1. "Trump Told Russia To Get Clinton’s Emails. The Same Day, They Obeyed./A new indictment from Robert Mueller reveals that Russia appeared to be listening to what Trump wanted" in The Huffington Post. My response:
If Trump were colluding, why would he flaunt his involvement? The more apt inference is that the Russians wanted to make it look like they were taking orders from him and chose this moment, because it would be so weird it would agitate media like HuffPo to generate this theory.2. A photojournalist's image of the Trump-as-a-diapered-baby balloon framed alongside a bronze statue of Winston Churchill. My response:
To get a fair comparison, show me how Trump is depicted 75 years in the future. Or recreate Churchill today, have him begin to enter politics, and show me how he would be regarded.I include a link to an article in the UK Independent, "Winston Churchill 'would not become Prime Minister today because his speaking style would be mocked'/Romola Garai, who stars in new ITV drama about the politician, says his eccentricities would rule him out in the modern era." From that article, quoting Garai (who played Churchill's nurse):
“Churchill would not get elected today. His speech was very peculiar, quite mumbled in some ways.... Churchill was very idiosyncratic in the way he spoke. Today public speaking has become so monotone and peculiarity is something that rolling news is very afraid of... It’s easy to pinpoint anybody’s idiosyncracies now, which I think is a terrible shame. Because some of the great orators were very individual in the way they spoke."The article was from February 2016, when — here in the United States — "SNL" hadn't yet brought in Alec Baldwin to do the Trump impersonation. They relied on — do you even remember? — Taram Killam (and Daryl Hammond) and — Trump's victory was so impossible — even let the real Donald Trump host the show and goof around with Killam and Hammond:
Ha ha ha. What a joke. Trump is President now, and I'm just going to guess he'll be a bronze statue in 75 years.
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237 comments:
1 – 200 of 237 Newer› Newest»"1. "Trump Told Russia To Get Clinton’s Emails. The Same Day, They Obeyed./A new indictment from Robert Mueller reveals that Russia appeared to be listening to what Trump wanted" in The Huffington Post."
-- Or, more honestly, the Russians had been trying for months to infiltrate Clinton's emails because of how obviously lax their security was. Rubio, for example, reported similar attempted intrusions that never got anywhere. It just happens that after months of trying, they happened to also try on the same day Trump said something stupid.
Also, we still don't even really know if the server was hacked by Russians, since law enforcement has never been allowed to see the server, and since it has been years, even if given access to it now, we could never prove if it was hacked or, as many people assumed, the data was stolen by an inside man. Indicting these people is like indicting someone for murder where there is no body.
Sure, people might THINK Jim is dead, but it is really hard to get a conviction when all you have is Jim is missing, and there's a gun that may or may not have been fired several years ago on or about the same day as Jim went missing, but no one was allowed to look at the gun then.
Meaning: Damn hard.
I share the frustration with the ubiquitous and relentlessly rabid anti-Trump posts. So far I hsve forborn.
Candidate Trump’s “Russia, if you’re listening” (or whatever) comment was about emails that had already been deleted, so the only way to find those via hacking would be if they had been saved elsewhere and Secretary Clinton was lying about having deleted them.
To honestly believe Trump was inviting hacking, you had to assume Clinton was lying.
Of course, the Russians might have obtained her emails earlier due to her own lax security.
I've never seen the obvious pointed out. At the time Trump "asked" the Russians for help in finding Hillary's emails, the server was long gone, out of commission, wiped with a cloth. Consequently, the Russians couldn't start searching for them. Trump was simply pointing out, in his humorous way, that the Russians already had the emails. Instead, we got hysteria over "treason".
Also: Why does the HuffPost say: "The indictment states that on July 27 ― the same day as Trump’s press conference ― Russian hackers," when the indictment actually reads: "On or about July 27, 2016."
What happens if it wasn't on, but in the wiggle room of about, it was a day earlier?
Note the lie still outpacing the correction -- President Trump didn't tell Russia to get Clinton's emails. That's a blatant media lie. He said that if Russia, or anyone else, had them, he hoped they'd be released so the American people could see them.
(The tweet reads, in its entirety: "If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton's 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the FBI!") LINK
As Ann points out, it's not the volume and tenor of the anti-Trump posts which is so annoying.
It's that they're so easily rebuffed.
These are the best arguments "the elites" can deliver?
Actually, look at the indictment closer. They had been spearphishing Clinton and Clinton team members *all summer.* The only thing about July 27 that happened was that they tried to spearphish new emails.
I bet you could say, pretty much on any day during the summer of 2016, that "On or about this day," the automated Russian hacking software tried to spearphish new Clinton emails. Because *that's how automated spearphishing works.*
"(The tweet reads, in its entirety: "If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton's 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the FBI!")"
-- Ironically, Weiner and Abedin DID end up sharing a portion of them with the FBI!
If Trump were colluding, why would he flaunt his involvement?
Because he's a doofus. But also a genius. Russia did what he asked because they're all doofuses. Also geniuses. Doofus/genius is the answer to everything Trump-related. I know because the internet tells me this.
I think normal people are going to reach a level of fatigue with all the anti-Trump nonsense.
Trump Told Russia To Get Clinton’s Emails. The Same Day, They Obeyed.
Trump wanted the deleted e-mails from her personal server, which we now know at least one foreign power already had.
This is describing a hack into the DNC's server, which we don't even know if Hillary used.
Either someone is stupid or purposely conflating the two.
Also, this effort started in March 2016, and the indictment isn't even sure how many emails were targeted (more than 300).
