Writes Matt Taibbi, in "No Doubt Left: Russiagate Was a Cover-Up/The most infuriatingly complex scandal of all time has just been reduced to a page or two, thanks to another declassified release" (Substack).
More from Taibbi at "The New York Times Can't Stop Sucking/How many times can one newspaper screw up a story?" (Substack).
ADDED: This post is really a place-holder. It marks my own nonfollowing of the story. Notice what I am quoting — Taibbi's acknowledgment that the story is too hard for people to follow. And it's not as though he's solving the problem for us. The quoted material is conclusory assertion. For someone who isn't already pro- or anti-Trump, you still have no way to sort out what's true. I also read The New York Times, and here's Taibbi telling me The New York Times is systematically screwing it up. Maybe. How am I supposed to know?
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166 comments:
Lock her up!
Hillary was 100x worse than Tricky Dick. She will go down in history as Crooked Hillary.
Taibbi is a soft spoken, easy going man. But he's a pitbull professionally.
Russiagate
Biden Laptop
2020 election
Biden mental capacity cover-up
Some of the most consequential scandals in American history all occurred for the purposes of keeping Trump out of power. And that's not even getting into the Lawfare. Amazing.
Sorry, Charlie.
We're looking for news that tells us the truth not the DNC narrative, no matter how much the TPTB need us to not do so. Rely on the ignorance of your readers, not me.
This won't be taken seriously by the people responsible until the DoJ requires them to be serious about it. Until then, "nothing to see here" is the response. They'll make a movie about this to prove their point, when they're all disgraced or in jail. By 2060 or so, their version goes into the history books.
And so it goes. Am I too cynical?
Taibbi is uncharacteristically gentle on the corrupt media that reported every salacious claim as though it were settled fact. They turned off their bullshit detectors and just spread rumours. Not caring in the slightest that they were harming their country and, because of the vital role that country plays, the world.
Taibbi's 3-point explanation of the Russiagate hoax is the final, definitive description of what really happened and why. Can't wait to hear gad, kak, and Inga try to refute the irrefutable now. But bless their plucky little troll hearts, I'm sure they'll try.
I was hoping you'd link to thus. I read the Annex. I read Taibbi. I read the Savage piece in the NYT. I read many other takes.
I still really don't know what to think about it (beyond confirming my political biases).
After some of Taibbi's initial reporting on this story I was a bit taken aback by the 'just a cover-up' tone of this piece. As pointed out by Yancey a while back and then detailed by some of the emails in the Annex, the Clinton plan was to plant hints the IC knew Trump's vote totals had been manipulated without ever confirming or denying the rumors. This was the significance of spiking the PDB where Clapper was going to declare that never happened. The whole project was designed to give Electors a reason to vote for Hillary over Trump when it really mattered. When that fell through then there was an immediate pivot to hiding the evidence, and Trump's first Presidency, under a cloud of investigative squid ink.
Knowing their allegations were false tells me the conspirators believed all they needed to do was establish tenable probable cause to investigate Trump. Once inside, surely they’d find actual wrongdoing because of course a guy like Trump had something to hide.
I would have loved to see their faces in private each time one of their inquisitions came up dry, especially if they ever looked in the mirror and realized that they themselves had become what they had accused Trump of being. But I doubt any of them had that level of self reflection.
The time for dancing around this obviously criminal activity is over. It’s time for certain seditious miscreants to pay the piper.
pantsuited pantload
your grim visage behind bars
snarling rug muncher!
NYT has lost its case, a minor tag of its former selfie. Ironic.
According to the Durham Annex, "the timely deletion of e-mails," meant that Hillary could not be charged with exposing US secrets when she used an unsecured server while Secretary of State because the evidence on just what she exposed was gone. But still the scandal lingered because it was obvious that the Secretary of State must have sent and received important e-mails, even if they were all erased, and those e-mails were sent and received on an unsecured server. This lingering scandal was to be covered over by accusing Trump of collusion with Russia. Obama, the FBI and the CIA didn't shoot down this political lie. Instead we see them drawn in to the corruption centered on the Clintons. That's what the Annex tells us.
As I see it, they all were sure that Trump would lose so this would be a small, tidy lie, just a political dirty trick. But Trump won. So the President and his loyalists had to be kept out of the FBI and CIA files. New and bigger lies were needed and supplied and these too must be kept from the President. Was it against their oaths of office for the leaders of the intelligence commuity to keep gigantic lies against a US President going? Surely it was.
Taibbi is trying to avoid calling a spade a spade.
Washington DC is an incestuous tribal set of people who lived in the ruling class. They all work in government jobs and have family in corrupt NGOs that suck taxpayer money. They funneled taxpayer money to their oligarch masters and lied for them constantly.
When Trump threatened their power and unearned wealth they banded together with each other to attack the outsider.
They are dishonest and evil people as a tribe and they cannot live in a competitive environment without government support. They knew they were lying and knew what was happening.
They are all traitors. There are thousands of them.
A gateway... conspiracy progressing from Clinton's Water closet to Obama's White House... Hole... Whore h/t NAACP.
Part of the problem for some of us is that this was obvious at the time. No one was ever able to explain why Putin would all of a sudden want to support any Republican in the White House. No one ever explained how we went from Hillary resetting relations with Russia, after W. supposedly damaged all the progress made by her husband, to now Russia didn't want anything to do with Hillary. Comey claimed Hillary's mishandling of classified information was an administrative issue, but then his FBI prosecuted a submariner for doing a lot less than Hillary. Hell, the whole thing was described in a book written about her failed campaign.
"One, Hillary Clinton and her team apparently hoped to deflect from her email scandal and other problems via a campaign tying Trump to Putin."
Another problem was that the Clinton campaign, the DNC, and their media allies had relentlessly promoted Trump in an effort to make a shambles of the Republican primaries. Rank-and-file Dems don't have to care about Russiagate - just go after the people who put this plan into action.
Dems will dismiss this reporting with ad hominem attacks on Taibbi just like they did re the Twitter Files coverage.
"He used to be good, I don't know what happened to him, but he sold out. He just wants to make money on Substack now."
Washington is swamped in a District of Corruption of special, peculiar, and foreign interests that are a first-order forcing of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change and government whoring.
According to the Durham Annex, "the timely deletion of e-mails," meant that Hillary could not be charged with exposing US secrets when she used an unsecured server while Secretary of State because the evidence on just what she exposed was gone.
Something to note is that deleting these emails is specifically why most people end up in jail.
