
the Russian Federation.
THe IRGC being labeled a terrorist organization and further more both Dems and Repub are trying to introduce
a bill that labels the Russian Federation as a sponsor of terrorism. You just can't make this stuff up. Least we forget replacing the meme of ASSAD HAS TO GO TO MADURRO HAS TO GO. War is a racket and as per usual we the sheeple just fall for it. Ret. Col Wilkerson lays all out at last years Israeli influence
conference.
Special Relationship? All it's possible for the outsider to see in that are questions.
The UK stands shoulder to shoulder with the US in repelling the Russian threat. Also, along with France, helps with any R2P
that needs doing. That's a consistent if by now bedraggled story.
But Europe, including the UK, is now going hell for leather at the "European Army" project. How long will it be before that
becomes a respectable independent force? A decade?
In the meantime all recognise that the US is the only significant European defence force. It's not just the money. The US ties
the European components of NATO together and provides the big reserves of men and equipment. Even Mr Blair accepts that reality.
I've been listening to his talk at the Munich Security Conference.
So the US is to hold the fort in Europe while the Europeans prepare to supplant NATO? Do the Europeans plan to be a military
superpower themselves eventually?
And where does Trump fit in? Trumpphobia is as strong as Russophobia in the UK and stronger than Russophobia in continental
Europe. So Trump is supposed to sit there placidly defending Europe until the Europeans are strong enough to dispense with the
American alliance, and that while the Europeans, including the UK, throw mud at him?
Neither in neocon terms nor in terms of sensible defence are these various stories compatible. Is there any sort of coherent
defense policy in this respect on either side of the Atlantic? Or are they all just winging it and ignoring the inconsistencies?
Bravo ! One word "Bravo!!!" This is a very good, probably the best so far in depth analysis of Mueller's final report. And your phase "disingenuous and dishonest" is like a stamp on Mueller's hatchet job:
A careful reading of the report reveals that Mueller has issued findings that are both disingenuous and dishonest. The report
is a failed hatchet job.
Part of the failure can be attributed to the amount of material that Attorney General Barr allowed to be released.
It appears that Bill Barr's light editing may have been intended to expose the bias and sloppiness of Mueller and his team.
The most farcical thing in the Mueller report is that he did not fill obstruction charges or even recommend that it should be
filled, but yet he did not "exonerate" Trump.
In other words, Mueller did not think that he had enough to make an obstruction case in the courts of justice, and keep in
mind that an indictment requires only "probable cause", not the "beyond a reasonable doubt" required for a criminal conviction,
but nevertheless he went out of his way to leave the obstruction sword hanging over Trump`s head so the political infighting does
not end.
IMO, that is the biggest evidence that the whole thing was an attempt at facilitating a political power grab instead of a serious
criminal investigation.
"... Corrupt, centrist Democrats will demand that voters choose whatever turkeys the DNC, DSCC, and DCCC choose to run in 2020. And Republicans will back Trump. ..."
Fist of all Larry C. Johnson is a former analyst at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. So his great advantage is that he
really knows the "kitchen"
What about you ? What are your credentials to discuss this Byzantium issue and use "ad hominem" attack ?
AND Likbez favorably cites a comment from JohnH – the village idiot who loves to writes all sorts of stupid stuff at Mark
Thoma's place!
The idea that in democratic societies the intelligence agencies tend to escape the control of executive branch and abuse their
capabilities (" the tail start wagging the dog") is not new.
So the variation of this pretty established idea raised in JohnH post is not something to complain about. It is an interesting
hypothesis that might or might not be true but definitely deserve consideration. In short it can be refined to the following statement:
"only candidates with enough compromising material in the hands of intelligence agencies are allowed to be elected."
I do not subscribe to it and believe other considerations were at the core of launching of the color revolution against Trump.
But the whole Pike commission was about abuse of power by CIA. And remember that none of the US presidents was able to remove
J. Edgar Hoover, who dies in this position, so such methods were used in the past.
In this sense the love of Mueller demonstrated by many commenters in this blog looks slightly misplaced and can be justified
only on the grounds "the end justifies the means" Which is a pretty slippery slope.
Currently both CIA and FBI are definitely over-politicized with FBI assuming the role of "kingmaker" in 2016 elections, pushing
Sanders under the bus by exonerating Hillary. If you do not know or do not understand this established and pretty much undisputable
historical fact that I can't help. FBI elected Trump. As simple as that.
As for JohnH, do you mean comments like this one?
JohnH -> kurt, April 19, 2019 at 07:13 AM
Funny! kurt has no idea what the Mueller Report says but Glenn Greenwald has dissected it:
"The key fact is this: Mueller – contrary to weeks of false media claims – did not merely issue a narrow, cramped,
legalistic finding that there was insufficient evidence to indict Trump associates for conspiring with Russia and then
proving their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. That would have been devastating enough to those who spent the last two
years or more misleading people to believe that conspiracy convictions of Trump's closest aides and family members were
inevitable. But his mandate was much broader than that: to state what did or did not happen.
That's precisely what he did: Mueller, in addition to concluding that evidence was insufficient to charge any American
with crimes relating to Russian election interference, also stated emphatically in numerous instances that there was
no evidence – not merely that there was insufficient evidence to obtain a criminal conviction – that key prongs of this
three-year-old conspiracy theory actually happened. As Mueller himself put it: "in some instances, the report points
out the absence of evidence or conflicts in the evidence about a particular fact or event."
Enough of the sour grapes. Hillary lost. Time for Democrats to adopt a positive agenda to cure what ails the country
if they're even capable of anything beyond blaming Republicans for their incompetence.
And the following
JohnH -> Christopher H . April 18, 2019 at 03:56 PM
After the Trump-Putin conspiracy cratered, Democrats fixed on Barr–why won't he release the report? They were livid,
because supposedly Barr was hiding something.
Now that the report has been released, Democrats will have new ammunition, which they will ingeniously distort to conflate
with the discredited Trump-Putin conspiracy:
"See, we were right!!!" they will howl until election day "it's all Republicans' fault!!!" Not that anyone cares.
Of course, Trump has his own conspiracy now who put Trump-Putin in to motion, and did they violate the law. No matter,
Trump will bask in his victimhood and probably win in 2020, since Trump-Putin exposed Democrats as being even less credible
than Trump, the serial liar.
And of course, nothing will get done. Pelosi will get miniscule changes done to Obamacare and crow, "See? We can do it!"
Of course, the Senate will have nothing of it, so Pelosi's vast accomplishments will go for naught, which she counted on,
since the miniscule changes were nothing more than electioneering voter bait. No one will care.
Corrupt, centrist Democrats will demand that voters choose whatever turkeys the DNC, DSCC, and DCCC choose to run
in 2020. And Republicans will back Trump.
Plenty of 'entertainment' for the next 18 months, nothing of substance will happen unless Democrats jump on the bandwagon
for a Trump war
I think it is pretty legitimate level of discussion and it does not look like he is a rabid Trumpster. Please note "Trump-Putin
exposed Democrats as being even less credible than Trump, the serial liar."
"Within approximately five hours of Trump's statement, GRU officers targeted for the
first time Clinton's personal office. "
The report shows that Russia coordinated with Trump even if he was unaware of it.
Do you understand that you implicate Obama administration in total and utter incompetence,
if not pandering to the foreign intervention into the USA elections. The latter is called
criminal negligence in legal speak.
So all our three letter agencies with their enormous budgets and staff including NSA which
intercepts all incoming/outgoing communications (and probably most internal communications)
can't protect the USA elections from interference that they knew about ? Why they did not
warn Trump?
Or NSA assumed that it was yet another CIA "training exercise" imposing as Russian
hackers?
It not clear why Russia need such a crude methods as, for example, hacking Podesta email
via spearfishing (NSA has all the recodings in this case), as you can buy, say a couple of
Google engineers for less then a million dollars (many Google engineers hate Google with its
cult of performance reviews and know that they are getting much less then their Facebook
counterparts, so this might well be not that difficult) and get all you want without extra
noise.
Historically Soviet and, especially, East German intelligence were real experts in
utilizing "humint". With the crash of neoliberal ideology that probably is easier for
Russians now then it was for Soviets or East Germans in 60th-80th.
For example, from my admittedly nonprofessional point of view, the most logical assumption
about DNC hack is that it was a mixture of the internal leak (download of the files to the
UCB drive) and Crowdstrike false flag operation (cover up operation which included implanting
Russian (or Ukrainian) malware from Vault 7 to blame Russians.
"Do you understand that you implicate Obama administration"
They did screw up.
Wrong. The fact that they did not warn/brief Trump suggests that this was an a
deliberate and pre-planned attempt to entrap him by initiating Russian contacts by
FBI/CIA/MI6 moles
Papadopoulos set up ( via Josef Misfud (MI6) and Stefan Halper (CIA) ). At the time
Halper probably was reporting to the current CIA director Gina Haspel who was at this
time CIA station chief in GB. She is a Brennan protégé, of recent Skripals
dead ducks hoax fame.
Surveillance was specifically established to collect compromising material on Trump
and his associates with high level official in Obama administration (and probably Obama
himself) playing coordinating role.
Colonel Lang's blog is a good source of information on those issues with posts by
former intelligence specialists.
And please note that I am not a Trump supporter. I resent him and his policies.
"... The political reality is that Dems don't have nearly enough votes for impeachment, and they don't have a collusion conspiracy to garner more votes. All they have is the detritus of a failed soft coup -- a stink of fecklessness, mendacity, and vulnerability heading into the 2020 election season. ..."
"... "Expectation that Mueller was going to deliver any sort of impeachment evidence was non-existent. We all knew that the Deep State was going to deliver resounding support for the second term candidacy of the sitting incumbent buffoon even if he embarrasses whole nations including that of the USA." ..."
"... The evidence is overwhelming that Trump is a disgusting con-artist and bully who was inserted into office by the Koch brothers and similar moneyed nitwits to transfer yet more wealth and advance their schoolboy Randian agenda. Elizabeth Warren is beginning the calls impeachment. Time to clean the Augean stables. ..."
I like the use of the words "constitutionally elected" to add serious power to the whole
affair. In our current world of voter antics by both parties, heavily gerrymandered
districts, corporations being considered people, corporate owned politicians who's main
concern is their corporate buddies, electronic voting machines with proprietary code nobody
can see, Israel's influence completely overlooked as people focus on Russia, etc it seems
that stupid covers a lot of ground these days.
But please, take this political moment super
seriously until the next political theater grabs everyone's attention. It's sure to make as
much of an impact on the average person's life as Reagan's pre-election antics, Clinton's
blowjob, etc On to the next thing in ADD nation is the most likely outcome. We will see, I
may be wrong.
Oh yes, absolutely. The Russians never would have succeeded in their endeavor had it not
been for the DNC's ham-fisted attempt to force the terminally unpopular Clintons down the
country's throat for a non-contiguous third term. It was such an epic bungle that of course
they're going to want to cast all the blame on the Russians so that they don't look like the
freaking idiots they are.
>>> their only beef with him has to be his mannerisms and pedigree
That's easily 50%.
Recall that Obama was the "deporter in chief" long before Trump. Obama was the progenitor
of the kids-in-cages deterrent. And nary a peep from his base or the MSM at that time. What
little coverage existed was graciously overlooked and forgotten, beguiled as the Dems were by
Obama's double-dealing dulcet promises of DACA and amnesty.
Obama was very good at telling people what they wanted to hear, and shielding them from
the harsh realities of life. To paraphrase Colbert, "We Americans didn't want to know, and
you had the courtesy not to tell us. Those were good times, as far as we knew." Obama was the
perfect leader for a nation of adult children obsessed with their mental issues and
genitalia.
Obama was a very smooth and genteel agent of empire, where Trump is as a rule very rude
and coarse, which is what I believe turned mainstream voters in suburbs and medium-sized
cities against him in the last election. But both never hesitated to give the one-percenters
most of what these elites wanted, and in the final analysis, that's the only thing that
really matters.
"Understand that the Mueller Report itself was the mendacious conclusion to a deceitful
investigation, the purpose of which was to conceal the criminal conduct of US government
officials meddling in the 2016 election, in collusion with the Hillary Clinton campaign, to
derail Mr. Trump's campaign, and then disable him when he managed to win the election. Mr.
Mueller was theoretically trying to save the FBI's reputation, but he may have only succeeded
in injuring it more gravely."
Yes indeed James, you know this, I know this, and many who post here know this. You always
present it all so well, thank you. We will, however, never cease to be plagued by those rabid
few that will not and cannot accept it and move on. They will continue to deny and fabricate
their own demented unrealities. Facts no longer exist for them for they have been replaced by
those delusions that are created by their own, tiny minds. Or planted there by those
manipulators that take full advantage of their lack of ability to think for themselves.
The loonies of today do not need facts, nor do they care to do mathematics, work with
budgets, or allow themselves to be forced to face any reality that bites them in the ass due
to their denial of consequences for their bad choices. Make it up as you go along is the rule
of the day and yes Jim, an Empire of Bullshit! Thank you.
The loonies of today do not need facts, -- Walter B
It is (again) that cult-like belief, Walter. When, in early 1945, captured German soldiers
brayed their confidence in the ultimate victory of the Third Reich (to howls of GI laughter,
I might add) those Germans were displaying a similar cult-like belief. It all fell apart the
moment their chosen demigod blew his brains out in preference to being taken prisoner by the
Soviet Union.
I wonder at what point will be the "moment it all falls apart" for the radical Left. I
don't think they ever considered that the arc of the moral universe might bend around
far enough to deal them a profound blow.
The second link is to my webpage but the first is an interview with John Pilger about JA.
I have never tried 'record UEL at current time before but lets try it out. It should start
out with Lets go to Vault
7
Using humor to avoid Truth is an American specialty, but common to all dying cultures it
would seem. So carry on until you are carried by six and ferried across the Styx. A silver
coin should be left in your mouth to pay the boatman, Charon.
CNN is desperately trying to be the tail that wags the dog. The political reality is that
Dems don't have nearly enough votes for impeachment, and they don't have a collusion
conspiracy to garner more votes. All they have is the detritus of a failed soft coup -- a
stink of fecklessness, mendacity, and vulnerability heading into the 2020 election season.
In short after years of telling white people how evil and entitled we are they have
suddenly realized they are going down like the Titanic if they don't change course or their
narrative and plank platform.
The DNC is the party of old crotchety people pretending to care about the unwashed masses but
they are every bit the 1% they disparage so much. Could they finally be understanding they
needed the white middle class or will they double down on class warfare and screams of
everyone is racists but the DNC supporters?
This deplorable has a huge tub of popcorn and will enjoy watching the DEMS speed up the cycle
of eating their own.
They discounted the Trumpster and he has been two steps ahead the entire time.
It will be funny if he manages to destroy the DNC and they become the next wig or bull moose
party in other words a foot note in history.
If so good riddance.
The long-and-short of it is that they don't have enough votes in the Senate to impeach
Trump, so it's just not going to happen. The Democrats need to focus their efforts on trying
not to force another turkey sandwich down the country's throat in 2020. {/cue Joe "Boundary
Issues" Biden sniffing and fondling everybody within arm's reach}
Reading today's post again: " demonstrating what a grievous injury was done to this
republic by its own vested authorities." brought something to mind.
Recently watched the first episode of Netflix's "Roman Empire" about how Marcus Aurelius'
wife Faustina, when she thought he had died, scampered off to Egypt to schtupp his
next-in-charge general in an effort to consolidate her power and keep the empire in family
hands. This inspired the general to raise his legions to take Rome. When hubby Marcus turns
out to be alive and well she off-ed herself, and Marcus had the general shanked.
The only question I have is who Jim is going to vote for in 2020.
Is Trump really screwing things up worse than say all the previous Presidents going back
to Eisenhower? So what if half the country thinks he's a clown.
Yes indeed he did come out and say that and I believe that he also told us who he voted
for in 2016 as well. It takes a real man to admit that you voted for an incompetent, though I
am certain that we have all done it in our time.
I love your petards, Jim Kunstler, but I am not in any way convinced of a grand Trump
counter-offensive following the release of the Inspector General's report. Nothing of
substance will happen. You are dreaming in Technicolor. The dirty tricks, the brazen scheming
to undermine the electoral process, the swindles and collusion between Obamite (as in
"termite") WH and the Clintonchiks (as in "apparatchik") will be drowned in the howls and
hysterics of the non-Fox media and the justice machinery's grasp of long-term self-interest,
that is, past MAGA, which it knows is plain ol' OTBR (Orange Toupee Bullshit Revolution).
If
anyone gets indicted, rest assured, it will be second-rate bit players, whose names the
public will not even recognize (perhaps with the exception of Andy McCabe or Peter Strzok).
In other words, it will not be carnage, and it will not reach the heights of Loretta Lynch,
or Allah forbid, Barack Obama. That level political rot will be protected by the standard teflon: "acted legally, and in good faith, on the information available". And that will be
that. The Republic will continue to be dismantled at the speed of God's windmills.
"Let congress put on a carnival of its own now. It will be greeted like a TV commercial
for a hemorrhoid remedy while the real national psychodrama plays out in grand juries and
courtrooms, demonstrating what a grievous injury was done to this republic by its own vested
authorities."
Just another banana republic, but instead of military juntas and generals and police
forces we have parties and lawyers and media. Same sad spectacle. Different actors. Exceptionalism indeed.
John Michael Greer does as decent job of discussing the hyper-subjectivity fueling, among
other things, the Russia hysteria among urban establishment-liberals in his blog-post this
week .
I guess I'm kind of an ends justifies the means kind of person. Whatever it takes to dampen the effects of or rid ourselves of the human wreckage
occupying the white house and all the other places he has installed his corrupt and
incompetent stooges is the lesser evil.
If you don't think Trump's initial response to learning he was going to be investigated
was glaring evidence he knew he'd been guilty of more than we'll ever know then you are
devoid of any perspicacity whatsoever.
Six terms of massively incompetent presidents will sink the U.S. Trump is increasing the
national debt more than Obama and when we default because the interest is too high, bad
things will happen.
China will come over here and buy everything it wants like it is a yard sale. We will turn
into Greece where everything of value was sold off to the highest bidder.
I am not talking about the small stuff, I am talking about buying Central Park or the
electric grid for the whole East Coast. Or a few National Parks, thats what happened in
Greece and it could happen here also.
The caliber of our politicians gives me confidence this will come about.
You shouldn't get your hopes up about Trump winning in 2020. Only half the
eligible-to-vote millennials voted in 2016. My guess is a substantial percentage of the ones
who didn't were disgusted rightfully disgusted by Hillary. They will be older and wiser now and something tells me the mid-terms were a foreshadowing
of what's to come. Of the millennials who did vote 2/3 voted for Hillary.
Meanwhile I'm guessing a fair number of white fat asses who voted for trump are or will be
taking their dirt naps next time around. Thx for the compliment.
Contrary to what you might think I have a very low opinion of Obama. He put the future of
this country in great danger by increasing the national debt by a staggering 10 Trillion
dollars. He passed and expanded the Patriot Act , he signed the NDAA and Felony Riot right before
he left office.
He condoned all the war crimes and black torture sites of the Bush administration and he
gave a pass to all the corruption that lead to that banking and housing collapse.
He is also a war criminal by expanding and continuing the wars and adding several more to
the list.
Since 2000 the U.S. has been going downhill because of the shitty Neo Conservative and Neo
Liberal administrations. I do not see it getting better and if you think Trump will leave us
better off than when he started you are kidding yourself.
As long as we have a federal judiciary that has power far beyond its role in government,
then Trump is not safe nor any conservative in particular. When a federal judge in HI can
make a ruling that affects the entire body politic, then we are ruled by unelected men and
women who respond to their own moods and philosophies and political bent.
There must be a new special counsel now who will pursue the lawless who in fact attempted
a soft coup. However, with the various judges who fit the bill above, nothing will come of
it. I cannot imagine Trump running for a second term and if he does, it will be a fiasco
counting the votes around the nation.
Rome burns while Nero fiddles!
America disintegrates while Trump tweets!
While we are constantly bombardeded, 24-hours a day, with Russigate hysteria like a
long-running boring, TV soap opera that has gotten stale, predictable and uninteresting, the
world teeters on a precipice.The world's fiat dollar standard monetary system and the
corresponding petrodollar are on borrowed time. This system no longer works for the rest of
the world and they have grown weary of us, the USA, claiming to be the world's richest and
most prosperous nation due to our ability to endlessly print currency without corresponding
hyperinflation.
The new international monetary standard will include gold along with other commodities.
Whether all this can be done peacefully is anyone's guess. With the world's largest most
expensive,military, I doubt, we the USA, will cede our top perch without a fight.
Soon,the rich little kiddies won't have to cheat to get into elite colleges because all the
youg'ns will be drafted into the military.
"Be the first one on your block to have your boy (girl) come home in a box "
-- - Country Joe and the Fish. Fighting for oligarchs and their ill-begotten dollars is such a noble cause. Sure???$700
insulin?? Because they care about you! What a laugh!
"War is a racket." -- General Smedly Butler. BTW, Trump vetoed the Congressional withdrawl of support for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen
because they have us by the balls due to the petrodollar. Ouch!
"Let congress put on a carnival of its own now. It will be greeted like a TV commercial
for a hemorrhoid remedy while the real national psychodrama plays out in grand juries and
courtrooms, demonstrating what a grievous injury was done to this republic by its own vested
authorities."
The question is how many of the almost 66 million Hillary voters will see it that way. And
they are still after Trump, like dissolute children deprived of a wills' fortune, seeking
vengeance on the rightful recipients.
We need convictions of those involved in the attempted coup. The daily disclosure of the
subterfuge used by these perpetraitors may just drive home the point to enough of the former
Hillary voters that the Democratic party is one of deceit and delusion, making them defect.
Timing is essential.
Slick jig Obama must also pay for his collusion. That Harvard slickster, that Hillary
tripster, that hoopin' hipster.
Trump currently peaks on the durometer. Tough guy. Dishes it out but also takes it.
MAGA (jail the perpetraitors) not MAKA
No, don't remember ever seeing it. A spur original? Or did some other genius already think
of it?
I just had a thought I'd like to get feedback on. What if the Russia collusion hysteria is
symptomatic of peak oil. A thesis of JHKs Long Emergency is that things organized at the mass
scale will fail. Are we first seeing the failure of dysfunctional mass scales endeavors? Are
these the last desperate gasps of an ideology which has failed to survive the hardships of
life? The dysfunctional policies emanating from it are certainly losing support here in
Washington, or at least that's the vibe I get. I wonder how others are experiencing this. In
summary, is the failure of the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory and the obvious failure of
policy regarding homelessness and economics the flushing out of detritus made necessary by a
lowered EROI?
Good thought. I'm not sure if is "symptomatic of peak oil", but my take is that it is a
form of mass delusion brought on by a profound disconnection from reality.
You've probably heard of the KISS Principle. Could it be that the dysfunction we're
witnessing is the going-off-the-rails of the overly complex, too large ( mass scale )
systems that have been built up since the mid-20th century or so? KISS was not adhered to,
thus we now get to experience what the "Stupid" in that acronym implied. Murphy's Law could
also be invoked, especially as increasing the complexity of anything is a great way of seeing
Murphy in action.
I can well imagine that people in rural environments will be the first to recognize the
dysfunction and adapt their behavior in order to survive. Particularly as a talent for
agitated fantasizing does not get one far in conditions of rough terrain or inclement weather
conditions familiar to rural dwellers.
Praetorian guards like Mueller, Comey, et al. always conveniently screw up any & all
investigations into White House executive so that the purpose of the executive branches of
government is always to serve the office of the president even if the actual president is a
first class boor & confidence man at face value.
Jerome Powell knows enough to stop talking about interest rate rises whilst the conman in
office wants to keep inflating assets for the wealthy as he goes into election for the second
term. Rarely do we ever evidence an incumbent president lose to an opposition upstart.
Republican Party voters would riot in the streets if their incumbent president was ever
indicted on any sort of evidence that the majority voter would not accept as fact or
truth/common knowledge. Praetorian guards are not paid to undermine the administrative side
of the legislative branch as they are merely footmen for the government de jour.
Expectation that Mueller was going to deliver any sort of impeachment evidence was
non-existent. We all knew that the Deep State was going to deliver resounding support for the
second term candidacy of the sitting incumbent buffoon even if he embarrasses whole nations
including that of the USA.
Orange Jesus is and always will be a complete bonehead no matter what endorsements he
receives from the prosecutorial branches of governance. Will equally dumb ass Americans vote
him in for a second round of international lunacy -- we don't know quite yet but I, for one,
am expecting that the Democrats will knuckle under and run with another candidate or two that
cannot seem to get traction with a potential second majority Republican win for 2020. Bernie
Sanders is the frontrunner and AOC is the running antagonist that will be played off of The
Duck for the vote drain.
Republicans have their work cut out for them this upcoming election, methinks. It's not
quite the cakewalk that everyone thinks it's going to be, eh. The Democrats have to come out
swinging violently for this election. They will be in a kick ass mood for sure. The Duck will
not paddle smoothly across the pond to election this time round as the Democrats will look
pretty lame if they don't throw up roadblocks of some sort aside from that which the even
lamer Praetorian guard throws up.
Mueller knows how to cash a government paycheque too, eh. Comey did not care about his
government paycheque as much as Mueller cares about his.
"Expectation that Mueller was going to deliver any sort of impeachment evidence was
non-existent. We all knew that the Deep State was going to deliver resounding support for the
second term candidacy of the sitting incumbent buffoon even if he embarrasses whole nations
including that of the USA."
I think I get it. The Deep State all along wanted Trump in, while just pretending to want
him out while staging a phony two year investigation. Jeez, they sure fooled
me.
I think this is mostly accurate. "The Duck" is giving the One-Percenters whatever they
want, and that's the only thing that really matters in the final analysis. I think the
Democrats will lose 2020 because they will insist yet again on putting up the guy least
likely to win (in this case, Joe "Mr. Handsy" Biden), and even though the superdelegate
system has been changed so that the DNC poobahs aren't guaranteed to get the candidate they
want, they can still rig primaries the way they did for Madame Hillary.
The Dems will lose because they are totally based on a lie and are the most corrupt
political entity that this country has had to endure. Liberalism is a methodology for the
1%to exert control over the rest of us. "We are smarter and better than you and you need us
to make your decisions for you in a socialistic basis. The DNC is the most un-American
organization that this country has ever experienced. The fact that they do not even let their
own folks compete fairly for nomination shows how manipulative their entire agenda is.
The idea that Trump is an agent of the Deep State is ludicrous, as stupid as that he is an
agent of Russia. My God, people, a group of 18 Democrats could not find an indication of
collusion by him. Trump wants to destroy the Deep State to free up the nation from the
imprisonment of this growing web of corruption and financial manipulation. It kills me to see
these nickel and dime Democrats state that two years of investigation by an anti-Trump
coalition is bogus and that the DOJ doesn't know what it is talking about. The fact that this
is getting press coverage as being true points to how stupidified this country has become.
Listening to Elizabeth Warren, a proven liar and fraud agent can dictate that the Mueller
report is wrong, shows how horrendous the political problem has become.
The entire agenda of the Left is built on falsehoods and lies. As more and more of it
comes to light, and the last two years has been one example after another of lies by the
party and the press. Compared to the DNC, Trump is an Honest Abe.
Good wrap-up of this odious waste of time, focus, and millions of dollars.
I have become rather amazed by the notion of the "media" as some sort of watchdog the
fabled "Fourth Estate".
A fable it is, and a dangerous one in which to believe.
The media: a group of corporations which are politically invested in various directions,
although the biggest of these corporations seem overwhelmingly affiliated with the political
left at the moment.
Now -- we don't expect much in the way of socially responsible behavior from other
corporations, do we? So why the Hell is there this notion that the corporate media is going
to somehow, magically, be socially responsible, when that has nothing to do with the driving
force of corporate actions -- their bottom line ?
Just like the old fables that banks, hospitals, and universities were somehow above the
money-grubbing fray they were special somehow, not really like those nasty
corporations. Except they weren't above the fray. We gave them, in older days, unwonted trust
because we were nudged by authorities to think of them as deserving of said trust.
Executive summary: they weren't.
Is it really any wonder that so many people are skeptics and cynics these days? Too much
of The Establishment has proven to be a con, or, if once reputable, has been corrupted.
In conscious echo of the title you gave this blog, Jim our weary nation casts its eyes
about, but we see only shit, bullshit, and more shit, in an apparently vain hope that
something of value may yet be seen.
Meanwhile Rachel Maddow had the balls to confab in prime time with disgraced former FBI
mandarin Andy McCabe, officially identified as a liar by his own colleagues at the
agency.
Hard to believe this is the same Jim Kunstler I first became aware of in Curtis White's
book 'The Middle Mind' He has become a sad shill and champion gas-lighter for this horrendous
mistake of a president. Worse yet, he surrounds himself with this sad echo chamber of a forum
– God only knows where all these Trump apologists come from.
The evidence is overwhelming that Trump is a disgusting con-artist and bully who was
inserted into office by the Koch brothers and similar moneyed nitwits to transfer yet more
wealth and advance their schoolboy Randian agenda. Elizabeth Warren is beginning the calls impeachment. Time to clean the Augean
stables.
Doubly sad, because although all that might be true, the alternative at the time was even
worse . No telling what we'll get next. Impeachment might feel good, but it ain't
going to heal what ails us.
What a colossal waste of time. Talk about obstruction. The game has gotten so bad that
they're now making it official party policy to unendingly investigate on the grounds that
they "may find something impeachable", all the while proclaiming it to be an undeniable
surety. Incredibly sad and annoying.
That said, the beleagured Repubs would have done the same (and most definitely will again
when it's their turn). Certainly can't just let government operate for a while. Must block,
accuse and speculate at every turn.
Naturally, at the federal level they're all self-serving, hypocritical crooks anyway just
saying this clown show is the new normal and it pisses me off.
But it isn't surprising really. The hypocritical crooks will be able to do their dirty
work without much interference. And they are very open about it. They know that tattletales
and whistleblowers will be buried under jails so they do what they want.
Let them vote for impeachment, I hope they do. While the Dems are flubbing around with impeachment for the rest of the year they won't be
passing laws designed to F-k over white people. And good luck for those dissemblers to get more than 1 or 2 Republican Senators to vote
their way, which will be cancelled out by a few Dems who vote no.
It could be that the media will be whipped like dogs.
Yet Judy Woodruff and company seem not to have gotten the memo. On PBS Newshour, it was
all gleeful breathlessness at the "roadmap" that Mueller provided congress for action of its
own, impeachment I suppose, though I don't know how that's gonna come about given that the
senate is Republican controlled. It's not only PBS, other msm were talking the same talk.
How does congress make any headway given that Mueller's 2 year campaign of investigation
and intimidation came up goose-eggs? The whole intent was to unseat Trump. They failed.
The 2016 campaign was useful in that it catapulted the Republican Party and its agenda
onto the garbage heap of failed arrangements. The question now is what takes its place. After
Trump's departure, it could happen that the Jeff Flakes and the Mitt Romneys and Paul Ryans
try to make a comeback. I mean, there's work to do, a lot of it, there's pension funds to
plunder, social security to privatize or, better still, eliminate. You know what they'll say,
they need to slay the deficit. And they need to eliminate growth killing taxes. They'll say
that companies and the wealthy are too highly taxed, and they'll have the usual shills from
the academic world to mouth the right words. You might hope that the Republican Party's dying
gasp was their massive corporate tax cut. We can only pray.
Democrats have a shot in 2020 to do what Republican voters already did. The question is
will they grab the bull by the horns. If they focus on the material interests of the American
worker with a credible agenda they have got a chance but early indications are not
encouraging, it looks like a lot more screaming and shouting about Trump, and more tedium of
trannies, gays and migrants. So if 2020 is a do-over with a lot of deploring the Deplorables,
identity politics shout-outs, while catering to elite business interests, then Democrats just
dig the grave deeper.
Yes, but no one was indicted on charges related to the subject of the investigation. They
were either unrelated/tangential financial crimes or lying to the FBI during said
investigation (which would not be hard for any of us to eventually do over an investigation
of years+ duration. They have their ways. Have you ever spent hours in a room with a lawyer
grilling you?).
They weren't indicted for the crimes that the investigation was commissioned to search
for. Still indictments, yes. And they have to take their punishment accordingly. But it makes
a difference to me.
That's my view also, that a few dozen outlandishly wealthy men (the Donor Class or the
Davos Class, take your pick) call the shots and it's all in service of their own
fortunes.
The degradation of not only the US but of much of the Western world didn't come about by
accident, nor in secret. It all unfolded in public, right under our noses.
As a result French Yellow Vests are still out in the streets, Ford Nation not only won an
election in Ontario (population 14.5 million), but now also in Alberta (population 4.3
million) with the land-slide win by Jason Kenney, the Brits voted Brexit, the Italians did
what they weren't supposed to and voted in the populist Northern League or Lega Nord or
whatever it is they call themselves nowadays.
I would urge – cough – "progressives" to smell the coffee but I know they
won't. They'll insist it's racism and stupidity behind it all. That's the stock answer and
they won't change.
Misdiagnosis can be as calamitous in the political realm as it is in the medical realm.
But if they insist on misdiagnosis, then so be it.
The most farcical thing in the Mueller report is that he did not fill obstruction charges or
even recommend that it should be filled, but yet he did not "exonerate" Trump.