Also: Looking at the document's layout, why is the July 27 document a new paragraph and not paragraph e? It is part of the string of events starting in March. That's just lazy and incompetent draftsmanship there. Also of interest is in the July date is the one place where no specific conspirator is named. It's such a random deviation as if the author was saying: "HEY! PAY ATTENTION TO THIS!"
"Trump Told Russia To Get Clinton’s Emails. The Same Day, They Obeyed."
-- This is a flat out lie. We don't know if it was the same day. The indictment says "on or about" July 27. It could have been before. It could have been after. It could have been the same day. It was grossly irresponsible of the writers of the indictment to choose that day and use those weasel words. If it was exactly later in the day July 27, they should say that -- clearly. If it was days later, they should state that. If it was days before, they should be fired for deliberately setting this up.
An interesting post today on CTH pointing out that Mueller's new indictment of 12 Russians, which includes a reference to a "member of the Trump campaign" has no specifics and was immediately transferred to the DOJ counter intel department. The same department that did the Clinton whitewash.
Also, how can they allege Russian participation in the Hillary emails when the FBI NEVER examined the Clinton/DNC servers? Bleach bit made any evidence go away.
The current officials within the corrupt DOJ/FBI system are protecting the former officials who worked within the corrupt DOJ/FBI system. The activity was so stunningly destructive to every tenet of our democracy and principle of our constitutional republic; the administrators of the system cannot allow the American electorate to know what they did.
Government officials within the DOJ and FBI conspired together with private political parties outside government to conduct intelligence gathering operations against their political opponents. You cannot get higher on the usurpation scale.
That illegally extracted opposition research was then laundered by design and passed back into the intelligence apparatus (DOJ/FBI) where it was weaponized -by gaining a Title-1 search warrant (Oct 21, 2016,)- to conduct active surveillance on everyone within a political campaign.
That weaponized surveillance, gained by the FISA authority, was then used as an “insurance policy” against the Trump campaign, President-elect Trump, and President Trump.
I can only assume that Trump, when the election is closer, will declassify the FBI material the WSJ is asking for.
That's just lazy and incompetent draftsmanship there.
And why? It's not like some statue of limitations was about to expire.
Perhaps rushing to get it out after the Stozk debacle and before the Putin meeting?
The left collectively hive-mindedly conveniently forget that Trump was teasing someone (not just the Russians) to find Hillary's deleted (bleach-bit erased "like with a cloth?") e-mails.
You know -the ones that were subpoenaed.
The left are so desperate to find a crime, create a crime, because the Hillary lost butt-hurt party never ends.
The left lie to themselves and it bleeds out everywhere, all while they destroy our nation.
Churchill was very idiosyncratic in the way he spoke.
Churchill won the Nobel Prize in Literature, in part for his speeches.
I think the manner of speaking had to be more interesting when most people were listening to them on the radio. A boring delivery without any visual compensation would put listeners to sleep.
The indictment says "on or about" July 27.
So they could have picked the 26th, or 25th, or 24th... But then, no headline.
I'm so glad this investigation hasn't been politicized.
"Perhaps rushing to get it out after the Stozk debacle and before the Putin meeting?"
-- There are a couple other lazy typos (By in or about -- no commas in one or two places) and in a bunch of other places they randomly change back from a, b, c to numbering.
It really feels like it just didn't have a proofreader look at it for consistency.
Churchill was first elected to the House of Commons at a very young age--25--and even though in some ways he'd already had a substantial career, the issue of "judgement" haunted him from the beginning. Incredibly, even though his father had died fairly young, there were people around politics who remembered him, and he (Randolph, the father) had become notorious for a kind of reckless judgement, putting everything on one roll of the dice, risking the fortunes of his party and friends, etc. In a way people were always watching to see if the family disability was going to emerge. In Boris Johnson's book about Churchill, he hilariously discusses major crises in terms of their "fiasco" factor--were they or were they not a fiasco, let's say from a British perspective--and then their "Churchill" factor--if so, was the fiasco to an important extent Churchill's fault. There are definitely cases where the answer is yes and yes--and Johnson I believe makes no mention of the Bengal famine of 1943. Churchill obviously didn't cause the famine, but a case can be made that he could have done much more to alleviate its effects.
No, I don't really think Churchill and Trump are very comparable. I keep thinking of Scott Adams' line: an analogy isn't thinking, it just feels like thinking.
Considering the first hack, happened in march, do they not read their own document?
I can only assume that Trump, when the election is closer, will declassify the FBI material the WSJ is asking for.
It will be the equivalent of the House voting on the bill to eliminate ICE.
With all the evidence available for examination, the innuendos and half-truths can no longer be maintained.
Though, I'm glad now that Trump is in charge, someone is actually doing something about hacking the state boards of election, rather than how Obama let it ride.
The collective idiotic evil hive-mind left hate Churchill because he fought the socialist Nazis and won.
It really feels like it just didn't have a proofreader look at it for consistency.
Remember it had to be on Friday so the weekend news shows could go on and on about it for the 48 hours before the Putin meeting.
It's not like they could look at it, decide it needed some more work, and drop it on Monday or Tuesday.
Not with Rosenstein's job on the line.
Kudos on the Russians for the "making an email with one letter difference" ploy. No one could have seen that coming.
So. Here's a question for Mueller: Why doesn't this indictment talk at all about the attempts to infiltrate Republican campaigns? We know Rubio's was targeted; they just didn't fall for any of the tricks (or at least, claim not to have fallen for it).
Why is there no investigation into that?
"Trump Told Russia To Get Clinton’s Emails. The Same Day, They Obeyed."