If the investigators can’t determine the scope of the leak then the average person has the book throw at them. Usually you end up with about a year in jail per document. Many got 1-5 years for a few pictures. Manning is in jail until the end of time.
Hillary would start at 33,000 years if she was an e5.
Taibbi also points out that the Legacy Media is resolutely refusing to cover this story… because they are among the perps. Democrats, by and large, are unaware that this story has even emerged.
Wait...so you're telling me Hillary left some stuff out of 'What Happened'? She wouldn't do that, would she?
I never thought Trump's 2016 campaign was organized enough to coordinate anything with Putin. That was one loose, rattletrap outfit. But it worked, and it drove everyone insane.
What great entertainment.
Wild swan said…
As I see it, they all were sure that Trump would lose so this would be a small, tidy lie, just a political dirty trick. But Trump won.
Yep. Makes you wonder how many less formidable people in the past were either destroyed anonymously or simply became Deep State tools.
Makes the John Roberts conspiracy theories seem at least more tenable given that there was indeed at least one cabal out there that would try to execute on such a plan.
Yes, all of this was obvious at the time...but now the evidence has finally been ferreted out for everyone to see. Before, they could simply deny and deflect. Pretty hard (but apparently still not impossible) to do that with the actual emails and text messages now revealed.
It would be nice if, at this point, it made a difference.
Wince asked..
especially if they ever looked in the mirror and realized that they themselves had become what they had accused Trump of being. But I doubt any of them had that level of self reflection.
silly boy!
Vampires can't see themselves in a mirror, they HAVE no reflection
"Fuck." - Hillary Clinton
..Can't wait to hear gad, kak, and Inga try to refute the irrefutable now.
I'm pretty sure, that you'll Never hear another word about this from them.
for them, it's time, to MoveOn.org
The amount of effort to distract from Hillary's server shows how bad her crime was. She knew what was on it. Classified corruption. She needed to make Russia look evil and discredited in case they did publish them when she was Prez (shudder).
Putin saw how the steep mid 80s drop in oil prices mortally wounded the USSR. There's simply no way he would favor Drill Baby Trump over climate-crazed , anti-fracking Commies.
..Hillary could not be charged with exposing US secrets when she used an unsecured server while Secretary of State because the evidence on just what she exposed was gone.
according to the DoJ:
Hillary could NOT be charged, because "no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case" ..
Biden would NOT be charged, because he was a forgetful old man
All that, is to say, no reasonable prosecutor would (LITERALLY) commit suicide by trying to convict them
OR, it was the worst political scandal in American history.
Watergate was bad enough to name every subsequent scandal after it, but this was far far worse, and by every measure. It was purposeful, it was illegal, it used all the powers of the government, it violated innumerable laws, and it was intended to rob the American people of their most basic right: the right to democratic control of their government.
I'm now at least 50% convinced that Watergate was a similar crime done for the same reasons, and like this one, the real crime is far worse than the one advertised by the seditious criminals.
The cycle is repeated and the political Lesson of all Lessons is once again hauled out into the light straining at the ropes, against its will: It's not the original crime what gets ya; It's the conspiracy to cover it up.
The very fact that the documents coming to light now had been treated as super classified shows the danger they represented not to US spycraft but to the narrative and interests of the PTB.
wild chicken said...
This is why Trump is so successful as an executive.
When Trump speaks he doesn’t run it past handlers or a politburo. And when he acts there are no surprises because he does what he said he was going to do.
“Organized” in this context describes people like Desantis, Jeb, and Mittens and W. They say what they are told to say and do what they are told to do. The reason GOP voters turned to Trump was because they were tired of the organized liars and scum weasels.
Old woman kneels
Pond reflects leaves, sky, sorrow
Then a policeman
One of the most infuriating aspects of this is that many of the crimes are known facts that most people know happened, but they pretend it's somehow yet to be proven, so they didn't have to admit their own culpability, and they can still support these criminals. Everybody knows that the FISA court was lied to, that Hillary destroyed thousands of emails, that she destroyed phones and computers, that countless other violations happened all to hide evidence, and pursue power, but people pretend like it was an accident or something, or just right wing conspiracy talk. You know it's true, so what does that say about you as an American.
“ They turned off their bullshit detectors and just spread rumours.”
As did our Lefty friends on this blog.
"According to the Durham Annex, "the timely deletion of e-mails," meant that Hillary could not be charged with exposing US secrets when she used an unsecured server while Secretary of State because the evidence on just what she exposed was gone."
Those emails were deleted after they had been subpoenaed by Congress. Is that not a crime in and of itself?
At the time I told a published historian friend of mine that the Russian hoax looked like one of the most obvious false flags ever.Gee I might be proved right.
"Three — and this is the most important part — instead of outing them, authorities used state resources to massively expand and amplify her scheme.... Hillary Clinton got in a jam, and the FBI, CIA, and the Obama White House got her out of it by setting Trump up."
That's the mind-blowing part.
Waiting.............
Hillary Clinton is all evil and all greed.
-> She set up a private server/e-mail to hide her insider deals as Obama's Sec of State. she should be in prison.
Hillary - and the Russian Uranium One deal - makes HILLARY THE RUSSIAN ASSET. Rachel Maddow(D-MSNBC) is her paid media whore side-kick.
Hillary Clinton WILL NEVER BE PRESIDENT.
But she should be someone's bitch behind bars.
So many democrats used their placement of power to enrich themselves while working for Obama.
As luck would have it the Obama's are also very wealthy.
take note that CULT dems like Inag/Bich/Dink/ - have nothing to say or offer.
they still buy the lies. Idiots.
How much tax payer money was used for this farce?
Fucking Chuckie Schumer don't care.
corrupt D-hack Media/ NYT get pushed into a corner for their corrupt party and the lies - they yell "No that's Russian meddling too!"
Look! A squirrel! Tariffs!
Matt T: Lifted:
"For what it’s worth, the Times without Savage’s help also swallowed the Hamilton 68 hoax whole and described the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag as the work of Russian “bots”; ran an editorial called “The Nunes memo is all smoke, no fire”; and ran a full house editorial (one that again cited the phony Hamilton 68 dashboard, by the way) describing the Nunes report as a “fake scandal” designed, like the Clinton email investigation, to distract from the “real conspiracy” investigated by Robert Mueller. This sounds remarkably like today’s story, which described the Durham release as an effort to “change the subject from its broken promise to release Jeffrey Epstein files.” They write the same stories, over and over. It never ends."
Indeed.
I recall some woman who had traveled with/covered the Clinton wrote a book that came out a few months after the election outright saying the Clinton campaign made up the Russia Collusion story out of whole cloth because she watched them do it. Haven't managed to find that book or quote though.