In other words, Mueller did not think that he had enough to make an obstruction case in
the courts of justice, and keep in mind that an indictment requires only "probable cause",
not the "beyond a reasonable doubt" required for a criminal conviction, but nevertheless he
went out of his way to leave the obstruction sword hanging over Trump`s head so the political
infighting does not end.
IMO, that is the biggest evidence that the whole thing was an attempt at facilitating a
political power grab instead of a serious criminal investigation.
"... The foreign country that worked feverishly to meddle in the 2016 Presidential election and the subsequent rule of Donald Trump is the United Kingdom. Russia is the patsy. ..."
"... Makes me wonder if this started out as a standard operation by the FBI to gain leverage over a presidential contender. That would explain Sater's early attempts at apparent entrapment. Since that didn't work, a different strategy had to be devised to deny the presidency to someone over whom the intelligence services lacked sufficient leverage. ..."
"... Such a scenario would explain why Sater, Mufid, Steele and apparent attempts at entrapment got buried. And, with obstruction still hanging over Trump's head, the borg's leverage is still there, if needed. ..."
On Sunday, Attorney General William Barr sent a letter to Congress, summarizing the
findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. The most telling section,
quoted directly from Mueller's report, read:
" [T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or
coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities. "
That one sentence should end a roughly 33-month national ordeal (the first Russiagate
stories date back to July 2016) in which the public was encouraged, both by officials and the
press, to believe Donald Trump was a compromised foreign agent.
"That one sentence" unexpurgated:
Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would
benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome and that the Campaign
expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through the
Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign
conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference
activities.
likbez , April 21, 2019 11:40 am
Here is a very interesting and highly qualified analysis of Mueller final report
The foreign country that worked feverishly to meddle in the 2016 Presidential
election and the subsequent rule of Donald Trump is the United Kingdom. Russia is the
patsy.
Summary
A careful reading of the report reveals that Mueller has issued findings that are both
disingenuous and dishonest. The report is a failed hatchet job.
Part of the failure can be attributed to the amount of material that Attorney General
Barr allowed to be released.
It appears that Bill Barr's light editing may have been intended to expose the bias and
sloppiness of Mueller and his team.
One interesting comment:
JohnH , 21 April 2019 at 12:38 AM
Makes me wonder if this started out as a standard operation by the FBI to gain
leverage over a presidential contender. That would explain Sater's early attempts at
apparent entrapment. Since that didn't work, a different strategy had to be devised to
deny the presidency to someone over whom the intelligence services lacked sufficient
leverage.
Hillary gladly cooperated and raised the specter of collusion with Russia, which she
trumpeted in the debates, downplaying other issues that could have resonated more with
voters. Since she thought she was a slam dunk, she thought she could afford to cooperate.
It could only help ingratiate her with the borg.
On the other hand, Brennan and others in the borg used their allies in the media to
promote and propagate the story, which mushroomed when Trump defied the odds and won.
Hillary was eager to play the victim as a way to excuse her failure. And the borg began
hyping the story to cripple Trump unless he heeled.
Initially Trump resisted, firing Comey.
But with Bolton now ensconced as the National Security Advisor, it is clear that the
borg has won, and the lack of any conspiracy could now be revealed.
Such a scenario would explain why Sater, Mufid, Steele and apparent attempts at
entrapment got buried. And, with obstruction still hanging over Trump's head, the borg's
leverage is still there, if needed.
"... As I noted in my previous piece-- The FBI Tried and Failed to Entrap Trump --Sater was an active FBI undercover informant. ..."
"... An honest prosecutor would have and should have disclosed this fact. He, Sater, was the one encouraging the Trump team to cozy up to Russia. Mueller does not disclose one single instance of Trump or Cohen or any of the Trump kids calling Sater on the carpet and chewing his ass for not bringing them deals and not opening doors in Russia. Omitting this key fact goes beyond simple disingenuity. It is a conscious lie. ..."
"... The circumstantial evidence indicates that Sater was doing this at the behest of FBI handlers. We do not yet know who they are. ..."
"... We also have the case of Michael Caputo and Roger Stone being approached by a Russian gangster named Henry Greenberg. ..."
"... How does a guy like Vorkretsov/Greenberg, with an extensive criminal record and circumstantial ties to the Russian mob gain entrance into the United States? Very simple answer. He too was an FBI informant : ..."
"... Please take time to read the full dossier at democrat dossier . This is more than an odd coincidence. This is a pattern. The FBI was targeting the Trump campaign and personnel in a deliberate effort to implicate them in wanting to work with Russians. ..."
"... Once again, the Mueller team treats the provocateur -- -i.e., Joseph Mifsud -- -as some simple guy with ties to Russia's political elites. Another egregious lie. Mifsud was not working on behalf of Russia. He was deployed by MI-6. Disobedient Media has been on the forefront of exposing Mifsud's ties to western intelligence in general and the Brits in particular . ..."
"... A number of Twitter users recently observed that Joseph Mifsud had been photographed standing next to Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee at Mifsud’s LINK campus in Rome. Newsmax and Buzzfeed later reported that the professor’s name and biography had been removed from the campus’ website, writing that the mysterious removal took place after Mifsud had served the institution for “years.” ..."
"... WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange likewise noted the connection between Mifsud and Smith in a Twitter thread, additionally pointing out his connections with Saudi intelligence: “[Mifsud] and Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and eight-year member of the UK Security Vetting panel both trained Italian security services at the Link University in Rome and appear to both be present in this [photo].” ..."
"... This is not a mere matter of Mueller and his team "failing" to disclose some important facts. If they were operating honestly they should have investigated Mifsud, Greenberg and Sater. But they did not. Two of the three--Sater and Greenber--alleged Russian stooges have ties to the FBI. And Mifsud has been living and working in the belly of the intelligence community. ..."
"... Don't hold your breath .The so called deep state which in reality are our plutocratic oligarchical class that win. Look at the new boss same as the old boss. ..."
"... Look at all the hair triggers that have been laid out with the TRUMP regime since he became POTUS with regards to the ME and the Russian Federation . THe IRGC being labelled a terrorist organization and further more both Dems and Repub are trying to introduce a bill that labels the Russian Federation as a sponsor of terrorism. ..."
"... You just can't make this stuff up. Least we forget replacing the meme of ASSAD HAS TO GO TO MADURRO HAS TO GO. War is a racket and as per usual we the sheeple just fall for it. Ret. Col Wilkerson lays all out at last years Israeli influence conference. ..."
"... The Special Relationship is hopefully entering the divorce stage. None too soon. Great work, Mr. Johnson. ..."
While President Trump is correct to celebrate the Mueller Report’s conclusion that no one on Trump’s side of the ledger attempted
to or succeeded in collaborating or colluding with the Russian Government or Russian spies, there remains a dark cloud behind the
silver lining. And I am not referring to the claims of alleged obstruction of justice. A careful reading of the report reveals
that Mueller has issued findings that are both disingenuous and dishonest. The report is a failed hatchet job. Part of the failure
can be attributed to the amount of material that Attorney General Barr allowed to be released. It appears that Bill Barr's light
editing may have been intended to expose the bias and sloppiness of Mueller and his team.
Let us start with the case of trying to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. If you were to believe that the Steele Dossier accurately
reported Vladimir Putin's attitude towards Trump, then a Trump real estate deal in Moscow was a slam dunk. According to one of Steele's
breathless reports:
The Kremlin's cultivation operation on TRUMP also had comprised offering him various lucrative real estate development business
deals in Russia, especially in relation to the ongoing 2018 World Cup soccer tournament.
How ever, so far, for reasons unknown, TRUMP had not taken up any of these.
Then there is reality. The impetus, the encouragement for the Moscow project came from one man--Felix
Sater.
In the late summer of 2015, the Trump Organization received a new inquiry about pursuing a Trump Tower project in Moscow. In approximately
September 2015, Felix Sater . . . contacted Cohen on behalf of I.C. Expert Investment Company (I.C. Expert), a Russian real-estate
development corporation controlled by Andrei Vladimirovich Rozov.J07 Sater had known Rozov since approximately 2007 and, in 2014,
had served as an agent on behalf of Rozov during Rozov's purchase of a building in New York City.30S Sater later contacted Rozov
and proposed that I.C. Expert pursue a Trump Tower Moscow project in which I.C. Expert would license the name and brand from the
Trump Organization but construct the building on its own. Sater worked on the deal with Rozov and another employee of I.C. Expert.
(see page 69 of the Mueller Report).
To reiterate--if the Steele Dossier was based on truthful intelligence then the Trump organization only had to sit back, stretch
out their hands and seize the moment. Instead, little Felix Sater keeps coming back to the well. In January 2016, according to the
Mueller report,
Sater then sent a draft invitation for Cohen to visit Moscow to discuss the Trump Moscow project,along with a note to "[t]ell
me if the letter is good as amended by me or make whatever changes you want and send it back to me."
After a further round
of edits, on January 25, 2016, Sater sent Cohen an invitation -- signed by Andrey Ryabinskiy of the company MHJ -- to travel to
"Moscow for a working visit" about the "prospects of development and the construction business in Russia," "the various land plots
available suited for construction of this enormous Tower," and "the opportunity to co-ordinate a follow up visit to Moscow by
Mr. Donald Trump..
This produced nothing. No deal, no trip. But Sater persisted:
Beginning in late 2015, Sater repeatedly tried to arrange for Cohen and candidate Trump, as representatives of the Trump Organization,
to travel to Russia to meet with Russian government officials and possible financing partners. . . .
Into the spring of 2016, Sater and Cohen continued to discuss a trip to Moscow in connection with the Trump Moscow project.
On April 20, 2016, Sater wrote Cohen, " [t)he People wanted to know when you are coming?,,
On May 4, 2016, Sater followed up:
“I had a chat with Moscow. ASSUMING the trip does happen the question is before or after the convention. I said I believe,
but don't know for sure, that's it's probably after the convention. Obviously the pre-meeting trip (you only) can happen anytime
you want but he 2 big guys where [sic) the question. I said I would confirm and revert.”
On May 5, 2016, Sater wrote to Cohen:
“Peskov would like to invite you as his guest to the St. Petersburg Forum which is Russia's Davos it's June 16-19. He wants
to meet there with you and possibly introduce you to either Putin or Medvedev, as they are not sure if 1 or both will be there.
This is perfect. The entire business class of Russia will be there as well.”
On June 14, 2016, Cohen met Sater in the lobby of the Trump Tower in New York and informed him that he would not be traveling
at that time.
Why was Felix Sater the one repeatedly identified pushing to arrange deals with the Russians and yet did not face any subsequent
charges by the Mueller team? Sater had been working as part of the Trump team since 2003. Why is it that the proposed deals and travel
to Moscow came predominantly from Felix Sater?
As I noted in my previous piece--The
FBI Tried and Failed to Entrap Trump--Sater was an active FBI undercover informant. He had been working with the
FBI since 1998. When he agreed to start working as an undercover informant aka cooperator in December 1998 guess who signed off on
the deal? Andrew Weissman. You can see the
deal here. It was signed 10
December 1998.
An honest prosecutor would have and should have disclosed this fact. He, Sater, was the one encouraging the Trump team to
cozy up to Russia. Mueller does not disclose one single instance of Trump or Cohen or any of the Trump kids calling Sater on the
carpet and chewing his ass for not bringing them deals and not opening doors in Russia. Omitting this key fact goes beyond simple
disingenuity. It is a conscious lie.
The circumstantial evidence indicates that Sater was doing this at the behest of FBI handlers. We do not yet know who they are.
But Sater's behavior and status as an FBI Informant was not an isolated incident. We also have the case of Michael Caputo and
Roger Stone being approached by a Russian gangster named Henry Greenberg. According to
democratdossier.com:
Greenberg's birth name is Gennady Vasilievich Vostretsov, the son of Yekatrina Vostretsova and Vasliy Vostretsov. He later adopted
new names twice as a result of two different marriages and became Gennady V. Arzhanik and later Henry Oknyansky. Henry Greenberg
is not a legal alias, but he uses it quite commonly in recent years.
But you would not know this from reading the Mueller report. Mr. Disingenuous strikes again:
In the spring of 2016, Trump Campaign advisor Michael Caputo learned through a Florida-based Russian business partner that another
Florida-based Russian, Henry Oknyansky (who also went by the name Henry Greenberg), claimed to have information pertaining to
Hillary Clinton . Caputo notified Roger Stone and brokered communication between Stone and Oknyansky.
Oknyansky and Stone set
up a May 2016 in-person meeting. 260 Oknyansky was accompanied to the meeting by Alexei Rasin, a Ukrainian associate involved
in Florida real estate. At the meeting, Rasin offered to sell Stone derogatory information on Clinton that Rasin claimed to have
obtained while working for Clinton. Rasin claimed to possess financial statements demonstrating Clinton's involvement in money
laundering with Rasin's companies. According to Oknyansky, Stone asked if the amounts in question totaled millions of dollars
but was told it was closer to hundreds of thousands. Stone refused the offer, stating that Trump would not pay for opposition
research.
How does a guy like Vorkretsov/Greenberg, with an extensive criminal record and circumstantial ties to the Russian mob gain entrance
into the United States? Very simple answer. He too
was an FBI informant:
In an affidavit, Vostretsov explained to an immigration judge he worked for the FBI for 17 years throughout the world, including
in the US, Iran and North Korea. He explained in the same paperwork the FBI granted him several temporary visas to visit the US in
exchange for information about criminal activities.
Please take time to read the full dossier at
democrat dossier. This is more than
an odd coincidence. This is a pattern. The FBI was targeting the Trump campaign and personnel in a deliberate effort to implicate
them in wanting to work with Russians.
And there is more. George Papodopoulus was entrapped by individuals linked to British MI-6 and the CIA with offers to provide
meetings with Russians and Putin. The Mueller account is a lie:
In late April 2016, Papadopoulos was told by London-based professor Joseph Mifsud, immediately after Mifsud 's return from a trip
to Moscow, that the Russian government had obtained "dirt" on candidate Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. One week later,
on May 6, 2016, Papadopoulos suggested to a representative of a foreign government that the Trump Campaign had received indications
from the Russian government that it could assist the Campaign through the anonymous release of information that would be damaging
to candidate Clinton.
Papadopoulos shared information about Russian "dirt " with people outside of the Campaign, and the Office
investigated whether he also provided it to a Campaign official. Papadopoulos and the Campaign officials with whom he interacted
told the Office that they did · not recall that Papadopoulos passed them the information. Throughout the relevant period of time
and for several months thereafter, Papadopoulos worked with Mifsud and two Russian nationals to arrange a meeting between the
Campaign and the Russian government. That meeting never came to pass.
Once again, the Mueller team treats the provocateur -- -i.e., Joseph Mifsud -- -as some simple guy with ties to Russia's political
elites. Another egregious lie. Mifsud was not working on behalf of Russia. He was deployed by MI-6. Disobedient Media has been on
the forefront of exposing Mifsud's ties to
western intelligence in general and the Brits in particular.
Mifsud’s alleged links to Russian intelligence are summarily debunked by his close working relationship
with Claire Smith, a major figure in the upper echelons of British intelligence. A number of Twitter users recently observed
that Joseph Mifsud had been photographed standing next to Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee at Mifsud’s LINK campus
in Rome. Newsmax and Buzzfeed later reported that the professor’s name and biography had been removed from the campus’ website, writing
that the mysterious removal took place after Mifsud had served the institution for “years.”
WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange likewise noted the connection between Mifsud and Smith
in a Twitter thread, additionally pointing out his connections with Saudi intelligence: “[Mifsud] and Claire Smith of the UK Joint
Intelligence Committee and eight-year member of the UK Security Vetting panel both trained Italian security services at the Link
University in Rome and appear to both be present in this [photo].”
The photograph in question originated on Geodiplomatics.com, where it specified that Joseph Mifsud
is indeed standing next to Claire Smith, who was attending a: “…Training program on International Security which was organised by
Link Campus University and London Academy of Diplomacy.” The event is listed as taking place in October, 2012. This is highly significant
for a number of reasons.
This is not a mere matter of Mueller and his team "failing" to disclose some important facts. If they were operating
honestly they should have investigated Mifsud, Greenberg and Sater. But they did not. Two of the three--Sater and Greenber--alleged
Russian stooges have ties to the FBI. And Mifsud has been living and working in the belly of the intelligence community.
When you put these facts together it is clear that there is real meat on the bone for Barr's upcoming investigation of the "spying"
that was being done on the Trump campaign by law enforcement and intelligence. These facts must become a part of the public consciousness.
The foreign country that worked feverishly to meddle in the 2016 Presidential election and the subsequent rule of Donald Trump is
the United Kingdom. Russia is the patsy.
turcopolier, 20 April 2019 at 10:44 PM
IMO the FBI leadership, Clapper, Brennan and his flunkies were working with the Brits at some senior level of their IO apparatus
to screw Trump. Mueller's testimony before the Congress should be revelatory of his true position.
falcemartello, 20 April 2019 at 11:28 PM
Don't hold your breath .The so called deep state which in reality are our plutocratic oligarchical class that win. Look
at the new boss same as the old boss.
It was obvious from way back in June 2016 when most of the fabricated /novella known as the Steele Dossier was floating around
and the role Fusion GPS played in the Clinton POTUS machine. There is a lot out there but as per usual smokey mirrors and deception.
I live you with this one thought.
Look at all the hair triggers that have been laid out with the TRUMP regime since he became POTUS with regards to the ME
and the Russian Federation . THe IRGC being labelled a terrorist organization and further more both Dems and Repub are trying
to introduce a bill that labels the Russian Federation as a sponsor of terrorism.
You just can't make this stuff up. Least we forget replacing the meme of ASSAD HAS TO GO TO MADURRO HAS TO GO. War is a
racket and as per usual we the sheeple just fall for it. Ret. Col Wilkerson lays all out at last years Israeli influence
conference.
Rick Merlotti
The Special Relationship is hopefully entering the divorce stage. None too soon. Great work, Mr. Johnson.
Money quote: ' One can't help wondering how it might have gone had Israel rather than
Russia been the foreign target of the investigation. After all, the FBI tells us that Israeli
spying against America is as intense as Russian and Chinese spying. The Israelis are more
advanced in some ways. There is no Russia-America Political Action Committee, for example. No
Russian Sheldon Adelson either.'
Notable quotes:
"... It's a pity really. The media so accurately represents modern day America: ignorant and corrupt. They'll bring down the nation if it will put a couple of extra bucks in their pockets. The inglorious end of Reaganism. ..."
"... I'm waiting Bash and Tapper to define what Hillary and the DNC did as collusion in the truest sense of the word. In that case, actual cash changed hands with foreigners for dirt on Trump, in order to influence the election. ..."
"... One can't help wondering how it might have gone had Israel rather than Russia been the foreign target of the investigation. After all, the FBI tells us that Israeli spying against America is as intense as Russian and Chinese spying. The Israelis are more advanced in some ways. There is no Russia-America Political Action Committee, for example. No Russian Sheldon Adelson either. ..."
"... So what do our wonderful Democratic progressive leaders and journalists (with rare exceptions) do? They zero in on a McCarthyite conspiracy theory where Trump is innocent. Freaking geniuses. Still, Trump is a sleaze and I leave it to the lawyers to determine if the "obstruction" charge will go anywhere. ..."
After two years of nonstop Russiagate coverage, the Mueller report landed with a thud. While
the special counsel did find things that are damaging and embarrassing to the Trump campaign,
there's no evidence of criminal conspiracy with Russia -- in fact, there's no evidence of
conspiracy at all. Judging from the funereal faces over on cable news, the utter implosion of
the Russiagate narrative came like a death in the family. The meltdown was so complete that
analysts were left insinuating that Democrats should reprise the Clinton impeachment
proceedings.
Of all the disgraces to journalism on Thursday, the most glaring were on CNN. Within minutes
of the release of the Mueller report, anchor Jake Tapper was getting reaction from reporters on
what was inside the 448-page document. Journalists were literally giving split-second legal
opinions on the contents of something they hadn't yet read, let alone had time to digest.
Sometimes journalists can ably analyze something just after it's been released because they
have advance copies. But we know that wasn't the case here, because the report was released to
the media and the public at the same time. Still, there wasn't a hint of shame from CNN as its
talking heads proffered instant opinions on a document they couldn't have possibly
understood.
CNN host Dana Bash was almost incoherent as she declared on live TV that there was "evidence
of collusion" even after Attorney General William Barr had said otherwise. When Jake Tapper
gently nudged her by claiming that collusion is "not a legal term," she offered up a crazy word
salad. Trump might not have done anything "criminal," she said, but the report still showed
"collusion in the truest definition of the word":
BASH: There was no conspiracy, but it turns out, maybe I'm answering my own question, that
-- I'm sorry, but there was collusion when you look at the actual definition of that term.
There wasn't conspiracy
TAPPER: Not a legal term, however.
BASH: It's not a legal term. That's exactly right. There wasn't conspiracy, there was no
crime committed, according to the special counsel, but on page after page after page,
instance after instance, you see people within the Trump campaign and the Russians talking
to, coordinating with, one another. Starting with what you said at the beginning when we
first got this, Don Jr., to other instances, the Trump Tower meeting, with WikiLeaks. It goes
on and on and on. Not criminal, but collusion in the truest definition of the
word.
Bash seemed to move through every one of the seven stages of grief on live television as she
wondered aloud whether Democrats would "have even more pressure than they had before, intense
pressure" to impeach Trump "because of how bad" things in the Mueller report are. At the same
time, she admitted that nothing in the report constituted a crime.
I never thought a day would come when CNN would speak positively of the Clinton impeachment
proceedings. But Trump Derangement Syndrome has hit the network so hard that legal analyst
Jeffrey Toobin did just that.
"A lot of people had no problem with the investigation of Bill Clinton for the very serious
matter of lying and obstruction of justice when [there was no] underlying event that was a
crime [there] either," Toobin declared.
The fake news was hardly limited to just CNN. An MSN article, titled "
Analysis: Report is a Brutal Indictment for Trump," was another great case in point. How
can a report that exonerates the president be an "indictment"? When it comes to Trump, the
media is forever inventing pseudo-legal-speak. Indictment is a word that holds legal weight.
But you wouldn't know it from the way the insta-experts are talking.
The media has long held contradictory beliefs on Russiagate. On the one hand, they think
that Trump is an imbecile. On the other, they believe his campaign was capable of the most
intricate and serpentine of conspiracies. This contradiction was bound to unravel, but it is
still shocking to see journalists still so publicly botching this story.
Barbara Boland is the former weekend editor of the Washington Examiner. Her work has
been featured on Fox News, the Drudge Report, HotAir.com, RealClearDefense, RealClearPolitics,
and elsewhere. She's the author of Patton Uncovered, a book about General Patton in World War
II. Follow her on Twitter @BBatDC
.
It's a pity really. The media so accurately represents modern day America: ignorant and
corrupt. They'll bring down the nation if it will put a couple of extra bucks in their
pockets. The inglorious end of Reaganism.
"Not criminal, but collusion in the truest definition of the word."
I'm waiting Bash and Tapper to define what Hillary and the DNC did as collusion in the
truest sense of the word. In that case, actual cash changed hands with foreigners for dirt on
Trump, in order to influence the election.
Bash also through out the word "coordination" despite Mueller's report literally stating
that there was none.
No actual journalists to be found on that network, just opinion commentators
So no Russia conspiracy after all. After all that.
One can't help wondering how it might have gone had Israel rather than Russia been the
foreign target of the investigation. After all, the FBI tells us that Israeli spying against
America is as intense as Russian and Chinese spying. The Israelis are more advanced in some
ways. There is no Russia-America Political Action Committee, for example. No Russian Sheldon
Adelson either.
After the Mueller fracas dies down, we can expect Russia and China to develop methods and
mechanisms that parallel those Israel uses to meddle in our elections and threaten our
politicians. It's safer, and far more effective.
This lefty tends to agree with you. There are so many issues where Trump can legitimately be
described as awful and on a personal level he is awful. On some of the issues (and on his
personality), some of the TAC conservatives around here would agree with me. Larison rips into
Trump almost every day.
So what do our wonderful Democratic progressive leaders and journalists (with rare
exceptions) do? They zero in on a McCarthyite conspiracy theory where Trump is innocent.
Freaking geniuses. Still, Trump is a sleaze and I leave it to the lawyers to determine if the
"obstruction" charge will go anywhere.
GERALD HORNE: Well, in terms of the big picture I think you need to realize that in
2016 there was a battle royale within the U.S. elite as to how to maintain U.S. imperialist
hegemony. Senator Clinton has suggested that Russia should be confronted first, is that the
so-called allies, led by Germany and the European Union and Canada, should be enlisted in that
regard. Trump and the Republicans took a different tack; that is to say that they are obviously
targeting the People's Republic of China, and would like to neutralize Russia, which is a major
threat. In terms of the election in November 2016, in terms the Electoral College, Mr. Trump
won the argument. But there is such a heavy investment in the pro-Moscow psychosis that it was
inevitable that there would be a very severe backlash, not least from the national security
establishment led by John Brennan, now an MSNBC commentator, and Jim Clapper, now a CNN
commentator. And that has led to the Mueller report.
But as a historian, before I make a final determination about the Mueller report, I would
also like to read the completed finished report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz of the
U.S. Department of Justice, who now is investigating the investigators. And that might give us
a fuller picture of what has been at stake.
.... .... ...
GERALD HORNE: Well, first of all, I think it's a bit rich, is it
not, that Washington is complaining about interference in their so-called sacrosanct elections
when Washington has made a habit, a habit indeed, of interfering in the internal affairs of
sovereign states all across the globe. Right now it's seeking to destabilize Venezuela. It's
heightening tensions with Cuba. I could go on indefinitely. Secondly, it's interesting as well
that Mr. Trump and his cohorts were lying repeatedly during the course of this investigation.
That raises the ancillary question as to what can we trust them with? I mean, can we believe
anything that's coming out of their mouth? As the defense lawyer often asked a lying witness,
are you lying now, or were you lying then?
I think we also need to wait for more evidence with regard to foreign alleged interference
in the internal affairs of the United States of America. The report mentions that George
Papadopoulos, you might recall was a Trump comrade, was not necessarily an agent of Russia,
although he may have been an agent, according to the report, of Israel. We also know that the
Congresswoman from Los Angeles Maxine Waters has issued a subpoena to Deutsche Bank, the German
bank which has been a major funder and financier of Mr. Trump. We should wait on those
documents, because that might shed light on why Mr. Trump has been so harsh personally towards
Chancellor Merkel of Germany, in particular. We all know about Saudi interference in the
internal affairs of the United States of America. So I think that this Mueller report,
accidentally or not, is raising as many questions as it is answering.
GREG WILPERT: Yeah, I think that's a very important point, is that of course Mueller
was not tasked with looking at Saudi Arabian and Israeli involvement in the U.S. presidential
election. But what do you think, Kamau? What does this mean to you, this issue of Russian
interference?
Instead of investigating ties of Trump campaign with Israel and Mossad (via Kushner and
Hassidic mafia) as well the role of Great Gritain in the 2016 US Presidential elections Mueller
spend millions of dollars trying to prove completely fake allegations or present claer false flag
operations as the proof of Trump connections to Russia.
Notable quotes:
"... it is entirely possible (as I've proposed numerous times) that the new McCarthyism is a Deep-State psyop as part of a response to the Russia-China Alliance that threatens AZ Empire's NWO. ..."
"... The meeting at Trump tower seem clearly to have been a set-up. ..."
"... whether Manafort had/has Russian ties or not, his work in Ukraine is easily spun. And that makes Trump's elevation of Manafort to campaign manager very strange. ..."
"... Trump's actions after taking office have not unduly benefited Russia. In fact, Trump's charm offensive has been accompanied by actions that cause Russia much consternation and concern. ..."
Since b's analysis on Mueller Report is delayed, I'll reposting mine from the previous
thread:
1. Trump's interactions with Russia are deemed suspicious whereas even greater
interactions with allies and frenemies like Israel are not.
2. Many of the Russian "influence operations" that Mueller details are minor (a few
facebook ads) or ordinary course of business (meeting with Russian ambassador).
3. Fails to note the problems raised with regard to supposed "Russian hacking"
(no reliable connection to Russia) and the failure of the Mueller team to interview Assange
and other knowledgeable sources.
4. The clear exonerations (there are many) are the strongest aspect of the Mueller
Report and demonstrate that Russiagate concerns were exaggerated and hyped by
media.
5. Neither "Steele" or "FISA" can be found in this summary , probably because
they are not in the Mueller Report itself (which I haven't read in detail). Using the
Steele dossier to get a FISA warrant to fish for "Russian influence" should be prosecuted -
Mueller could've made such a recommendation, but didn't.
6. There are surprisingly few actors in this drama . This is important because
it is entirely possible (as I've proposed numerous times) that the new McCarthyism is a
Deep-State psyop as part of a response to the Russia-China Alliance that threatens AZ
Empire's NWO.
The meeting at Trump tower seem clearly to have been a set-up.
Mueller determined that Manafort had Russian ties
Note: whether Manafort had/has Russian ties or not, his work in Ukraine is easily
spun. And that makes Trump's elevation of Manafort to campaign manager very
strange.
7. Mueller highlights "intent" but FAILS to note that:
- a Presidential candidate can legitimately want improved relations with another country;
- Trump's actions after taking office have not unduly benefited Russia. In fact,
Trump's charm offensive has been accompanied by actions that cause Russia much
consternation and concern.
If you've followed my previous comments, you know that I think the Mueller Report is part
of an overall effort to initiate a new McCarthyism. That makes the Mueller Report more
propaganda than investigation.
"... It wasn't just Mifsud and Halper, it was everyone -- the head of the London law firm where Papadopoulos was working, as well as his immediate boss at the firm -- everyone was working to set him up as "Trump's liason with the Russians". ..."
Michael Tracey's interview with George Papadopoulos is also available on YouTube (for those who have
difficulty playing it on Patreon). It's two hours long, but if you have any interest in the
Russiagate, you should listen to it.
It wasn't just Mifsud and Halper, it was everyone -- the
head of the London law firm where Papadopoulos was working, as well as his immediate boss at
the firm -- everyone was working to set him up as "Trump's liason with the Russians".
"... It is quite distressing that in may so called “progessive” or “left liberal” – self designated of course – circles in the USA and the UK such a statement will lead to your being labelled a Russian Troll or the suggestion you are being on Putin’s payrol ..."
"... “…In the era of weapons of mass destruction, not only nuclear, but primarily nuclear, ever more sophisticated, the Russians now have a new generation of nuclear weapons -- Putin announced them on March 1, they were dismissed here, but they’re real -- that can elude any missile defense. .. ..."
"... Russia has now thwarted us; they now have missile defense-evading nuclear weapons from submarines, to aircraft, to missiles. And Putin has said, ‘It’s time to negotiate an end to this new arms race,’ and he’s 100 percent right. ..."
"... So when I heard Trump say, in 2016, we have to cooperate with Russia, I had already become convinced… ..."
"... When I see the right-of-center DNC supporters saying, “Our democracy has been attacked,” I an reminded of the interview Hermann Goering gave while he was waiting to be executed. ..."
"... Perhaps the assumption of Russia meddling in our election is a simple case of projection. As has been documented, the USA has frequently meddled in other countries’ elections or election outcomes (Iran, Russia, Chile, Central America). ..."
"... To paraphrase the late Leona Helmsley, “Democracy is for little people”, not for the meddling-in-foreign-democracies policymakers of the Boston-Washington corridor. ..."
"... We live in a multi-polar world and if Washington can’t get used to it, we are the ones who may pay for their willful stubborn blindness, their inability to come to terms with a perfectly obvious developing reality. ..."
"... The neocons have not had a new idea in 30 years. I continue to be baffled by their obsession with Iran. Iran is a fact; the enmity goes back to our support for the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 and only made worse by our support of the Shah as our-guy-in-Tehran. ..."
"... The USA is in disarray internally and in its approach to the rest of the world. ..."
The DNC had the biggest influence on the 2016 outcome; they insisted on running a disliked candidate who was a terrible campaigner
so disliked the DNC cleared the field for her ahead of time (got Biden and others to not declare in 2016) and had to club dissenters
in their own party to make sure she got the nomination. imo. But sure, blame "those guys over there". That's the ultimate "the
dog ate my homework" excuse. meh.
Good analysis. This even makes the insanity of “Russiagate” seem strategic. (But as overwrought as saying ‘give us liberty
or give us death’. The solution to everything is somewhere in the middle.) We know that such dedicated souls as the very fatuous
Mr. Brennan cooked it all up and pretended it was because Trump was “treasonous”.
Brennan in his dotage might actually be thinking that.
I’ve always thought that Putin, like Yeltsin, was pro West. Possibly an atlanticist. Tho’ being as chauvinistic as an atlanticist
today is a little offensive to the rest of the world. Cohen’s statement that Putin is pro Russian-anti communism might be a simplification.
Russia is certainly positioning itself to be safe from our aggression. I think there are remnants of good social management that
the commies learned over the years that Russia/Putin still employs.
It’s too simplistic to say Putin is anti-communist. He’s just a realist. And he’s a nationalist. Being a nationalist-protectionist
is the worst sin against neoliberal advancement. That’s another propaganda bullet point – you never hear a rational discussion
of nationalism – it’s all trash, “Marine LePen is a fascist” exaggeration.
It is quite distressing to see the Mueller report take up as if it were settled fact the idea that Russia influenced the
2016 Presidential election, particularly since his investigation didn’t provide any information that supported this theory.