That's a Good Thing, right? That the Rooskies obey a US President? Even before he's the President?
"A new indictment from Robert Mueller reveals that Russia appeared to be listening to what Trump wanted"
Oh noes, they hacked into our News Broadcast System!
You'd think that if the FBI were trying to get to the bottom of the Russian hacking story, they'd look at everyone, not just the one that failed so spectacularly on their security protocols. They'd also be interested in *actual sitting Senator being targeted* than private citizen at the time Clinton.
Where are Hillary's deleted e-mails? Why did she and her loyalists destroy all those devices? Why did Hillary set up and use a Private Server while head of the State Dept? Why did she go to such great lengths to hide what she was doing?
Why did Bryan Pagliano, her-> private IT guy, take the 5th?
So, Russian hacking On Obama's watch being pursued by Trump's justice department.
Why did Peter Strozk change the words "Grossly negligent" to... "Extremely Careless"?
Why did Comey, who was not in any position of power to let Hillary off the hook, let her off the hook?
"The same day they obeyed"
Such total BS. The left do not even care if they lie.
Bronze statue? Bu of course. What other color could it be?
"Trump Told Russia To Get Clinton’s Emails. The Same Day, They Obeyed."
So Trump has enough power over Putin and the Russians that they obey his commands. That sounds like a good thing. Putin is Trump's lackey. Who knew.
@Ann I thought you had shown the good sense to walk away from Facebook. What happened?
I'm actually fairly confident it wasn't on or after the 27th, or they would have just said that. That might be me being too skeptical though.
I mean, if the narrative they're trying to create is Russia and Trump colluded, and they could prove Russia did something AFTER Trump said to do that, they'd not be weasely about it, right? They'd just flat out lay out the timeline and let inferencing do the work.
Given that, I'm inclined to believe that the specific targeting there happened before the 27th. Or, it DID happen on or after the 27th, but since it was just further refining of the tactics they'd been using for months, it really wasn't newsworthy or notable, save that Trump said a thing.
All in all, that paragraph seems out of place, doesn't say what the HuffPo claims it does and just feels like it was inserted to make a splash.
re: Kevin:
Perhaps rushing to get it out after the Stozk debacle and before the Putin meeting?
As far as I'm aware, Mueller responded promptly and appropriately to the discovery of Strzok's unprofessional texting activities. He learned about the texts before the public did, and promptly kicked Strzok off the team, whereupon Strzok was promptly kicked out of counterintelligence over into HR. This was actually kind of a mystery at the time (my guess had been that he was removed from the team and demoted for leaking about the investigation) but it makes sense in retrospect.
The fact that this grinning fool helped kick things off is bad, sure, but Mueller was assigned an investigation, and accepted that assignment, regardless of how it was kicked off. And when he learned what Strzok was, he did the needful.
It's that they're so easily rebuffed.
These are the best arguments "the elites" can deliver?
It has always been this way. I remember during the primary, there be some stupid anti-Trump talking point out there. I'd make a comment that the point is stupid or counter product, wrong etc. I would always prefeace the comment with "I'm not a Trump supporter but . . ."
Finally I got tired of the preface and dropped it even though I didn't support Trump. And election day I was going to vote for the Libertarian but inside I thought "I'm not a Trump supporter but . . ." And voted for the man.
So the hysteria is counter productive.
@Ann I thought you had shown the good sense to walk away from Facebook. What happened?
I thought she said she had an account, for the usual reasons.
But it wasn't for us to see. :(
ConsevativeTreehouse raised the very good question, and Matthew points it out at the start: How could Mueller claim that a server - or servers -that he has never seen was hacked? I also am curious how he came up with the people names to indict. If it's like the Concord Management case half of them could have been dead at the time they were "hacking" the idiots of the Democratic party.
Wasn't that server in FBI custody when Trump made his facetious "ask the Russians" quip?
I wonder what the Russians can learn about our counter intelligence capabilities due to these released indictments. I'm not sure they can learn much except what we know, but that's still a useful thing to figure out.
RE: Matthew Sablan:
It really feels like it just didn't have a proofreader look at it for consistency.
I wouldn't infer too much from that. I've dealt with subpoenas from government agencies where they had duplicate numbers assigned to different requests. I've also had prosecutors confront me with evidence about my client, only it wasn't actually my client; it was an unrelated company with a similar name. Prosecutors are human too. And documents that get worked over by a lot of different people -- like indictments -- are probably especially prone to these kinds of minor screw-ups.
Another fun question is who was the party/country that had all Hillary's e-mails forwarded to them?
Given that, I'm inclined to believe that the specific targeting there happened before the 27th.
It may have happened on the 27th but before Trump said anything. Russia is what 7 hours ahead of us? Their work day is over in our morning.
The anti-Trump crowd has already reached peak stupidity. Remember the old revolutionary saw from the Battle of Bunker Hill about not firing until you see the whites of their eyes?
For the Left, it's fire wildly in 360 degree directions, while screaming incoherently.
Darrell Hammond even had the long tie length right.
No serious person would make the accusations that Rosenstein did.
"Wasn't that server in FBI custody when Trump made his facetious "ask the Russians" quip?
-- Which server? There are a couple; the Hillary Clinton personal server was bleach bitted and made irrelevant before being submitted to any government agency. That is why the FBI and others had to recreate thousands of emails from other people's machines. We don't even know if we found them all, and there are probably Weiner laptop like troves still out there, if Clinton's people haven't taken a hammer to them. Even if the FBI had that server, they didn't really have the server in question. Think of it like wiping a hard drive or flashdrive. Sure, whoever you give it to has your drive, but the thing that made your drive unique (the data) is gone.