MAGA went from wanting the death penalty for child rapists to being apologists for sending them to do their time in a minimum security club fed.
Maxwell can hurt Trump, so she gets what she wants. And none of them will say a word about it.
"Nobody knows what Mueller knows!"
The further down the rabbit hole you go, the more you see that this was about a continuous pattern of endless wars that have been going on since the fall of the USSR. We needed to set up the next one. The Manafort "Black Ledger" that the New York Times wrote about on behalf of Hillary Clinton's campaign in August of 2016 was not only hand written, but invented by the very same Ukrainian politicians who are known from White House logs to have visited Joe Biden's White House offices. The impeachments were all about endless wars.
JFK tried to find a way to coexist with the Soviets, look what happened to him.
Nixon tried to find a way to coexist with China and recognized Taiwan as part of China, which it had always been until Imperial Japan occupied it. Look what happened to him.
Trump was trying to find a way to peacefully co-exist with Russia, look what the deep state did to him.
It's all because the deep state has an agenda of world domination. Once the European dream of dividing up Russia is complete, China is low hanging fruit. So the point was to provoke an existential crisis with Russia in Ukraine, it was a simple plan. Don't think that just because it didn't work, we won't continue the conflict until one of us loses catastrophically.
Nixon also ended the Viet Nam War, his real crime.
Leland said...
Part of the problem for some of us is that this was obvious at the time. No one was ever able to explain why Putin would all of a sudden want to support any Republican in the White House.
@Leland, yes and no. Back in the day whenever any of us irredeemably deplorable folks raised the point a commentator would pop into the thread — his handle not having been seen before and generally not seen afterwards — to airily inform us that Putin utterly despised Hillary and worked to get Trump elected instead. This was generally stated with a distinct “everybody knows this” vibe.
Infuriating to those of us who understand something about cybersecurity. Hillary Clinton insisted not only on using an unsecured mail server, but insisted on using her unsecured Blackberry, even while she was in Moscow in 2010. Putin and the SVR had to have information that could be used to blackmail her. On the one hand a US President thst Putin could blackmail. On the other hand a US President, Trump, who was totally unpredictable. Which US President do you think Vlad Putin preferred?
Hillary reported to Barack Obama, and he could have ordered her either to start using the State Department’s secure communications channels or tender her letter of resignation. But he was too weak.
YouTube: Hillary - "I Always Try To Tell The Truth" 2-18-2016
Kak - can you focus on the topic? You sound like a Russian bot.
This is the easiest story in history to unfold. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton tried to execute a coup on Donald Trump and they both should be hauled up on Treason charges and hung by their necks until they are dead.
Easy. Peasy.
How am I supposed to know?
@Althouee, you were a full professor and the holder of an endowed chair. Unless Wisconsin Law is utterly weird, those are indicators of a well above average level of intelligence. Why do you resist following the the story and going where the logic takes you?
I think — and I could be wrong — that the answer lies in your admission a couple years back that you voted for Hillary. You may be reluctant to admit that “solidarity” drove you to vote for such a worthless human being as her.
"Hillary Clinton insisted not only on using an unsecured mail server, but insisted on using her unsecured Blackberry, even while she was in Moscow in 2010. Putin and the SVR had to have information that could be used to blackmail her."
Hillary Clinton delivered US uranium to fuel Putin's nuclear weapons against the United States.
Why in the world would they wish to blackmail her?
tim maguire said..."Taibbi is uncharacteristically gentle on the corrupt media…"
Yeah, he calls their lies are "screw ups". My understanding of that phrase is "mistakes". They are not making "mistakes" in their reporting. They're lying to advance the democrats agenda.
"How am I supposed to know?"
Well, you could follow the story from the beginning and start to get a feel for who might be lying and who might be telling the truth by seeing whose assertions stand up over time. It's like the Ukraine war, you watch what they say, then watch what happens, and it becomes apparent that the Ukrainians are lying, and our press simply repeats their lies. I didn't start out believing that, I started out by watching the war unfold and hearing what both sides were saying.
It's like that quote from the guy who lived in Japan during WWII. He said, "I knew we were losing when every glorious victory was won closer to the home island."
One side, the side that Russiagate was all lies, based on an invented dossier that Hillary's campaign paid for, and then lied on disclosure forms and claimed it as "legal expenses." This is a matter of public record. Had Trump done that, he would be behind bars, Hillary got a small fine.
One side is part of a coherent narrative that jibes with not only recent history, but with the kinds of motivations and actions of empires since time immemorial, and the other side depends on calling people bad names and using "fears" as reasons. It's not that hard.
What's hard is putting aside a lifetime of belief in institutions like the American Press, the New York Times and Washington Post mainly, and accepting that these institutions were co-opted by people who wanted control of trillions of dollars in spending and an awe inspiring military. What is so hard about believing that you can't run elections with stakes that high on the honor system? What is so hard about believing that people who seek control of the US government would balk at taking control of the press? Newspapers used to be based on advertising revenue, now their business model is political clout, but you can't just sell your clout to the highest bidder, that would not be tolerated by the tiny cabal of people with real power, if you can produce clout, you must be controlled.
People think that geopolitics is like a poker game where people don't rig the game, accept their losses when they lose, and square their debts based on the honor system. Most people think like children.
..."How am I supposed to know? ..."
First read, and then fisk the de-classified annex to Durham's report.
None of this would have been possible without the explicit compliant support of the Legacy Media - that much becomes very clear when you start to realize what they had access to, and asked no questions about.
"This post is really a place-holder. It marks my own nonfollowing of the story."
…
"How am I supposed to know? "
Perhaps you could follow the story.
Just a thought.
Poor little kaka-spewing Kaki and his desperate attempts to deflect...
Steve McIntyre's Twitter account was a trove of fact based demolition charges for the Russiagate narrative. His detailed reviews of White House logs alone was amazingly illuminating. But McIntyre probably has an IQ of 150 at least, he won a Canada wide math prize coming out of high school, that, paired with a dogged work ethic. Following his work is too hard for most people who would rather consume the comfortable lies, lies which trade on confirmation bias, doled out by the New York Times and NPR.
Remember when the head of NPR said that they could not let "reverence for the truth" stand in the way of the things that needed to be done?
This post is really a place-holder
There’s a level of irresponsibility to Ann’s ‘added’ here. We can’t follow because we don’t know and we don’t know because the perpetrators don’t want us to know. As someone who sometimes brags of clairvoyance of current events this lack of engagement is too deliberate. Bad faith…
"The New York Times is systematically screwing it up. Maybe. How am I supposed to know?"