It is quite distressing that in may so called “progessive” or “left liberal” – self designated of course – circles in the
USA and the UK such a statement will lead to your being labelled a Russian Troll or the suggestion you are being on Putin’s payroll.
That is the level of rational discussion in many those circles today when it comes to the discussion about the west's relationship
to Russia.
This of course led in Russia to the conclusion that to engage with the west at present in an attempt to ease the tensions is
futile and rather counterproductive.
I think Professor Cohen has a real point in the following statements:
“…In the era of weapons of mass destruction, not only nuclear, but primarily nuclear, ever more sophisticated, the Russians
now have a new generation of nuclear weapons -- Putin announced them on March 1, they were dismissed here, but they’re real --
that can elude any missile defense. ..
Russia has now thwarted us; they now have missile defense-evading nuclear weapons from submarines, to aircraft, to missiles.
And Putin has said, ‘It’s time to negotiate an end to this new arms race,’ and he’s 100 percent right.
So when I heard Trump say, in 2016, we have to cooperate with Russia, I had already become convinced…
So I began to speak positively about Trump at that moment–that would have been probably around the summer of 2016–just on this
one point, because none of the other candidates were advocating cooperation with Russia…”
Then, when he goes on to elaborate on China’s weaponry and posit including them in the next round of draw-down negotiations,
as far off as that may look – that to me is what Trump can use for his re-election. I do believe his attitude towards Russia won
him his first term.
Those Russia-gate kooks need to focus on the American people, not on Trump. Well, maybe they did, and still do. It’s really
about us, not him.
When I see the right-of-center DNC supporters saying, “Our democracy has been attacked,” I an reminded of the interview
Hermann Goering gave while he was waiting to be executed.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Perhaps the assumption of Russia meddling in our election is a simple case of projection. As has been documented, the USA has frequently meddled in other countries’ elections or election outcomes (Iran, Russia, Chile,
Central America).
One recent Democratic presidential candidate was taped asserting “we should not have held the election unless we could determine
the outcome” in another foreign country.
If Russia did not meddle significantly in the US election, the political class may have had to ponder that possibly the Russians
believed that the decline of the US in the world stage did not merit the effort.
To paraphrase the late Leona Helmsley, “Democracy is for little people”, not for the meddling-in-foreign-democracies policymakers
of the Boston-Washington corridor.
The thrust of Cohen’s position is correct. Quibble all you wish with the details. We live in a multi-polar world and if Washington
can’t get used to it, we are the ones who may pay for their willful stubborn blindness, their inability to come to terms with
a perfectly obvious developing reality.
The neocons have not had a new idea in 30 years. I continue to be baffled by their obsession
with Iran. Iran is a fact; the enmity goes back to our support for the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 and only made worse by our
support of the Shah as our-guy-in-Tehran.
The Russians really do have a new generation of weapons. The Chinese are re-assuming
a leading position in the world that has been theirs most of the time for two thousand years.
Europe is not a rising power.
The
USA is in disarray internally and in its approach to the rest of the world. I do not consider these to be opinions but objective
statements. I am not prepared to suffer for illusions and vanity among the “elite.”
Assange actually undermined the key pre-condition of the Deep state existence -- secrecy.
Notable quotes:
"... Robert Mueller, who helped the Bush administration deceive the world about WMD in Iraq, has claimed that the GRU was the source of WikiLeaks' 2016 drops, and claimed in his report that WikiLeaks deceived its audience by implying that its source was the murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich. ..."
"... The smear is that Assange knew his source was actually the Russian government, and he implied it was Seth Rich to throw people off the scent. Mueller asserted that something happened, and it's interpreted as hard fact instead of assertion. There's no evidence for any of this, and there's no reason to go believing the WMD guy on faith about a narrative which incriminates yet another government which refuses to obey the dictates of the US empire. ..."
"... HItchen's Razor: "what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." ..."
I'm just going to toss this one here at the end because I'm seeing it go around a lot in the
wake of the Mueller report.
Robert Mueller, who helped the Bush administration deceive the world about WMD in Iraq, has
claimed that the GRU was the source of WikiLeaks' 2016 drops, and claimed in his report that
WikiLeaks deceived its audience by implying that its source was the murdered DNC staffer Seth
Rich.
This claim is unsubstantiated because, as we discussed in Smear 4, the public has not seen a
shred of evidence proving who was or was not WikiLeaks' source, so there's no way to know there
was any deception happening there. We've never seen any hard proof, nor indeed anything besides
official narrative, connecting the Russian government to Guccifer 2.0 and Guccifer 2.0 to
WikiLeaks, and Daniel Lazare for Consortium News documents that there are in fact some
major
plot holes in Mueller's timeline. Longtime Assange friend and WikiLeaks ally Craig Murray
maintains that he knows the
source of the DNC Leaks and Podesta Emails were two different Americans, not Russians, and
hints that one of them was a DNC insider. There is exactly as much publicly available evidence
for Murray's claim as there is for Mueller's.
Mainstream media has been blaring day after day for years that it is an absolute known fact
that the Russian government was WikiLeaks' source, and the only reason people scoff and roll
their eyes at anyone who makes the indisputably factual claim that we've seen no evidence for
this is because
the illusory truth effect causes the human brain to mistake repetition for fact.
The smear is that Assange knew his source was actually the Russian government, and he
implied it was Seth Rich to throw people off the scent. Mueller asserted that something
happened, and it's interpreted as hard fact instead of assertion. There's no evidence for any
of this, and there's no reason to go believing the WMD guy on faith about a narrative which
incriminates yet another government which refuses to obey the dictates of the US
empire.
And I guess that's it for now. Again, this article is an ongoing project, so I'll be
updating it and adding to it regularly as new information comes in and new smears need
refutation. If I missed something or got something wrong, or even if you spotted a typo, please
email me at [email protected] and let
me know. I'm trying to create the best possible tool for people to refute Assange smears, so
I'll keep sharpening this baby to make sure it cuts like a razor. Thanks for reading, and
thanks to everyone who helped! Phew! That was long.
We don't have to like Julian Assange, but the release of the "Collateral Damage" video
alone is enough to justify defending Assange and the freedom of the press.
She really didn't debunk the thing about Seth Rich very well. Basically just said that
whatever Mueller said wasn't true, which doesn't go very far for me. He definitely did imply
that he got at least some of his info from Rich so if there is some sort of proof of that, it
needs to be supplied; otherwise Mueller's story is the only one.
I have recently seen a political cartoon with Dotard then saying: "I love Wikileaks" + " I
will throw her in jail" and now saying: "I know nothing about Wikileaks" + "I will throw him
in jail"
It summed up perfectly that swine's lack of integrity.
It's so simple. Assange and Wikileaks exposed Hillary, Podesta, and the entire DNC to be
lying, deceiving, hypocritical, disingenuous, elitist bastards. His crimes are miniscule
compared to that, and all who attempt to condemn Assange only show us that they are members
of that foul group.
Excellent thorough content. And Kim Schmitz pointed out they'll drag things on for as long
as possible and try to add additional things as they go. Such a bunch of sad, pathetic
control freaks. Covering up their own failures, crimes and short comings with a highly
publicized distraction putting the screws to a single journalist.
“ Ty Clevenger has FOIAed information from NSA asking for any data that involved
both Seth Rich and also Julian Assange .
And they responded by saying we’ve got 15 files , 32 pages , but they’re all
classified in accordance with executive order 13526 covering classification, and therefore
you can’t have them.
That says that NSA has records of communications between Seth Rich and Julian Assange. I
mean, that’s the only business that NSA is in — copying communications between
people and devices.”
Assange and Snowden are freedom fighters, exposing the duplicitous, corrupt, and criminals
to the entire world.
The hundreds of millions of mindless zombies are so brainwashed by the fake news industry,
that if Assange and Snowden are not spies, they are criminal in some capacity.
I have liberal, conservative, and libertarian leaning friends, and virtually every one of
them believe Assange and Snowden are traitors to America, got innocent people killed, are
rapists, or too cowardly to stand trial in the USA.
What has happened to common sense and some necessary cynicism?
Why even bother arguing with these people. Assange gave up his liberty to reveal the
truth, and the American public said in essence "so what." No one except the leakers and
whistle-blowers faced any punishment, and I can't think of a single national politician who
even talks about doing anything about the misconduct that was revealed. Yeah, a small
percentage of the population is outraged at what was revealed, but the vast majority
literally don't give a ****.
Hehe... I guess you will find out how wrong you are in 2020 :-) His release of Hillary's
emails gave Trump 2016... and him turning his back on Assange took away his chances in
2020
Most regular readers on ZH know but this is an echo chamber for "Always Trumpers" so there
won't be many commenters on this article. Rather than defend his DOJ's extradition attempts
with implausible theories they'll be chattering back and forth about the Mueller Report.
Agreed. It's amazing to me that people who claim to be believers of the MAGA message don't
see the harm associated with the arrest of Assange, and all of the other uniparty **** Trump
is perpetuating. A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.
Yeah and yet.... everyone seemed to credit Hillary's loss to the release of her emails on
wikileaks... Hmm that narrative that seems to be trying to minimize the impact on Trumps
chances in 2020 really breaks down in the face of that fact doesn't it?? Trump has no hope...
just stop... get behind a republican that has a chance... Trump doesn't... he lost half of
his base... get over it...
"... My reasoning starts with a desire to counter Russian and Chinese assertiveness as proposed by Kissinger in an WSJ Op-Ed of August 2014 in which Kissinger expressed a desire for a strengthened USA - very much aligned with what one might expect a MAGA nationalist President to achieve. ..."
"... Kissinger is considered to be the "dean" of US FP establishment and his opinions are respected by 'Deep State' leaders that I mentioned. ..."
Did he order the new McCarthyism (aka "Code Red") which included electing Trump as
President, setting up Wikileaks to be smeared as a foreign agent, and settling scores with
Michael Flynn?
Acting on 'Deep State' approval from the likes of Clinton, McCain, Mueller, Bush Sr., et
al.
"Brennan on trial" is an imagined future occurrence based on informed speculation that
I've previously described.
My reasoning starts with a desire to counter Russian and Chinese assertiveness as
proposed by Kissinger in an WSJ Op-Ed of August 2014 in which Kissinger expressed a desire
for a strengthened USA - very much aligned with what one might expect a MAGA nationalist
President to achieve.
Kissinger is considered to be the "dean" of US FP establishment and his opinions are
respected by 'Deep State' leaders that I mentioned.
"... Do you know, by the way, speaking of meddling, that Biden went to Moscow and told Putin not to return to the presidency in 2012? ..."
"... One recent Democratic presidential candidate was taped asserting "we should not have held the election unless we could determine the outcome" in another foreign country. ..."
"... If Russia did not meddle significantly in the US election, the political class may have had to ponder that possibly the Russians believed that the decline of the US in the world stage did not merit the effort. ..."
"... To paraphrase the late Leona Helmsley, "Democracy is for little people", not for the meddling-in-foreign-democracies policymakers of the Bos-Wash corridor. ..."
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, just stay for one minute on Russia, because the China thing is
worth talking about too. But he says, almost alone, for the first time–how long has it
been since we had a president really pursue detente? It's been a very long time. Obama called
it a reset, but it was fraudulent. It was basically saying to the Russians, "Give us
everything, and we aren't going to give you anything." It was doomed from the beginning. Plus,
they wagered that Putin wouldn't return to the presidency. Do you know, by the way, speaking of
meddling, that Biden went to Moscow and told Putin not to return to the presidency in 2012?
PAUL JAY : No.
STEPHEN COHEN : Wrap your head around that a minute. The vice president of the United
States goes to Moscow and tells Putin, who's now prime minister because he termed out, but he
could return, "We don't think you should return to the presidency." So you know what I'm
wondering, I'm wondering whether Biden's calling up Putin today and asking Putin whether Biden
should get into the presidential race here. I mean, what the hell? What the hell? And we talk
about meddling? So the point about Trump, to finish this, is for the first time in many, many
years, a presidential candidate, one that I didn't vote for and didn't care for, had said it's
necessary to cooperate with Russia.
Perhaps the assumption of Russia meddling in our election is a simple case of
projection.
As has been documented, the USA has frequently meddled in other countries' elections or
election outcomes (Iran, Russia, Chile, Central America).
One recent Democratic presidential candidate was taped asserting "we should not have held
the election unless we could determine the outcome" in another foreign country.
If Russia did not meddle significantly in the US election, the political class may have
had to ponder that possibly the Russians believed that the decline of the US in the world
stage did not merit the effort.
To paraphrase the late Leona Helmsley, "Democracy is for little people", not for the
meddling-in-foreign-democracies policymakers of the Bos-Wash corridor.
Originally from: The 'Guccifer 2.0' Gaps in Mueller's Full Report April 18, 2019 •
12 Commentsave
Like Team Mueller's indictment last July of Russian agents, the full report reveals questions about Wikileaks' role that
much of the media has been ignoring, writes Daniel Lazare.
The five pages that the special prosecutor's report devotes to WikiLeaks are essentially lifted from Mueller's
indictment last July of 12 members of the Russian military
intelligence agency known as the GRU. It charges that after hacking the Democratic National Committee, the GRU used a specially-created
online persona known as Guccifer 2.0 to transfer a gigabyte's worth of stolen emails to WikiLeaks just as the 2016 Democratic
National Convention was approaching. Four days after opening the encrypted file, the indictment says, "Organization 1 [i.e. WikiLeaks]
released over 20,000 emails and other documents stolen from the DNC network by the Conspirators [i.e. the GRU]."
Attorney General William Barr holding press conference on full Mueller report, April 18, 2019. (YouTube)
Mueller's report says the same thing, but with the added twist that Assange then tried to cover up the GRU's role by
suggesting that murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich may have been the source and by telling a congressman
that the DNC email heist was an "inside job" and that he had "physical proof" that the material was not from Russian.
All of which is manna from heaven for corporate news outlets eager to pile on Assange, now behind bars in London. An April 11,
2019, New York Timesnews analysis ,
for instance, declared that "[c]ourt documents have revealed that it was Russian intelligence – using the Guccifer persona – that
provided Mr. Assange thousands of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee," while another Timesarticle published shortly after
his arrest accuses the WikiLeaks founder of "promoting a false cover story about the source of the leaks."
But there's a problem: it ain't necessarily so. The official story that the GRU is the source doesn't hold water, as a timeline
from mid-2016 shows. Here are the key events based on the GRU indictment and the Mueller report:
June 12: Assange
tells
Britain's ITV that another round of Democratic Party disclosures is on the way: "We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton,
which is great. WikiLeaks is having a very big year." June 14: The Democratic National Committee
accuses Russia of hacking its computers. June 15: Guccifer 2.0 claims credit for the hack. "The main part of the papers, thousands
of files and mails, I gave to WikiLeaks ," he
brags . "They will publish them soon."
June 22: WikiLeaks tells Guccifer via email: "Send any new material here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact
than what you are doing." July 6: WikiLeaks sends Guccifer another email: "if you have anything hillary related we want it
in the next tweo [ sic ] days prefable [ sic ] because the DNC [Democratic National Convention] is approaching and
she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after."Replies Guccifer: "ok . . . i " July 14: Guccifer sends WikiLeaks an
encrypted file titled "wk dnc link1.txt.gpg." July 18: WikiLeaks confirms it has opened "the 1Gb or so archive" and will release
documents "this week." July 22: WikiLeaks
releases more than 20,000 DNC emails and 8,000 other attachments.
According to Mueller and obsequious news outlets like the Times , the sequence is clear: Guccifer sends archive, WikiLeaks
receives archive, WikiLeaks accesses archive, WikiLeaks publishes archive. Donald Trump may not have colluded with
Russia, but Julian Assange plainly did. [Attorney General Will Barr, significantly calling WikiLeaks a publisher, said at
his Thursday press conference: " Under applicable law, publication of these types of materials would not be criminal unless the publisher
also participated in the underlying hacking conspiracy."]
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announcing in 2018 the grand jury indictment of 12 GRU agents. (Wikimedia Commons)
Avoiding Questions
The narrative raises questions that the press studiously avoids. Why, for instance, would Assange announce on June 12 that a big
disclosure is on the way before hearing from the supposed source? Was there a prior communication that Mueller has not disclosed?
What about the reference to "new material" on June 22 – does that mean Assange already had other material in hand? After opening
the Guccifer file on July 18, why would he publish it just four days later? Would that give WikiLeaks enough time to review some
28,000 documents to insure they're genuine?
Honor Bob Parry's legacy by
donating
to our Spring Fund Drive.
"If a single one of those emails had been shown to be maliciously altered," blogger Mark F. McCarty
observes , "Wikileaks' reputation would have been in tatters." There's also the question that an investigator known as Adam Carter
poses in Disobedient
Media : why would Guccifer brag about giving WikiLeaks "thousands of files" that he wouldn't send for another month?
The narrative doesn't make sense – a fact that is crucially important now that Assange is fighting for his freedom in the U.K.
New Yorker staff writer Raffi Khatchadourian sounded
a rare note of caution last summer when he warned that little about Guccifer 2.0 adds up. While claiming to be the source for
some of WikiLeaks ' most explosive emails, the material he released on his own had proved mostly worthless – 20 documents
that he "said were from the DNC but which were almost surely not," as Khatchadourian puts it, a purported Hillary Clinton dossier
that "was nothing of the sort," screenshots of emails so blurry as to be "unreadable," and so forth.
John Podesta: Target of a phishing expedition. (Voice of America via Wikimedia Commons)
While insisting that "our source is not the Russian
government and it is not a state party, Assange told Khatchadourian that the source was not Guccifer either. "We received quite a
lot of submissions of material that was already published in the rest of the press, and people seemingly submitted the Guccifer archives,"
he said somewhat cryptically. "We didn't publish them. They were already published." When Khatchadourian asked why he didn't put
the material out regardless, he replied that "the material from Guccifer 2.0 – or on WordPress – we didn't have the resources to
independently verify."
No Time for Vetting
So four days was indeed too short a time to subject the Guccifer file to proper vetting. Of course, Mueller no doubt regards this
as more "dissembling," as his report describes it. Yet WikiLeaks has never been caught in a lie for the simple reason that honesty
and credibility are all-important for a group that promises to protect anonymous leakers who supply it with official secrets. (See
"Inside WikiLeaks : Working with the Publisher that Changed the World,"
Consortium News , July 19, 2018.) Mueller, by contrast, has a rich history of mendacity going back to his days as FBI
director when he sought to cover up
the Saudi role
in 9/11 and assured Congress on the eve
of the 2003 invasion that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction pose "a clear threat to our national security."
Mueller with President George W. Bush on July 5, 2001, as he is being appointed FBI director. (White House)
So if the Mueller narrative doesn't hold up, the charge of dissembling doesn't either. Indeed , as ex-federal prosecutor Andrew
C. McCarthy
observes in The National Review , the fact that the feds have charged Assange with unauthorized access to a government
computer rather than conspiring with the Kremlin could be a sign that Team Mueller is less than confident it can prove collusion
beyond a reasonable doubt. As he puts it, the GRU indictment "was more like a press release than a charging instrument" because the
special prosecutor knew that the chances were
zero that Russian intelligence agents would surrender to a U.S. court.
Indeed, when Mueller charged 13 employees and three companies owned by Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin with interfering
in the 2016 election, he clearly didn't expect them to surrender either. Thus , his team seemed taken aback when one of the alleged
" troll farms
" showed up in Washington asking to be heard. The prosecution's initial response, as McCarthy
put it , was to seek
a delay "on the astonishing ground that the defendant has not been properly served – notwithstanding that the defendant has shown
up in court and asked to be arraigned." When that didn't work, prosecutors tried to limit Concord's access to some 3.2 million pieces
of evidence on the grounds that the documents are too "
sensitive " for Russian eyes to see. If they are again unsuccessful, they may have no choice but to drop the charges entirely,
resulting in yet another " public relations
disaster " for the Russia-gate investigation.
None of which bodes well for Mueller or the news organizations that worship at his shrine. After blowing the Russia-gate story
all these years, why does the Times continue to slander the one news organization that tells the truth?
Daniel Lazare is the author of "The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy" (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and
other books about American politics. He has written for a wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique
and blogs about the Constitution and related matters at D aniellazare.com .
There is one thing Mueller did not address. The collusion theory originated inside the
Obama administration and it was based on evidence provided by US and British intelligence.
Almost certainly this evidence was bogus. One would think that providing false evidence in an
effort to frame Trump and his campaign would be highly relevant highly relevant to any
investigation into the basic charge of collusion. But Mueller did not go there.
It seems pretty clear that Clapper and Brennan were active in pushing those false charges.
Perhaps there should now be a Senate investigation into the activities of the FBI and CIA in
creating these false charges. The Church committee hearings that were held in the 1970s are a
good precedent for such an investigation.
Thanks b for undertaking the unpleasant task of culling through a politicized report from a
politicized witch hunt that assiduously avoided asking questions of those few people who
could provide actual evidence thus halting the hoax in its tracks at its beginning.
I've noted in looking into all the major cover-ups since Warren Commission that omitting key
witnesses is an ongoing habit of those doing the "investigating."
The actual criminals in this entire affair--a grandiose cover-up--are Hillary Clinton,
the DNC, and many of their associates--and Barak Obama and others within his administration
that devised the cover-up/obstruction of justice.
Yes, there are still those crimes to investigate, but I wager they'll remain
covered-up.
With the initial hyper-triggered shock of the moderately-redacted Mueller Report having
washed across the cognitively dissonant liberal media and their zombified social media
followers...
(for example: Former NYT's Jared
Yates Sexton "All right. I just finished the Mueller Report. I'm going to combine the most
shocking and important revelations in one thread. Long and short: there was collusion, there
was obstruction, Donald Trump needs to be removed from office. Immediately... Trump and his
cronies made a decision to put power and wealth above the country. They actively sought help in
undermining our democratic process. They didn't report constant Russian contacts or offers to
help. They're traitors. That's it. They're traitors. ")
We've never seen the Dark State lose so publicly before. It's beautiful to watch.
But I will say this - the amount of crazy out there right now is startling. The pundits,
the journalists, the Dem politicians, celebrities, and regular folk (a crazy liberal guy
yelling at another guy at the gym this morning, for nothing). They have finally cracked and I
can't help but fear a little that once Trump starts taking down the dirty actors, cracked and
crazy may turn violent. Nevertheless, patriots will stand strong.
How far, Trump? How far you gonna take it because it would involve the Clintons, Obama,
Clinton Foundation(s), TRILLIONS of money tufted away in secret bank accounts across the
Caribbean; pedohiles, ISRAEL and because of that last one, ain't squat gonna happen. 4 more
years of vacuous MAGA trumpetting and nothing, not one ******* thing gonna change.
What does that have to do with prosecuting the guilty in this very obvious witch hunt and
who will get prosecuted? My guess since there's three or four crime families involved
(Trump's Jewish crime family one), Israel involved in everyone's crimes, all we're gonna hear
is same **** outta Tel Aviv as news and information, more homos prancing across your
overpriced 60" China made 4UHD TV, more inflation, more on wars in Venezuela, Iran, Syria and
now Cuba ... same ****, different day. We're doomed since 1768.
I seem to remember Natalia V (Russian Attny) was only allowed in to the country via
special arrangement with the DOJ (Holder) or some 3 letter acronym'd agency and the POTUS
(Obama) to meet with "clients" and or Trump's team. Shouldn't that be the starting point for
this investigation? That sounds a lot like a smoking gun if this is/were true.
Lynch's DoJ let her in. The Russian lawyer was anti the Magnitsky Act. Said act was pushed
through Congress by traitor McCain. Bill Browder (sleaze) was behind it, to create cover for
his own nefarious deeds -- not paying taxes in Russia on his hedge fund profits. The Russian
government is also anti Magnitsky, but the Russian did not directly represent them.
Strangely, GPS Fusion was also working on the anti-Magnitsky side of the case, along with the
Russian lawyer. In Helsinki Putin said publicly that U.S. Intelligence officials helped
funnel $400 million from Browder to Hillary's campaign. The phony Magnitsky Act is just
something used by governments as an excuse to sanction Russia.
"... This was the insurance policy in case "she" didn't win (heaven forbid) and it's been used and abused as a coup 'de tat ever since. All the Mueller convictions must be vacated as fruit of the poison tree since the wiretaps were a set-up based on lies. ..."
"... The Hunters now becomes the Prey, and Prey now become the Hunters. ..."
Now that the redacted
448-page Mueller report
has been
released to the public, people on both
sides of the aisle have been madly
poring over the results of the special
counsel's 22-month Russia probe.
Prosecutors closely examined whether
Donald Trump or members of his 2016
campaign conspired with Russia to
release emails which were damaging to
Hillary Clinton's campaign and the DNC,
and/or any involvement with the
Kremlin's social media disinformation
campaigns.
The investigation also covered
whether Trump associates operated as
unregistered Russian (and in one case
Israeli) agents, and whether the
infamous June 9, 2016 Trump Tower
meeting with a Russian attorney
violated campaign finance laws as a
"thing-of-value" offered by foreign
governments, or crossed any other legal
boundaries.
At the end of the day, Mueller and
his team
did not find that any
Trump campaign associates were
operating on behalf of a foreign
government in connection with the 2016
election.
Mueller did,
however, find Trump campaign manager
Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates
guilty of crimes connected to their
work for the Ukrainian government prior
to their involvement with Trump.
There are a mountain of pages and
footnotes to go through, but here are
some takeaways so far:
Mueller was unable to
establish that Trump committed any
underlying crimes.
"Unlike cases in which a subject
engages in obstruction of justice to
cover up a crime, the evidence we
obtained did not establish that the
president was involved in an underlying
crime related to Russian election
interference," the report reads.
Mueller considered
pressing charges in connection with
the Trump Tower meeting.
The special counsel's office
considered prosecuting the Trump Tower
meeting as a campaign-finance
violation, however declined because
they didn't have "admissible evidence"
likely to prove that Trump officials
"wilfully" acted, or that the
information offered by the Russians
exceeded the threshold for
prosecution.
Interestingly - the Mueller report
completely
omits the involvement of Fusion GPS in
the Trump tower meeting -
as
the Russian attorney involved in it,
Natalia Veselnitskaya, was a
Fusion
GPS associate and met with founder
Glenn Simpson before and after the
Trump Tower meeting
.
Also noteworthy is that the Trump
Tower meeting investigation "did not
identify evidence connecting the events
of June 9 & the GRU's hack-and-dump
operation.
Mueller looked at
charging Trump aide George
Papadopoulos as an agent of Israel
.
Trump worried that the
Special Counsel investigation would
end his presidency.
According to the Mueller report,
when then-Attorney General Jeff
Sessions let Trump know about the
appointment of a special counsel, Trump
replied: "Oh my God. This is terrible.
This is the end of my presidency.
I'm
fucked,
" adding "How could you
allow this to happen, Jeff?"
Trump goes on to say: "
Everyone
tells me if you get one of these
independent counsels it ruins your
presidency.
It takes years and
years and I won't be able to do
anything. This is the worst thing that
ever happened to me."
Former White House
attorney Don McGahn threatened to
resign.
McGahn was ready to hand in his
resignation as White House counsel in
June 2017 when Trump directed him to
tell Deputy Attorney Rod Rosenstein
that "Mueller has to go," per the
report.
"In response to that request, McGahn
decided to quit because he did not want
to participate in events that he
described as akin to the Saturday Night
Massacre," during the Nixon
administration. McGahn would stay on as
White House counsel for for another 16
months.
Biggest news of the day was Pelosi announcing, before even reading
the report, that the Dem party won't pursue impeachment.
The GOP impeached Clinton for lying in a deposition. These
corporatist Democrats? They love Trump. They probably share the same
donors. ****, Pelosi would MUCH RATHER keep Trump in 2020 than have
Bernie elected. It's clear as day.
The two parties have merged, anyone who can't see it is just blind
and stupid. That's why they all argue 24/7 about a stupid and
pointless investigation rather than the decimation of the middle
class, stagnant wages, never ending wars, wall street running amok
and gambling with your pensions, campaign finance, etc. Not a *******
peep about that, from either party.
Immigration? They bitch about caravans of a few hundred, but
meanwhile employers continue to go unpunished for hiring illegals for
cheap labor.
Dems want Trump in place. They don't mind him. They get
to grandstand about "resistance" and other horseshit without
actually doing anything and they think voters appreciate them
for it.
But Trump isn't riling up things one bit for any of them.
He talks a whole lot, but the status quo hasn't been affected
in the slightest.
Name 1 way in which Trump has truly changed the course of
this country. Go on.
No more Imperial wars, no more corrupt Congress getting
there way on many things, a true fight on the two tier
justice system, Veterans being treated better than since
Reagan, tax cuts that are helping the working class,
companies are starting to come back to the US with all the
Federal Corporate tax cuts, all the federal regulations
being stopped / ended, the Deep State being exposed and the
fight starting to end their corruption, the fight with the
Federal Reserve and global central bankers.
This was the insurance policy in case "she" didn't win (heaven
forbid) and it's been used and abused as a coup 'de tat ever since.
All the Mueller convictions must be vacated as fruit of the poison
tree since the wiretaps were a set-up based on lies.
Erect the
gallows on the Mall and meantime let the indictments flow! I hereby
volunteer to pull the handle!
The Hunters now becomes the Prey, and Prey now become the Hunters.
All individuals in Government found guilty of crimes of Treason,
subversion of the Us Constitution, US Law, etc need to have all their
assets seized both domestic and overseas. All of it! Everything
should be liquidated to pay back the taxpayers for this hoax. News
outlets, commentators, reporters, etc need to be charged with
insurrection and treason. All of their assets needed to be seized
for repayment of the cost of this hoax. I care not if it puts their
families in the streets. They and their families have lived and
profited off of the lies, deceit, and treason far to long.
Members of Congress must be held accountable also, including all
former members who resigned last election cycle. I'm happy that
Trump was found to be innocent of any crimes he clearly didn't
commit, though sadened the Clintons who are guilty of many crimes
walk free even now.
The article of Scott Jenkings is a typical neoliberal paranoia, but one conclusion looks logical. If we assume that Russia
hacked the elections, then Obama is is a despicable sucker, along with Brennan and Comey, who did nothing to prevent it. And
should be hold accountable instead of snorting cocaine in the safety of White House.
Notable quotes:
"... The partisan warfare over the Mueller report will rage, but one thing cannot be denied: Former President Barack Obama looks just plain bad. [Supposedly] On his watch, the Russians meddled in our democracy while his administration did nothing about it. ..."
"... Congressman Adam Schiff, who disgraced himself in this process by claiming collusion when Mueller found that none exists, once said that "the Obama administration should have done a lot more." The Washington Post reported that a senior Obama administration official said they "sort of choked" in failing to stop the Russian government's brazen activities. And Obama's ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, said , "The punishment did not fit the crime" about the weak sanctions rolled out after the 2016 election. ..."
CNN contributor Scott Jennings - soon to be exiled from every social media platform we
suspect - dared to point out that the Mueller report looks bad for Obama.
The partisan warfare over the Mueller report will rage, but one thing cannot be denied:
Former President Barack Obama looks just plain bad. [Supposedly] On his watch, the Russians meddled in our
democracy while his administration did nothing about it.
The Mueller report flatly states that Russia began interfering in American democracy in
2014. Over the next couple of years, the effort blossomed into a robust attempt to interfere
in our 2016 presidential election. The Obama administration knew this was going on and yet
did nothing. In 2016, Obama's National Security Adviser
Susan Rice told her staff to "stand down" and "knock it off" as they drew up plans to
"strike back" against the Russians, according to an account
from Michael Isikoff and David Corn in their book "Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of
Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump".
Is this some kind of penance on this holy weekend for CNN's past sins of omission? Perhaps.
But Jennings then asked the hard question: Why did Obama go soft on Russia?
My opinion is that it was because he was singularly focused on
the nuclear deal with Iran . Obama wanted Putin in the deal, and to stand up to him on
election interference would have, in Obama's estimation, upset that negotiation. This turned
out to be a disastrous policy decision.
Obama's supporters claim he did stand up to Russia by deploying sanctions after the
election to punish them for their actions. But, Obama,
according to the Washington Post , "approved a modest package... with economic sanctions
so narrowly targeted that even those who helped design them describe their impact as largely
symbolic." In other words, a toothless response to a serious incursion.
But don't just take my word for it that Obama failed. Congressman Adam Schiff, who
disgraced himself in this process by claiming collusion when Mueller found that none exists,
once said that "the Obama administration should have done a lot more."
The Washington Post reported that a senior Obama administration official said they "sort
of choked" in failing to stop the Russian government's brazen activities. And Obama's
ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul,
said , "The punishment did not fit the crime" about the weak sanctions rolled out after
the 2016 election.
A legitimate question Republicans are asking is whether the potential "collusion"
narrative was invented to cover up the Obama administration's failures. Two years have been
spent fomenting the idea that Russia only interfered because it had a willing, colluding
partner: Trump. Now that Mueller has popped that balloon, we must ask why this collusion
narrative was invented in the first place.
Given Obama's record on Russia, one operating theory is that his people needed a
smokescreen to obscure just how wrong they were. They've blamed Trump. They've even blamed
Mitch McConnell, in some twisted attempt to deflect blame to another branch of government.
Joe Biden once claimed McConnell refused to sign a letter condemning the Russians during
the 2016 election. But McConnell's office counters that the White House asked him to sign a
letter urging state electors to accept federal help in securing local elections -- and he
did. You can read it
here .