If you mean the DNC server, no. The FBI never even asked to see it. After claiming it was hacked, the DNC retired the server, repurposed it, and plugged it into a new network. Essentially, same as above. Any evidence that could have been obtained was lost. Instead, the DNC hired a private firm to do an investigation, where they claim it was hacked, but backed away from that claim a few months after the story broke. Other investigators claim the download/upload rate was too high to have been hacked from a foreign source (in this case, just meaning not part of the network, not necessarily foreign-foreign), and had to have been directly plugged in to the network, suggesting an inside person stealing data and handing it off using a flashdrive or just lifting a drive completely. But, again, since that was years ago and the FBI never had a chance to investigate, we'll never really know what happened.
Hillary gets to do whatever she wants, the left back her and her lying money grubbing state-sponsored fake charity money grubbing. It is illegal to do any oppo-research against Hillary or to criticizer her in any way.
*insert arrogant STrozk squirm*
Link for FBI never asking for the servers, and yes, it is BuzzFeed, but I'm lazy and it somehow was the first hit on Google.
The faces RWR and DJT will be carved into the side of a mountain in South Dakota.
I know where Hillary's deleted emails are. The Platte River Networks guy kept an insurance copy. So did her lawyer, David Kendall. Kendall kept a copy to make sure the Clintons paid his bill of ten million. When you have criminals for clients, you have to take extra measures to get paid.
I see Mueller didn't fuck up and indict a corporation or government entity that can appear by their attorneys. I see the dull-eyed dullard can learn a lesson.
It would be funny if Putin extradicted one of his intelligence officer to stand trial. Demand all the evidence and interview all the counter intelligence agents involved in the case. Just think of all the information they would obtain.
Then arrest a couple of US citizens and do a prisoner swap.
Being involved in local politics and government, I remarked once that I admired elected officials because they get incomprehensible amounts of criticism and grief, and rarely thanks. A person involved in politics told me that a large segment of the public can make some elect officials into Jesus figures, either full throated support or rhetorical crucifixion, and it all occurs in the moment. When they leave office, the public moves on to the next Jesus figure.
It explains why Reagan, Bush I and Bush II were all LITERALLY HITLER until the next GOP President, at which point the previous HITLER becomes a statesman compared to the HITLER we have now. It will be no different for Trump.
Churchill was no different in his own time. While is remembered as a great Prime Minister, he also lost the 1945 election. That is rarely raised.
Another possible scenario: Putin claims none of those people exist after quietly purging them and destroying all records of their existence.
"It explains why Reagan, Bush I and Bush II were all LITERALLY HITLER until the next GOP President, at which point the previous HITLER becomes a statesman compared to the HITLER we have now. It will be no different for Trump."
-- The phrase you may be looking for is "strange new respect."
... Or the fifth face on a mountain in South Dakota.
Bay Area Guy: "The anti-Trump crowd has already reached peak stupidity."
Nonsense. They were always at peak stupidity. Its only now they are being fully exposed thanks to Trump.
I read the indictment ad it does not say whether they examined the DNC server. As others have pointed out, the FBI left when the DNC told them to get out. Perhaps Mueller got the server; maybe he didn't. We do not know what evidence he based the indictment upon, if any.
The indictment is not all that impressive. It alleges that Russian military intelligence was spying. If we needed $20 million and an army of lawyers to tell us that, our intelligence is in really sorry shape.
One other thought for this august group: The indictment is against 12 Russian military officials. We have a robust military intelligence apparatus. Is there anything preventing another country from issuing indictments against them for doing the same thing?
I'd advise Dems to quit whining and try and make their case to get votes, and if they get the most votes, I'd expect their rivals to make a gracious concession speech.
Q: could Rosenstein be Trumpian "sockpuppet" trolling from FBI august swamp ditches.
Iow has Jeff Beau recused recused??!!
This post is a simple and perfect example of what makes Althouse unique and wonderful. I too am beyond annoyed with two years of relentless Trump bashing on Facebook. But I would have accepted on its face the Churchill/Trump visual comparison. Prof Althouse points out the silliness of such a facile comparison. She digs just one layer and reminds us that Churchill wasn't CHURCHILL exactly -- forced me to find an audio clip from the war and ... Wow! And our perception of Trump in 75 years will also change. It's great to wake up every morning to one blog that resists lazy takes -- thanks Professor Althouse!
HuffPo= more chum for the chumps.
"Finally I got tired of the preface and dropped it even though I didn't support Trump."
-- It lasted until after the election for me. I think it was either The Incident at the Koi Pond or The Case of the Thrown MAGA Hat that finally got me to abandon prefacing most of what I say with it. Sometimes I still do, but, after those two instances, I just kind of gave up.
Trump is a Jerk. Yes. That's true. So what?
Or Putin claims they were all double agents working for Hillary and Obama.
And getting instructions via draft saved folder.
I thought the Russian collusion, whatever it is supposed to be or is supposed to have done, had, if anything, something to do with the DNC server and the exposing of the dirty tricks of the Democrats but nothing at all with the illegal Clinton private server (*).
This is becoming more insane by the day.
(*) Except for the sarcastic and appropriate joke made by Trump. Proof that if one wants to use sarcasm this day one must publish the fact in no uncertain terms (and even then it probably isn't enough because the 'progressives' aren't only batshit crazy but also completely dishonest).
"Trump Told Russia To Get Clinton’s Emails. The Same Day, They Obeyed./A new indictment from Robert Mueller reveals that Russia appeared to be listening to what Trump wanted"
A new indictment from Robert Mueller reveals squat. An indictment is NOT EVIDENCE. An indictment is a wholly unsubstantiated assertion. In this case from a corrupt, unethical partisan.