Come on, folks. Don't you recognize our hostesses humor when you see it?
"It marks my own nonfollowing of the story. "
I can understand that. It's not like anyone is going to go to prison, or be held, in any way, even partially accountable for an attempt at overthrowing an elected government.
“I also read The New York Times, and here's Taibbi telling me The New York Times is systematically screwing it up. Maybe. How am I supposed to know?”
This is really disappointing, Professor. Having watched a sort of transformation of the blog during which you regularly Fisk the NYT I thought you recognized that they “systematically screw up” almost everything to do with Trump, Republicans, and now, Israel.
"Haven't managed to find that book or quote though"
I think you're referring to "Shattered" by Allen and Parnes:
"In Brooklyn, her team coalesced around the idea that Russian hacking was the major unreported story of the campaign"
"here's Taibbi telling me The New York Times is systematically screwing it up. Maybe. How am I supposed to know?" I know because it is the New York Times. The NYT motto: "all the news the DNC sees fit to print".
Come on, folks. Don't you recognize our hostesses humor when you see it?
@Fred, subjecting the American government to an attempted coup is nothing to joke about.
Wow! Great job by Kak changing the subject. I’m impressed.
How am I supposed to know?
A legit question for anyone who hasn't been following the story, which is probably more than half the country. And that will be the challenge for the DOJ and the Trump Administration now going forward.
The problem Althouse points out might be the reason nothing ever happens to the major players. They're has-beens now and aren't worth the political bandwidth it would take to prosecute them when there is so much to be done in such a short time as Trump has left. Trump won, but the Trump reformation has to keep winning.
Hopefully the first draft of history will be completely scrapped when the books come out.
Maybe the side that lied to you about Mueller not being senile while he purported to run their infestigation, infested with Democratic operatives, is the side you should question. We plainly saw that Mueller had no idea what was going on during his public testimony before Congress, which was a preview of Biden's fateful debate performance.
Naah! That's mean!
I hear that they are putting out a new version of The Emperor's New Clothes where the boy is whisked off to a re-education camp and finally learns that true happiness lies in going along with what you are told by people in authority.
Seriously? If you have a WILL TO UNDERSTAND you will take the time to do so. Professor, you just don’t want to understand. YOU have the time while most working people dont have the time. Just say, “I don’t want to make the time. I have no desire to find out why & how I was duped because it is in the past.”
This story is all about the timeline line of when meetings happened & who was part of them, decisions made & by
who and the complicity of the media.
Another distraction from Trump’s connections to Epstein and Maxwell. Entirely predictable. 🤡
As almost always these days, there is a coherent, reasoned factual analysis supported by evidence on one hand, and a wild baseless set of allegations on the other. Sadly, for about half of the voting population, the latter is the one that gets through.
Trump’s record of feigning blamelessness while casting aspersions on the blameless will never be matched.
Although to his credit — Trump has a built in audience for this sort of material.
"We plainly saw that Mueller had no idea what was going on during his public testimony before Congress,"
Yes, he looked lost, but there were others (like Weissman) under him who were not. I recently watched a video of Mueller's testimony to Congress and when asked about the Steele Dossier he explicitly would not answer a single question on it. Astounding.
"Professor, you just don’t want to understand."
It's hard to conclude otherwise.
Taibbi's is a good summary of how it all started. What the released material showed is that there was never any real belief that the Russian-Trump collusion was real by the people who initiated the official investigations and wire-taps. They knew it was all Clinton Campaign bullshit all along but were eagerly willing to act on it in an official capacity. If I were Bondi and the DoJ team, I would think seriously about bringing civil cases against Brennan, Clapper, and Comey/McCabe/Strzok for fraud to recover the funds spent on this bogus investigation.
"Kak - can you focus on the topic? You sound like a Russian bot."
Jeez, April Apple, the Russians have higher standards than to let a moron like KakBich onto their team.
The best Taibbi article to read about Russiagate is this one.
To me, Hillary's involvement was minor. She was running a campaign to win, and she was smearing her opponent. She's not the first to do that!
What was astounding was how the security apparatus was abused by Obama to undermine and attack the incoming president. That had never been done before. And it wasn't done to "cover up for HIllary." That's a ridiculous idea. It was done to sabotage the American president and his administration.
The important focus is what happened after the election of 2016, not before it. Hillary is irrelevant to this story.
Stefanik: Was the Steele Dossier reviewed?
Mueller: I can't discuss that case.
I mean, come on!
"canine incuriosity" - Is that a thing? Is it supposed to be the opposite of the well-known trope about feline curiosity?
It was hard for me to follow. AI can help sort things out. C'mon Althouse, you were ready to run away with Grok a while back. You can lean on Grok now to see you through this.
As far as I can make out, John Durham, while investigating the intelligence agencies' Russiagate hoax, went to the intelligence agencies and they told him that two supposed Clinton emails confirming that Russiagate was a hoax were faked by the Russians. So does that mean that the Russians were interfering after all? Should Durham have taken them at their word after they'd been lying for years? I'm trying to wrap my head around all that. I asked AI to see the emails, but they haven't been released yet.
"Stefanik: Was the Steele Dossier reviewed?
Mueller: I can't discuss that case."
If you read the Mueller Report it becomes clear that they invested almost literally no time at all on it. The reason they didn't was that they already knew from Steele's "source" that it was a complete fabrication (this was known before Trump took office and we now know it was known before the 1st Carter Page FISA warrant was approved). Mueller refused to answer the question because to admit the Steele Dossier was bullshit was political dynamite.
“ Putin and the SVR had to have information that could be used to blackmail her. On the one hand a US President thst Putin could blackmail. On the other hand a US President, Trump, who was totally unpredictable. Which US President do you think Vlad Putin preferred?”
And we had it confirmed - Putin greatly preferred the consistently corrupt Clinton whom he could blackmail.
I also read The New York Times, and here's Taibbi telling me The New York Times is systematically screwing it up. Maybe. How am I supposed to know?
The NYT spectacularly failed to report on Stalin's atrocities in the Ukraine. The paper's reporter overlooked millions of people being starved to death. And the NYT was awarded a Pulitizer for its unbelievably bad journalism.
In the 50 years of Roe v. Wade, the NYT never showed us a photograph of an aborted infant. They never investigated whether the pro-life movement might be right. Instead of looking into the allegations, it was all swept under the rug.