I guess if I had failed to stop Russia from marching into Crimea, making a mess in Syria,
and hacking our democracy I'd be looking to blame someone else, too.
But the Mueller report makes it clear that the Russian interference failure was Obama's
alone. He was the commander-in-chief when all of this happened. In 2010, he and Eric Holder,
his Attorney General,
declined to prosecute Julian Assange , who then went on to help Russia hack the
Democratic National Committee's emails in 2016. He arguably chose to prioritize his
relationship with Putin vis-à-vis Iran over pushing back against Russian election
interference that had been going on for at least two years.
If you consider Russian election interference a crisis for our democracy, then you cannot
read the Mueller report, adding it to the available public evidence, and conclude anything
other than Barack Obama spectacularly failed America. Subsequent investigations of this
matter should explore how and why Obama's White House failed, and whether they invented the
collusion narrative to cover up those failures.
As President Trump just
commented , this hoax was "...a big, fat, waste of time, energy and money - $30,000,000 to
be exact."
"It is now finally time to turn the tables and bring justice to some very sick and
dangerous people who have committed very serious crimes, perhaps even Spying or Treason .
This should never happen again!"
The question is - will CNN follow this 'racist' op-ed with some real journalism on who knew
what, when and how this farce started? (We will not be holding our breath).
Specifically what'd Russia do. Last I heard someone inside Russia spent $5000 on Facebook
ads. It's time to stop the nonsense, drop the sanctions, and level the playing field, and
allow international corporations to vie for commerce without fear of threats or sanctions.
Maybe then peace will breakout.
Obama's body may have been in the White House, but his soul was in the bath house doing
cocaine and sucking ****. He can't be held responsible for this. Ask his Deep State masters
why they didn't stop the Russians in 2016.
Obama, Bushes, Clintons, CNN, Wa Post, Anderson Popper and many others are all See Eye A.
Limited hangout. Obama will be safe unless he opens his month then he will be heart
attacked.
I haven't read the entire Mueller report, but reading the first 15 pages is plenty to see
that it's a load of BS. As b says, completely unsubstantiated conclusions are expressed as
fact, such as "In March 2016, the GRU began hacking the accounts of Clinton Campaign
volunteers and employees, including campaign chairman John Podesta." And then it says the GRU
released further materials through WikiLeaks. Not only is that not proven, all the evidence
says there's no connection whatsoever between these events. So the Mueller report constrains
itself to the talking points of the Atlanticists, i.e., Russia is bad and everything Russia
does is an attack on the US, etc.--and does so without presenting any supporting forensic
evidence.
Just at the time when propagandists such as Maddow should be forced to eat their hats,
they will find plenty of friendly language in the report to continue peddling their
conspiracy theories.
Americans, easily misled at the best of times, have been horribly misled on the
undisclosed purpose of the Mueller Trump-Russia collusion, and with very good reason. Russia
collusion was a dead duck before the SC was formed. This is clearly documented by the
chronology. That's why the Maddow/media Rush-ah Rush-ah hyper-ventilation was important.
Endless sound and fury was a surrogate for a wannabe storm. Keep the peeps in a permanent
froth and maybe they won't notice there's no beer in the stein.
Not unlike the Grand Jury process, the SC created an institutional obstruction that
impeded a Republican Congress' and POTUS' access to key witnesses and unredacted documents,
while also creating a potential obstruction of justice tweet-trap for Trump, which obviously
failed.
However when there is no crime (as only the accused would definitively know), the accused
can yell and scream all he likes. Justice cannot be obstructed by a falsely accused man. We
already know from the summary Barr document that there was no collusion, so...
The SC performed in a manner similar to that described by Tom Cruise here (at 4:25) in The
Firm as a ship set sail with instructions never to arrive. Unlike in The Firm however,
Mueller's hull houses no actionable cargo. The SC was designed to exist, persist, fish and
perhaps catch the occasional process offender in the net.
Here's a riddle: what a process crime? It's a strange sort of fish that you find only in
nets, never in the ocean.
Mueller fished until he could fish no more. Barr ordered him to port. Now he's opening the
hold. Apart from some prurient bits and pieces which the Dems hope desperately to spin into
political hay, the hold is empty.
Release The Whole Report? That's the latest mantra for people who seem unable to swim
without lurching from one red herring to the next.
Bill Binney and the VIPS scrutinized the claims about Russian hacking of the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) based on the file transfer speed, which computer experts say could
not have been conducted from Russia but could match the speed of a thumb drive.
In Mueller's report, he claims that the GRU leased a computer inside the United States to
transfer the file, which would explain the discrepancy and debunk the VIPS claim.
Too bad that the evidence for Mueller's claim on the computer's location is redacted and
the rest comes from an indictment not meant to go to trial. Where did he get it? We will
never know unless the full, unredacted report is released.
Until that time, I'm placing my bets on the fact that the information comes from the
discredited, partisan cybersecurity firm that started this mess, Crowdstrike.
So obstructing an investigation is an offence. May I present Hillary Clinton.
So endangering/compromising US national security is an offence. May I present Hillary
Clinton.
So profiteering and using office to extort wealth is an offence. May I present Hillary
Clinton, Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and the Clinton Foundation.
Silence from Trump, FBI, and the entire corrupt political class. Scumbags!
"The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and
systematic fashion."
The report can't find any prove that Trump was involved but that just doesn't matter.
Trump is unimportant, irrelevant. While Trump supporters will be shouting out that their
champion has been vindicated, what the report really amounts to is a big-step towards war
with Russia.
Think:- Trump was elected with the stated aim of peace with Russia. Now the US has the
incontrovertible lie-truth that Russia tried to attack US democracy; and Trump is all
onboard. This could not have been achieved if Clinton had been elected.
I am sure that the irrelevant argument about whether or not Trump was involved will
continue. BUT NO ONE IS DISPUTING THE LIE-TRUTH THAT RUSSIA "INTERFERED IN THE 2016
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN SWEEPING AND SYSTEMATIC FASHION."
The US are moving towards war with Russia and Russia are preparing to defend
themselves.
The 2020 US election will probably be all about Russia and the candidates are likely to be
doing their very best to outdo eachother in their Russophobia.
The next step, when the time is right, when Americans are judged sufficiently credulous,
will be a false-flag on US soil blamed (not on muslims or white supremacists) but on
Russia.
More friggen' political theater for the masses. The Dem. leadership has not the will or
intention to impeach DJT.
The "foodfight" will continue, and keep the necessary issues( medi-care for all,
infrastructure investment, ceaseless interventionism, etc.) from being discussed.
And, making the ruling class very happy.
We, in the U$A, have one major political party, the party of $, and it owns the majority
of our so-called "representatives".
On with the show..
@ 21 said;"Yes, there are still those crimes to investigate, but I wager they'll remain
covered-up."
He's turned out to be a ziocon and Bibi's bitch instead. He's surrounded himself with
neocons. And he's also Wall St's bitch as his primary concern is stock prices. He wants the Fed
to lower already low rates and grow its multi-trillion dollar "emergency" balance sheet even
more. The federal government will add a trillion dollars to the national debt each year of his
term. Isn't this exactly what the establishment of both parties want?
In any case, the hammer needs to come down hard on the putschists, so that law enforcement
& the intelligence agencies don't become an extra-constitutional 4th branch of government
accountable only to themselves. We'll see how far the Trump administration will go in holding
these seditionists to account?
We had been inflicted with "Russogate" ad nauseam for the better part of two years and
nothing, absolutely nothing, came of it. But no mention of the Zio-gate where the dog and its
tail reciprocally meddle in each others' election(s) overwhelmingly in favor of Zio-tail
interests. The silence of this issue in the MSM is deafening.
"... "IDF's chief rabbi-to-be permits raping women in wartime." Just how does that differ from Daesh's behavior? Or was it the IDF that told Deash such behavior was okay? I'm pretty certain that rabbi is afoul of fundamental Mosaic Law and thus shouldn't be a rabbi. ..."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General William Barr said on Wednesday he would look into
whether U.S. agencies illegally spied on President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, sparking
criticism from Democrats who accused him of promoting a conspiracy theory.
Barr, who was appointed by Trump, is already facing criticism by congressional Democrats
for how he has handled the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on the probe
of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and his comments about surveillance brought
more derision from Democratic senators.
His testimony echoed longstanding allegations by Trump and Republican allies that seeks
to cast doubt on the early days of the federal investigation in an apparent attempt to
discredit Mueller, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
IMO the notion that a few senior Intelligence officials (mostly FBI) tried to overthrow
Trump is silly to the point of being laughable.
Not to all of us, it isn't. The part I don't understand is the Why of their effort.
Did they have some scheme to get rid of Pence too? Or was it all mindless blind hatred
because he took down their Goddess Hillary?
ZS @ 68 said in part;"assuming the Corporate Democrats don't force one of their candidates
Big Corporations want on the ballot. Which is, of course, most of them."
I assume what you speculated on above, will happen.
Zachary Smith @68: ... Corporate Democrats ... domestic policies ...
The democratic party is irredeemable as it operates as one arm of the duopoly. I don't see
any meaningful distinction between "Corporate Democrats" and progressive Democrats except
this: progressive Democrats give the Democratic Party cover to support the establishment.
IMO domestic policy can no longer be considered separately from Empire. "Progressive
Democrats" are forced encouraged by their Party to support the military and
ignore foreign policy.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <>
IMO the only grouping that is currently viable/strong alternative is the libertarians. If
they could bring conservatives and (real) progressives together, then we could see a real
challenge to the "radical center" (which actually rules as center-right).
But conservatives, (real) progressives, and libertarians are underfunded and constantly
get played.
Not to all of us, it isn't. The part I don't understand is the Why of their effort.
Well of course the WHY baffles you, because the only WHY that makes sense is what I
described and that will never be allowed to come out publicly because then people will see
that their democracy is a sham.
The "managed democracy" that we have in USA subverts the will of the people to the
Empire.
Though I hadn't seen that before, the general theme is in agreement with what I believe is
the truth. Even ignorant and thuggish goons like Trump can be victims of a crime, and I
believe that's what happened here.
I find it piquant that the vice president of the US attacks a Venezuelan ambassador at the UN
and then ramps up his aggression...by retreating.
Pence is so certain that the other guy doesn't belong, that he himself walks away. Every
schoolyard would see this behavior for exactly what it is. Animals would understand it
clearly also, in terms of pecking order.
How perfect this action is in matching precisely what we've been watching the US do in
several military theaters for some time now. The louder and the ruder the bluster, the more
certain we can be that it covers pure emptiness. And that the US is tangibly retreating under
cover of the smoke.
"IDF's chief rabbi-to-be permits raping women in wartime." Just how does that differ from Daesh's behavior? Or was it the IDF that told Deash such
behavior was okay? I'm pretty certain that rabbi is afoul of fundamental Mosaic Law and thus
shouldn't be a rabbi.
----------------------
"The Talmud: The Steinsaltz Edition," Ketubot 11b, vol. 7 (NY: Random House, 1991), p.
145:
"If a grown man has intercourse with a little girl less than three years old, all agree
that it is not a significant sexual act "
"If a man engages in homosexual intercourse with a minor who is under the age of nine,
whether actively or passively, he is exempt as with regard to ritual law..."
I"m not sure we disagree very much, for I also believe our "democracy" is thoroughly
managed, and "sham" is quite a good word for it. The part I don't understand is why you seem
to object to pointing out efforts by the 'managers' to correct the error of a slam dunk
election going bad. Hillary was supposed to be in the White House. More than one
nation had been making advance payments to the Clinton Foundation to purchase her goodwill.
She was the dream for Big Banking, the apartheid Jewish state, and probably a lot more folks.
That didn't happen, and some people became unhinged.
Though I hadn't seen that before, the general theme is in agreement with what I believe
is the truth.
I think that you're not thinking this through.
You're question of WHY, is still unanswered.
> WHY did the hold back on Russian-influence allegations during the election? Hillary was suppose to win, sure. But why not ENSURE that win?
> WHY did they continue with Russiagate after the election? They engaged in Treasonous behavior because Hillary was butthurt?
She supposedly got 3 million more votes than Trump; how badly could her ego be
bruised?
> WHY did the establishment hate Trump so much? He's delivered all they could want and more.
> Why did Russiagate force Trump to bend to Deep State wishes? Ha! It didn't! Trump has always maintained that there was no Russia collusion. And now
the Mueller Report confirms this. Trump's Cold War policy continues the Deep State's same
policy - because Trump is part of the team.
This is not meant to be exhaustive. There are many other questions that you could ask because
there's a lot that doesn't add up - unless Russiagate was a Deep State psyop with bi-partisan
support (as I've described).
Zachary Smith @85: efforts by the 'managers' to correct the error
Because it makes no sense. If they got their wish and "corrected" the error by overthrowing Trump, there would be a
civil war. Which is counter-productive in the extreme.
But they don't need to take such drastic action 'cause Trump does that the Deep States
wants anyway! So what are they trying to "correct"?!?
Alleged ongoing Military Coup in Sudan today, another just happened in Algeria... Haftar
making moves in Libya, could all just be a coincidence, then again, maybe not? Anyone got
anything? Wondering what Mr B. thinks..
Barr says Mueller didn't find an "Direct" coordination with "Russian Government officials."
That leaves all sorts of room for indirect (through wiki, through Kislyck, through the NRA...
etc.). This is wildly different than what you claim here - and your claim is not something
you know. I suppose it could be true, but you are believing the guy that covered up the Iran
Contra affair and got Oliver North off for his numerous, admitted crimes.
IF what you say is true, please explain -
1. Why did Trump, his family and his closest associates lie 100's of times about over 100
contacts with known assets of the GRU?
2. If Mueller "completely and totally exonerated" Trump, why are Trump's lawyers and
McConnell keeping the report from the public.
3. How is it possible that Barr thoroughly read and absorbed the report and it's evidence in
reportedly only 9 hours including the time it took him to draft his heavily hedged 4 page
memo?
4. Why did Mueller go out of his way to nail Manafort for lying about Russian contacts if it
was immaterial - he was going to jail for the rest of his life regardless?
5. Why do you discount the publicly available evidence that Trump obstructed justice? Is it
okay with you that Trump did it just because it was in the open?
6. Do you care that Russia clearly attempted to influence (and likely did) the 2016
election?
Leaked by someone with inside knowledge and thinks that justice has not been served...happens
all the time.
Exactly what is kurt think Trump is guilty of?
Books have written about Trump criminality, but for some strange reason, Democrats have
not been interested in pursuing those crimes. They were only interested in Hillary's
preposterous allegation that Trump colluded with Putin.
Perhaps because Trump's other crimes are similar to Democratic corruption...and he may
have the goods on folks like Schumer? Mutual assured destruction to pursue crimes that
committed over the past 50 years?
You have no idea what Mueller said. Only Barr's summary. Which is full of hedge language -
which indicates cover up. If it exonerates Trump, why is McConnell blocking the release and
back to "but her emails" and Steele Dossier?
Among kurt's questions, he carefully avoids the central question: Did Trump conspire with the
Russian government to subvert and American election and help Trump win? Hillary thought so.
kurt assured us repeatedly that Trump's guilt was a proven fact, a slam dunk prosecution.
Democrats and their media talked about it incessantly for three years, crowding out interest
in domestic corruption and other avenues of prosecution...and allowing Democrats flog that
issue and avoid developing a coherent message and a popular program to address major
problems.
They were all wrong about the central charge that Trump conspired with Putin to subvert
the election. Mueller did not find enough evidence to indict or prosecute. That was...repeat,
that was Mueller's charge. And he answered that central question, embarrassing and
humiliating Democrats and the media that flogged that fake news for three years.
Sure, Trump has not been exonerated on everything. Sure, investigations should continue,
focusing on those that have a high probability of finding corruption and
criminality...something that Democrats have avoided for years, despite books being written on
the subject.
The key question is: why have Democrats avoided investigating Trump on all those areas
that could yield prosecution for domestic corruption and criminality and instead focus almost
exclusively on a wild goose chase?
It's true. Democrats had had no subpoena power, but there is always the court of public
opinion. Books have been written about Trump's corruption, his sleazy and likely criminal
business behavior. Hillary refused to raise the issue much if at all. Pelosi and Schumer
avoided anything but Putin...probably because Trump has the goods on them. They needed to
fabricate a preposterous charge that wouldn't blow back against them.
Read the one and only footnote on Barr's "report." Then get back to me. It is doing all the
work and it is obviously a coverup. If you define collusion as only tacit agreement between
only government actors, then every spy that has ever been jailed or executed is not guilty.
Having disgraced themselves with full immersion in the barren Russia-gate "narrative," the
Resistance is now tripling down on Russia-gate's successor gambit: obstruction of justice where
there was no crime in the first place. What exactly was that bit of mischief Special Prosecutor
Robert Mueller inserted in his final report, saying that " while this report does not conclude
that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him?"
It's this simple: prosecutors are charged with finding crimes. If there is insufficient
evidence to bring a case, then that is the end of the matter. Prosecutors, special or
otherwise, are not authorized to offer hypothetical accounts where they can't bring a criminal
case. But Mueller produced a brief of arguments pro-and-con about obstruction for others to
decide upon. In doing that, he was out of order, and maliciously so.
Trump and Barr on Feb. 14, 2019. (Wikimedia Commons)
Of course, Attorney General William Barr took up the offer and declared the case closed, as
he properly should where the prosecutor could not conclude that a crime was committed. One
hopes that the AG also instructed Mueller and his staff to shut the f up vis-à-vis
further ex post facto "anonymous source" speculation in the news media. But, of course, the
Mueller staff -- which inexplicably included lawyers who worked for the Clinton Foundation and
the Democratic National Committee -- at once started insinuating to
New York Times reporters that the full report would contain an arsenal of bombshells
reigniting enough suspicion to fuel several congressional committee investigations.
The objective apparently is to keep President Donald Trump burdened, hobbled, and disabled
for the remainder of his term, and especially in preparation for the 2020 election against
whomever emerges from the crowd of lightweights and geriatric cases now roistering through the
primary states. It also leaves the door open for the Resistance to prosecute an impeachment
case, since that is a political matter, not a law enforcement action.
Setting up the AG
This blog is not associated with any court other than public opinion, and I am free to
hypothesize on the meaning of Mueller's curious gambit, so here goes: Barr, long before being
considered for his current job, published his opinion that there was no case for obstruction of
justice in the Russia-gate affair. By punting the decision to Barr, Mueller sets up the AG for
being accused of prejudice in the matter -- and, more to the point, has managed to generate a
new brushfire in the press.
Barr could see this coming from a thousand miles away. I suspect he's pissed off about being
set up like this. I suspect further that he knows this brushfire is intended to produce a
smokescreen to obscure the rash of grand jury referrals coming down in the weeks and months
ahead against the many government employees who concocted the Russia-gate scandal. Personally,
I think Mueller himself deserves to be in that roundup for destroying evidence (the Strzok /
Page cell phones) and for malicious prosecution against General Michael Flynn , among other
things.
The reason Mueller did not bring an obstruction-of-justice charge against Trump is that the
evidence didn't support it. He didn't have a case. In a trial -- say, after Trump was impeached
or left office -- the discovery process could bring to light evidence that might embarrass and
even incriminate Mueller and his staff, and cast further opprobrium on the federal justice
agencies. For instance: why did Mueller drag out his inquiry for two years when he must have
known by at least the summer of 2017 that the Steele dossier was a fraud perpetrated by the
Clinton campaign?
Now the propaganda crusade has been initiated to defame Barr. The idiots running the budding
new congressional inquiries are going to pile on him, with the help of the news media. Though
he is said to be an "old friend" of Robert Mueller's, I believe they have become adversaries,
perhaps even enemies. Mueller is not in a position of strength in this battle. He has now
officially exited the stage as his mandate expires, so he has no standing to oppose further
consequences in the aftermath of Russia-gate. What remains is a dastardly and seditious hoax as
yet un-adjudicated and an evidence trail a mile wide, and no amount of jumping up and down
crying "woo woo woo" by Democratic lawmakers Jerrold Nadler, Maxine Waters, and Adam Schiff is
going to derail that choo-choo train a'chuggin' down the tracks.
James Howard Kunstler is author of "The Geography of Nowhere," which he says he wrote
"Because I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway
strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that
makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work." He has written several
other works of nonfiction and fiction. Read more about him here . This article first appeared on his blog, ClusterfuckNation .
.
KiwiAntz , April 8, 2019 at 18:00
If at first you don't succeed, "try, try, try again? The Resistance, unlike Neo in the
Matrix, fails to take the red pill to wake up too real life, in the present & continues
to swallow the blue pill to stay in the dreamworld of fake realities & Hoax conspiracies?
So the Kabuki theatre must continue, the too big to fail lie of Russiagate can't be allowed
to die? The damage this fake conspiracy, collusion delusion is having on the US can't be
quantified? The fools who continue to promote this narrative are now tripling down in a state
of denial that defies belief! The Mainstream Media is now totally dead & buried, no one
believes their lies anymore & people are heading to alt media in droves! Politicians
& Politics, especially left wing, are objects of derision & contempt, & although
Trump may be innocent, the fact remains that he is a terrible President & a dangerous
idiot?? You only need to look at his staff with warmongering imbeciles like Pompeo, Bolton
& their kind who are leading America to War, in which their win ratio is zero? The
lunatic Russiagate narrative has served & achieved part of its goals & purposes? To
hamstrung Trump & paralyse his administration & get him impeached via a coup
d'état then to destroy & poison Russian detente,civility & relations? It
failed on one level to obtain Trumps removal but succeeded in destroying Russian relations,
the most dangerous gambit ever, to taut & ridicule a Nuclear Superpower? But that's the
actions of a dying US Empire in decline, arrogance, ignorance, hubris & self delusion,
all aptly supported by a corrupt propagandist fourth estate, the American Fakestream
Media?
JonnyJames , April 8, 2019 at 17:06
Once again, we see this is all a rather ridiculous charade to distract the public. As Bill
Binney & the VIPS pointed out on this website & others: if there was any evidence of
"Russian collusion" the NSA would have had it immediately. After two wasted years of
distractions & nonsense, of course there is NO evidence.
The irrational reactions of partisan hypocrites are truly bizarre, we need to have a
social psychologist explain the madness of crowd mentality here. What's more, so many people
STILL fail to acknowledge (or are paid not to) that there is NO evidence. They say wait and
see (We're still waiting for Saddam's WMD etc) Tragically humorous
You want REAL collusion and high crimes?: The Trump regime virtually takes orders verbatim
on foreign policy from Benjamin Nuttyahoo. However, Israeli diktats enjoy the overwhelming
support of both "parties" in Congress and the servile media cartel. Pointing out these
extremely obvious & highly problematic facts is not allowed. One cannot talk about
Israeli lobby groups not having to register as foreign agents. One cannot talk about
indisputable facts with a mountain of evidence in plain sight.
In the words of Rod Serling: "You have entered the Twilight Zone"
Jeff Harrison , April 8, 2019 at 13:20
I believe that the term prosecutor should officially be retired and the more accurate term
persecutor should be substituted in its place. The frequency of persecutorial misconduct at
all levels of the judicial system makes a mockery of the concept of justice.
JonnyJames , April 8, 2019 at 17:17
Yes indeed.
Justice and "the rule of law" is made a mockery of every day: Dick Cheney/Bush Jr.. Tony
Blair & other war criminals walk free. Instead of being in prison for life, they are
lavished with praise from media personalities & make big money.
After committing "the largest financial crimes in history, by orders of magnitude", (prof.
William K. Black) NOT ONE senior banker has been indicted, let alone prosecuted. Jamie Dimon,
for example, is in the media regularly and depicted as a brilliant & great man.
Congress & the Exec. routinely ignore & violate the law, including the US
constitution & Bill of Rights. At this point when any politician says the words
"democracy" & "the rule of law" I sneer & laugh with contempt
Skip Scott , April 8, 2019 at 12:55
It will be interesting to see if the DoJ really does follow up on the RussiaGate scam and
attempt to indict the people who created it. Would they really dare to prosecute members of
our so-called "intelligence" community? What about Schumer's "six ways from Sunday"?
mike k , April 8, 2019 at 15:26
Schumer is just a little Mafia toady.
JDC , April 8, 2019 at 12:38
The discovery process in any trial of Trump would have also perhaps brought to light that
Mueller's conclusion, as relayed by Barr's summary, that Russia hacked the DNC and delivered
the documents to Wikileaks has no basis in fact, given what Bill Binney and the other VIPS
have shown.
hetro , April 8, 2019 at 12:31
I think what needs clarifying here is the difference between "does not conclude the
President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him" and the more specific
"obstruction of justice" accusation. For me, at least, this is confusing. Trump may well have
committed a crime by ordering Cohen to pay off Stormy Daniels, or in other ways similar to
the financial sleaze revealed with his associates–but is this not separate from
"obstruction of justice"? Further, it would seem to most ordinary mortals Mueller would be
embarrassed after more than two years to come up with . . . nothing? So he gives us not
guilty of "collusion" and hints at something else, taking the heat off himself (or attempting
to)?
"... Nice group shot of the three stooges. The most dishonest, disloyal, dipshitted psychopaths a country should never have to endure. ..."
"... The likelihood of anyone being convicted let alone indicted is rather slim. Why? These people know where too many dead bodies are buried. ..."
"... There is an understanding in their circles that certain individuals on both sides of the spectrum are bulletproof. You can't run such a large criminal enterprise without it being this way. Why else would Mueller not talk to Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Steele, the heads of Fusion GPS, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr., the promoter who set that up, etc., etc. ..."
"... This whole ordeal was meant to die an uneventful death. It's unlikely Barr will act on any recommendations from Nunes becuase it would start a partisan war that would snare GOP never Trumpers too. It's how Washington works. Like Carlin says - it's a great big club and you ain't in it. They are, and they don't do time. ..."
As the Russia collusion hoax hurtles toward its demise, it's important to consider how this destructive information operation
rampaged through vital American institutions for more than two years , and what can be done to stop such a damaging episode from
recurring.
While the hoax was fueled by a wide array of false accusations, misleading leaks of ostensibly classified information, and bad-faith
investigative actions by government officials, one vital element was indispensable to the overall operation: the Steele dossier.
<
Funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democrat National Committee, which hid their payments from disclosure by funneling
them through the law firm Perkins Coie, the dossier was a collection of false and often absurd accusations of collusion between Trump
associates and Russian officials. These allegations, which relied heavily on Russian sources cultivated by Christopher Steele, were
spoon-fed to Trump opponents in the U.S. government, including officials in law enforcement and intelligence.
The efforts to feed the dossier's allegations into top levels of the U.S. government, particularly intelligence agencies, were
championed by Steele, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, and various intermediaries. These allegations were given directly to the
FBI and Justice Department, while similar allegations were fed into the State Department by long-time Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal.
Their efforts were remarkably effective. Officials within the FBI and DOJ, whether knowingly or unintentionally, provided essential
support to the hoax conspirators, bypassing normal procedures and steering the information away from those who would view it critically.
The dossier soon metastasized within the government, was cloaked in secrecy, and evaded serious scrutiny.
High-ranking officials such as then-FBI general counsel James Baker and then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr were
among those whose actions advanced the hoax. Ohr, one of the most senior officials within the DOJ, took the unprecedented step of
providing to Steele a back door into the FBI investigation. This enabled the former British spy to continue to feed information to
investigators, even though he had been terminated by the FBI for leaking to the press and was no longer a valid source. Even worse,
Ohr directly briefed Andrew Weissmann and Zainab Ahmad, two DOJ officials who were later assigned to special counsel Robert Mueller's
investigation. In short, the investigation was marked by glaring irregularities that would normally be deemed intolerable.
According to Ohr's congressional testimony, he told top-level FBI officials as early as August or September 2016 that Steele was
biased against Trump, that Steele's work was connected to the Clinton campaign, and that Steele's material was of questionable reliability.
Steele himself confirmed that last point in a British court case in which he acknowledged his allegations included unverified information.
Yet even after this revelation, intelligence leaders continued to cite the Steele dossier in applications to renew the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
It is astonishing that intelligence leaders did not immediately recognize they were being manipulated in an information operation
or understand the danger that the dossier could contain deliberate disinformation from Steele's Russian sources . In fact, it is
impossible to believe in light of everything we now know about the FBI's conduct of this investigation, including the astounding
level of anti-Trump animus shown by high-level FBI figures like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, as well as the inspector general's discovery
of a shocking number of leaks by FBI officials.
It's now clear that top intelligence officials were perfectly well aware of the dubiousness of the dossier, but they embraced
it anyway because it justified actions they wanted to take - turning the full force of our intelligence agencies first against a
political candidate and then against a sitting president.
The hoax itself was a gift to our nation's adversaries, most notably Russia. The abuse of intelligence for political purposes
is insidious in any democracy. It undermines trust in democratic institutions, and it damages the reputation of the brave men and
women who are working to keep us safe. This unethical conduct has had major repercussions on America's body politic, creating a yearslong
political crisis whose full effects remain to be seen.
Having extensively investigated this abuse, House Intelligence Committee Republicans will soon be submitting criminal referrals
on numerous individuals involved in these matters.
These people must be held to account to prevent similar abuses from occurring in the future. The men and women of our intelligence
community perform an essential service defending American national security, and their ability to carry out their mission cannot
be compromised by biased actors who seek to transform the intelligence agencies into weapons of political warfare.
All 3 of them have been confirmed to by lying through their teeth by their own people. They are all going down. We just need
the Mueller report to come out to get the ball rolling. Can't do it before the report comes out as they would call it obstruction.
So we wait another 9 days, or less, according to AG Barr.
Could be, PapaGeorge. Maybe this time it's different because it could be argued that the TPTB don't want Trump pulling the
same thing on the DNC--and get away with it like the Usual Suspects just did. In legal terms, a bar has been set. BARR? Get it?
Buwhahahahahahahahahha!!!
The likelihood of anyone being convicted let alone indicted is rather slim. Why? These people know where too many dead bodies
are buried. There is an understanding in their circles that certain individuals on both sides of the spectrum are bulletproof.
You can't run such a large criminal enterprise without it being this way. Why else would Mueller not talk to Comey, Clapper, Brennan,
Steele, the heads of Fusion GPS, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr., the promoter who set that up, etc., etc.
This whole ordeal was meant to die an uneventful death. It's unlikely Barr will act on any recommendations from Nunes becuase
it would start a partisan war that would snare GOP never Trumpers too. It's how Washington works. Like Carlin says - it's a great
big club and you ain't in it. They are, and they don't do time
The likelihood of anyone being convicted let alone indicted is rather slim. Why? These people know where too many dead
bodies are buried.
There is an understanding in their circles that certain individuals on both sides of the spectrum are bulletproof. You
can't run such a large criminal enterprise without it being this way. Why else would Mueller not talk to Comey, Clapper, Brennan,
Steele, the heads of Fusion GPS, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr., the promoter who set that up, etc., etc.
This whole ordeal was meant to die an uneventful death. It's unlikely Barr will act on any recommendations from Nunes becuase
it would start a partisan war that would snare GOP never Trumpers too. It's how Washington works. Like Carlin says - it's a great
big club and you ain't in it. They are, and they don't do time.
<<<House Intelligence Committee Republicans will soon be submitting criminal referrals on numerous individuals involved in
these matters<<< We shall see now, won't we? I won't believe this, till I see It!
The capacity of the mainstream media repeatedly to promote the myth that Russia caused
Clinton's defeat, while never mentioning what the information was that had been so damaging to
Hillary, should be alarming to anybody under the illusion that we have a working "free media".
There are literally hundreds of thousands of mainstream media articles and broadcasts, from
every single one of the very biggest names in the Western media, which were predicated on the
complete nonsense that Russia had conspired to install Donald Trump as President of the United
States.
I genuinely have never quite understood whether the journalists who wrote this guff
believed it,
whether they were cynically pumping out propaganda and taking their pay
cheque, or whether they just did their "job" and chose to avoid asking themselves whether they were
producing truth or lies.
I suspect the answer varies from journalist to journalist.
At the Guardian, for
example, I get the impression that Carole Cadwalladr is sufficiently divorced from reality to
believe all that she writes. Having done a very good job in investigating the nasty right wing
British Establishment tool that was Cambridge Analytica, Cadwalladr became deluded by her own fame
and self-importance and decided that her discovery was the key to understanding all of world
politics. In her head it explained all the disappointments of Clintonites and Blairites everywhere.
She is not so high-minded however as to have refused the blandishments of the Integrity Initiative.
Luke Harding is in a different category. Harding has become so malleable a tool of the
security services it is impossible to believe he is not willingly being used.
It would be
embarrassing to have written a bestseller called "Collusion", the entire premiss for which has now
been disproven, had Harding not made so much money out of it.
Harding's interview with Aaron Mate of The Real News was a truly enlightening moment. The august
elite of the mainstream media virtually never meet anybody who subjects their narrative to critical
intellectual scrutiny.
Harding's utter inability to deal with unanticipated scepticism
descends from hilarious to toe-curlingly embarrassing.
In general, since the Mueller report confirmed that $50 million worth of investigation
had been unable to uncover any evidence of Russiagate collusion, the media has been astonishingly
unrepentant about the absolute rubbish they have been churning out for years.
Harding and the
Guardian's
story
about Manafort repeatedly calling on Assange in the Ecuador Embassy is one of the most
blatant and malicious fabrications in modern media history. It has been widely ridiculed, no
evidence of any kind has ever been produced to substantiate it, and the story has been repeatedly
edited on the Guardian website to introduce further qualifications and acknowledgements of dubious
attribution, not present as originally published. But still neither Editor Katherine Viner nor
author Luke Harding has either retracted or apologised, something which calls the fundamental
honesty of both into question.