Michael K said...
Also, how can they allege Russian participation in the Hillary emails when the FBI NEVER examined the Clinton/DNC servers?
This has been answered repeatedly. Supposedly a foreign intelligence service ( Dutch maybe, I forget ) had infiltrated or counterhacked the Russian hacking operation, and observed the hacking operation as it was taking place.
I'm not saying that actually happened, just that it has been reported, and that it would explain how the FBI could know definitively of Russian hacking without examining the server.
that it would explain how the FBI could know definitively of Russian hacking without examining the server.
Yes, and there is Magic too, of course.
Where are Hillary's deleted e-mails?
Interesting question. If her server were hacked by the Russians, then the Russians would have them and presumably would have released them to Wikileaks.
Balfegor said...
The fact that this grinning fool helped kick things off is bad, sure, but Mueller was assigned an investigation, and accepted that assignment, regardless of how it was kicked off. And when he learned what Strzok was, he did the needful.
This is garbage. Pure garbage.
Mueller has been dirty from the start. Has he fired any of the other Clinton donors from his team?
He chose people because they were partisan. Specifically.
Why did Mueller tip off the rest of the Podestas right before he indicted their co-partner manafort and tell them to clean up their paperwork?
Why hasn’t Steele, who was caught red handed paying Russians, been indicted?
Perkins and Coie have some documents I am sure could be picked up in a raid.
It isn’t even worth bringing up the dozens of examples of Mueller’s misconduct and obvious corruption anymore. People who defend this want to be tricked and support obvious corruption.
This is the only appropriate response to ANY mention of collusion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsFR8DbSRQE
We have a robust military intelligence apparatus. Is there anything preventing another country from issuing indictments against them for doing the same thing?
No. And they will.
Note that when the left, Queen Hillary->, Her-> media, Sanders the millionaire/Antifa hate crime inspirer discuss Hillary's "E-mails" they use the word "e-mail" and NOT PRIVATE SERVER.
That's no accident.
I think the indictments are bullshit. They are just making stuff up. For instance, they state that a particular GRU agent logged on to a url shortening service and crafted the url used to fool Podesta into revealing his email password. Bitly.com provides that service and you can get a login just by providing an email address and creating a login with a password. A GRU operative is going to know how to create an email address that can't be traced to him. He is going to be using a VPN service and a tor enabled browser to mask where his traffic is coming from. He is probably even going to be using several hacked accounts on various servers to connect to bitly.com. So, how in the world can the DOJ know which particular GRU operative logged into bitly.com and created a custom URL to fool Podesta? They can't even know what part of the world the traffic actually came from.
Spear phishing prominent people in order to get access to their email while concealing your identity is something that script kiddies can do. Hell, given what is password was there wasn't even any need to phish him.
Re: cronus titan:
The indictment is not all that impressive. It alleges that Russian military intelligence was spying. If we needed $20 million and an army of lawyers to tell us that, our intelligence is in really sorry shape.
Eh, indicting foreign intelligence personnel for doing their jobs is not new. We indicted five Chinese military hackers back in 2014. This isn't even the first time we've indicted Russian intelligence personnel for hacking. We did it in March 2017 too.
I find it somewhat pointless. The scene that runs through my mind is some pimply young hacker rushing out of his mother's basement crying: "You thought I was wasting my life playing Warcraft and eating junk food all day, but in fact I was working for the interests of Mother Russia all this time! I had to keep it a secret, but thanks to the Americans, now I can tell the world!"
And if we really wanted to catch these people, wouldn't it have been smarter to do sealed indictments and arrested them if they unsuspectingly transited through US-controlled territory? But, notwithstanding the grandiose pronouncements from Holder, Sessions, and our friend Jim Comey, I don't think foreign intelligence officials are the real audience for these indictments. They're principally for domestic consumption, to reassure us that our government is taking the problem seriously and investigating the activities of foreign governments. And that's not nothing.
Bay Area Guy said...
The anti-Trump crowd has already reached peak stupidity.
That will be August 28th.
After that we will watch the leftists pretend none of this happened and start saying “can’t we all just be friends?”
"If Trump were colluding, why would he flaunt his involvement?"
I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.
Ann, you are so credulous. But it's something else - you are not listening, really listening, to the commenters on your own blog!
And of course there will be a bronze statue. Even if he didn't become president, there would have been a statue. Even if he does shoot someone on 5th avenue, there will be a bronze statue. So what?
The fact that this grinning fool helped kick things off is bad, sure, but Mueller was assigned an investigation, and accepted that assignment, regardless of how it was kicked off. And when he learned what Strzok was, he did the needful.
I think Mueller is in a bad position. He's damned if he finds something and damned if he doesn't. I assume his investigation is therefore going by the book to the best of his abilities, as he knows the whole thing is going to be thrown into the court of public opinion the moment he ends it.
This is his legacy.
Rosenstein didn't realize this whole thing was going to come back into his lap, but his recent testimony made it clear this is the Rosenstein investigation, not Mueller's. Rosenstein is directing it and can end it at any point. Until then, Mueller is just doing as he's directed.
I believe Mueller gathered the information and it was Rosenstein who decided to frame them as indictments. Then we have the press touting "the number of indictments which have come down" to combat the notion Mueller hasn't found anything.
But the point isn't Russian meddling. Was that ever in question? The investigation was Trump's collusion with Russia, for which there has never been any evidence.
“I'd advise Dems to quit whining and try and make their case to get votes, and if they get the most votes, I'd expect their rivals to make a gracious concession speech.”