The Russian collusion hoax is nothing new at the NYT. It's an ongoing pattern of not seeing the truth, because you don't want to see the truth. These are not journalists. They are political partisans who have taken over a newspaper.
By the time this all shakes out, we'll learn that Hillary was the one who paid prostitutes to pee on the bed Obama slept in.
Kak’s second attempt to change the subject wasn’t quite as impressive.
Just a reminder for everyone, this scandal didn’t end until Trump was re-elected, and (alleged but illegally appointed) Special Prosecutor Smith let the FL documents case against Trump die, after the election. It was just part of the ongoing coverup. The two corrupt organizations that squashed Midyear Exam (Clinton email scandal) and used Crossfire Hurricane to try to destroy Trump (FBI Counterintelligence Division and DOJ Counterintelligence and Export Control (CEC) group) setup and ran this case against Trump from the earliest days of the Biden Administration, when CEC branch chief Jay Bratt visited the WH several times. And part of it was chasing down documents that Trump had that exposed their culpability.
“Well, you could follow the story from the beginning and start to get a feel for who might be lying and who might be telling the truth….”
Now, there’s a mug’s game.
Read the Durham Annex. Then ask yourself, 'why was this classified?'
Yeah.
I don’t believe anyone has a position on this that doesn’t align their feelings toward Trump. That that’s how people are able to figure it out. They know where they want to go. I’m not doing that so it’s entirely different task, and it involves reading things that are written by people who already have a position, so it’s like listening to lawyers, arguing for their clients. I am not the judge obligated to resolve the dispute and my opinion about it has no impact so I refuse to do the thankless work. It would be easy work if I just decided whether to support or oppose Trump and do what is expedient, but it’s way more expedient just to refuse to do the work.
Yancey - good point. But as we know - most Russian bots are not even real. they are manufactured D-hack BS.
Kak/Richsockpuppet/actbluebot is still mad that Sydney Sweeney and Laken Riley won't date him.
Of course leftists like them younger than that. Reeeeeeal young.
Ask Adam Westbrook and Brett Blomme.
also@ Yancey@ 11:05. YES!
Mr T.
Laken riley cannot date anyone. she was savagely murdered by one of A-ho Joe's illegal thugs.
And this is why the NYT does what it does.
“Now, there’s a mug’s game.”
Would having a trial of one of the people who broke the law creating the story work? Or is the legal system incapable of finding the truth and needs to be abandoned? Is that what legal professionals are now thinking?
Original Mike and Bruce Hayden-
Indeed.
St Croix said:
"The Russian collusion hoax is nothing new at the NYT. It's an ongoing pattern of not seeing the truth, because you don't want to see the truth. These are not journalists. They are political partisans who have taken over a newspaper."
...that... all year long.
I don’t believe anyone has a position on this that doesn’t align their feelings toward Trump.
Taibbi is a Bernie bro.
I suspect his politics have shifted to the right as he's followed this story. How could it not? The Biden administration sent the IRS over to his house to shut him up. But he's definitely not some party hack.
"Taibbi is a Bernie bro."
Ouch.
It doesn't seem very complex to me. Corrupt politicians and officials played a series of very, very dirty tricks to protect their own asses and damage the opposition. They used dishonest media and the power of corrupt intelligence agencies and judges to accomplish this. They are finally being exposed.
It is an unprecedentedly yuge scandal, and involves very powerful people, including Barack Obama. But there's nothing particularly complicated about it.
Why are you "nonfollowing" the story? It's one of the biggest political scandals in history. Are you covering your eyes and ears because you don't want to hear it?
"You sound like a Russian bot."
Not if you ignore his comments.
Kakistocracy appears on cue
raging and hooting
and flinging his poo
I don’t believe anyone has a position on this that doesn’t align their feelings toward Trump. That that’s how people are able to figure it out. They know where they want to go. I’m not doing that so it’s entirely different task, and it involves reading things that are written by people who already have a position, so it’s like listening to lawyers, arguing for their clients. I am not the judge obligated to resolve the dispute and my opinion about it has no impact so I refuse to do the thankless work. It would be easy work if I just decided whether to support or oppose Trump and do what is expedient, but it’s way more expedient just to refuse to do the work.
"Lalalalalalala...I can't hear you!"
Wow. Just wow.
In nearly 20 years of reading Althouse Blogposts, I cannot remember a single one that illustrates more perfectly how obtuse an otherwise intelligent individual may be. It’s an embarrassment. Don’t retreat to legalese and work deferrals. Own it. A enormous political scandal, and you are a person who might have quipped in 1976, I don’t really understand that Watergate thing. Ok, well, la di da! You might have at least noted a grammatical error or a poorly constructed sentence in the reams of reportage on the same. I was personally struck by the allegation that Trump had two Russian hookers per on the bed that Obama had used in Moscow. I sincerely HOPED that was true.
This is about political operatives trying to defenestrate a duly elected president. You'd think a constitutional law professor would care.
Continuing with my previous post. CEC branch chief and Deputy Special Prosecutor Jay Bratt ostensibly raided MAL to obtain the documents marked classified that Trump supposedly had. From the beginning, some believed that it was to scoop up the binder of Crossfire Hurricane (and RussiaGate) documents that Trump formally ordered declassified his last full day in office (including photographs of him signing the order). And, interestingly, FOIA requests even as late as the 2024 election, four years later, didn’t produce any of those documents. Not surprising then, that the whole FL documents case was run by DOJ CEC and FBI’s CD, from their DC offices.
Here is the interesting part - that there were strong suggestions back then, when he ordered the declassification of that Biden of documents (that were still not declassified when he reentered the WH this year) that the binder included the classified portions of the Special Counsel investigations into RussiaGate, etc. We didn’t know much else about what was in that binder, but we knew that. And magically, they showed up in hidden burn bags. But nowhere else.
A friend suggested the other day that what is going on is a carefully scripted rollout of evidence implicating Clinton, Obama, Biden (handlers), DOJ CEC and FBI CD, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, the DNC, Adam Schifty, now Soros, etc. in heinous crimes.
Why was Kash Patel named FBI Director? My guess is for this rollout of evidence. He was the Minority party lead expert on this scandal in the House. He has known from then the who, what, and where of the scandal better, probably, than anyone else, not directly involved.
FormerLawClerk said...
"Hillary Clinton insisted not only on using an unsecured mail server, but insisted on using her unsecured Blackberry, even while she was in Moscow in 2010. Putin and the SVR had to have information that could be used to blackmail her."
Hillary Clinton delivered US uranium to fuel Putin's nuclear weapons against the United States.