Manafort is now in prison, because as with many others interviewed, the Mueller investigation
found he had been involved in several incidences of wrongdoing.
Right up until Mueller
finalised his report, media articles and broadcasts repeatedly, again and again and again every
single day, presented these convictions as proving that there had been collusion with Russia.
The media very seldom pointed out that none of the convictions related to collusion. In fact for
the most part they related to totally extraneous events, like unrelated tax frauds or Trump's
hush-money to (very All-American) prostitutes. The "Russians" that Manafort was convicted of
lobbying for without declaration, were Ukrainian and the offences occurred ten years ago and had no
connection to Trump of any kind. Rather similarly the lies of which Roger Stone stands accused
relate to his invention, for personal gain, of a non-existent relationship with Wikileaks.
The truth is that, if proper and detailed investigation were done into any group
of wealthy politicos in Washington, numerous crimes would be uncovered, especially in the fields of
tax and lobbying.
Rich political operatives are very sleazy. This is hardly news,
and if those around Clinton had been investigated there would be just as many convictions and of
similar kinds. it is a pity there is not more of this type of work, all the time. But the
Russophobic motive behind the Mueller Inquiry was not forwarded by any of the evidence obtained.
My analysis
of the Steele dossier, written before I was aware that Sergei Skripal probably had
a hand in it, has stood the test of time very well. It is a confection of fantasy concocted for
money by a charlatan.
We should not forget at this stage to mention the unfortunate political prisoner Maria Butina,
whose offence is to be Russian and very marginally involved in American politics at the moment when
there was a massive witchhunt for Russian spies in progress, that makes
The Crucible
look
like a study in calm rationality. Ms Butina was attempting to make her way in the US political
world, no doubt, and she had at least one patron in Moscow who was assisting her with a view to
increasing their own political influence. But nothing Butina did was covert or sinister. Her
efforts to win favour within the NRA were notable chiefly because of the irony that the NRA has
been historically responsible for many more American deaths than Russia.
Any narrative of which the Establishment does not approve is decried as conspiracy
theory.
Yet the "Russiagate" conspiracy theory – which truly is Fake News – has been
promoted massively by the entire weight of western corporate and state media. "Russiagate", a
breathtaking plot in which Russia and a high profile US TV personality collude together to take
control of the most militarily powerful country in the world, knocks "The Manchurian Candidate"
into a cocked hat. A Google "news search" restricts results to mainstream media outlets. Such a
search for the term "Russiagate" brings 230,000 results. That is almost a quarter of a million
incidents of the mainstream media not only reporting the fake "Russiagate" story, but specifically
using that term to describe it.
Compare that with a story which is not an outlandish fake conspiracy theory, but a very
real conspiracy.
If, by contrast, you do a Google "news search" for the term "Integrity Initiative", the UK
government's covert multi million pound programme to pay senior mainstream media journalists to
pump out anti-Russian propaganda worldwide, you only get one eighth of the results you get for
"Russiagate". Because the mainstream media have been enthusiastically promoting the fake conspiracy
story, and deliberately suppressing the very real conspiracy in which many of their own luminaries
are personally implicated.
"... Among the scope memo's few unredacted lines are allegations regarding Paul Manafort's "colluding with Russian government officials to interfere with the 2016 elections." The only known source for those allegations is the Steele dossier. What that strongly suggests is that under those redactions are other fabricated allegations that were also drawn from the Clinton-funded smear campaign -- a dirty-tricks operation that was led by Fusion GPS founder and conspiracy theorist Glenn Simpson. ..."
"... Saturday Night Live ..."
"... While the length of Mueller's investigative process may have protected the FBI from the president's immediate rage, the release of the report has exposed the deep corruption and personal narcissism of the press and its professional networks of "experts" and "sources." ..."
"... Russiagate was an information operation from the beginning, in which dozens of individual reporters and institutions actively partnered with paid political operatives like Glenn Simpson and corrupt law enforcement and intelligence officials like former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and senior DOJ official Bruce Ohr to smear Trump and his circle, and then to topple him. None of what went on the last two years would have been possible without the press, an indispensable partner in the biggest political scandal in a generation. ..."
It will take weeks for the elite pundit class to unravel all the
possible implications and subtexts embedded in Robert Mueller's final report on the charge that
Donald Trump and his team colluded with Russia to fix the 2016 election. The right claims that
the report exonerates Trump fully, while the left contends there are lots of nuggets in the
full text of the final report that may point to obstruction of justice, if not collusion.
But here's all you need to know about the special counsel probe:
First, after nearly two years, the special counsel found no credible evidence of collusion.
It found no credible evidence of a plot to obstruct justice, to hide evidence of collusion. The
entire collusion theory, which has formed the center of elite political discourse for over two
years now, has been publicly and definitely proclaimed to be a hoax by
the very person on whom news organizations and their chosen "experts" and "high-level sources"
had so loudly and insistently pinned their daily, even hourly, hopes of redemption.
Mueller should have filed his report on May 18, 2017 -- the day after the special counsel
started and he learned the FBI had opened an investigation on the sitting president of the
United States because senior officials at the world's premier law enforcement agency thought
Trump was a Russian spy. Based on what evidence? A dossier compiled by a former British spy,
relying on second- and third-hand sources,
paid for by the Clinton campaign .
Instead, the special counsel lasted 674 days, during which millions of people who believed
Mueller was going to turn up conclusive evidence of Trump's devious conspiracies with the
Kremlin have become wrapped up in a collective hallucination that has destroyed the remaining
credibility of the American press and the D.C. expert class whose authority they promote.
Mueller knew that he wasn't ever going to find "collusion" or anything like it because all
the intercepts were right there on his desk. As it turned out, two of his prosecutors,
including Mueller's so-called "pit bull," Andrew Weissman, had been briefed on the
Steele dossier prior to the 2016 election and were told that it came from the Clintons, and was
likely a biased political document.
Weissman left, or was pushed out of, his employment with the special counsel a few weeks
ago, after the arrival of a new attorney general, William Barr, who had deep experience in
government, including stints at the Justice Department and the CIA. Knowing what we know now,
here's what seems most likely to have just happened: Barr looked at the underlying documents on
which Mueller's investigation was based. First, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's May
17, 2017, memo appointing the former FBI director to take supervision of the FBI's
investigation of Trump. And more importantly, the Aug. 2, 2017,
memo from Rosenstein outlining the scope of the investigation.
Among the scope memo's few unredacted lines are allegations regarding Paul Manafort's
"colluding with Russian government officials to interfere with the 2016 elections." The only
known source for those allegations is the Steele dossier. What that strongly suggests is that
under those redactions are other fabricated allegations that were also drawn from the
Clinton-funded smear
campaign -- a dirty-tricks operation that was led by Fusion GPS founder and conspiracy
theorist Glenn Simpson.
And now, after all the Saturday Night Live skits, the obscenity-riddled Bill Maher
and Stephen Colbert routines, the half a million news stories and tens of millions of tweets
all foretelling the end of Trump, the comedians and the adult authority figures are exposed as
hoaxsters, or worse, based on evidence that was always transparently phony.
The Mueller report is in. But the abuse of power that the special counsel embodied is a
deadly cancer on American democracy. Two years of investigations have left families in ruins,
stripping them of their savings, their homes, threatening their liberty, and dragging their
names through the mud. The investigation of the century was partly based on the possibility
that Michael Flynn, a combat veteran who served his country for more than three decades, might
be a Russian spy -- because of a dinner he once attended in Moscow, and because as incoming
national security adviser he spoke to the Russian ambassador to Washington. What rot.
While the length of Mueller's investigative process may have protected the FBI from the
president's immediate rage, the release of the report has exposed the deep corruption and
personal narcissism of the press and its professional networks of "experts" and "sources."
Instead of providing medicine, the press chose instead to spread the disease through a body
that was already badly weakened by the advent of "free" digital media
. Only, it
wasn't free .
* * *
The media criticism of the media's performance covering Russiagate is misleadingly anodyne
-- OK, sure the press did a bad job, but to be fair there really was a lot of suspicious stuff
going on and now let's all get back to doing our important work. But two years of false and
misleading Russiagate coverage was not a mistake, or a symptom of lax fact-checking.
Russiagate was an information operation from the beginning, in which dozens of individual
reporters and institutions actively partnered with paid political operatives like Glenn Simpson
and corrupt law enforcement and intelligence officials like former FBI Deputy Director Andrew
McCabe and senior DOJ official Bruce Ohr to smear Trump and his circle, and then to topple him.
None of what went on the last two years would have been possible without the press, an
indispensable partner in the biggest political scandal in a generation.
The campaign was waged not in hidden corners of the internet, but rather by the country's
most prestigious news organizations -- including, but not only, The New York Times , the
Washington Post , CNN, and MSNBC. The farce that has passed for public discourse the
last two years was fueled by a concerted effort of the media and the pundit class to
obscure gaping holes in logic as well as law. And yet, they all appeared to be credible
because the institutions sustaining them are credible .
... ... ...
Americans still want and need accurate information on which to base their decisions about
their own lives and the path that the country should take. But neither the legacy media nor the
expert class it sustains is likely to survive the post-dossier era in any
recognizable form . For them, Russiagate is an extinction level event.
Not since the witchcraft hysteria of the Middle Ages have we seen such a display of human
idiocy, credulity and absurdist behavior. I refer, of course, to the two-year witch hunt
directed against President Donald Trump which hopefully just concluded last week –
provided that the Hillaryites, Democratic dopes and secret staters who fueled this mania don't
manage to keep the pot boiling.
This column has said from Day 1 that claims Trump was somehow a Russian agent were absurd in
the extreme. So too charges that Moscow had somehow rigged US elections. Nonsense. We know it's
the US that helps rig elections around the globe, not those bumbling Russians who can't afford
the big bribes such nefarious activity requires.
What Muller found after he turned over the big rock was a bevy of slithering, slimy
creatures, shyster lawyers, and sleazes that are normally part of New York's land development
industry. No surprise at all that they surrounded developer Trump. Son-in-law Jared Kushner
hails from this same milieu. The Kushners are pajama-party buddies with Israel's leader,
Benjamin Netanyahu.
Now that the Muller investigation found no collusion between the Trump camp and the Kremlin,
we Americans owe a great big apology to Vladimir Putin for all the slander he has suffered. Too
bad he can't sue the legions of liars and propagandists who heaped abuse on him and,
incidentally, pushed the US and Russia to the edge of war.
People who swallowed these absurdist claims really should question their own grasp of
reality. Those who believed that the evil Kremlin was manipulating votes in Alabama or Missouri
would make good candidates for Scientology or the John Birch Society.
They were the simple fools. Worse, were the propagandists who promoted the disgusting
Steele dossier, a farrago of lies concocted by British intelligence and apparently promoted by
the late John McCain and Trump-hating TV networks. One senses Hillary Clinton's hand in all
this. Hell indeed hath no fury like a woman scorned.
It's so laughably ironic that while the witch hunt sought a non-existent Kremlin master
manipulator, the real foreign string-puller was sitting in the White House Oval office
chortling away: Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and, behind him, the moneybags
patron of Trump and Netanyahu, American billionaire gambling mogul, Sheldon Adelson, the
godfather of Greater Israel.
The three amigos had just pulled off one of the most outrageous violations of international
law by blessing Israel's annexation of the highly strategic Golan Heights that Israel had
seized in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. This usurpation was so egregious that all 14 members of
the UN Security Council condemned it. Even usually wimpy Canada blasted the US.
Giving Golan to Israel means it has permanently secured new water sources from the Mount
Hermon range, artillery and electronic intelligence positions overlooking Damascus, and the
launching pad for new Israeli land expansion into Lebanon and Syria. Israel is said to be
preparing for a new war against Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.
In contrast to this cynical business over Golan, the Trump administration is still
hitting Russia with heavy sanctions over Moscow's re-occupation of Crimea, a strategic
peninsula that was Russian for over 300 years. So Israel can grab Golan but Russia must vacate
Crimea. The logic of sleazy politics.
We also learned last week that according to State Secretary Mike Pompeo, Trump might have
been sent by us by God, like ancient Israel's Queen Esther, to defend Israel from the wicked
Persians. Up to a quarter of Americans, and particularly Bible Belt voters, believe such crazy
nonsense. For them, Trump is a heroic Crusading Christian warrior.
This is as nutty as Trump being a Commie Manchurian candidate. We seem to be living in an
era of absurdity and medieval superstition. No wonder so many nations around the globe fear us.
We too often look like militant Scientologists with nuclear weapons.
Fortunately, the cool, calm, collected Vladimir Putin remains in charge of the other side in
spite of our best efforts to overthrow or provoke him.
A Reprise of the Iraq-WMD Fiasco? February 3, 2017 • 39
Comments
Exclusive: Official Washington's new "group think" – accepting evidence-free charges
that Russia "hacked the U.S. election" – has troubling parallels to the Iraq-WMD
certainty, often from the same people, writes James W Carden.
The controversy over Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election shows
no sign of letting up. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators recently introduced legislation that would
impose sanctions on Russia in retaliation for its acts of "cyber intrusions."At a press event in Washington on Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, called Election Day
2016 "a day that will live in cyber infamy." Previously, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, called
the Russian hacks of the Democratic National Committee "an act of war," while Sen. Lindsey
Graham, R-South Carolina, has claimed that there is
near unanimity among senators regarding Russia's culpability.
Despite all this, the question of who exactly is responsible for the providing WikiLeaks
with the emails of high Democratic Party officials does not lend itself to easy answers. And
yet, for months, despite the lack of publicly disclosed evidence, the media, like these
senators, have been as one: Vladimir Putin's Russia is responsible.
Interestingly, the same neoconservative/center-left alliance which endorsed George W. Bush's
case for war with Iraq is pretty much the same neoconservative/center-left alliance that is
now, all these years later, braying for confrontation with Russia. It's largely the same cast
of characters reading from the Iraq-war era playbook.
It's worth recalling Tony Judt's observation in September 2006 that "those centrist voices
that bayed most insistently for blood in the prelude to the Iraq war are today the most
confident when asserting their monopoly of insight into world affairs."
While that was true then, it is perhaps even more so the case today.
The prevailing sentiment of the media establishment during the months prior to the
disastrous March 2003 invasion of Iraq was that of certainty: George Tenet's now infamous
assurance to President Bush, that the case against Iraq was a "slam drunk," was essentially
what major newspapers and television news outlets were telling the American people at the time.
Iraq posed a threat to "the homeland," therefore Saddam "must go."
The Bush administration, in a move equal parts cynical and clever, engaged in what we would
today call a "disinformation" campaign against its own citizens by planting false stories
abroad, safe in the knowledge that these stories would "bleed over" and be picked up by the
American press.
WMD 'Fake News'
The administration was able to launder what were essentially "fake news" stories, such as
the aluminum tubes fabrication , by
leaking to Michael R. Gordon and
Judith Miller of The New York Times. In September 2002, without an ounce of skepticism, Gordon
and Miller regurgitated the claims of unnamed U.S. intelligence officials that Iraq "has sought
to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes intended as components of centrifuges to
enrich uranium." Gordon and Miller
faithfully relayed "the intelligence agencies' unanimous view that the type of tubes that
Iraq has been seeking are used to make centrifuges."
By 2002, no one had any right to be surprised by what Bush and Cheney were up to; since at
least 1898 (when the U.S. declared war on Spain under the pretense of the fabricated Hearst
battle cry "Remember the Maine!") American governments have repeatedly lied in order to promote
their agenda abroad. And in 2002-3, the media walked in lock step with yet another
administration in pushing for an unnecessary and costly war.
Like The New York Times, The Washington Post also relentlessly pushed the administration's
case for war with Iraq. According
to the journalist Greg Mitchell , "By the Post 's own admission, in the months
before the war, it ran more than 140 stories on its front page promoting the war." All this,
while its editorial page assured readers that the evidence Colin Powell presented to the United
Nations on Iraq's WMD program was "irrefutable." According to the Post, it would be "hard to
imagine" how anyone could doubt the administration's case.
But the Post was hardly alone in its enthusiasm for Bush's war. Among the most prominent
proponents of the Iraq war was The New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg , who, a full year
prior to the invasion, set out to link Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Writing for The New Yorker
in March 2002, Goldberg retailed former CIA Director
James Woolsey's opinion that "It would be a real shame if the C.I.A.'s substantial
institutional hostility to Iraqi democratic resistance groups was keeping it from learning
about Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda in northern Iraq."
Indeed, according to Goldberg ,
"The possibility that Saddam could supply weapons of mass destruction to anti-American terror
groups is a powerful argument among advocates of regime change," while Saddam's "record of
support for terrorist organizations, and the cruelty of his regime make him a threat that
reaches far beyond the citizens of Iraq."
Writing in Slate in October 2002, Goldberg was of the opinion that "In five years . . . I
believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound
morality."
Likewise, The New Republic's Andrew Sullivan was certain
that "we would find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I have no doubt about that." Slate's
Jacob Weisberg supported the invasion because
he thought Saddam Hussein had WMD and he "thought there was a strong chance he'd use them
against the United States."
Even after it was becoming clear that the war was a debacle, the neoconservative pundit
Charles Krauthammer declared that the inability to find WMDs was "troubling" but "only because
it means that the weapons remain unaccounted for and might be in the wrong hands. The idea that
our inability to thus far find the weapons proves that the threat was phony and hyped is simply
false."
Smearing Skeptics
Opponents of the war were regularly accused of unpatriotic disloyalty. Writing in National
Review, the neoconservative writer David Frum
accused anti-intervention conservatives of going "far, far beyond the advocacy of
alternative strategies." According to Frum, "They deny and excuse terror. They espouse a
potentially self-fulfilling defeatism. They publicize wild conspiracy theories. And some of
them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation's enemies."
Similarly, The New Republic's Jonathan Chait castigated anti-war liberals for turning
against Bush. "Have Bush haters lost their minds?" asked Chait . "Certainly some have.
Antipathy to Bush has, for example, led many liberals not only to believe the costs of the Iraq
war outweigh the benefits but to refuse to acknowledge any benefits at all."
Yet of course we now know, thanks, in part, to a
new book by former CIA analyst John Nixon, that everything the U.S. government thought it
knew about Saddam Hussein was indeed wrong. Nixon, the CIA analyst who interrogated Hussein
after his capture in December 2003, asks "Was Saddam worth removing from power?" "The answer,"
says Nixon, "must be no. Saddam was busy writing novels in 2003. He was no longer running the
government."
It turns out that the skeptics were correct after all. And so the principal lesson the
promoters of Bush and Cheney's war of choice should have learned is that blind certainty is the
enemy of fair inquiry and nuance. The hubris that many in the mainstream media displayed in
marginalizing liberal and conservative anti-war voices was to come back to haunt them. But not,
alas, for too long.
A Dangerous Replay?
Today something eerily similar to the pre-war debate over Iraq is taking place regarding the
allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election. Assurances from the
intelligence community and from anonymous Obama administration "senior officials" about the
existence of evidence is being treated as, well, actual evidence.
State Department spokesman John Kirby told CNN that he is "100%
certain" of the role that Russia played in U.S. election. The administration's expressions of
certainty are then uncritically echoed by the mainstream media. Skeptics are likewise written
off, slandered as " Kremlin cheerleaders " or
worse.
Unsurprisingly, The Washington Post is reviving its Bush-era role as principal publicist for
the government's case. Yet in its haste to do the government's bidding, the Post has published
two widely debunked stories relating to Russia (one on the scourge of Russian inspired "fake
news", the other on a non-existent Russian hack of a Vermont electric utility) onto which the
paper has had to append "editor's notes" to correct the original stories.
Yet, those misguided stories have not deterred the Post's opinion page from being equally
aggressive in its depiction of Russian malfeasance. In late December, the Post published an
op-ed by Rep. Adam Schiff and former Rep. Jane Harmon claiming "Russia's
theft and strategic leaking of emails and documents from the Democratic Party and other
officials present a challenge to the U.S. political system unlike anything we've
experienced."
On Dec. 30, the Post editorial board
chastised President-elect Trump for seeming to dismiss "a brazen and unprecedented attempt
by a hostile power to covertly sway the outcome of a U.S. presidential election." The Post
described Russia's actions as a "cyber-Pearl Harbor."
On Jan. 1, the neoconservative columnist Josh Rogin
told readers that the recent announcement of
sanctions against Russia "brought home a shocking realization that Russia is using hybrid
warfare in an aggressive attempt to disrupt and undermine our democracy."
Meanwhile, many of the same voices who were among the loudest cheerleaders for the war in
Iraq have also been reprising their Bush-era roles in vouching for the solidity of the
government's case.
Jonathan Chait, now a columnist for New York magazine, is clearly convinced by what the
government has thus far provided. "That Russia wanted Trump to win has been obvious for
months," writes Chait.
"Of course it all came from the Russians, I'm sure it's all there in the intel," Charles
Krauthammer told Fox News on Jan. 2. Krauthammer is certain.
And Andrew Sullivan is certain as to the motive. "Trump and Putin's bromance," Sullivan told MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Jan. 2, "has
one goal this year: to destroy the European Union and to undermine democracy in Western
Europe."
David Frum,
writing in The Atlantic , believes Trump "owes his office in considerable part to illegal
clandestine activities in his favor conducted by a hostile, foreign spy service."
Jacob Weisberg agrees, tweeting: "Russian covert action threw the election to Donald Trump.
It's that simple." Back in 2008, Weisberg
wrote that "the first thing I hope I've learned from this experience of being wrong about
Iraq is to be less trusting of expert opinion and received wisdom." So much for that.
Foreign Special Interests
Another, equally remarkable similarity to the period of 2002-3 is the role foreign lobbyists
have played in helping to whip up a war fever. As readers will no doubt recall, Ahmed Chalabi,
leader of the Iraqi National Congress, which served, in effect as an Iraqi government-in-exile,
worked hand in hand with the Washington lobbying firm Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey (BKSH)
to sell Bush's war on television and on the op-ed pages of major American
newspapers.
Chalabi was also a trusted source of Judy Miller of the Times, which, in an apology to its
readers on May 26,
2004, wrote : "The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been
named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced
reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration
and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles." The pro-war lobbying of the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee has also been exhaustivelydocumented .
Though we do not know how widespread the practice has been as of yet, something similar is
taking place today. Articles calling for confrontation with Russia over its alleged "hybrid
war" with the West are
appearingwithincreasingregularity
. Perhaps the most egregious example of this newly popular genre appeared on Jan. 1 in
Politico
magazine. That essay, which claims, among many other things, that "we're in a war" with
Russia comes courtesy of one Molly McKew.
McKew is seemingly qualified to make such a pronouncement because she, according to her bio
on the Politico website, served as an "adviser to Georgian President Saakashvili's government
from 2009-2013, and to former Moldovan Prime Minister Filat in 2014-2015." Seems reasonable
enough. That is until one discovers that McKew is actually registered with the
Department of Justice as a lobbyist for two anti-Russian political parties, Georgia's UMN
and Moldova's PLDM.
Records show her work for the consulting firm Fianna Strategies frequently takes her to
Capitol Hill to lobby U.S. Senate and Congressional staffers, as well as prominent U.S.
journalists at The Washington Post and The New York Times, on behalf of her Georgian and
Moldovan clients.
"The truth," writes McKew, "is that fighting a new Cold War would be in America's interest.
Russia teaches us a very important lesson: losing an ideological war without a fight will ruin
you as a nation. The fight is the American way." Or, put another way: the truth is that
fighting a new Cold War would be in McKew's interest – but perhaps not America's.
While you wouldn't know it from the media coverage (or from reading deeply disingenuous
pieces like McKew's) as things now stand, the case against Russia is far from certain. New
developments are emerging almost daily. One of the latest is a report from the
cyber-engineering company Wordfence, which concluded that "The IP
addresses that DHS [Department of Homeland Security] provided may have been used for an attack
by a state actor like Russia. But they don't appear to provide any association with
Russia."
Indeed, according to Wordfence, "The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be
Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an
indicator of compromise for any website."
On Jan. 4,
BuzzFeed reported that, according to the DNC, the FBI never carried out a forensic
examination on the email servers that were allegedly hacked by the Russian government. "The
FBI," said DNC spokesman Eric Walker, "never requested access to the DNC's computer
servers."
What the agency did do was rely on the findings of a private-sector, third-party vendor that
was brought in by the DNC after the initial hack was discovered. In May, the company,
Crowdstrike, determined that the hack was the work of the Russians. As one unnamed intelligence
official told BuzzFeed, "CrowdStrike is pretty good. There's no reason to believe that anything
that they have concluded is not accurate."
Perhaps not. Yet Crowdstrike is hardly a disinterested party when it comes to Russia.
Crowdstrike's founder and chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch , is also a senior fellow at the
Washington think tank, The Atlantic Council, which has been at the forefront of escalating
tensions with Russia.
As I
reported in The Nation in early January , the connection between Alperovitch and the
Atlantic Council is highly relevant given that the Atlantic Council is funded in part by the State
Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and
the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. In recent years, it has emerged as a leading voice
calling for a new Cold War with Russia.
Time to Rethink the 'Group Think'
And given the rather thin nature of the declassified evidence provided by the Obama
administration, might it be time to consider an alternative theory of the case? William Binney,
a 36-year veteran of the National Security Agency and the man responsible for creating many of
its collection systems, thinks so. Binney believes that the DNC emails were leaked, not hacked,
writing
that "it is puzzling why NSA cannot produce hard evidence implicating the Russian
government and WikiLeaks. Unless we are dealing with a leak from an insider, not a
hack."
None of this is to say, of course, that Russia did not and could not have attempted to
influence the U.S. presidential election. The intelligence community may have
intercepted damning evidence of the Russian government's culpability. The government's
hesitation to provide the public with more convincing evidence may stem from an
understandable and wholly appropriate desire to protect the intelligence community's sources
and methods. But as it now stands the publicly available evidence is open to question.
But meanwhile the steady drumbeat of "blame Russia" is having an effect. According to a
recent you.gov/Economist
poll, 58 percent of Americans view Russia as "unfriendly/enemy" while also finding that 52
percent of Democrats believed Russia "tampered with vote tallies."
With Congress back in session, Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain is set to hold
a series of hearings focusing on Russian malfeasance, and the steady drip-drip-drip of
allegations regarding Trump and Putin is only serving to box in the new President when it comes
to pursuing a much-needed detente with Russia.
It also does not appear that a congressional inquiry will start from scratch and critically
examine the evidence. On Friday, two senators – Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat
Sheldon Whitehouse –
announced a Senate Judiciary subcommittee investigation into Russian interference in
elections in the U.S. and elsewhere. But they already seemed to have made up their minds about
the conclusion: "Our goal is simple," the senators said in a joint statement "To the fullest
extent possible we want to shine a light on Russian activities to undermine democracy."
So, before the next round of Cold War posturing commences, now might be the time to stop,
take a deep breath and ask: Could the rush into a new Cold War with Russia be as disastrous and
consequential – if not more so – as was the rush to war with Iraq nearly 15 years
ago? We may, unfortunately, find out.
James W Carden is a contributing writer for The Nation and editor of The American Committee
for East-West Accord's eastwestaccord.com. He previously served as an advisor on Russia to the
Special Representative for Global Inter-governmental Affairs at the US State Department.
Yes, "Trump was selling himself as a traitor to a corrupt class, someone who knew how soulless and greedy the ruling elite was because
he was one of them. " But he turned to be a fake, a marionette who is controlled by neocons like hapless Bush II.
Notable quotes:
"... Last weekend, I published a book chapter criticizing the Russiagate narrative, claiming it was a years-long press error on the scale of the WMD affair heading into the Iraq war. ..."
"... The overwhelming theme of that race, long before anyone even thought about Russia, was voter rage at the entire political system. ..."
"... The anger wasn't just on the Republican side, where Trump humiliated the Republicans' chosen $150 million contender , Jeb Bush (who got three delegates, or $50 million per delegate ). It was also evident on the Democratic side, where a self-proclaimed "Democratic Socialist" with little money and close to no institutional support became a surprise contender . ..."
"... Trump was gunning for votes in both parties. The core story he told on the stump was one of system-wide corruption, in which there was little difference between Republicans and Democrats. ..."
"... Perhaps just by luck, Trump was tuned in to the fact that the triumvirate of ruling political powers in America – the two parties, the big donors and the press – were so unpopular with large parts of the population that he could win in the long haul by attracting their ire, even if he was losing battles on the way. ..."
"... The subtext was always: I may be crude, but these people are phonies, pretending to be upset when they're making money off my bullshit . ..."
"... Trump was selling himself as a traitor to a corrupt class, someone who knew how soulless and greedy the ruling elite was because he was one of them. ..."
Faulty coverage of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign later made foreign espionage a more plausible explanation for his ascent to power
Last weekend, I published a book chapter criticizing the Russiagate
narrative, claiming it was a years-long press error on the scale of the WMD affair heading into the Iraq war.
Obviously (and I said this in detail), the WMD fiasco had a far greater real-world impact, with hundreds of thousands of lives
lost and trillions in treasure wasted. Still, I thought Russiagate would do more to damage the reputation of the national news media
in the end.
A day after publishing that excerpt, a
Attorney General
William Barr sent his summary of the report to Congress, containing a quote filed by Special Counsel
Robert Mueller : "[T]he investigation did not establish
that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."
Suddenly, news articles appeared arguing people like myself and Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept were
rushing to judgment
, calling us bullies whose writings were intended to leave reporters "cowed" and likely to "
back down from aggressive coverage of Trump ."
This was baffling. One of the most common criticisms of people like Greenwald, Michael Tracey, Aaron Mate, Rania Khalek, Max Blumenthal,
Jordan Chariton and many others is that Russiagate "skeptics" - I hate that term, because it implies skepticism isn't normal and
healthy in this job - were really secret Trump partisans, part of a "horseshoe" pact between far left and far right to focus attention
on the minor foibles of the center instead of Trump's more serious misdeeds. Even I received this label, and I once wrote a book
about Trump called Insane Clown President .
A typical social media complaint:
@mtaibbi and all his deplorable followers. The truth will come out
and your premature celebrations are embarrassing.
It's irritating that I even have to address this, because my personal political views shouldn't have anything to do with how I
cover anything. But just to get it out of the way: I'm no fan of
Donald Trump .
I had a well-developed opinion about him long before the 2016 race started. I once interned for Trump's nemesis-biographer, the
late, great muckraker Wayne Barrett
. The birther campaign
of 2011 was all I ever needed to make a voting decision about the man.
I started covering the last presidential race in 2015 just as I was finishing up a book about the death of Eric Garner called
I Can't Breathe . Noting that
a birther campaign started by "peripheral political curiosity and reality TV star Donald Trump" led to 41 percent of respondents
in one poll believing Barack Obama was "not even American," I wrote:
If anyone could communicate the frustration black Americans felt over Stop-and-Frisk and other neo-vagrancy laws that made
black people feel like they could be arrested anywhere, it should have been Barack Obama. He'd made it all the way to the White
House and was still considered to be literally trespassing by a huge plurality of the population.
So I had no illusions about Trump. The Russia story bothered
me for other reasons, mostly having to do with a general sense of the public being misled, and not even about Russia.
The problem lay with the precursor tale to Russiagate, i.e. how Trump even got to be president in the first place.
The 2016 campaign season brought to the surface awesome levels of political discontent. After the election, instead of wondering
where that anger came from, most of the press quickly pivoted to a new tale about a Russian plot to attack our Democracy. This conveyed
the impression that the election season we'd just lived through had been an aberration, thrown off the rails by an extraordinary
espionage conspiracy between Trump and a cabal of evil foreigners.
This narrative contradicted everything I'd seen traveling across America in my two years of covering the campaign. The overwhelming
theme of that race, long before anyone even thought about Russia, was voter rage at the entire political system.
The anger wasn't just on the Republican side, where Trump humiliated the Republicans' chosen
$150 million
contender , Jeb Bush (who got three delegates, or
$50 million per delegate ). It was also evident on the Democratic side, where a self-proclaimed "Democratic Socialist" with little
money and close to no institutional support became
a surprise contender
.
Because of a series of press misdiagnoses before the Russiagate stories even began, much of the American public was unprepared
for news of a Trump win. A cloak-and-dagger election-fixing conspiracy therefore seemed more likely than it might have otherwise
to large parts of the domestic news audience, because they hadn't been prepared for anything else that would make sense.
This was particularly true of upscale, urban, blue-leaning news consumers, who were not told to take the possibility of a Trump
White House seriously.
Priority number-one of the political class after a vulgar, out-of-work game-show host conquered the White House should have been
a long period of ruthless self-examination. This story delayed that for at least two years.
It wasn't even clear Trump whether or not wanted to win. Watching him on the trail, Trump at times went beyond seeming disinterested.
There were periods where it looked like South Park's "
Did I offend you? " thesis was true, and he was
actively trying to lose, only the polls just wouldn't let him.
Forget about the gift the end of Russiagate might give Trump by allowing him to spend 2020 peeing from a great height on the national
press corps. The more serious issue has to be the failure to face the reality of why he won last time, because we still haven't done
that.
... ... ...
Trump, the billionaire, denounced us as the elitists in the room. He'd call us "bloodsuckers," "dishonest," and in one line that
produced laughs considering who was saying it, "
highly-paid ."