Alas, the Democrats foolishly changed the rules. Everything they’ve done, can and will be done to them.
And documents that get worked over by a lot of different people -- like indictments -- are probably especially prone to these kinds of minor screw-ups.
Were any of those documents you referenced going to be dropped to every major media outlet in the free world and read intently by millions?
They could have taken the time to do it right.
They're principally for domestic consumption, to reassure us that our government is taking the problem seriously and investigating the activities of foreign governments. And that's not nothing.
More garbage.
Mueller is corrupt. The entire “special counsel” is unlawful with any reasonable reading of the law.
Attorney client privilege is dead at his hand.
Manafort sits in solitary confinement because Mueller used a corrupt Obama Judge to vacate bail while his partners at Podesta group were told to clean up their paperwork.
Everything about Mueller and this investigation is dirty. Why is he digging 5 years back into things not related to the election?
"If Trump were colluding, why would he flaunt his involvement?"
See how the genius/doofus argument always has an answer, either:
1. Trump was too dumb to realize we'd take him seriously, or
2. Trump was being clever and said it to give himself plausible deniability
Pick whichever one serves your interest, and if that fails switch to the other until everyone else moves on. This is how the mindlessness has continued for so long.
As Ann points out, it's not the volume and tenor of the anti-Trump posts which is so annoying.
It's that they're so easily rebuffed.
If there is a willingness to listen to the evidence, sure. But there are dozens of examples of memes proven false still being trumpeted by supposedly professional media.
Whoever drafted the indictment document deliberately inserted the bit about "on or about July 27th". This literally stands out like a sore thumb in the document. However, if you read the rest of the document, it appears the DNC, DCCC, the Clinton Campaign, and others were under constant cyber attack for the months before and after July 27th. There is nothing special about the activity on July 27th other than the fact it was July 27th, which is the day Trump made the joke about the Russians having all of Clinton's deleted e-mails. The indictment document was deliberately constructed to induce that headline Ms. Althouse quoted, and for no other reason. It is all political.
Blogger Dickin'Bimbos@Home said...
"The same day they obeyed"
Such total BS. The left do not even care if they lie.
*******************
Reminds me of the time hostile cable news networks displayed a split-screen of George W. Bush giving a speech, alongside a graph showing fluctuating stock market indexes.
Supposedly, "the market" was reacting in real time to everything Bush said ---UP twenty points on positive comments, DOWN fifty points on negative news---as he said it.
Brazen bullshit, straight up.
"But the point isn't Russian meddling. Was that ever in question?"
Dump's tweets:
"Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!" July 12, 2018.
“Why isn't Hillary/Russia being looked at? So many questions, so much corruption!"
“I never said Russia did not meddle in the election,” Trump wrote. “I said ‘it may be Russia, or China or another country or group, or it may be a 400 pound genius sitting in bed and playing with his computer.’ The Russian ‘hoax’ was that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia — it never did!”
“Somebody did say if he did do it, you won’t have found out about it. Which is a very interesting point"
“The whole Russian thing, that’s a ruse. That’s a ruse.”
On TV: “When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won,’”
Just read the HuffPost article, and it is pretty brain dead. Trump had just asked the Russians for the copy be sent to the FBI of Crooked Hillary’s emails that everyone assumed they had made years earlier when they, along with probably a bunch of other countries that had hacked her email server, and the Russians responded by trying to hack the DNC server that same day? The slight of hand has been repeated so often now that it is becoming obvious to even those who don’t follow this closely. We had two different email servers, separated by four years, and hundreds of miles, belonging to two different entities, and they jump from the one to the other, and assume that no one will notice what they have just done.
A reminder for all concerned:
1) Crooked Hillary had an email server setup at her home in 2008, upon which she illegally conducted all of her of her official business as Secretary of State between 2008 and 2012. Several of her closest minions, including Huma Abedelin, had accounts on that server. The FBI requested (not subpoenaed) copies of the 60,000 emails on it in 2016, 4 years after it had been shut down. Her attorneys provided the FBI with 30k of the 60k emails on paper. Not electronically, but on printed out on paper. Congress then subpoenaed the server (which the FBI had never done), at which time, in response, her people had the server bleach bited. End of story, until many of those emails showed up on the computer shared by Carlos Danger Weiner and Huma Abedelin. Which discovery Peter Strzok tried to run out the clock on right before the 2016 election.
2) DNC emails ended up on Wikileaks in summer of 2016, showing that the DNC had cheated to give the nomination to Clinton. DNC contractor Cloudstrike said it was the Russians. DNI Clapper and his hand picked team of analysts, with little other evidence, and most intelligence agencies excluded, confirmed this. Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, called BS, which was confirmed by the time stamps on the leaked emails, which made showed that Eastern European hacking was all but impossible, and that an inside job was all but certain. And, I should add that Seth Rich, former DNC staffer is still dead.
3) Possible pedophile and former Crooked Hillary campaign chair Leon Panetta fell for a fairly crude phishing scheme, resulting in having his emails hacked.
Matthew Sablan you ask why the Mueller indictments and "hunt" focuses on agents who tried to inflitrate the Clinton campaign--but not the agents who tried to infiltrate the Trump campaign. Well for one thing, the "agents" who tried to infiltrate the Clinton campaign were allegedly Russian agents. Maybe yes, maybe no---there may have been disaffected Democrats or disgruntled campaign employees. But okay, I will go with "Russkis" as the answer for the Clinton campaign.