Why in the world would they wish to blackmail her?
Perhaps the URANIUM was the payoff.
“ Read the Durham Annex. Then ask yourself, 'why was this classified?'”
Actually, it was almost certainly formally ordered declassified by Trump his last full day in office in 2021. Sitting POTUS formally (essentially by written EO) ordered it declassified, but somehow, 4 years later, it hadn’t been.
"Actually, it was almost certainly formally ordered declassified by Trump his last full day in office in 2021. Sitting POTUS formally (essentially by written EO) ordered it declassified, but somehow, 4 years later, it hadn’t been."
If that's true, Trump was an idiot for waiting so long. Did he really think the IC under Biden were going to follow through?
I don’t believe anyone has a position on this that doesn’t align their feelings toward Trump.
What about Taibbi, author of Insane Clown President, a book about Trump?
Going forward, I think Taibbi is as good a source of relatively unbiased information on this growing story as I'm likely to find. Others are Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag. Find them writing here: https://www.public.news/
"on this growing story"
Unless the DOJ brings charges, this story ain't growing. I am ambivalent regarding the DOJ perusing this. Yes, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, et al deserve it, but it will be messy and there are so many important things to focus on (the border, the budget, etc). But Althouse's attitude makes a compelling case for prosecution. How else to get people's heads out of the sand?
Bruce Hayden said...
“ ...And we had it confirmed - Putin greatly preferred the consistently corrupt Clinton whom he could blackmail."
Doesn't that also implicate the (alleged) Joe Biden Administration? Yeah, they helped Ukraine, but what's to say they weren't playing both ends against the middle?
Taibbi also points out that the Legacy Media is resolutely refusing to cover this story… because they are among the perps. Democrats, by and large, are unaware that this story has even emerged.
Does this not speak to Althouse’s statement of how befuddled she is by this story?
“How am I supposed to know?”, indeed.
Why not start with the assumption that you cannot possibly trust the legacy news media establishment that has cast a dark veil of omertĂ over the most consequential story of government malfeasance since Teapot Dome?
For someone who isn't already pro- or anti-Trump, you still have no way to sort out what's true.
It's quite easy if you focus on the original and supposedly damaging accusation which was that Trump colluded with Russia. There was never any evidence of that, and now the fallback position is that Russia "interfered" and wanted Trump to win. Neither of these is true in any meaningful sense, but the key fact is that those asserting it are admitting the collusion never existed.
Here's something well worth watching:
"Ex-CIA Lawyer Drops BOMBSHELL on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Raid"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a51LsmP1-es
If you need any more convincing that the DOJ, FBI, and the Intelligence "community" were in cahoots to get Slobbering SloJo re-elected, this will help.
Just know that this declassified annex relates to a long running criminal investigation commissioned by Trump's AG that resulted in no indictment.
its an easy story, the many ways they corrupted the intelligence agencies of course the press are unindicted co conspirators, so they won't cover it, and they move on to another squirrel
Not if you ignore his comments.
Bears repeating.
If the goal is to deflect from the Epstein story it won’t work.
This conspiracy was launched in Clinton's Water Closet. Crappergate? Then Obamacares and the rest is progressive. #HateLovesAbortion
it was the journolist, which never died but it metastazized into podesta rizzotto circle, podesta whose long time soviet ties developed into a lucrative lobbying gig, that manafort was the middle man for with ukrainian oligarchs,
“Just know that this declassified annex relates to a long running criminal investigation commissioned by Trump's AG that resulted in no indictment.”
“If the goal is to deflect from the Epstein story it won’t work.”
“Democrats, by and large, are unaware that this story has even emerged.”
Democrats are well aware of this story and mostly ignore it because it’s such a blatant and pathetic effort of Trump’s to deflect from his part in the Epstein scandal. No one but Trump hangers on are buying it. Again we’re now hearing how when the investigation into the Democrats is finished we’ll be seeing them incarcerated for treason. The same silly stuff we heard when the Durham investigation was in progress. It’s a nothing-burger that is exciting the Trump base and giving them a lift which they need in light of Trump/Epstein/ Maxwell. I don’t blame Trumpists for being depressed.
LOL. So that's the story circulating on the left. Thanks for the update, Inga.
Taibbi's development in a curious one, when he and Mark Ames set up the Exile in Post Soviet Russia, he noted how many things were dreadfully wrong, not all stemmed from the shock therapy that Summers and Sachs ordered up, that made the liberal party Yabloko, anathema, after just a few years, that identified democracy with chaos and poverty,
for many average Russians, this is what brought Putin to power and sustains him to this day,
Christopher Steele, the vehicle for this fraud, chose to believe Litvinenko and his retainer Berezovsky who was typical of the bread, maybe some things he brought to light were true, but the fact that he chose danchenko as his gum shoe, the Wormuld of this tale, tells you much,
"I don’t believe anyone has a position on this that doesn’t align their feelings toward Trump."
That's false, but even if it was true, it's no excuse for willful ignorance. Which is the only way to not understand this extensive but simple set of facts.
"OR, it was the worst political scandal in American history.
Watergate was bad enough to name every subsequent scandal after it, but this was far far worse, and by every measure. It was purposeful, it was illegal, it used all the powers of the government, it violated innumerable laws, and it was intended to rob the American people of their most basic right: the right to democratic control of their government."
It also poisoned our relationship with Russia, and burned any reputation we had as pro-democracy. We look like hypocrites to them. Good job, Clinton.
For the person above who thinks the Clinton emails were "Russian fakes" they were in fact Russian synopsis of real emails. Durham was not allowed to access Open Society emails, so he could not find the originals. Which probably were long deleted. Recall that for Trump, they broke all kinds of client privilige and rustled through everyone's shit, but for Clinton - they trust Crowdstrike, they trust Hillary, they won't let FBI guys examine real emails...
The thing is, those few emails basically line up with Dem actions including Hillary and Co. tweets, and leaks to journos...so it would be nice to have the OG emails to prove it all, but the judges made sure you can't.
So we have to rely on Russian translations.
BTW, these translations are how Obama and Brennan were told about Clinton Plan summer 2016.
OBAMA COULD HAVE CALLED UP HILLARY if he wanted to confirm or tell her to stop.
Instead in Dec. 2016 he joined in.
First Watership Down and now this.
So, if the IC decided these were good enough to brief the President about, then I trust they were real.
They also had emails discussing actual actions that took place shortly thereafter. The Russians would be psychic if they could make fake emails that the Dem operatives then followed through on.