He also did something that I immediately recognized as brilliant (or diabolical, depending on how you look at it). He dared cameramen
to turn their cameras to show the size of his crowds.
They usually wouldn't – hey, we don't work for the guy – which thrilled Trump, who would then say something to the effect of,
"See! They're
very dishonest people ." Audiences would turn toward us, and boo and hiss, and even throw little bits of paper and other things
our way. This was unpleasant, but it was hard not to see its effectiveness: he'd re-imagined the lifeless, poll-tested format of
the stump speech, turning it into menacing, personal, WWE-style theater.
Trump was gunning for votes in both parties. The core story he told on the stump was one of system-wide corruption, in which there
was little difference between Republicans and Democrats.
...
Perhaps just by luck, Trump was tuned in to the fact that the triumvirate of ruling political powers in America – the two parties,
the big donors and the press – were so unpopular with large parts of the population that he could win in the long haul by attracting
their ire, even if he was losing battles on the way.
...
The subtext was always: I may be crude, but these people are phonies, pretending to be upset when they're making money off my
bullshit .
I thought this was all nuts and couldn't believe it was happening in a real presidential campaign. But, a job is a job. My first
feature on candidate Trump was called "
How
America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable ." The key section read:
In person, you can't miss it: The same way Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house, Donald on the stump can see his future.
The pundits don't want to admit it, but it's sitting there in plain view, 12 moves ahead, like a chess game already won:
President Donald Trump
It turns out we let our electoral process devolve into something so fake and dysfunctional that any half-bright con man with
the stones to try it could walk right through the front door and tear it to shreds on the first go.
And Trump is no half-bright con man, either. He's way better than average.
Traditional Democratic audiences appeared thrilled by the piece and shared it widely. I was invited on scads of cable shows to
discuss ad nauseum the "con man" line. This made me nervous, because it probably meant these people hadn't read the piece, which among other things posited the failures
of America's current ruling class meant Trump's insane tactics could actually work.
Trump was selling himself as a traitor to a corrupt class, someone who knew how soulless and greedy the ruling elite was because
he was one of them.
...
The only reason most blue-state media audiences had been given for Trump's poll numbers all along was racism, which was surely
part of the story but not the whole picture. A lack of any other explanation meant Democratic audiences, after the shock of election
night, were ready to reach for any other data point that might better explain what just happened.
Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity in
what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming. Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither
Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing
to vote for Donald Trump."
Post-election, Russiagate made it all worse. People could turn on their TVs at any hour of the day and see anyone from Rachel
Maddow to Chris Cuomo openly reveling in Trump's troubles. This is what Fox looks like to liberal audiences.
Worse, the "walls are closing in" theme -- two years old now -- was just a continuation of the campaign mistake, reporters confusing
what they wanted to happen with what was happening . The story was always more complicated than was being represented.
"... Paul Krugman. In " Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate ," in July 2016, he suggested that "there's something very strange and disturbing going on here, and it should not be ignored." ..."
"... With Trump's election, this argument only intensified. The Intercept found that in a six-week period starting in late February of 2017, shortly after Trump's inauguration, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow homed in on "The Russia Connection," as she called it, with Russia-related fare accounting for more than half of her broadcasts. "If the American presidency right now is the product of collusion between the Russian intelligence services and an American campaign, I mean that is so profoundly big," Maddow declared. Time rendered the thought balloon as a cover illustration, showing the red walls of the Kremlin and the candy-striped domes of St. Basil's Cathedral sprouting from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. ..."
"... The apex of such coverage was attained by Jonathan Chait, in his July 2018 New York opus , on the eve of a meeting between "Prump" and "Tutin" in Helsinki. The headline: "Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart -- Or His Handler? A plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion." The mind-boggling part was Chait's hypothesis that Trump possibly became a Kremlin asset back in 1987, when the real-estate mogul had visited Moscow. ..."
"... After all, contrary evidence, before the Mueller Report was submitted, was not hard to find. In April 2018, Trump met with German chancellor Angela Merkel in the White House, and gave her a difficult time, according to a story that later ran on the front page of the Wall Street Journal , about her backing of a pipeline to ship natural gas from Russia to Germany. "Angela," Trump said, according to the Journal, "you've got to stop buying gas from Putin." Do those sound like the words of a Kremlin agent? ..."
"... The paranoid style, which can include an inability to live with complexity and ambiguity and an intolerance for adverse outcomes, is characteristic for its resilience. ..."
"... In any event, Democrats in Congress are apt to pursue ongoing investigations into the "Russia connection" with even more intensity, in hopes of uncovering some nugget that eluded Mueller. The goal, as Hofstadter might have described it, is to repossess the country -- and that can't be achieved until Donald Trump leaves the White House. ..."
The idea of irascible Donald Trump as a compliant tool of the Kremlin in Moscow -- some sort
of clandestine agent or asset, in spy parlance -- has always seemed off-center. Who has ever
been able to control him, this volcano of a man? Does Trump seem capable of keeping secrets,
following orders, or maintaining the strict discipline required of a double agent? So, to sober
minds, it should come as no surprise that the final report of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller
III supports no such conclusion. The report, as summarized by Attorney General William P. Barr
in a letter to congressional leaders on Sunday, found no conspiracy between the Trump campaign
and Russia to fix the 2016 election in Trump's favor. And that's exactly what Trump has been
saying, in his mantra of "no collusion," from the start of this nearly two-year-old
investigation.
Surely, then, it's time for a reckoning -- starting with, say, New York Times
columnist Paul Krugman. In " Donald
Trump, the Siberian Candidate ," in July 2016, he suggested that "there's something very
strange and disturbing going on here, and it should not be ignored." On Twitter, Washington
Post columnist Anne Applebaum chimed in that Trump was "the real-life Manchurian
candidate." The Krugman-Applebaum references were to Richard Condon's classic Cold War novel,
published in 1959, and the subsequent film, The Manchurian Candidate , about an American
prisoner of war brainwashed into becoming a Communist sleeper agent. That, America was told,
was Donald Trump.
With Trump's election, this argument only intensified. The Intercept found that in a
six-week period starting in late February of 2017, shortly after Trump's inauguration, MSNBC's
Rachel Maddow homed in on "The Russia Connection," as she called it, with Russia-related fare
accounting for more than half of her broadcasts. "If the American presidency right now is the
product of collusion between the Russian intelligence services and an American campaign, I mean
that is so profoundly big," Maddow declared. Time rendered the thought balloon as a
cover illustration, showing the red walls of the Kremlin and the candy-striped domes of St.
Basil's Cathedral sprouting from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue.
The apex of such coverage was attained by Jonathan Chait, in his July 2018 New
York opus , on the eve of a meeting between "Prump" and "Tutin" in Helsinki. The
headline: "Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart -- Or His Handler? A plausible theory of
mind-boggling collusion." The mind-boggling part was Chait's hypothesis that Trump possibly
became a Kremlin asset back in 1987, when the real-estate mogul had visited Moscow.
These are just samples of the Trump-as-Putin's-tool theory, now discredited by Mueller's
report. The idea was advanced not only by liberal media types but also by anti-Trump
conservatives, and it became a talking point in Democratic Party and U.S. foreign-policy
establishment circles. John Brennan, Barack Obama's former CIA director, all but called Trump a
traitor to America, for being in Putin's pocket. Of course, not all Trump opponents swallowed
this improbable if seductive line -- but many did.
Partisan politics are one factor at work in efforts to show Trump as being in cahoots with
the Russians. But mere partisanship seems insufficient to explain an abiding belief in Trump as
Moscow's pawn. After all, contrary evidence, before the Mueller Report was submitted, was not
hard to find. In April 2018, Trump met with German chancellor Angela Merkel in the White House,
and gave her a difficult time, according to a story that later ran on the front page of the
Wall Street Journal , about her backing of a pipeline to ship natural gas from Russia to
Germany. "Angela," Trump said, according to the Journal, "you've got to stop buying gas
from Putin." Do those sound like the words of a Kremlin agent?
The root explanation for the belief in a compromised Trump lies elsewhere than partisan
politics, and a good place to look is the classic essay by historian Richard Hofstadter, "
The Paranoid
Style in American Politics ," published in the November 1964 issue of Harper's.
Hofstadter was speaking, in the first instance, of the "Radical Right" of his day and its
cherished conviction that Communists had infiltrated the highest echelons of the U.S.
government. But the main point of his essay was to identify a recurrent pattern in our
political life, going back to the republic's early days. "I believe there is a style of mind
that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing," he wrote in his opening
paragraph. "I call it the paranoid style," he explained, "simply because no other word
adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy
that I have in mind." In using this expression, he took pains to say, he was not speaking in a
clinical sense of "men with profoundly disturbed minds." Rather, it was "the use of paranoid
modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant."
Red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s was one example; another was leaders of the
Populist Party in the 1890s believing in "secret cabals" of "gold gamblers" to ruin
America.
"Trump as Kremlin man" now can be added to these dubious annals. Hofstadter, who died in
1970, surely would be surprised. Though he did not see the "paranoid style" as the sole
province of the Right, he tended to view most exhibitors of this style as figures and movements
closer to the margins of American politics than to its center. A New York Times
columnist, say, was not the sort of person he had in mind. Yet his insight into the "modern
right wing" as feeling "dispossessed," as living in an America that "has been largely taken
away from them and their kind," and therefore liable to the paranoid style, also applies in the
current instance. For at least some of his critics, Trump's election was so perplexing and
disorienting that it was as if they were living in a foreign country. How could this be
happening in "their" America?
They still feel this way. The paranoid style, which can include an inability to live with
complexity and ambiguity and an intolerance for adverse outcomes, is characteristic for its
resilience. Mueller, the decorated former Marine and former FBI director, is apt to be
attacked, in some disbelieving quarters, as a sellout: What isn't he telling us? Even the
publication of his full report -- as many Americans, rightly, are demanding -- will not satisfy
critics, who will insist that the absence of evidence of collusion is simply an element of the
vast conspiracy to cover it up.
A vindicated Trump, for his part, can be expected only to heighten the conspiratorial mood
of our times. An irony of this episode is that he, too, is the sort of person apt to believe in
intrigues, only in his view of the matter, the dark plot is a scheme by the "Deep State" to
keep him from getting elected and, once elected, to stay in power. He may well be loathed by
more than a few Washington bureaucrats, but that idea looks like another rabbit hole.
In any
event, Democrats in Congress are apt to pursue ongoing investigations into the "Russia
connection" with even more intensity, in hopes of uncovering some nugget that eluded Mueller.
The goal, as Hofstadter might have described it, is to repossess the country -- and that can't
be achieved until Donald Trump leaves the White House.
Paul
Starobin , a former Moscow bureau chief of Business Week , is working on a book on
the Alaska gold rush of 1900.
"... Anyway, Trump is neutered. His appointments and policies are indistinguishable from a meaner, more reckless and more dysfunctional version of Dubya, even down to the Bush-era retreads. ..."
"... The anti-Russia fear-mongering from the Pentagon's Combatant Commandeers is thick with ominous warnings. (All requiring huge new spends for their War Toys of course.) ..."
"... New incoming Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mike Milley has already demonstrated his Nut-Job sensibilities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLfkJODepcI ..."
"... Front of the mind or back of the mind, the politics of Russia post-Mueller have already been baked into Washington with the huge bills for the poisonous pathological cake being delivered to the deluded and hapless taxpayers. ..."
Anyway, Trump is neutered. His appointments and policies are indistinguishable from a
meaner, more reckless and more dysfunctional version of Dubya, even down to the Bush-era
retreads.
I've stated before that the Pentagon now controls foreign policy. Along with the sanctified
Generals, Lunatic Bolton, Fat Pompeo, Nitwit Pence and other civilians are completely wired
into the Warfare State architecture parasitically dependent on a Russia = Soviet Union 2.0
model.
The anti-Russia fear-mongering from the Pentagon's Combatant Commandeers is thick with
ominous warnings. (All requiring huge new spends for their War Toys of course.)
The anti-Russia froth spilling out of a sclerotic Congress suffused with Idiots who want
to throw even more Billions at the 5-Sided Pleasure Palace is thick and heavy.
While Trump has proven himself to be a stupid, impotent fop against that war-mongering
menagerie.
Re: "Politics in Washington can often guide policy. The question post-Mueller is
whether policy will now be front of mind."
Front of the mind or back of the mind, the politics of Russia post-Mueller have already
been baked into Washington with the huge bills for the poisonous pathological cake being
delivered to the deluded and hapless taxpayers.
Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home
without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media.
As has long been rumored, the former FBI chief's independent probe will result in multiple
indictments and convictions, but no "presidency-wrecking" conspiracy charges, or anything that
would meet the layman's definition of "collusion" with Russia.
The New York Times:
A senior Justice Department official said that Mr. Mueller would not recommend new
indictments. The Times tried to soften the emotional blow for the millions of Americans trained
in these years to place hopes for the overturn of the Trump presidency in Mueller. Nobody even
pretended it was supposed to be a fact-finding mission, instead of an act of faith.
The Special Prosecutor literally became a religious figure during the last few years, with
votive candles sold in his image and Saturday Night Live cast members singing "All I Want for
Christmas is You" to him featuring the rhymey line: "Mueller please come through, because the
only option is a coup."
The Times story today tried to preserve Santa Mueller's reputation, noting Trump's Attorney
General William Barr's reaction was an "endorsement" of the fineness of Mueller's work:
In an apparent endorsement of an investigation that Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked as a
"witch hunt," Mr. Barr said Justice Department officials never had to intervene to keep Mr.
Mueller from taking an inappropriate or unwarranted step.
Mueller, in other words, never stepped out of the bounds of his job description. But could
the same be said for the news media?
It's a brutal week for anyone who expected
special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election to be the end of
Donald Trump. Per Attorney General William Barr's
summary
of Mueller's report, there is no evidence to prove that Trump or his campaign conspired with
Russian agents to influence the election; while Mueller left the door open to obstruction of justice charges,
Barr has decided there are no grounds for those, either. Maybe the "Mueller time" merchandise can now be
marketed to Trump fans.
This outcome has left a lot of "Resistance" types
distraught and discredited, and it's an entirely self-made disaster. Trump/Russia hype and hysteria on the left
have been wildly over the top. It wasn't just fringe
conspiracy theorists
like British journalist Louise Mensch who claimed Trump was knowingly working for the
Kremlin; Jonathan Chait and Max Boot floated the same idea in
New York Magazine
and
The Washington Post
, respectively, as did
Bill Maher
on HBO's
Real Time
. Pundits, ex-intelligence officials,
and some congressional Democrats (notably California's Adam Schiff) repeatedly asserted that the Mueller probe
was all but certain to end with major indictments. It seemed like every week, a new "
bombshell
"
signaled "the beginning of the end" for Trump.
But now, the triumphant pro-Trump Republicans and
left-wing Trump/Russia skeptics (two groups currently enjoying a bizarre love-in) are engaging in just as much
hype and overreach -- and it may end badly for them, too.
For the record: From the start, I have been
mostly a Trump/Russia agnostic. In my
first piece
on the subject in July 2016, for the now-defunct AllThink blog, I wrote:
I don't think anyone is actually claiming that Trump is literally a [Vladimir] Putin agent. It's more that
Putin would much prefer to see Trump rather than [Hillary] Clinton in the White House; that Trump is not at
all averse to having Putin in his corner; and that top Trump staffers, campaign chairman Paul Manafort and
Russia adviser Carter Page, have tangible ties to the Kremlin regime and to Putin's cronies. And that Putin
may be using KGB-style dirty tricks to help elect Trump -- such as putting out what the Russians call
kompromat
on Clinton.
(I think this aligns pretty closely with
the Mueller report as summarized by Barr.)
Later, I was highly skeptical of the more extreme
Trump/Russia claims, including "
pee
tape
" blackmail. In a
December 2017
Newsday
column, I warned about the damage from
biased and sloppy media coverage of the story. In
July 2018
, I condemned Trump's conduct when he stood next to Putin at the Helsinki summit and badmouthed
the Mueller probe while endorsing Putin's denial of election meddling; I also stressed that "[c]ollusion with
the Kremlin is certainly not the only way to explain Trump's actions."
In other words, I am not a Russiagate peddler
refusing to concede error and bitterly clinging to my discredited position.
I simply believe that, on the facts, the extreme
"Russia Hoax" position (there was never anything to the Trump/Russia story except a conspiracy theory intended
to take down Trump) is as untenable as the extreme "Russiagate" position (Trump is Putin's bitch).
I think it's a bit galling for Trump defenders to
crow vindication when, only recently, the same people -- including Trump himself -- were viciously attacking
Mueller and slamming his investigation as a baseless witch-hunt cooked up by Trump haters and "Deep State"
malefactors. And yes, in some cases, it's literally the same people, not just people from the same political
camp. For instance,
Federalist
writer Sean Davis, who has been
gleefully
flogging
the media for their coverage of the scandal, had this to say last October when some Trump zealots
attempted to frame Mueller for sexual harassment:
(Davis apparently deleted the tweet later, but
it's definitely real, as demonstrated by
an embed
appearing on
RedState
.)
Indeed, Fox News Opinion was attacking Mueller on
the eve of the release of his findings, in an
article
that now looks deliciously ironic:
Fast-forward a few days, and anyone who has
the temerity to suggest that the Barr summary of Mueller's findings may not be the absolute last word on
Trump/Russia is promptly accused of being pathetic and desperate.
We'll know more soon when the full Mueller
report is out. But pending its release, here's a quick look at some of the post-Mueller "Russia hoax" myths.
Myth: The Mueller findings prove there was never anything to Trump/Russia. It's simply an anti-Trump conspiracy
theory spawned by the Christopher Steele dossier -- a discredited piece of Clinton opposition research -- and
fanned by the Trump-hating media.
This is sheer nonsense.
First of all: Discussions of Trump's, and his
campaign's, Russian connections began before anyone had heard of the dossier and before the FBI opened its
investigation into the matter.
The Washington Post
ran a
piece
on the Trump-Putin "bromance" and Trump's extensive financial ties to Russia on June 17, 2016, when
Steele, a former British intelligence agent, was just starting to compile his Trump-Russia dossier. An article
by Franklin Foer titled "
Putin's
Puppet
" appeared in
Slate
on July 4, still nearly
a month
before the FBI started its investigation into Russian election interference and some three months
before FBI agents first met with Steele.
Foer discussed Trump's "odes to Putin," the
Kremlin-controlled media's vocal support for Trump, the hacking of Democratic National Committee servers by
Russian intelligence, Trump's financial connections to Russia, and the fact that "Trump's inner circle is
populated with advisers and operatives who have long careers advancing the interests of the Kremlin." At
Talking Points Memo
in
late July
, Josh Marshall also highlighted the fact that the one foreign policy issue where Trump's team
pushed for change in the Republican Party platform was to tone down language calling for more American
assistance to Ukraine in its border conflict with Russia.
Trump's infamous "
Russia,
if you're listening
" remark on July 27 of that year, responding to questions about the DNC hacking by
jocularly inviting Russia to find Clinton's missing emails, raised the story to a new level. Unlike many
people, I believe he was making a tacky joke, not actually signaling the Kremlin. Even so, it's not difficult
to understand why this conduct would be considered suspicious. At best, a presidential candidate was responding
to reports that his opponent had been targeted for cyberattacks by an adversarial foreign power by jokingly
cheering for the hackers.
There are plenty of others times Trump
behaved in ways that fed the story.
There was his
statement
to NBC's Lester Holt in May 2017 that he fired James Comey because of the "Russia thing."
(Whether we now find Comey an obnoxiously self-important grandstander is totally irrelevant.)
There was, even more shockingly, the
revelation
that Trump bragged about the firing in a White House meeting with Russian foreign minister
Sergei Lavrov and Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, calling Comey "a real nut job" and saying that the
pressure he had faced over the Russia story was now "taken off." (Is there any way such behavior by the
President of the United States would
not
raise disturbing questions?)
There was his behavior at the Helsinki summit, and
numerous instances in which he took a remarkably mild attitude toward apparent criminal activity by the
Kremlin. Just last October, in a
60 Minutes
interview on CBS, Trump
conceded
that Putin had probably orchestrated the attempted poisoning of Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and
his daughter Yulia in England -- but brushed it off with "it's not in our country." (This is an
incident
in which Russian intelligence agents tried to kill two Russians on the soil of one of our top
allies, in the process accidentally killing one of that country's nationals and injuring two more. As they say:
Let that sink in.) In the same interview, Trump also downplayed 2016 Russian election meddling by claiming,
with no evidence, that "China meddled too" and "is a bigger problem."
Aside from that, there really were extensive
interactions between the Trump campaign and Russians with Kremlin or intelligence ties. There really was -- as
the Barr letter on Mueller's findings explicitly states -- a Russian effort to influence the election and
undermine Clinton. (Was the intent to damage the generally expected Clinton presidency, or to help elect Trump?
It's likely this was viewed as a win-win scenario.) Mueller
indicted
13 Russians over that operation. Remember, Mueller's mandate was to investigate
all
Russian interference in the 2016 election (including the possible
role of people inside the Trump campaign in aiding such interference). So to dismiss the Mueller probe as a
"conspiracy theory" and/or a waste of money is to show a rather shocking lack of regard for the integrity of
our elections.
It's true that not one American citizen
has been indicted for "collusion" (or, to be more accurate, conspiracy; there is no such crime as "collusion").
The prosecutions of Trump associates have been over other, only tangentially related things: Paul Manafort and
Rick Gates, for
financial crimes
connected to consulting work for pro-Russian Ukrainians; Roger Stone (who still
faces trial
in November) for lying to Congress about his contacts with WikiLeaks, the "whistleblower"
organization that published the hacked documents; former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and campaign
staffer George Papadopoulos, for lying to the FBI about Russian contacts. Mueller has found -- there's no reason
to doubt the accuracy of the Barr letter on this -- that none of the contacts between the Trump campaign and
Russian operatives amounted to conspiracy, defined as an agreement to influence the election.
But: first of all, this doesn't mean that the issue
wasn't worth investigating. There
was
very real evidence of suspicious
and sleazy contacts. It didn't rise to the level of criminal and treasonous conspiracy. So far, so good.
Secondly, this doesn't mean that anything short of
conspiracy is fine. We didn't need Mueller to tell us that Trump welcomed the WikiLeaks disclosures of hacked
documents from the DNC and the Clinton campaign; Trump
repeatedly said so
on the campaign trail in 2016. The Mueller probe did uncover contacts between WikiLeaks
and at least two people close to Trump: Stone and Donald Trump Jr. (We don't know whether such contacts at any
level would amount to conspiracy under the Mueller report's definition, since WikiLeaks is not definitively
classified as a Russian asset.)
The Stone indictment
charges
that late in the summer of 2016, after news of the DNC hacking -- which U.S. and allied intelligence
agencies, along with multiple private cybersecurity firms, identified as the work of Russian operatives -- a
senior Trump campaign official asked Stone to find out from WikiLeaks what was in the hacked emails and when
they would be made public.
Bloomberg News
columnist Eli Lake
argues
, in his commentary on the Mueller probe conclusion, that this fact actually undercuts the collusion
scenario: "If the [Trump] campaign was coordinating with Russia's influence campaign, why would Stone have
needed to go to WikiLeaks?" But surely collusion is not limited to full-time coordination. If the unnamed
official knew that WikiLeaks was acting as an intermediary for the Russians and directed Stone to find out more
about their plans to disclose illegally obtained material damaging to the Clinton campaign, that sounds pretty
damning to me -- even if doesn't amount to conspiracy with Kremlin agents.
And that's aside from the Trump Tower meeting. It's
a
fact
that Don Jr. received an email saying that a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer wanted to meet and offer
dirt on Clinton as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." It's a fact that he responded,
"I love it." (As it turned out, the lawyer had no information and used the meeting to talk about ending
sanctions against Russia.) The Barr summary notes that there is no evidence any Trump associate was involved in
coordination or conspiracy with the Russian government, "despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated
individuals to assist the Trump campaign." Yet at least in the case of the Trump Tower meeting, it seems clear
that the offer was not rejected; it was enthusiastically welcomed but turned out to be bogus. (Former Trump
attorney Michael Cohen
claims
Don Jr. told his father about this meeting, but there is no solid proof of this.)
If Trump supporters think this is a
vindication, or that this proves the Mueller probe was a pointless conspiracy theory I suppose they're
entitled to that view. It seems to me that any reasonable person would conclude that these facts warranted a
full investigation to find out whether they amounted to criminal conspiracy.
Myth: The Trump/Russia story was made up as an excuse for Clinton's defeat so that the Democrats could avoid
facing the fact that (a) they ran a terrible candidate and (b) a lot of Americans were sufficiently fed up with
the political establishment that they voted for Trump.
Did the collusion story serve that purpose for some
Democrats? Sure. But again, the Trump/Russia issue first became a story several months before the election,
when pretty much everyone expected Clinton to win. Indeed, in his "
Putin's
Puppet
" story in July 2016, Foer wrote, "We shouldn't overstate Putin's efforts, which will hardly
determine the outcome of the election." (Famous last words!)
Myth: We know for a fact that Russian interference did not help Trump win.
For some reason, suggesting that Russian meddling
may have affected the outcome of the election is often taken as tantamount to saying that Americans did not
really
elect Donald Trump. But that doesn't follow at all.
No credible person suggests that Russia tampered
with the voting tallies (though it's a measure of current levels of political derangement that
two-thirds of Democrats
believe such tampering "definitely" or "probably" happened). However, Trump won
several states by extremely small margins; surely some of those results could have been tipped by the WikiLeaks
disclosures,
falsely spun
as "the DNC fixed the primaries to rob Bernie Sanders and hand the nomination to Hillary."
Let's not forget that WikiLeaks began it's second dump of compromising material hours after the disclosure of
the "Access Hollywood" audio in which Trump was heard bragging that his star status allows him to "do anything"
to women, even "grab 'em by the pussy."
Of course this does not absolve Clinton of running
a bad campaign. A good candidate would have been ahead of Trump by a wide enough margin that WikiLeaks would
not have made a difference. A good candidate would not have had personal baggage that made it difficult for her
to hit Trump on the sexual misconduct allegations. There were numerous factors that contributed to Trump's win.
But I don't see how anyone can say with certainty that the Russia/WikiLeaks project wasn't one of
them -- especially since Trump exploited those disclosures to the hilt on the campaign trail.
Myth: The mainstream media as a group are utterly discredited because they fell for Trump/Russia hype, while
once-derided Trump/Russia skeptics have been vindicated.
This claim is being made not only by conservative
Trump supporters like Davis, but by leftists like Michael Tracey, Glenn Greenwald, and
Matt Taibbi
, whose indictment of the media's Russiagate fail has been widely praised.
There is a lot to criticize. Rachel Maddow should
be embarrassed. So should Chait, who once suggested that Trump might be meeting "his handler" in Helsinki.
But the critics are wrongly (and, I
suspect, intentionally) lumping together several extremely different things: outlandish Trump/Russia conspiracy
theories
a la
Mensch; sloppy "bombshell" reporting that ended up being
quickly debunked and retracted (such as the ABC News "
scoop
"
that Trump had directed Flynn to contact Russian officials during the campaign, not after the election);
opinions that were always presented as opinions; and factual reporting on the Trump/Russia investigation.
For instance, after I
tweeted
that Taibbi vastly overstates the media consensus on the "Trump is a Russian asset" narrative,
someone tweeted a collage of
Washington Post
headlines at me in
rebuttal.
However, none of those headlines refer to
Trump being a Russian asset. The closest is one that says, "Why the FBI might've thought Trump could be working
for Russia." But the FBI
did
briefly investigate that possibility in
2017 before Mueller took over the Russia probe! What's more,
the article
, by Aaron Blake, is the farthest thing from irresponsible hype. It offers a measured assessment
of the facts, pointing out that such claims are "highly speculative," that the brief FBI inquiry "may not mean
a whole lot," and that there are other explanations for the behavior that made the FBI suspicious.
And other headlines are simply factual: for
instance, "Trump misrepresents judge in Manafort trial as he claims 'no collusion' with Russia."
He did
.
Or: "Russia's support for Trump's election is no
longer disputable." Yes, the Barr letter confirms that too.
Some of Taibbi's criticism is fair (for instance,
he makes a strong case that Michael Isikoff of
Yahoo News
vastly
overhyped the Steele dossier before backtracking and suggesting that it's mostly inaccurate; he also rightly
spanks Chait for the "What if Trump is a longtime Russian agent"
New York
Magazine
cover story). Some is more dubious. Thus, Taibbi writes:
"
Trump
Campaign Aides had repeated contacts with Russian Intelligence
," published by the
Times
on Valentine's Day, 2017, was an important,
narrative-driving "bombshell" that looked dicey from the start. The piece didn't say whether the contact was
witting or unwitting, whether the discussions were about business or politics, or what the contacts
supposedly were at all.
In fact, the article explicitly
acknowledges these unknowns. It states that the law enforcement officials who had provided the information "did
not say to what extent the contacts might have been about business" and whether they had anything to do with
Trump. It also notes that several Trump associates (including Manafort, the only person named in the article)
had done business in Russia and that "it is not unusual for American businessmen to come in contact with
foreign intelligence officials, sometimes unwittingly, in countries like Russia and Ukraine, where the spy
services are deeply embedded in society." Finally, it states that the officials interviewed "said that, so far,
they had seen no evidence" of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to influence the election.
One can criticize
The
New York
Times
for hyping the "bombshell" in the headline only to admit in the
body of the text that it may amount to nothing much. (Did it amount to anything? We don't know; the charges
against Manafort are partly
related
to giving U.S. polling data to an intelligence-linked Russian business associate, Konstantin V.
Kilimnik, as part of these contacts.) But Taibbi's failure to note that the article does acknowledge facts
contrary to the "narrative" also skews his account.
"What I meant to write is, I
wasn't
skeptical," he said.
Leaving aside the sloppiness (it's "Hounshell,"
and the second article was published six months later, not a year later), Taibbi's account here is way off.
Yes, Hounshell got a
mostly negative
reaction to his piece on Twitter, though it was no pitchfork-wielding mob. But there's no
indication his reversal had anything to do with social-media sniping: Hounshell's second piece was a reaction
to Trump's odd behavior at the Helsinki summit and his attacks on NATO. ("What I meant " was, of course, a
joke.)
Taibbi also makes no mention of instances in which
mainstream media did shoot down or push back against false Russiagate narratives.
Vox
published a
piece
by Zack Beauchamp in May 2017 cautioning Democrats against falling for Trump/Russia conspiracy
theories peddled by the likes of Mensch, attorney Seth Abramson, and national security expert John Schindler.
The New York
Times
ran
a piece
days before the election headlined, "Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to
Russia." Foer's
October 31, 2016
Slate
article claiming that there was a secret
electronic communication channel between the Trump campaign and a Russian bank was
debunked
the next day by
The Washington Post
.
Finally, Taibbi's critique rests on a false binary.
He writes, "There was never real gray area here. Either Trump is a compromised foreign agent, or he isn't. If
he isn't, news outlets once again swallowed a massive disinformation campaign." But in fact, there are plenty
of gray areas and many different versions of what "Trump/Russia" means -- from "Trump is a foreign agent" to
"Trump was fine with accepting election help from Putin." Plenty of news outlets gave credence to the second
scenario, not the first.
It would be good to see a fair and
comprehensive analysis of media coverage of Russiagate. But it's not going to come from Davis, Taibbi, or
Greenwald. Media groupthink and malpractice should be criticized, but this can be done without lumping all of
the "mainstream media" together in a mass indictment of "fake news."
As for the left-wing Russiagate skeptics being
vindicated: most of them have staunchly insisted that there is no evidence the Kremlin engaged in an effort to
undermine our election. And Glenn Greenwald's position
seems to be
that even if it did, America was asking for it because we meddle, too. In this scheme of
things, then-Secretary of State Clinton expressing sympathy with the Russians who took to the streets in
2011–2012 to protest a rigged election is morally equivalent to Russian agents stealing the private
communications of American political organizations.
Myth: The fact that the Trump administration is tough on Russia disproves the Trump/Russia story.
For the record: I don't believe Trump is a "Russian
tool." It's clear that he has taken a number of positions that are at odds with Russia's interests, including
on Venezuela (from which he
said
the other day that "Russia has to get out"). His administration includes a number of Russia hawks,
from National Security Advisor John Bolton to high-level official
Fiona Hill
.
On the other hand, it's hard to say how much of
Washington's current Russia policy happens in spite of Trump. The White House has repeatedly
tried
to weaken and
spike
Russia sanctions, despite a rare bipartisan consensus in Congress for tough policies. He was
reportedly
highly reluctant to agree to the sale of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, which he now cites as
evidence that he's tougher on Russia than Obama. And he has made some definite Russia-friendly moves -- such as
calling
for Russia to be readmitted into the Group of 7 when he attended the G7 summit in Quebec last
summer.
But, once again, the truth of Russiagate can be
quite bad for Trump without Trump being a knowing Putin pawn. If Trump knowingly went along with a
Kremlin-directed effort to help his campaign -- even with no quid pro quo -- that may not be criminal conspiracy,
but surely it is a betrayal of the American people. (And no, it's not remotely comparable to using opposition
research collected in part from intelligence sources within the Russian establishment; to
equate the two
, as some Trump partisans have done, is tantamount to suggesting that there's no difference
between intelligence-gathering and spying for a foreign power.)