OTOH, it was probably FBI "agents", whether FBI employees or FBI contractors, who attempted to infiltrate the Trump campaign. You can bet your sweet bippy that Mueller and his minions will never go there.
-- Or, more honestly, the Russians had been trying for months to infiltrate Clinton's emails because of how obviously lax their security was. Rubio, for example, reported similar attempted intrusions that never got anywhere.
This whole thing assumes that Mueller isn’t lying about the date. Mueller has lied about Whitey Bulger (Mueller was the Deputy DA is Boston), lied about Richard Jewell in the Olympic bombing, and lied about Steve Hatfill. Why believe him now?
The left KNOW Putin and Trump colluded to steal it all from poor poor poor Hillary. There is no way you will talk them off that meme-ledge.
DNC contractor Cloudstrike said it was the Russians.
Crowdstrike but I agree with the rest completely.
The fix was always in.
The left KNOW Putin and Trump colluded to steal it all from poor poor poor Hillary. There is no way you will talk them off that meme-ledge.
Occam's razor. How else explain that the wonderfullest, smartest, best qualified person ever to run for President managed to lose the election while getting the most votes ?
Trump brings out the stupidity in stupid liberals. Stupid liberals seem to have a need to show their ignorance, Trump accommodates.
Manafort sits in solitary confinement because Mueller used a corrupt Obama Judge to vacate bail while his partners at Podesta group were told to clean up their paperwork.
Bail was revoked because he was allegedly "tampering with witnesses" when he had never been given a list of witnesses!
How the fuck could he "tamper" with people that he had not been informed might be witnesses ?
He's a crook but, if there is any honesty left in the courts, his case will be dismissed for prosecutorial misconduct.
Blogger dreams said...
Trump brings out the stupidity in stupid liberals.
They are NOT Liberal. Call them leftists or progs but they are not liberal.
Conservatives are the only liberals.
Whether Russia responded to Trump’s call to hack the emails is a moot point although the timing of the release is interesting, but what is more interesting is why Trump has continually denied any Russian involvement in the election, which now even Russian TV brags about.
I unfollowed all my Trump demented Facebook friends. All except my son, that is. He doesn't post very often, but once in a while he puts some anti-Trump thing up. It makes me sad more than anything else because I thought we raised him to think critically and to not follow the crowd.
Churchill was so reviled in the late 1930s that his column in a major British newspaper was cancelled when its publisher could no longer stand Churchill's opposition to Chamberlain's foreign policies. He was distraught.
As early as 1936, he was writing things like this in his column, "It is worth a supreme effort—the laying aside of every impediment, the clear-eyed facing of fundamental facts, the noble acceptance of risk inseparable from heroic endeavor—to control the hideous drift of events and arrest calamity on the threshold. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!!! NOW is the appointed time."
Yet when the time came for Prime Minister Baldwin to select a Minister of Defense he chose not Churchill but a lawyer whose greatest leadership role had been to oppose changes to the Anglican prayer book.
Trump has it easy compared to what Churchill endured. Churchill lived in humiliation for years--out of power.
"Conservatives are the only liberals."
Such as this "Classical liberalism is a political ideology and a branch of liberalism which advocates civil liberties under the rule of law with an emphasis on economic freedom."
Current liberals for sure don't believe in economic freedom.
Should have added this to my above posting about three email servers. The slight of hand is that Trump called for Russians to give the FBI the missing emails on server #1 (Clinton server) BECAUSE THEY HAD ALREADY BEEN DELETED. The response was supposedly that those pesky Ruskies hacked server #2 (DNC server) utilizing the techniques (phishing) utilized to hack server #3 (Panetta emails). Hacking wouldn’t have provided the Russians the missing #1 emails, at that time, because that server had not been connected to the Internet for most of the intervening 4 years and BECAUSE THEY HAD ALREADY BEEN DELETED. THe Russians could phish all they wanted, on or after July 27, 2016, but that wasn’t going to get them the missing emails from (Crooked Hillary) server #1 BECAUSE THEY HAD ALREADY BEEN DELETED.
RV - Trump didn't call for hacking, he called for someone to find Hillary's deleted e-mails.
do you get that?
That will be August 28th
What happens August 28? Google fails me.
“Whether Russia responded to Trump’s call to hack the emails is a moot point although the timing of the release is interesting, but what is more interesting is why Trump has continually denied any Russian involvement in the election, which now even Russian TV brags about.”
Again slight of hand. Sure, there is evidence that the Russians may have tried to hack the election. But there is no evidence that they succeeded in the least bit.
@sydney
What does your son make of "walkaway"?
Is he aware of it?
Draw his attention ... Parents' duty etc.
"RV - Trump didn't call for hacking, he called for someone to find Hillary's deleted e-mails.
do you get that?"
And it's obvious that he was joking but the dems pretend not to understand.
why Trump has continually denied any Russian involvement in the election, which now even Russian TV brags about.
Because it didn't happen ? RV believes the Russians. Time to up your game RV.
The left shows no signs of recovery from the psychosis of November 9, 2016.
Hayden:
Leon Panetta was NOT Hillary's campaign chairman. You meant John Podesta. And we don't know anything about Podesta's sexual activity.
“Again slight of hand. Sure, there is evidence that the Russians may have tried to hack the election. But there is no evidence that they succeeded in the least bit.”
Let me add that the reason that they are bragging about it, is that they managed to look like a Goliath with minimally expended resources. Mostly to look this fearsome, they have to spend billions, which they don’t really have (e.g. their F-35 Lightning killer has just gone back to the drawing board). The Russians see brave Putin kicking sand into the eyes of the weak Americans.