"Christopher Steele, the vehicle for this fraud, chose to believe Litvinenko and his retainer Berezovsky who was typical of the bread, maybe some things he brought to light were true, but the fact that he chose danchenko as his gum shoe, the Wormuld of this tale, tells you much,"
You are assuming Steele chose Danchenko.
Danchenko was assigned to this. I think Steele had a single job: be a cut out.
He also was useful because as a foreigner he could hide out in the UK. And the media could describe him as a "foreign intelligence source" because of his MI6 background.
That makes it sound like he has secret knowledge from Russia.
Instead, he's just a washed up retiree who wrote a bunch of lies and got fed crap from a Russian who lives in Washington DC and knows no one of consequence in Russia.
It’s a nothing-burger that is exciting the Trump base and giving them a lift which they need in light of Trump/Epstein/ Maxwell.
Or maybe - just maybe - the left's sudden fascination with the Epstein story is a distraction from what's finally being revealed about the Russian Hoax.
The proof is right there. We were right the entire time. You were wrong the entire time. We told you so over and over and over.
No wonder you fuckheads are so desperate to focus on something else.
"Instead, he's just a washed up retiree who wrote a bunch of lies and got fed crap from a Russian who lives in Washington DC and knows no one of consequence in Russia."
And got paid by Hillary for it.
Remember the Democrats' slogans?
COUNTRY OVER PARTY
Now you understand what kind of a lie that was.
So when they start shouting Epstein! like susan rice just did, put on your cynical hat.
Why would you trust liars who told you "country over party" was important to them?
Peachy said...
"Mr T.
Laken riley cannot date anyone. she was savagely murdered by one of A-ho Joe's illegal thugs."
Exactly.
Ibarra got there first.
8/2/25, 12:04 PM
You know which way the NYT leans - heavily. You know they'll do whatever it takes to make the left look good, and the right look bad, even when they're unaware of what they're doing.
See the "starving child" photo farce just last week.
Is this new and exciting previously hidden bombshell just another Alexander Smirnov situation? You remember the mysterious “whistleblower” information that Grassley and Comer bought hook, line and sinker until Smirnov pleaded guilty?
https://crockett.house.gov/media/press-releases/crockett-releases-statement-smirnov-guilty-plea-false-allegations-against
"This is not the first time we have seen foreign countries attempt to infiltrate our political process, and based on recent statements by the incoming President and his administration officials, I am worried this will not be the last. As we anxiously brace for the devastating implications of a second Trump presidency with a Republican-controlled Congress rubber stamping his every whim, it is vital that every American—regardless of party—remember that American national security must be placed above partisan politics. If this ordeal has taught us anything, it is that we must enact stronger guardrails to stop malicious foreign agents from influencing those at top levels of our government. To do that, we need accurate answers to the following questions before it is too late: How did not a single House Republican or their staff catch the significant inconsistencies and lies within Mr. Smirnov’s story in nearly two years of congressional investigations? And if they did indeed know Mr. Smirnov’s account was fraudulent, why did they allow it to guide their work and influence their judgement for so long?“
As usual, Tiabbi jumps on the wrong side of facts in an attempt to validate the conspiracy theories of John Durham. Way back on July 25. 2016, Thomas Rid, one of America’s foremost intelligence disinformation scholars, wrote "All Signs Point to Russia Being Behind the DNC Hack."
The detailed information contained revealed that the DNC hired Crowdstrike in May 2016 to investigate and counter network threats. They found two Russian invaders, which Crowdstrike then publicized in the WaPo.
Immediately, a Wordpress blog authored by "Guccipher 2" appeared which claimed that he was the one and only threat and he sent files to Wikileaks that were immediately released. as 19,000 emails and 8,000 attachments. Guccipher 2 was tracked back to the Russians as well.
The forensic evidence linking the DNC breach to known Russian operations is very strong. On June 20, two competing cybersecurity companies, Mandiant (part of FireEye) and Fidelis, confirmed CrowdStrike’s initial findings that Russian intelligence indeed hacked the DNC. Later additional confirmations were released by ThreatConnect and RipJar.
There are many moving parts, but it's not that hard to follow. Just imagine a movie about a grand conspiracy involving several people who decided to "go nuclear" against an outsider, but it's real life, and instead of the intrepid news hounds being the heroes, they're actually the bad guys.
Crockett - LOL. fraud.
Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
There’s no shortage of possible crimes in Russiagate, from perjury to illegal leaks of classified intelligence to criminal misuse of FISA to concealing/destroying evidence and obstruction of justice, even the Espionage Act, and various conspiracy offenses."
...."I am not the judge obligated to resolve the dispute ... it’s way more expedient just to refuse to do the work....."
The most Curious Person on the Internet, the one who has populated a personal blog full of curious, off-the-beaten-track stories, mainstream controversies, national and international newsbreakers, etc. etc. for over twenty years, every single day, announces that this particular story is one that she isn't interested in resolving, even in her own mind, simply for the sake of the intellectual exercise.
Suure, you're not.
"Suure, you're not."
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
"Wow. “Contact with Russia.” And remember the time Trump’s spouse took a $500,000 check from a Moscow bank and met with Putin while he was in office? Oh, wait, that was Hillary…"
The forensic evidence linking the DNC breach to known Russian operations is very strong. On June 20, two competing cybersecurity companies, Mandiant (part of FireEye) and Fidelis, confirmed CrowdStrike’s initial findings that Russian intelligence indeed hacked the DNC. Later additional confirmations were released by ThreatConnect and RipJar.
When your password is “Password” you deserve whatever happens to you. However the four firms mentioned here by gadfly the idiot need to get out of the cyber business. They can come back when they understand physics. Proper computer forensic analysis shows that the transfer rate for the files is several times faster than the transfer rate achievable across the Internet. It is, however, consistent with transfer across a LAN and download onto a thumb drive. The DNC hack was an inside job.
@BigMike - those four firms were paid by the DNC/Clinton to come to the decisions they came to. The same Clintons who continue to leave a string of dead bodies in their wake. Here it was likely the ill fated Seth Rich.
Also, you skipped (presumably for brevity) that the time stamps on the transferred files are consistent with transfer to external media, which statistically eliminates the email alternative. Jump in and correct me, if I mixed this up, but Flash drives and the like utilize an obsolete directory format (FAT - File Access Table), which was replaced for hard drives by Microsoft when it moved from DOS to Windows NT (NTFS - NT File System). That was roughly 25 years ago. FAT was the standard for external media because they all were treated like floppy disks (remember them?) NTFS was much more efficient, esp in terms of space, and allowed growth to the sizes of hard drives we see today. The significant difference here is that FAT stores times in a format that drops the low order bit. That means that all FAT time stamps are even. Email, across a network doesn’t have that restriction. Probability says that with a large number of emails across a network, very close to half would have had odd time stamps. They didn’t. They were all even.