In the past two years, there has been a lot of
wild, and sometimes outright deranged, speculation on Trump/Russia. A lot of Russiagate zealots got carried
away, buoyed by the seeming victories of mounting Trump/Russia revelations ("BOOM"!). Now, they're paying the
price.
Right now, the shoe is on the other foot. The
anti-Russiagate crowd, dizzy from its apparent triumph, is getting way ahead of the evidence in declaring
Russiagate a "hoax" and proclaiming that Trump has been both legally and morally vindicated. It seems a bit
foolhardy when, among other things, there are legal proceedings still underway, including Stone trial and a
still-active
grand jury
.
Am I expecting a new "bombshell" that will finally
spell the end for Trump? No -- and, for the record, I do not want impeachment. But I do think that after the
past three years, one lesson we should all have learned is that no one can predict what twists are coming in
the crazy plots of
The Trumpman Show
.
And then Stephen Cohen of The Nation , another voice of reason, sent me a copy of his
book, "
War With Russia? " It's a collection of his heretical writings about our new, unnecessary
Cold War, and the opening essay ,
adapted from a talk he gave in Washington D.C., made me ashamed of my silence.
"Some people who privately share our concerns -- again, in Congress, the media,
universities and think tanks -- do not speak out at all. For whatever
reason -- concern about being stigmatized, about their career, personal
disposition -- they are silent. But in our democracy, where the cost of dissent
is relatively low, silence is no longer a patriotic option," Cohen wrote, adding, "We
should exempt from this imperative young people, who have more to lose. A few have sought my
guidance, and I always advise, 'Even petty penalties for dissent in regard to Russia could
adversely affect your career. At this stage of life, your first obligation is to your family
and thus to your future prospects. Your time to fight lies ahead'."
Well, what was my excuse?
Special Prosecutor Robert S. Mueller has now turned in his findings, and there's not much
there. For weeks beforehand, mainstream media warned about this -- exhorting
readers against succumbing to feeling "disappointed".
Disappointed? I guess, as my friend Taibbi has noted , it would have
been an immense relief had the U.S. president been found to be a high-level traitor. We
could have all brought picnic lunches to his execution.
Right before the species-ending war with Russia.
In their fanatic loyalty to the narrative, what used to be my favorite media have stridently
reminded us that, Mueller aside, "it's not over!" The "focus of the investigation" will move
now to the New York prosecutors, to House committees. The American intelligentsia will
continue to dream up wild theories -- they'll be Scotch-taped on every vertical
surface, connected by bits of yarn and magic marker scribbles and hyperverbal mania.
The question now is, has the Mueller report finally freed up the rest of us to challenge the
more insane flights of fantasy? Or is it instead so close to the 2020 presidential
elections -- and so legally dangerous for some of the intelligence insiders who
have tried to bring down the president -- that skeptical journalists more than
ever will be bullied to keep silent?
Rootless Whataboutism
As a test case -- a first step on the road to journalistic recovery --
can I suggest we at least retire the insane, Orwellian term "whataboutism?"
Whataboutism really deserves consideration as a "Word of the Year", and not in a good way.
There have been multiple non-ironic media reports about this odious concept,
on NPR , in the
Huffington Post ,
in The Washington Post , you name it.
"His campaign may or may not have conspired with Moscow," The Washington Post
told us awhile back, "but President Trump has routinely employed a durable old Soviet
propaganda tactic 'whataboutism,' the practice of short-circuiting an argument by asserting
moral equivalency between two things that aren't necessarily comparable."
NPR's version also claims that whataboutism is a Soviet-tainted practice. "It's not exactly
a complicated tactic -- any grade-schooler can master the
'yeah-well-you-suck-too-so-there' defense," NPR says. "But it came to be associated with the
USSR because of the Soviet Union's heavy reliance upon whataboutism throughout the Cold War and
afterward, as Russia."
Yet in my experience, it's not so much a Soviet tactic as an American one --
specifically, it's a way of demanding a loyalty oath to the anti-Trump resistance.
I have occasionally dared express skepticism about the entire overblown story that Russia
was involved in our 2016 elections at all. That's right. I don't buy it. I am not
entirely convinced that "Russian bots and trolls" infected anyone's mind by, say, taking
positions both for and against gun control after the Parkland high school mass shooting, or
by setting up
anti-masturbation hotlines , or by
giving bad reviews to "Star Wars: the Last Jedi."
I am also not entirely convinced that the Russians, having supposedly decided at the highest
levels of their government to try to sink Hilary Clinton's candidacy, couldn't think of
anything more clever than to spear-phish campaign manager John Podesta's G-mail.
Nor do I
share the concerns of The Times of London that the Russian animated cartoon "Masha
and the Bear" is part of a soft propaganda drive to weaken the minds of Estonian children ahead
of their eventual annexation by Red Army tanks.
Yet before I can even offer any subtler qualification of all this -- sure,
there is Russian-government, let's say, "illicit computer and social media activity" out there,
mixed with a lot of other noise signals (click-bait farms, which explains at least some of the
infamous Internet Research Agency's activities; ordinary Russians with pro-Kremlin positions
and personal Facebook accounts; and yes, people sitting on their beds who weigh 400 pounds),
but it has to be weighed against -- I'll be cut off.
"That's whataboutism ," I've been told flatly.
It's actually not -- that doesn't even meet the absurd quasi-official
definitions of this new Kafkaesque term -- but that's the whole point.
Disagreement is by its very nature whataboutist . Every skeptical question, after all,
could technically begin, "But what about ?"
Of course, it's far, far worse if I truly commit a whataboutism and -- God
forbid! God forbid! – I express curiosity about The New York Times
reporting about millions flowing to the Clintons and associated with the Russian purchase
of American uranium mines.
Whataboutism! It's so comparable to the old Soviet thought crimes --
Trotskyite, wrecker, cosmopolitan, rootless cosmopolitanism Every time I hear someone
flag a statement as guilty of whataboutism, I mentally add " rootless whataboutism."
People tell me Mueller missed the point. It's about Russian oligarch and Kremlin money,
invested in Trump real estate -- it's not over! All hail the Southern District
prosecutors! OK, let's see it, I'm open to that possibility. But if all Russian money is
tainted just because it's "oligarchical" -- good luck defining that
! -- then is it O.K. for the spouse of then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to
take $500,000 for a single hour's work, a speech in Moscow, for one of the most famous
"oligarch" banks?
"That's whataboutism! NPR and The Washington Post say that's a
Soviet-favored tactic! Your loyalty is thus suspect two-fold. Have you had contact with
any Russian nationals?"
Communists and Crickets
"EVIDENCE POINTS TO RUSSIA AS MAIN SUSPECT IN BRAIN INJURY ATTACKS ON DOZENS OF U.S.
DIPLOMATS" was the report by
MSNBC in September 2017, and they flogged that big scoop for months, and have never
really apologized for it.
Two dozen American diplomats in Cuba suffered headaches, dizziness and other vague symptoms
they blamed on strange sounds -- sounds some of them tape-recorded and supplied
to journalists, doctors and the government. "It sounds sort of like a mass of crickets," was
the opening line of the Associated Press report about the recordings (which you can
listen to yourself here ).
But no. Not crickets. As MSNBC reported, our intelligence services had intercepted
Russian communications (!) revealing the sounds were "some kind of microwave weapon,"
one so sophisticated that our top government minds were at a loss.
We might not know how it works, MSNBC reported, but we did know it was a weapon, and
"now Russia is the leading suspect."
"This is not an accident," reported anchorwoman Andrea Mitchell then. "This is not a
microwave listening device gone bad. This is an attack -- against American
diplomats and intelligence officers, and this was targeting."
What an amazing allegation. The Russian government was beaming a mysterious, high-tech
weapon at our citizens ; we had intercepted communications that made this
clear.
For more than a year, I and colleagues with Russia-reporting experience would be grilled
about this, and would just have to shrug apologetically. We just didn't know what to say. It
didn't make a lot of face-value sense -- why exactly would Russian agents, amid
all this rabid anti-Russia hysteria, beam a secret brain-frying weapon at two-dozen random
American diplomats and their family members in Cuba, for weeks apparently? What would be the
logic behind giving these random-seeming people headaches and making them dizzy and even
causing "brain injuries similar to concussions"?
As a physician, I also shared the s
kepticism of colleagues published about this in the Journal of the American Medical
Association. Playing odds, I agreed with those critics that I would have assumed either a
mass psychogenic illness or a viral infection more likely etiologies than a secret Siberian
death ray. I also read "brain injuries similar to concussions" as, "brain injuries that don't
show up on objective testing." (Of course, I've not examined any of these patients or reviewed
their cases so it's not for me to say.)
But in our fevered Russophobic environment, no one wanted to entertain alternative
scenarios -- after all, we don't even understand this sophisticated
weapon, which our intelligence agencies assure us (anonymously) they have intercepted Russian
communications bragging about, so how dare we debate the logic behind its use? (Maybe
this is how they control the president!)
Then three months ago, American scientists published in a peer-review journal their analysis
of the dastardly recordings and
identified the sounds : Crickets. Caribbean crickets.
Specifically, the echoing call of the male, short-tailed indies. During mating season.
But did MSNBC apologize, or retract?
Crickets.
Instead, during a historically cold week this winter, MSNBC star Rachel Maddow used
the excuse of a government panel about energy security to go on a Jack D. Ripper about Russia
someday deciding to freeze middle America to death.
"It is like negative 50 degrees in the Dakotas right now. What would happen if Russia killed
the power in Fargo today? What would happen if all the natural gas lines that service Sioux
Falls just 'poofed', on the coldest day in recent memories, and it wasn't in our power
whether or not to turn them back on?" Maddow asked. "What would you do if you lost heat indefinitely --
as the act of a foreign power! -- on the same day the temperature in
your front yard matched the temperature in Antarctica? I mean, what would you and your family
do?"
Gee, I don't know Rachel. What would my family and I do if Russia launched a nuclear weapon
at my front yard? I guess we'd all die. I guess I don't know who to trust anymore, I feel
exhausted by the news, sick of it all, I just want to stop caring, and you seem to feel the
same, and omigosh Rachel, we've been infected by the red virus!
'They Hate our Freedoms'
James Comey, the former FBI director, testified before the Senate after his firing that the
Russians are "coming after America," because, "They think that this great experiment of ours is
a threat to them, and so they're going to try to run it down and dirty it up as much as
possible."
Right. It's because "they hate our freedoms."
Where have I heard that before?
People had been waiting breathlessly for Mueller's report, but in reality, everything we
needed to know was right there in the first report -- the January 6, 2017, grand
announcement, the big reveal by our Intelligence Community -- the consensus of
CIA, FBI and NSA -- "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S.
Elections."
I remember finishing that report at the time and thinking:
Holy Cow, they have nothing.
Nothing!
Of the 15 pages with any meat to them in that report, seven were a long, bizarre complaint
about the existence and activities of RT (formerly RussiaToday ), the
Kremlin-sponsored English-language news channel.
Our intelligence agencies reported that RT has become "the most-watched foreign news
channel in the UK," had more YouTube viewers than the BBC or CNN , and was
surpassing al-Jazeera in New York and Washington D.C. ( Voice of America , which
is the U.S. government version of RT , has no sense of humor or passion and so no
viewers anywhere outside of Foggy Bottom.)
RT's success was, per the intelligence report, thanks to a combination of lavish
Kremlin funding and an alluring editorial slant. The intelligence report quoted RT's
editor as saying her station got lots of new viewers after offering sympathetic coverage of the
Occupy Wall Street movement. The intelligence report continued:
In an effort to highlight the alleged "lack of democracy" in the United States, RT broadcast,
hosted, and advertised third-party candidate debates and ran reporting supportive of the
political agenda of these candidates. The RT hosts asserted that the US two-party system does
not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a "sham." RT's reports
often characterize the United States as a "surveillance state" and allege widespread
infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use RT has also focused on
criticism of the US economic system, US currency policy, alleged Wall Street greed, and the
US national debt. Some of RT's hosts have compared the United States to Imperial Rome and
have predicted that government corruption and "corporate greed" will lead to US financial
collapse RT runs anti-fracking programming, highlighting environmental issues and the impacts
on public health
This was hilarious of course -- a public snit by our intel communities about
Russians racking up big numbers among American viewers in Washington and New York , just
by offering mildly critical takes on drone killings and fracking and "alleged Wall Street
greed" ("alleged"? Really ?). We were promised a major assessment of any improper
Russian influences on our 2016 electoral process and we got -- this? A formal
complaint that Russian TV gave Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein too much air time?
All this bitching and moaning about RT -- which, remember, is not some
secret plot, but just a public TV station you can go watch on YouTube or not watch
-- takes up well more than half of that grand intelligence community assessment.
It really speaks volumes about what was on their minds. And again, my conclusion reading it two
years ago was: So, they've got nothing.
The one caveat, though, was that there was a classified appendix. There's always a
classified appendix. So, who knew what was in that ? After all, immediately and in the
two years since, intelligence officials have occasionally been cited -- always
anonymously! --
in The Guardian ,
The New Yorker , and The
New York Times -- as claiming to have intercepted communications between the
Trump team and the Russian government.
Well, by now, we should realize the appendix is a myth.
First, we now know that
at least part of it -- and, I would guess, probably all of it --
was nothing more than the Steele report, the infamous document first posted on
BuzzFeed , that collection of anti-Trump opposition research paid for by the Hilary Clinton
campaign. (You know -- the pee tape stuff.)
And we now also know, courtesy of Robert Mueller's report, that there are no "intercepted
communications" between Russians and the Trump campaign teams. Just like there are no Russian
intercepts about secret Siberian brain-frying rays in Cuba, because that, again, was the mating
call of a short-tailed Caribbean cricket.
I don't know what's funnier about all of this -- and it is damned funny,
really -- the fact that all of this has actually happened , or the fact
that I feel the need to come out of journalistic retirement to help point it out.
A
President With a Traitor's Heart -- for Six More Years
And that's the way it is, and has been, all along for these past two years. There have been
non-stop media allegations that, one way or another, our narcissistic, loud-mouthed, overtly
racist U.S. president has a traitor's heart. Any errors or inaccuracies -- and
there have been a shocking number of retracted "scoops," as well as screwups like the Caribbean
crickets that have just been ignored -- are excused in service of this larger
truth: Our president has a traitor's heart.
But I already knew that! We all did!
We knew it the moment he said , "Russia, if you're listening, I
hope you'll be able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing" -- referencing
some official e-mails of Hilary Clinton's that were improperly handled and got deleted. (Among
the onion layers of irony to this political season is that Trump pioneered the 21st century
witch hunt. There has never been any evidence that Clinton's deleted emails represent anything
at all -- yet Trump hammered away at this as if it mattered, until one day it
did. And he didn't even suggest investigations, he skipped straight to "lock her up!").
Being racist, or stupid, or sexist, or a bully, or a New York real estate developer
-- all of these are deep character flaws. They are not always crimes. (Sexually
assaulting someone is always a crime, however, even if you are a TV star and remember
your breath mints.)
And yet, again, we already knew all of this. Remember this transcript
from The New York Times ?
Trump : I did try and fuck her. She was married and I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I
took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said, "I'll show you
where they have some nice furniture." I took her out furniture -- I moved on
her like a bitch. But I couldn't get there.
Trump : Yeah, that's her [peeking out a trailer window at a different target, an
approaching actress] . I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You
know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful -- I just start kissing them.
It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it.
You can do anything.
Billy Bush [a fawning minor TV personality] : Whatever you want.
Trump : Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything.
Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.
I share your pain. And I have no doubt he'd trade his own son for majority ownership of a
moderately nice golf course. But I'm also, frankly, no longer very interested in him. I'm much
more interested in us -- the rest of us.
What happened to us?
Well, I'll amend that slightly. I am of course quite interested in seeing Donald Trump leave
office. I suspect, however, that these two-plus years of journalistic malpractice --
a politically-motivated Red Scare at a time when we don't even have any Reds anymore,
just Russians -- has locked in his second term. (What's that? Impeachment
you say? Oh please. He'd set up a government-in-exile in Mar-a-Lago and then he'd be around for
twenty more years instead of six. And he'd have half the nation with him the entire
time.) So thank you for that, MSNBC and NPR and New York Times.
"... Mr. Mueller himself should be summoned to a grand jury to answer for his deceitful inquisition, his abuse of FISA warrants, and the malicious prosecutions of General Michael Flynn and Trump campaign supernumerary George Papadopoulos. This story is far from over and it is now moving in the opposite direction. Former CIA Director John Brennan is going down for chaperoning the Steele Dossier through congress, the FBI, and the news media. And many others will follow. It will go very hard on the claque of lunatics like Rep. Adam Schiff and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow as the painful consequences unspool. The Democratic presidential hopefuls will have to run shrieking from this giant hairball, but it will roll over them anyway and possibly even flatten their party. ..."
The tides are shifting. Something's in the wind. And it's not just the fecund vapors of
spring. The political soap opera of RussiaGate ended like a fart in a windstorm last weekend,
leaving Mr. Mueller's cheerleaders de-witched, bothered, and bewildered. And then a crude
attempt was made to cram the Jussie Smollett case down Chicago's memory hole. These two
unrelated hoaxes emanating out of Wokester Land may signal something momentous: the end of the
era when anything goes and nothing matters .
Welcome to the new era of consequences! All of a sudden, a whole lot of people who have been
punking the public-at-large will have to answer for their behavior. Despite the fog of
misdirection blowing out of The New York Times , The WashPo , CNN, and MSNBC,
it's become obvious that the RussiaGate hoax was kicked off by Hillary Clinton's campaign and a
cabal of Obama appointees in several executive agencies. The evidence is public, fully
documented, and overwhelming that the so-called Steele Dossier was the sole animating
instrument in both the 2016 pre-election effort to incriminate the Golden Golem of Greatness,
and the Mueller Investigation launched post-election to cover-up those same political misdeeds
of the Clinton campaign, the FBI, the Department of Justice, the CIA, NSA, and State
Department.
It's also very likely that Robert Mueller learned that the Steele Dossier was a fraud in the
summer of 2017, if not shortly after his appointment in May of that year, and yet he dragged
out his investigation for almost two years in order to defame and antagonize Mr. Trump -- and
deflect attention from the ugly truth of the matter. It is certain Mr. Mueller knew that the
Steele Dossier was purchased by Glenn Simpson's Fusion GPS political "research" company, which
was simultaneously in the paid employ of Mrs. Clinton and the Russian political lobbying agency
Prevezon (as reported by Sean
Davis in The Federalist ). If the FBI brass did not bring that to Mr. Mueller's attention
right away, then either their incompetence is epic or they are criminally liable for concealing
the hoax.
There is your essential collusion , and a lot of participants are going down because
of it. Mr. Mueller himself should be summoned to a grand jury to answer for his deceitful
inquisition, his abuse of FISA warrants, and the malicious prosecutions of General Michael
Flynn and Trump campaign supernumerary George Papadopoulos. This story is far from over and it
is now moving in the opposite direction. Former CIA Director John Brennan is going down for
chaperoning the Steele Dossier through congress, the FBI, and the news media. And many others
will follow. It will go very hard on the claque of lunatics like Rep. Adam Schiff and MSNBC's
Rachel Maddow as the painful consequences unspool. The Democratic presidential hopefuls will
have to run shrieking from this giant hairball, but it will roll over them anyway and possibly
even flatten their party.
In another instance of justice miscarried, charges in the Jussie Smollett racial attack hoax
were dismissed in a hasty, unannounced motion by the assistant to Cook County Prosecutor Kim
Foxx, who had pretended to recuse herself from the case, but actually did not follow the proper
procedure for doing it. Ms. Foxx has apparently been consorting with members of Jussie
Smollett's family and with Michele Obama's former chief of staff, Tina Tchen, a Chicago
political operator. It's easy to imagine what they were bargaining about: the fear that Mr.
Smollett would have a very hard time serving any sort of prison sentence, given his celebrity
status, his sexual orientation, and the laughable idiocy of his crime. It was probably a
reasonable fear -- but not a viable excuse for summarily dropping the case. The further excuse
that he had already paid the price by hanging out in Jessie Jackson's Operation Push
headquarters for two days is also a joke, of course.
The Chicago police chief and mayor objected loudly, as did the Illinois Prosecutors Bar
Association, which declared the move was "abnormal and unfamiliar to those who practice law in
criminal courthouses across the State." An understatement for sure. What's next for Jussie? The
City of Chicago will tote up the cost of investigating his stupid prank and haul him into civil
court to compel him to pay for it.
Further and greater consequences will emanate from the Smollett hoax. Despite former
Vice-president Joe Biden's recent lamentations over the wickedness of "white man's culture,"
many American's will show a renewed interest in that hoary old system devised by white folks
called Anglo-American law, which includes such niceties as due process. The Jussie Smollett
scam may be the end of many intersectional culture heroes getting a free pass on their
bad behavior. Won't that be
refreshing?
"... Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, tweeted: "Time to investigate the Obama officials who concocted and spread the Russian conspiracy hoax!" Representative Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican, said "underlying documents" supporting what became Mueller's probe should be released to the public. ..."
"... A McCain associate, David Kramer, acknowledged in a deposition in a libel case that he spread word of the dossier to several news organizations. ..."
President Donald Trump and a key ally, Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, said Monday that after Robert Mueller closed
his Russia probe, they want an investigation of the investigators.
Graham said at a news conference that Attorney General William Barr should appoint a new special counsel to examine why the U.S.
government, under President Barack Obama, decided to open an investigation into Russian election interference in 2016, and whether
it was an excuse to spy on Trump's campaign.
"Was it a ruse to get into the Trump campaign?" Graham said at the news conference. "I don't know but I'm going to try to find
out."
Trump told reporters at the White House that unspecified "people" behind the Russia probe would "be looked at."
The remarks show that Trump and some of his allies have retribution and score-settling on their minds after Mueller found no evidence
that the president or his campaign colluded with the Kremlin's election interference. It's unclear whom Trump wants investigated,
but possibilities include former FBI Director James Comey, whom he fired in May 2017; Obama's CIA Director John Brennan, whom Trump
stripped of his security clearance last year; and other former intelligence and Justice Department officials who have vocally criticized
the president.
The stage is also set for dueling and contradictory congressional investigations. In the House, controlled by Democrats, several
committees have opened investigations into the president's financial and business affairs, and Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler
said Sunday he wants Barr to testify soon on his finding that Mueller didn't produce sufficient evidence that Trump obstructed justice
by interfering in the Russia inquiry.
The Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, on Monday blocked a vote on a measure by the Democratic leader, Chuck
Schumer of New York, calling for Mueller's report to be made public. McConnell said Barr should have time to consider which portions
of the report can be publicly released given concerns about classified information, ongoing investigations and other information
protected by law.
Republican Allies
Several other Republicans backed Graham and Trump on Monday. Senate Oversight Committee Chairman Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said
he'd like to work with Graham "to get those answers for the American public."
"We need to find out what happened," he said in an interview.
Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, tweeted: "Time to investigate the Obama officials who concocted and spread the Russian
conspiracy hoax!" Representative Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican, said "underlying documents" supporting what became Mueller's
probe should be released to the public.
"Let them decide for themselves whether this investigation was warranted -- or whether it was a two-year long episode of political
targeting, driven by FBI and DOJ executives who wanted to retaliate against a legitimately elected president," Meadows said in an
interview.
Graham said his committee would also look into the FBI's handling of the inquiry into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's
use of a private email server, saying that Comey's actions in that investigation "did affect" the 2016 election. Comey held a news
conference in July 2016 to announce that Clinton wouldn't be charged with a crime, and then announced less than two weeks before
the election that the investigation had been re-opened after additional emails were discovered.
'Evil Things'
Trump's indication that unnamed people responsible for the probe would be investigated was vague. He didn't name anyone, and after
he made similar remarks on Sunday, White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley told reporters that Barr hadn't been directed
to open any investigations of Democrats.
"People that have done such harm to our country," Trump complained on Monday. "We've gone through a period of really bad things
happening. Those people will certainly be looked at. I've been looking at them for a long time and I'm saying, why haven't they been
looked at. They lied to Congress. Many of them. You know who they are. They've done so many evil things."
Trump added that he hasn't considered pardoning anyone convicted in connection to Mueller's probe.
Graham said he planned to talk with Barr on Monday and hoped to hold a public hearing with the attorney general to explain his
findings in the Mueller probe. Barr sent a four-page letter to Congress on Sunday summarizing Mueller's findings, which have not
been publicly released.
"I'm asking him to lay it all out," Graham said.
Both Trump and Graham said they support Barr publicly releasing as much of Mueller's report as possible. The investigation turned
out "100 percent" as it should have, Trump told reporters.
Dossier Distribution
Trump has previously singled out individuals over their role in the probe, calling for an investigation into the "
other side " of the investigation. He's mentioned Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former FBI employees Peter
Strzok and Lisa Page, and Justice Department attorney Bruce Ohr.
Graham also said he advised his friend and Senate colleague John McCain to give the FBI the so-called Steele dossier on Trump,
rebutting the president's accusations that McCain tried to hinder his 2016 election.
Graham told reporters that McCain, an Arizona Republican who died last year, had shown him the unverified collection of intelligence
reports on Trump's links to Russia that was put together by a former British spy, Christopher Steele. Steele was commissioned to
compile the information by an opposition research firm hired by Democrats.
McCain put the dossier in his safe and handed it over to the FBI the next day, Graham said.
A McCain associate, David Kramer, acknowledged in a deposition in a libel case that he spread word of the dossier to several news
organizations.
-- With assistance by Billy House
( Updates with McConnell blocking Schumer measure in seventh paragraph. ) Published on March 25, 2019 12:37 PM
Updated on March 25, 2019 5:58 PM
What actually happened with RussiaGate? A cabal of government officials colluded with the
Hillary Clinton campaign to interfere in the 2016 election and, failing to achieve their
desired outcome, engineered a two-years-plus formal inquisition to deflect attention from their
own misconduct and attempt to overthrow the election result.
The Cable News characters, quite a few of them lawyers, were litigating the living shit out
of the story on Sunday night in their usual spirit of obdurate rank dishonesty. For instance,
Jeffrey Toobin, who plays Attorney General on CNN, went off on the infamous 2016 Trump Tower
Meeting in which the president's son, Donald, Jr., met with Russian lawyer Natalia V.
Veselnitskaya. Toobin omitted to mention that Ms. Veselnitskaya was, at that very time, on the
payroll of Fusion GPS, Hillary Clinton's "oppo" research contractor. In other words, Trump
Junior was set up.
That was characteristic of the collusion that actually occurred between
the Hillary campaign, the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, the NSA, the UK's MI6 intel agency, and the
Obama White House, striving to prevent the election of a TV reality show star, and to disable
him afterwards -- also of the news media's role in the whole interminable scam of RussiaGate.
Their fury and despair were as vivid the night of March 24, 2019, as on November 8, 2016. And
now they will attempt to spark off a sequel.
Rachel Maddow, for instance, struggling to maintain her dignity after two years playing
Madame DeFarge on MSNBC, tried to console her fans with the prospect of Mr. Trump getting raked
over the coals by the DOJ's Southern District of NY prosecutors for crimes as yet unpredicted
-- really, whatever they might find if they turn over enough rocks in Manhattan. Perhaps she
doesn't know how the justice system actually works in this country: we prosecute crimes not
persons. In places like Stalin's Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany, you first choose a person
to eliminate and then fit them to a crime. If no crime can be found, one is easily
manufactured. In the USA, a predicate crime is required before you can launch a prosecution.
Perhaps the actual Attorney General, Mr. Barr, will advise the avid staff of the Southern
District of NY how this works.
There remains also, the rather sweeping panorama of misconduct and probable crime among the
government (and former government) players in the agencies mentioned above. Does the full
Mueller Report mention, for instance, that the animating document claiming that Trump colluded
with Russia was manufactured by Mrs. Clinton's employees? And that this document was used time
and again improperly and illegally to prolong the inquisition? How could Mr. Mueller not
acknowledge that? And if not, what sort of investigation was this?
You are forced to ask: did Mr. Mueller play an honorable role in this epic, multilayered
scandal? And is Mr. Mueller himself an honorable character, or something less than that? I
believe we'll find out. The other team is coming to bat now -- and just in time for MLB's
opening day, too. The Mueller report has been a shocking disappointment to the so-called
"resistance," but what about the as-yet-unreleased DOJ Inspector General's report on these very
matters ? Or the parallel investigation of federal prosecutor John Huber, who is charged
specifically with looking into the malfeasance of the RussiaGate investigators? Or whatever
action the Attorney General himself launches in the wake of all this? Or whether Mr. Trump
finally declassifies the mountains of documents behind the simple failure to find him guilty of
any crime? My favorite college professor and mentor, David Hamilton, once put a curious
question to us when we were vexing him for some reason now forgotten: "Why," he asked, "Did
Achilles drag Hector around the city of Troy three times?"
So, If they would trample Trump's constitutional rights by abusing this bogus fisa warrant
system, shouldn't we assume they are 10 times as likely to abuse it to spy on average
americans, who have no chance of protecting themselves from the police state they have built
since 9-11? Revoke the patriot act. It is unconstitutional anyway, though Trump rewarded the
man who helped write it with the Supreme court position. We have a small window to claw back
the rights they stripped from us. If we don't do it now, when these programs are called into
question, these deep state turds will do whatever they can to consolidate their hold on the
US. I'm not too hopeful, myself. Seeing the blatant piracy they are attempting in Venezuela,
even after the failures in Iraq and Syria, doesn't do much to console me as to America's
future. My relatives came here from England and Germany with little more than the clothes on
their backs. It may be time to look for greener pastures if we are going to be a proxy of
Israel, and a deep state, stripped of our inherent rights bit by bit until we aren't allowed
to leave.
First is the multipart crime committed by Hillary Clinton and her cabal of deep state
co-conspirators to rig a primary, which they did against Bernie Sanders, then attempt to
steal an election by using various intelligence connections in the FBI and CIA to dig up dirt
on candidate Trump in the form of a fake Russia dossier, then petition the DOJ with only
parts of it, to get a warrant to spy on him and ultimately discredit him. Then in the event
he won, use that dossier to concoct a fake Trump/Russia collusion scandal in order to
delegitimize and hopefully reverse the Trump Presidential victory. This was treasonous and
seditious to its core and those conspirators should be investigated as thoroughly as Mueller
investigated Trump and all of his acquaintances.
The second was the Mainstream media's part in all of this mess. They so eagerly bought
into the false narrative and went out of their way, like good little bolsheviks, and
disseminated unproven and unsubstantiated "fake news" that was fed to them each morning by
democrat operatives and consultants, 24/7/365 . Every mainstream media reporter (and I use
that term loosely), and every late night talk host on CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, NY
Times, Washington Post, and others, as well as every guest pundit opined without proof, and
pounded the table to every lemming who would listen, that Trump had to be guilty and was in
fact guilty because, well, they didn't like him. These reporters and pundits spread rumors,
called him names such as racist and nazi, etc, etc, with no basis in fact, which was an
historically new low, even for state based propaganda. (FOX news, to their credit, did not).
This agenda driven media overstepped the boundaries of good reporting and journalistic
ethical standards and set the news business back 250 years. What American journalists,
reporters and pundits did in the name of the first amendment "free press" was a national and
global disgrace.
Well said. You forget to mention, as did the article, Mueller's seditious criminal past.
Worst of all - Madcow and the rest of the MSM did a serious smear job on the Russian
government, at a time of already heightened propaganda against a country that could reduce
the USA to ashes. Also - there is the collusion of the UK government and the equally
ridiculous Skripal affair.
It is profoundly sad none of the ringleaders and real provocateurs will be prosecuted, and
things will continue to deteriorate until there is a nuclear war. Because the entire system
is rotten to the core and the citizens don't care about truth or justice.
Thanks for your additional comments. While I'm hopeful Hillary and her co-conspirators
will be investigated, indicted, tried and found guilty of sedition and treason in breaking
laws of at least 6 different acts, I don't believe Republicans have the spine or intestinal
fortitude to make their case, even if they have proof beyond any reasonable doubt to the
extent a first year law student could argue and win the case open and shut.
Also, I do not believe, even for one Milli-second, that public verbal sparring of
political leaders or their hyperbole in the midst of tough negotiations, will ever lead
civilized nations of the world to a nuclear war. it is done purely for effect and political
strategy in their home nations.
That said, you are correct that the media's continuously negative anti-Trump, anti-America
tone for two straight years, did not help trade negotiations or international relations, and
in fact, put the US at a distinct disadvantage. It's a small wonder President Trump has
achieved all the successes he has in spite of this. He deserves great credit.
Mueller knew this was all lies and BS within weeks of taking the job and put on this
charade for 2 YEARS and ruined the lives of innocent people. Mueller is not the good guy here
at all.
That was characteristic of the collusion that actually occurred between the Hillary
campaign, the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, the NSA, the UK's MI6 intel agency, and the Obama White
House...
After the IG report is released in April, we need to start real investigations.
Congressional and Senate hearings are kabuki! President Trump needs to hire outside lawyers
as a special counsel to get to the bottom of this treason! I don't trust anyone in DOJ to do
that!
It's on..Trump just made an extremely strong statement about "this must NEVER happen to
ANY President EVER again" in response to a question from a journo..
This implies they have any concept of decency or shame to begin with.
They've been planning the SpecialCounsel-Russiagate to Congressional-Obstruction pivot
since 2017... as continued albatross around Trump & MAGA's neck.
Trump better get voter fraud under control to win 2020.
3. IMO a great opportunity has been lost for improving relations with the Russian
thermonuclear power. Only hyper-nationalist madmen like Brennan and Clapper and ignorant Jingos
like Bolton and Pompeo can imagine that an improvement in relations with a country which can
destroy you was not a good idea. Trump hoped for that and the Russiagate hoax blocked any
possibility for improvement. The Russian government unsuccessfully sought to tinker with our
election? Yes, and they will again. That is part of the Game of Nations. Grow up, Americans! It
is our responsibility to foil such attempts. We have done similar things since we first emerged
on the world stage. We can make a list of those events if you like.
... ... ...
5. Nadler, Schiff and Elijah Cummings wish to continue the farcical pursuit of Trump on all
sides of earth until he "spouts black blood and roll fin out." As has been said, the House
committees headed by these people lack the funds, personnel and authorities to dig up the
masses of data which Mueller's office possessed. It is for this reason that they want all the
Mueller data. They hope to sift through it to find things that they can claim constitute
grounds for a plausible bill of impeachment. Well pilgrims, Barr would be wise to remember that
the Mueller report AND all its supporting documents are Executive Branch assets, not assets of
the Congress. There is no reason to give the Congress anything that is classified (secret),
Grand Jury testimony or information that should be concealed to allow for the functioning of
the presidency (Executive Privilege). So, don't give it to them! Let them sue you. Let the
Supreme Court decide.
"... The criminal investigations will be conducted by the Southern District of New York. And those are underway. Anyone who has followed Donald's career knows how deep into the seamier side of NYC real estate development he has been, with all that this implies. ..."
"Some time ago I suggested that this implausible and histrionic Russia-gate investigation fomented by the Clintonistas appears
to be a thinly-veiled fishing expedition. The target is not any significant 'collusion' to throw the election, but much more likely
[to be] obstruction of justice, coming off dodgy private real estate deals and assorted financial arrangements involving money
laundering..."
Jesse, 11 January 2018
Russiagate was a diversion and a distraction from the real work to be done, that of reforming the political and financial systems
and putting an end to this predatory economy and its damaging bubbles. No one in the public was a winner in this.
The criminal investigations will be conducted by the Southern District of New York. And those are underway. Anyone who has
followed Donald's career knows how deep into the seamier side of NYC real estate development he has been, with all that this implies.
The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any
sustainable recovery.
CrowdStrike is a high-profile cybersecurity firm that worked with the DNC (Democratic
National Committee) in 2016 and was called in due to a suspected breach. However, CrowdStrike
appears to have first started working with the DNC approximately five weeks prior to this and
approximately just five days after John Podesta (Hillary Clinton's campaign manager for the
2016 election) had his Gmail account phished. Nothing was mentioned about this until after the
five weeks had passed when the DNC published a press release stating that
CrowdStrike had been at the DNC throughout that period to investigate the NGP-VAN issues
(that had occurred three months before Podesta was phished).
Upon conclusion of those five weeks, CrowdStrike was immediately called back in to
investigate a suspected breach. CrowdStrike's software was already installed on the DNC network
when the DNC emails were acquired but CrowdStrike failed to prevent the emails from being
acquired and didn't publish logs or incident-specific evidence of the acquisition event either,
the latter of which is odd considering what
their product's features were advertised to be even if they were just running it in a
monitoring capacity .
Trump never ceases to crack me up. While his (terrible) current lawyer, declares on TV
that there was collusion but it just didn't last long, Trump calls his former lawyer/fixer at
"Rat".
This is just too funny, I mean this is the President of the United States calling his
former personal lawyer a "Rat" which of course is a common mob term for a witness testifying
against you.
Of course it never happened, just like Manafort didn't make 3 trips to London to meet
Julian Assange. These fictions were just used as a pretext for diving into the backgrounds of
Trump's political supporters and find crimes to charge them with.
The Cohen raid was particularly egregious, a likely violation of attorney-client
privilege. Not suprisingly the American Bar Association is silent.
So, Manafort never laundered money and failed to report taxes? Did Flynn never fail to
report his work as a foreign agent? Did he also not report income taxes?
Look at all these poor crooks, unfairly being prosecuted for cheating and stealing.
All that could have been prosecuted by a district attorney. They looked at all of
Manafort's dealings 10 years ago and passed because he was working with the Podesta Group at
the time and thus protected by Hillary Clinton's influence.
If this is true, then this is definitely a sophisticated false flag operation. Was malware Alperovich people injected specifically
designed to implicate Russians? In other words Crowdstrike=Fancy Bear
Images removed. For full content please thee the original source
One interesting corollary of this analysis is that installing Crowdstrike software is like inviting a wolf to guard your chicken.
If they are so dishonest you take enormous risks. That might be true for some other heavily advertized "intrusion prevention" toolkits.
So those criminals who use mistyped popular addresses or buy Google searches to drive lemmings to their site and then flash the screen
that they detected a virus on your computer a, please call provided number and for a small amount of money your virus will be removed
get a new more sinister life.
"... Disobedient Media outlines the DNC server cover-up evidenced in CrowdStrike malware infusion ..."
"... In the article, they claim to have just been working on eliminating the last of the hackers from the DNC's network during the past weekend (conveniently coinciding with Assange's statement and being an indirect admission that their Falcon software had failed to achieve it's stated capabilities at that time , assuming their statements were accurate) . ..."
"... To date, CrowdStrike has not been able to show how the malware had relayed any emails or accessed any mailboxes. They have also not responded to inquiries specifically asking for details about this. In fact, things have now been discovered that bring some of their malware discoveries into question. ..."
"... there is a reason to think Fancy Bear didn't start some of its activity until CrowdStrike had arrived at the DNC. CrowdStrike, in the indiciators of compromise they reported, identified three pieces of malware relating to Fancy Bear: ..."
"... They found that generally, in a lot of cases, malware developers didn't care to hide the compile times and that while implausible timestamps are used, it's rare that these use dates in the future. It's possible, but unlikely that one sample would have a postdated timestamp to coincide with their visit by mere chance but seems extremely unlikely to happen with two or more samples. Considering the dates of CrowdStrike's activities at the DNC coincide with the compile dates of two out of the three pieces of malware discovered and attributed to APT-28 (the other compiled approximately 2 weeks prior to their visit), the big question is: Did CrowdStrike plant some (or all) of the APT-28 malware? ..."
"... The IP address, according to those articles, was disabled in June 2015, eleven months before the DNC emails were acquired – meaning those IP addresses, in reality, had no involvement in the alleged hacking of the DNC. ..."
"... The fact that two out of three of the Fancy Bear malware samples identified were compiled on dates within the apparent five day period CrowdStrike were apparently at the DNC seems incredibly unlikely to have occurred by mere chance. ..."
"... That all three malware samples were compiled within ten days either side of their visit – makes it clear just how questionable the Fancy Bear malware discoveries were. ..."
Of course the DNC did not want to the FBI to investigate its "hacked servers". The plan was well underway to excuse Hillary's
pathetic election defeat to Trump, and
CrowdStrike would help out by planting evidence to pin on those evil "Russian hackers." Some would call this
entire DNC server hack an
"insurance policy."
All signs of sophisticated false flag operation, which probably involved putting malware into DNC servers and then
detecting and analyzing them
Notable quotes:
"... 6 May 2016 when CrowdStrike first detected what it assessed to be a Russian presence inside the DNC server. Follow me here. One week after realizing there had been a penetration, the DNC learns, courtesy of the computer security firm it hired, that the Russians are doing it. Okay. Does CrowdStrike shut down the penetration. Nope. The hacking apparently continues unabated. ..."
"... The Smoking Gun ..."
"... I introduce Seth Rich at this point because he represents an alternative hypothesis. Rich, who reportedly was a Bernie Sanders supporter, was in a position at the DNC that gave him access to the emails in question and the opportunity to download the emails and take them from the DNC headquarters. Worth noting that Julian Assange offered $20,000 for information leading to the arrest of Rich's killer or killers. 8. 22 July 2016. Wikileaks published the DNC emails starting on 22 July 2016. Bill Binney, a former senior official at NSA, insists that if such a hack and electronic transfer over the internet had occurred then the NSA has in it possession the intelligence data to prove that such activity had occurred. ..."
"... Notwithstanding the claim by CrowdStrike not a single piece of evidence has been provided to the public to support the conclusion that the emails were hacked and physically transferred to a server under the control of a Russian intelligence operative. ..."
"... Please do not try to post a comment stating that the "Intelligence Community" concluded as well that Russia was responsible. That claim is totally without one shred of actual forensic evidence. Also, Julian Assange insists that the emails did not come from a Russian source. ..."
"... Wikileaks, the protector of the accountability of the top, has announced a reward for finding the murderers of Seth Rich. In comparison, the DNC has not offered any reward to help the investigation of the murder of the DNC staffer, but the DNC found a well-connected lawyer to protect Imran Awan who is guilty (along with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz) in the greatest breach of national cybersecurity: http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/29/wasserman-schultz-seemingly-planned-to-pay-suspect-even-while-he-lived-in-pakistan/ ..."
"... I'm afraid you're behind the times. Wheeler is no longer relevant now that Sy Hersh has revealed an FBI report that explicitly says Rich was in contact with Wikileaks offering to sell them DNC documents. ..."
"... It's unfortunate for the Rich family, but now that the connection is pretty much confirmed, they're going to have to allow the truth to come out ..."
"... Mr. Dmitri Alperovitch, of Jewish descent (and an emigre from Russia), has been an "expert" at the Atlantic Council, the same organization that cherishes and provides for Mr. Eliot Higgins. These two gentlemen - and the directorate of Atlantic Council - are exhibit one of opportunism and intellectual dishonesty (though it is hard to think about Mr. Higgins in terms of "intellect"). ..."
"... Alperovitch is not just an incompetent "expert" in cybersecurity - he is a willing liar and war-mongering, for money. ..."
"... One could of course start earlier. What is the exact timeline of the larger cyberwar post 9/11, or at least the bits and pieces that surfaced for the nitwits among us, like: Stuxnet? ..."
"... Scott Ritter's article referenced in PT's post is terrific, covering a ton of issues related to CrowdStrike and the DNC hack. You need to read it, not just PT's timeline. In case you missed the link in PT's post: ..."
"... His article echoes and reinforces what Carr and others have said about the difficulty of attribution of infosec breaches. Namely that the basic problem of both intelligence and infosec operations is that there is too much obfuscation, manipulation, and misdirection involved to be sure of who or what is going on. ..."
"... The Seth Rich connection is pretty much a done deal, now that Sy Hersh has been caught on tape stating that he knows of an FBI report based on a forensic analysis of Rich's laptop that shows Rich was in direct contact with Wikileaks with an attempt to sell them DNC documents and that Wikileaks had access to Rich's DropBox account. Despite Hersh's subsequent denials - which everyone knows are his usual impatient deflections prior to putting out a sourced and organized article - it's pretty clear that Rich was at least one of the sources of the Wikileaks email dump and that there is zero connection to Russia. ..."
"... None of this proves that Russian intelligence - or Russians of some stripe - or for that matter hackers from literally anywhere - couldn't or didn't ALSO do a hack of the DNC. But it does prove that the iron-clad attribution of the source of Wikileaks email release to Russia is at best flawed, and at worst a deliberate cover up of a leak. ..."
Notwithstanding the conventional wisdom that Russia hacked into the DNC computers, downloaded emails and a passed the stolen missives
to Julian Assange's crew at Wikileaks, a careful examination of the timeline of events from 2016 shows that this story is simply
not plausible.
Let me take you through the known facts:
1. 29 April 2016 , when the DNC became aware its servers had been penetrated (https://medium.com/homefront-rising/dumbstruck-how-crowdstrike-conned-america-on-the-hack-of-the-dnc-ecfa522ff44f).
Note. They apparently did not know who was doing it. 2, 6 May 2016 when CrowdStrike first detected what it assessed to be a Russian
presence inside the DNC server. Follow me here. One week after realizing there had been a penetration, the DNC learns, courtesy of
the computer security firm it hired, that the Russians are doing it. Okay. Does CrowdStrike shut down the penetration. Nope. The
hacking apparently continues unabated. 3. 25 May 2016. The messages published on Wikileaks from the DNC show that 26 May 2016
was the last date that emails were sent and received at the DNC. There are no emails in the public domain after that date. In other
words, if the DNC emails were taken via a hacking operation, we can conclude from the fact that the last messages posted to Wikileaks
show a date time group of 25 May 2016. Wikileaks has not reported nor posted any emails from the DNC after the 25th of May. I think
it is reasonable to assume that was the day the dirty deed was done. 4. 12 June 2016, CrowdStrike purged the DNC server of all malware.
Are you kidding me? 45 days after the DNC discovers that its serve has been penetrated the decision to purge the DNC server is finally
made. What in the hell were they waiting for? But this also tells us that 18 days after the last email "taken" from the DNC, no additional
emails were taken by this nasty malware. Here is what does not make sense to me. If the DNC emails were truly hacked and the malware
was still in place on 11 June 2016 (it was not purged until the 12th) then why are there no emails from the DNC after 26 May 2016?
an excellent analysis of Guccifer's role : Almost immediately after the one-two punch of the Washington Post article/CrowdStrike
technical report went public, however, something totally unexpected happened -- someone came forward and took full responsibility
for the DNC cyber attack. Moreover, this entity -- operating under the persona Guccifer 2.0 (ostensibly named after the original
Guccifer , a Romanian hacker who stole the emails of a number of high-profile celebrities and who was arrested in 2014 and sentenced
to 4 ½ years of prison in May 2016) -- did something no state actor has ever done before, publishing documents stolen from the DNC
server as proof of his claims.
Hi. This is Guccifer 2.0 and this is me who hacked Democratic National Committee.
With that simple email, sent to the on-line news magazine,
The Smoking
Gun , Guccifer 2.0 stole the limelight away from Alperovitch. Over the course of the next few days, through a series of
emails, online posts and
interviews
, Guccifer 2.0 openly mocked CrowdStrike and its Russian attribution. Guccifer 2.0 released a number of documents, including a massive
200-plus-missive containing opposition research on Donald Trump.
Guccifer 2.0 also directly contradicted the efforts on the part of the DNC to minimize the extent of the hacking,
releasing the very donor lists
the DNC specifically stated had not been stolen. More chilling, Guccifer 2.0 claimed to be in possession of "about 100 Gb of data"
which had been passed on to the online publisher, Wikileaks, who "will publish them soon." 7. Seth Rich died on 10 July 2016.
I introduce Seth Rich at this point because he represents an alternative hypothesis. Rich, who reportedly was a Bernie Sanders supporter,
was in a position at the DNC that gave him access to the emails in question and the opportunity to download the emails and take them
from the DNC headquarters. Worth noting that Julian Assange offered
$20,000 for information leading to the arrest of Rich's killer or killers. 8. 22 July 2016. Wikileaks published the DNC emails
starting on 22 July 2016. Bill Binney, a former senior official at NSA, insists that if such a hack and electronic transfer over
the internet had occurred then the NSA has in it possession the intelligence data to prove that such activity had occurred.Notwithstanding the claim by CrowdStrike not a single piece of evidence has been provided to the public to support the conclusion
that the emails were hacked and physically transferred to a server under the control of a Russian intelligence operative.Please do not try to post a comment stating that the "Intelligence Community" concluded as well that Russia was responsible.
That claim is totally without one shred of actual forensic evidence. Also, Julian Assange insists that the emails did not come from
a Russian source.
Wikileaks, the protector of the accountability of the top, has announced a reward for finding the murderers of Seth Rich.
In comparison, the DNC has not offered any reward to help the investigation of the murder of the DNC staffer, but the DNC found
a well-connected lawyer to protect Imran Awan who is guilty (along with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz) in the greatest breach of national
cybersecurity:
http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/29/wasserman-schultz-seemingly-planned-to-pay-suspect-even-while-he-lived-in-pakistan/
Seth Rich's family have pleaded, and continue to plead, that the conspiracy theorists leave the death of their son alone and have
said that those who continue to flog this nonsense around the internet are only serving to increase their pain. I suggest respectfully
that some here may wish to consider their feelings. (Also, this stuff is nuts, you know.)
"We also know that many people are angry at our government and want to see justice done in some way, somehow. We are asking
you to please consider our feelings and words. There are people who are using our beloved Seth's memory and legacy for their own
political goals, and they are using your outrage to perpetuate our nightmare."
"Wheeler, a former Metropolitan Police Department officer, was a key figure in a series of debunked stories claiming that Rich
had been in contact with Wikileaks before his death. Fox News, which reported the story online and on television, retracted it
in June."
I'm afraid you're behind the times. Wheeler is no longer relevant now that Sy Hersh has revealed an FBI report that explicitly
says Rich was in contact with Wikileaks offering to sell them DNC documents.
It's unfortunate for the Rich family, but now that the connection is pretty much confirmed, they're going to have to allow
the truth to come out.
Mr. Dmitri Alperovitch, of Jewish descent (and an emigre from Russia), has been an "expert" at the Atlantic Council, the same
organization that cherishes and provides for Mr. Eliot Higgins. These two gentlemen - and the directorate of Atlantic Council
- are exhibit one of opportunism and intellectual dishonesty (though it is hard to think about Mr. Higgins in terms of "intellect").
Take note how Alperovitch coded the names of the supposed hackers: "Russian intelligence services hacked the Democratic National
Committee's computer network and accessed opposition research on Donald Trump, according to the Atlantic Council's Dmitri Alperovitch.
Two Russian groups ! codenamed FancyBear and CozyBear ! have been identified as spearheading the DNC breach." Alperovitch
is not just an incompetent "expert" in cybersecurity - he is a willing liar and war-mongering, for money.
The DNC hacking story has never been about national security; Alperovitch (and his handlers) have no loyalty to the US.
PT, I make a short exception. Actually decided to stop babbling for a while. But: Just finished something successfully.
And since I usually need distraction by something far more interesting then matters at hand. I was close to your line of thought
yesters.
But really: Shouldn't the timeline start in 2015, since that's supposedly the time someone got into the DNC's system?
One could of course start earlier. What is the exact timeline of the larger cyberwar post 9/11, or at least the bits and
pieces that surfaced for the nitwits among us, like: Stuxnet?
But nevermind. Don't forget developments and recent events around Eugene or Jewgeni Walentinowitsch Kasperski?
The Russia thing certainly seems to have gone quiet.
Bannon's chum says the issue with pursuing the Clinton email thing is that you would end up having to indict almost all of
the last administration, including Obama, unseemly certainly. Still there might be a fall guy, maybe Comey, and obviously it serves
Trump's purposes to keep this a live issue through the good work of Grassley and the occasional tweet.
Would be amusing if Trump pardoned Obama. Still think Brennan should pay a price though, can't really be allowed to get away
with it
Scott Ritter's article referenced in PT's post is terrific, covering a ton of issues related to CrowdStrike and the DNC hack.
You need to read it, not just PT's timeline. In case you missed the link in PT's post:
Also, the article Carr references is very important for understanding the limits of malware analysis and "attribution". Written
by Michael Tanji, whose credentials appear impressive: "spent nearly 20 years in the US intelligence community. Trained in both
SIGINT and HUMINT disciplines he has worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the National
Reconnaissance Office. At various points in his career he served as an expert in information warfare, computer network operations,
computer forensics, and indications and warning. A veteran of the US Army, Michael has served in both strategic and tactical assignments
in the Pacific Theater, the Balkans, and the Middle East."
His article echoes and reinforces what Carr and others have said about the difficulty of attribution of infosec breaches.
Namely that the basic problem of both intelligence and infosec operations is that there is too much obfuscation, manipulation,
and misdirection involved to be sure of who or what is going on.
The Seth Rich connection is pretty much a done deal, now that Sy Hersh has been caught on tape stating that he knows of
an FBI report based on a forensic analysis of Rich's laptop that shows Rich was in direct contact with Wikileaks with an attempt
to sell them DNC documents and that Wikileaks had access to Rich's DropBox account. Despite Hersh's subsequent denials - which
everyone knows are his usual impatient deflections prior to putting out a sourced and organized article - it's pretty clear that
Rich was at least one of the sources of the Wikileaks email dump and that there is zero connection to Russia.
None of this proves that Russian intelligence - or Russians of some stripe - or for that matter hackers from literally
anywhere - couldn't or didn't ALSO do a hack of the DNC. But it does prove that the iron-clad attribution of the source of Wikileaks
email release to Russia is at best flawed, and at worst a deliberate cover up of a leak.
And Russiagate depends primarily on BOTH alleged "facts" being true: 1) that Russia hacked the DNC, and 2) that Russia was
the source of Wikileaks release. And if the latter is not true, then one has to question why Russia hacked the DNC in the first
place, other than for "normal" espionage operations. "Influencing the election" then becomes a far less plausible theory.
The general takeaway from an infosec point of view is that attribution by means of target identification, tools used, and "indicators
of compromise" is a fatally flawed means of identifying, and thus being able to counter, the adversaries encountered in today's
Internet world, as Tanji proves. Only HUMINT offers a way around this, just as it is really the only valid option in countering
terrorism.
"Only recently did the "collusion with Russia" nonsense suddenly die down."
My short letter to the editor of The New Yorker (see last sentence):
Raffi Katchadourian ("Julian Assange, a man without a country," Aug. 21, 2017) didn't mention Wikileak's Vault 7 release
includes revelation of CIA capability to allow it to misdirect the attribution of cyber attacks. According to Wikileaks, the
U.S. false-flag technology consists of "leaving behind the 'fingerprints' of the very groups that the attack techniques were
stolen from."
Karchadourian's omission belies his assertion: "Whatever one thinks of Assange's election disclosures, accepting his contention
that they shared no ties with the two Russian fronts requires willful blindness."
His article, of near-record length for the magazine, exhaustively attempts to resuscitate speculation about a Russian cyber
connection to the Clinton meltdown.
At present, it looks a LOT like Shawn Henry & Dmitri Alperovitch (CrowdStrike executives), working for either the HRC campaign
or DNC leadership were very likely to have been behind the Guccifer 2.0 operation
Notable quotes:
"... CrowdStrike were recently exposed with their misattribution of quotes and fake information. ..."
"... In other words, CrowdStrike lied to you. ..."
"... CrowdStrike, the cyber-security firm that initially claimed Russia hacked the DNC and tilted the 2016 election in Donald Trump's favor, is being accused of misattribution of quotes in a December report. CrowdStrike have since walked back key and central claims in said report, calling their credibility into serious question. ..."
"... "Michael Alperovitch – Russian Spy with the Crypto-Keys - Essentially, Michael Alperovitch flies under the false-flag of being a cryptologist who works with PKI. A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a system for the creation, storage, and distribution of digital certificates which are used to verify that a particular public key belongs to a certain entity. ..."
"... The PKI creates digital certificates which map public keys to entities, securely stores these certificates in a central repository and revokes them if needed. Public key cryptography is a cryptographic technique that enables entities to securely communicate on an insecure public network (the Internet), and reliably verify the identity of an entity via digital signatures. ..."
"... Digital signatures use Certificate Authorities to digitally sign and publish the public key bound to a given user. This is done using the CIA's own private key, so that trust in the user key relies on one's trust in the validity of the CIA's key. Michael Alperovitch is considered to be the number one expert in America on PKI and essentially controls the market." ..."
"... At present, it looks a LOT like Shawn Henry & Dmitri Alperovitch (CrowdStrike executives), working for either the HRC campaign or DNC leadership were very likely to have been behind the Guccifer 2.0 operation." ..."
Voice of America (VOA) which is the largest U.S. international
broadcaster and also according to the not-for-profit and independent Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), CrowdStrike were
recently exposed with their misattribution of quotes and fake information.
In other words, CrowdStrike lied to you.
CrowdStrike, the cyber-security firm that initially claimed Russia hacked the DNC and tilted the 2016 election in Donald Trump's
favor, is being accused of misattribution of quotes in a December report. CrowdStrike have since walked back key and central claims
in said report, calling their credibility into serious question.
That article doesn't mention Wikileaks at all, so this is not the really the best place to discuss it. But in any case,
my response is: the VOA news article is a good source for the article
Fancy Bear , where it is already appropriately cited.
The VOA article or something like it might also be appropriate for the
CrowdStrike article, so long as we were extremely careful
to follow the source and avoid undue emphasis .
(We would, for instance, have to note CrowdStrike's defense, that its update to the report "does not in any way impact the
core premise of the report...").
Hi all :) For those interested to join or continue this discussion, I suggest we resume in
that other talk page . This would centralize discussion related to that news about CrowdStrike who walked back some of
their key and central claims. Thanks to contributor Neutrality for that suggestion :)
Yes, this is a good place to discuss it because whether Wikileaks was specifically mentioned at all or not, the fact is it's
a central component of what CrowdStrike was investigating so to say it's not appropriate to the article is ridiculous. As for
"does not in any way impact the core premise"...) that's the typical dissembling by entities caught making false claims and conclusions.
It's not a "defense." -- Preceding unsigned
comment added by 72.239.232.139
( talk
) 21:31, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
Michael Alperovitch/ Papa Bear/ Fancy Bear
"Michael Alperovitch – Russian Spy with the Crypto-Keys
- Essentially, Michael Alperovitch flies under the false-flag of being a cryptologist who works with PKI. A public key infrastructure
(PKI) is a system for the creation, storage, and distribution of digital certificates which are used to verify that a particular
public key belongs to a certain entity.
The PKI creates digital certificates which map public keys to entities, securely stores
these certificates in a central repository and revokes them if needed. Public key cryptography is a cryptographic technique that
enables entities to securely communicate on an insecure public network (the Internet), and reliably verify the identity of an
entity via digital signatures.
Digital signatures use Certificate Authorities to digitally sign and publish the public key bound
to a given user. This is done using the CIA's own private key, so that trust in the user key relies on one's trust in the validity
of the CIA's key. Michael Alperovitch is considered to be the number one expert in America on PKI and essentially controls the
market."
At present, it looks a LOT like Shawn Henry & Dmitri Alperovitch (CrowdStrike executives), working for either the HRC campaign
or DNC leadership were very likely to have been behind the Guccifer 2.0 operation." --
87.159.115.250 (
talk )
17:54, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
"... Given the stakes involved in the Russia-gate investigation – now including a possible impeachment battle over removing the President of the United States – wouldn't it seem logical for the FBI to insist on its own forensics for this fundamental predicate of the case? Or could Comey's hesitancy to demand access to the DNC's computers be explained by a fear that FBI technicians not fully briefed on CIA/NSA/FBI Deep State programs might uncover a lot more than he wanted? ..."
"... "In the case of the DNC, and, I believe, the DCCC, but I'm sure the DNC, we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done the work. But we didn't get direct access." ..."
"... "Isn't content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?" ..."
"... "It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks – the people who were my folks at the time is that they had gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016." ..."
"... Burr demurred on asking Comey to explain what amounts to gross misfeasance, if not worse. Perhaps, NBC could arrange for Megyn Kelly to interview Burr to ask if he has a clue as to what Putin might have been referring to when he noted, "There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia." ..."
"... Given the congressional intelligence "oversight" committees' obsequiousness and repeated "high esteem" for the "intelligence community," there seems an even chance that – no doubt because of an oversight – the CIA/FBI/NSA deep-stage troika failed to brief the Senate "oversight committee" chairman on WikiLeaks "Vault 7" disclosures – even when WikiLeaks publishes original CIA documents. ..."
Given the stakes involved in the Russia-gate investigation – now including a possible impeachment battle over removing the
President of the United States – wouldn't it seem logical for the FBI to insist on its own forensics for this fundamental predicate
of the case? Or could Comey's hesitancy to demand access to the DNC's computers be explained by a fear that FBI technicians not fully
briefed on CIA/NSA/FBI Deep State programs might uncover a lot more than he wanted?
Comey was asked again about this curious oversight on June 8 by Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr:
BURR: "And the FBI, in this case, unlike other cases that you might investigate – did you ever have access to the actual hardware
that was hacked? Or did you have to rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected?"
COMEY:"In the case of the DNC, and, I believe, the DCCC, but I'm sure the DNC, we did not have access to the devices themselves.
We got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done the work. But we didn't get direct
access."
BURR: "But no content?"
COMEY: "Correct."
BURR:"Isn't content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?"
COMEY:"It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks – the people who were my folks at the time is that they had
gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016."
Burr demurred on asking Comey to explain what amounts to gross misfeasance, if not worse. Perhaps, NBC could arrange for Megyn
Kelly to interview Burr to ask if he has a clue as to what Putin might have been referring to when he noted, "There may be hackers,
by the way, in the United States who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia."
Given the congressional intelligence "oversight" committees' obsequiousness and repeated "high esteem" for the "intelligence
community," there seems an even chance that – no doubt because of an oversight – the CIA/FBI/NSA deep-stage troika failed to brief
the Senate "oversight committee" chairman on WikiLeaks "Vault 7" disclosures – even when WikiLeaks publishes original CIA documents.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.
He was an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and CIA analyst for a total of 30 years and now servers on the Steering Group of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Reprinted with permission from
Consortium News .
Please note that Hillary's path to the top was marked by proved beyond reasonable doubt DNC fraud.
With information contained in recent email leaks some DNC honchos probably might go to jail for
violation of elections laws. So for them this is a death match and people usually fight well when
they are against the wall. The same in true about Obama and his entourage.
And while this Nobel Peace Price winner managed to bomb just eight countries, Hillary might
improve this peace effort, which was definitely insufficient from the point of view of many diplomats
in State Department. Also the number of humanitarian bombs could be much greater. Here Hillary
election can really help.
From the other point of view this might well be a sign of the crisis of legitimacy of the US
ruling neoliberal elite (aka financial oligarchy).
After approximately 50 years in power the level of degeneration of the US neoliberal elite
reached the level when the quality of candidates reminds me the quality of candidates from the
USSR Politburo after Brezhnev death. Health-wise Hillary really bear some resemblance to Andropov
and Chernenko. And inability of the elite to replace either of them with a more viable candidate
speaks volumes.
The other factor that will not go away is that Obama effectively pardoned Hillary for emailgate
(after gentle encouragement from Bill via Loretta Lynch). Otherwise instead of candidate to POTUS,
she would be a viable candidate for orange suit too. Sure, the rule of law is not applicable to
neoliberal elite, so why Hilary should be an exception? But some naive schmucks might think that
this is highly improper. And be way too much upset with the fruits of neoliberal globalization.
Not that Brexit is easily repeatable in the USA, but vote against neoliberal globalization (protest
vote) might play a role.
Another interesting thing to observe is when (and if) the impeachment process starts, if she
is elected. With some FBI materials in hands of the Congress Republicans she in on the hook. A
simple majority of those present and voting is required for each article of impeachment, or the
resolution as a whole, to pass.
All-in-all her win might well be a Pyrrhic victory. And the unknown neurological disease that
she has (Parkinson?) makes her even more vulnerable after the election, then before. The role
of POTUS involves a lot of stress and requires substantial physical stamina as POTUS is the center
of intersection of all important government conflicts, conversations and communications. That's
a killing environment for anyone with Parkinson. And remember she was not able to survive the
pressure of the role of the Secretary of State when she was in much better health and has an earlier
stage of the disease.
Another interesting question, if the leaks continue after the election. That also can contribute
to the level of stress. Just anticipation is highly stressful. I do not buy the theory about "evil
Russians." This hypothesis does not survive Occam razor test. I think that there some anti-Hillary
forces within the USA ruling elite, possibly within the NSA or some other three letter agency
that has access to email boxes of major Web mail providers via NSA.
If this is a plausible hypothesis, that makes it more probable that the leaks continue. To
say nothing about possible damaging revelations about Bill (especially related to Clinton Foundation),
who really enjoyed his retirement way too much.
Those who vote for Hillary for the sake of stability need to be reminded that according to
the Minsky Theory stability sometimes can be very destabilizing
When Krugman is appointed to a top government post by Hillary Clinton we will be able to FOIA
his pay and attach a value to all the columns "electioneering" Krugman has written.
likbez -> anne...
Anne,
"An intolerably destructive essay that should never have been posted, and I assume no
such essay will be posted again on this blog. Shameful, shameful essay."
You mean that voting for the female warmonger with some psychopathic tendencies ("We came,
we saw, he died") is not shameful ?
An interesting approach I would say.
I am not fun of Trump, but he, at least, does not have the blood of innocent women and children
on his hands. And less likely to start WWIII unlike this completely out of control warmonger.
With the number of victims of wars of neoliberal empire expansion in Iraq, Libya and Syria,
you should be ashamed of yourself as a women.
Please think about your current position Anne. You really should be ashamed.
Beyond his collusion lies, Adam Schiff repeatedly & falsely claimed that I committed perjury in my Congressional testimony
& suggested Mueller would indict me for it. Is anyone in the media going to hold him accountable for that? It was nothing more
than slander. #FullOfSchiff
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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Although this profile says Virginia, tweets are from the Sofia, Bulgaria time zone and he writes in Russian. Another curiosity considering the Fancy Bear source code is in Russian. This image shows Crowdstrike in their network. Crowdstrike is part of Ukrainian nationalist hacker network. In the image it shows a network diagram of Crowdstrike following the Surkov leaks. The network communication goes through a secondary source.
Although OSINT Academy sounds fairly innocuous, it's the official twitter account for Ukraine's Ministry of Information head Dimitri Zolotukin. It is also Ukrainian Intelligence. The Ministry of Information started the Peacekeeper or Myrotvorets website that geolocates journalists and other people for assassination. If you disagree with OUNb politics, you could be on the list.