Continuing. As BigMike pointed out, the amount of data transferred, in the transfer of the DNC emails exceeded the capacity of single links almost halfway around the world. And setting up multiple links in a hacking scenario is extremely problematic - it would have probably required multiple highly coordinated, simultaneous intrusions. But as important, maybe, that sort of transfer, between DC and Eastern Europe/Russia would have been noticed by the NSA. That’s what they do. It wasn’t, and Adm Rogers was still running the agency at the time.
Maybe most importantly, the emails were released by WikiLeaks, run by Julian Assange. And, to this day, despite enormous government pressure by the US and allied governments, he has steadfastly denied that he got the DNC emails from the Russians.
Did the FBI (or any other government agency) ever have access to the DNC email server to do a complete forensic investigation? No. Did they ask? Apparently. And were refused. Could they have issued a subpoena, or even raided the DNC for the server? Of course. We are talking national security here. But the organization doing the investigation was, of course, the FBI’s corrupt Counterintelligence Division (CD). Where the infamous Peter Strzok, etc, worked, and indeed was the one running the Midyear Exam Clinton email investigation, and was intentionally underinvestigating after promising his lover, Lisa Page, that they would make sure that Crooked Hillary wouldn’t lose (there is evidence that Strzok and Page were the ones who came up with Dir Comey’s BS excuse not to indict Clinton).
Which means, that the only evidence of the DNC emails having been hacked by the Russians was the Wikileaks email dump, and that of several DNC contractors.
“The forensic evidence linking the DNC breach to known Russian operations is very strong. On June 20, two competing cybersecurity companies, Mandiant (part of FireEye) and Fidelis, confirmed CrowdStrike’s initial findings that Russian intelligence indeed hacked the DNC. Later additional confirmations were released by ThreatConnect and RipJar.”
Nope. As far as any of us know, DNC/Clinton contractor CloudStrike has the only people who have actually done anything approaching a forensic investigation of the email server. Which they unlikely did themselves, because they would have been able to disclose the who, what, when, and where of the alleged intrusion(s). And we never heard that information.
Does (or did) the FBI know what really happened? Very likely. The problem was that their Counterintelligence Division was already running interference for Clinton.
Just a reminder of the origins of this scandal. It came out that Crooked Hillary had illegally used her own private email server, instead of the legally required systems, while she was Secretary of State. She had apparently done so to evade potential FOIA disclosure of her communications. That was 3-7 years earlier. It was bad enough that she had conducted all of her official business this way. Worse, her email server had been repeatedly hacked over those four years. Most notably, her server had been hacked by the Russians, who apparently installed a mirror, that relayed them all of her email, in near real-time. And, yes, she had also used her personal, unsecured, Blackberry in foreign airspace throughout her term in office, where her calls were no doubt intercepted, again on a routine basis.
So, the FBI’s CD launched a half hearted investigation of Clinton and her email server, with the infamous Peter Strzok ultimately in charge. Normal FBI SOP would have been to request, then demand, access to the email server, and seize it, through subpoena if necessary. Nope. Strzok let her people do their own search, and gave them whatever emails they wanted to, in printed form (thus eliminating all headers/metadata). Then, with the email server under subpoena by Congress, her people bleach bitted her email server (and physically destroyed her old Blackberries).
Meanwhile the contents of the DNC’s email server mysteriously were released by Wikileaks. The emails disclosed how the Clinton campaign had worked with the DNC (which they had effectively taken over, by providing most of its funding) had cheated Bernie Sanders of the Democratic nomination. (Notably, the murdered Seth Rich, a DNC staffer with low level access to the server, had apparently been a BernieBro).
With that background, by now public, Trump was asked about Clinton’s missing emails. He responded that they should ask the Ruosians - because, by then, it was public that her private email server had been repeatedly hacked while she was SoS, and the Russians, in particular were believed to have installed that mirror in her server that relayed her emails to them, in near real-time. Which, with her email server now effectively scrubbed, they were the ones most likely to still have copies of the (many likely incriminating) emails that she hadn’t turned over.
This could have been devastating to Clinton’s campaign. They counterattacked by merging the two email scandals, and tried to shift blame to Trump. Everything since then, from RussiaGate, Crossfire Hurricane, etc, up through Special Counsel Smith’s FL Documents case against Trump, is a causal result of Clinton and her campaign trying to recover from the disclosure of her illegal use of her insecure private email server while Secretary of State, from 2009-2013, and that it had almost certainly been hacked by the Russians.
Can we at least agree that the pee story is true?
The forensic evidence linking the DNC breach to known Russian operations is very strong.
Even presuming arguendo this is true how does it prove Trump colluded with Russia?
When we focus on the actual issue the distractions are obvious.
for I-NAG:
"Leonard Bernardo, who was the regional director for Eurasia at the Open Society Foundations, explained that “during the first stage of the campaign, due to lack of direct evidence, it was decided to disseminate the necessary information through the FBI-affiliated…from where the information would then be disseminated through leading U.S. publications.”
Bernardo added, “Julie (Clinton Campaign Advisor) says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later, the FBI will put more oil into the fire.”
The media (including the Washington Post and New York Times, which won Pulitzer prizes for reporting on the debunked claims) are apoplectic in dismissing these disclosures. The last thing they will do is report on how they helped sell a political hoax. The problem is that they never said it was a trick. They said it was the truth. That is why they cannot honestly cover the story. To do so would not be coverage, it would be a confession.
It appears that everyone was in on the trick: the U.S. government, the media, even foreign governments. The only chumps were the American people. Now they are about to see how it was done."
Can we at least agree that the pee story is true?
There's a scene in Game of Thrones where the King's councilors make up a story that the rival claimant has no heir. His daughter is really the son of their fool (a court jester for those not invested). They believe this will motivate people to repeat it because they love to think of powerful people being made to look ridiculous.
The Steele Dossier was intended to stoke a whisper campaign, it was never intended to become public. So the Clinton campaign needed a hook to make people laugh which in turn motivates people to share the story. Nothing is so interesting at happy hour among Democrat DC hill staffers as Trump looking petty by disrespecting Obama.
jim - why? It's another lie the idiot leftists hive love to believe, for their jerking jollies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO4qJDI-D-w
Greenwald breaks down the mealy mouth BS from the nYT.
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