Mueller is going to look like an ass in the end. He is indicting people and entities he can't reach and some of them don't even exist for the "crime" of exposing the Democrats as crooks. If Putin really wants to fuck over the US government then he should send the indicted to the US and hire top notch lawyers for them and condition the extradition to the US on having a speedy and televised trial for all of them in one trial. Smart lawyers for the Russians will subpoena Obama and half of his senior Administration people and with the cross examination of the government's witnesses and experts the spectacle will be so embarrassing that the Democrats might relegated to a minority party for a generation. Notice no one is disputing the authenticity of the emails. Rather the outrage is that the disclosure of the venality and criminality of the Democrats cost the Democrats an election.
@BruceHayden
I read Bill Clinton claim it his server, cleared by SS etc.
Maybe not destroyed, connected to internet still??
Claim to contrary could all be lies and deflection.
Odd, the indictment noe says the hackers remained toll October, yet crowdstrike says they expelled them in August, even though the initial hack was in March. Maybe that million dollars in capital were not warranted.
Of course, shawn Henry the head of crowsdstrike was Mueller head of cyberdefense, who operated in among other places, Romania. The other partner was also ex bureau and he came from Perkins and coie
Re: Bruce Hayden:
Should have added this to my above posting about three email servers. The slight of hand is that Trump called for Russians to give the FBI the missing emails on server #1 (Clinton server) BECAUSE THEY HAD ALREADY BEEN DELETED. The response was supposedly that those pesky Ruskies hacked server #2 (DNC server) utilizing the techniques (phishing) utilized to hack server #3 (Panetta emails). Hacking wouldn’t have provided the Russians the missing #1 emails, at that time, because that server had not been connected to the Internet for most of the intervening 4 years and BECAUSE THEY HAD ALREADY BEEN DELETED. THe Russians could phish all they wanted, on or after July 27, 2016, but that wasn’t going to get them the missing emails from (Crooked Hillary) server #1 BECAUSE THEY HAD ALREADY BEEN DELETED.
Just to emphasise, the emails were deleted some time around March 2015, after Congress requested that they be preserved. The Trump comments we're talking about took place over a year after Clinton's server had been wiped. The only way the Russians could have had those emails is if they'd taken them before March 2015 (which, you know, if they were the foreign power reading all her email, they may have done).
The server that was wiped hosted domains like clintonemail.com, presidentclinton.com, and wjcoffice.com. When Panetta's email got phished, (a) that was a google account, and (b) the campaign server was hosting hillaryclinton.com -- I don't think they carried over the old domain names (although I have not followed the saga closely . . .)
Haha, I confused Panetta and Podesta too . . . whoops. Podesta's email.
Mueller needs Russia placeholder to keep paychecks coming and Democrats happy.
He will be forced to give up his first set of Russians on August 28 ... Put up or shut up.
“Leon Panetta was NOT Hillary's campaign chairman. You meant John Podesta. And we don't know anything about Podesta's sexual activity.”
Sorry. Hard to keep the two of them straight. And, yes, you are correct about actual proof of pedophelia. I have none. But I get emails almost daily from my conspiracy theory friends showing supposedly conclusively that both of the Podesta brothers were heavily involved in a DC based under aged sex ring that also involves a bit of BDSM. I threw the reference in there as a reference to those persistent rumors. Probably more “proof” than my old Senator from when I lived in NV had when smearing multiple Republicans. Do we really know that the Podesta brothers weren’t involved? Or does that lack of evidence show how thoroughly corrupt and powerful the Deep State is, esp in Wash, DC.?
@Matthew ... and Ali Watkins wrote the story!!1 It has to be true.
I am going to point out something that escaped most people yesterday- the Mueller indictment claims detailed knowledge about which GRU officers did what and when, and yet, "mysteriously", is unable to pin an actual identity on Guccifer 2.0. Think about that and consider this- when Guccifer 2.0 first surfaced "proving" he was the Podesta spearphisher, he did so by releasing only the opposition research the Clinton team had on Trump- and he did this the day after the DNC and Crowdstrike put the story about the phishing of Podesta on the front page of WaPo while adding that detail about some of the information being Trump opposition material. Which seems more likely to you- was Guccifer 2.0 the spearphisher, or was Guccifer 2.0 an ally of the Clinton Campaign? I pointed this out at the time 2 years ago, and yesterday's indictment document supports my assertion in its complete lack of any identity being found for Guccifer 2.0 even though Mueller's team claims vast knowledge about the identities of everyone else including what and when they did things. So why don't they know who is Guccifer 2.0?
“And we don't know anything about Podesta's sexual activity.”
Let me add that I sometimes go overboard with interjecting my sense of humor into my postings. For those conspiracy theorists, the Podesta emails were more significant for all of the hints about his sexual preferences and activities, than about the upcoming election. The real dirt there was in the DNC emails which fairly conclusively showed that they (the DNC) had consistently cheated against Bernie Sanders and in favor of Crooked Hillary, thereby depriving all the Berniebots of their choice for President. Later, of course, we found that the DNC really was, essentially, a fully owned subsidiary of the Clinton campaign, thanks to all the money that Clinton had supplied the almost bankrupt DNC.
“Which seems more likely to you- was Guccifer 2.0 the spearphisher, or was Guccifer 2.0 an ally of the Clinton Campaign?”
My memory is that there were metadata tracks found in the Guccifer 2.0 data that appeared to implicate a Biden foreign policy staffer as the originator of the Word template that supposedly showed Russian involvement.
And, who do you trust more about the Wikileaks dump of the DNC emails: Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, or Guccifer 2.0? On the one hand we have a real person, whose organization dumped the emails, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy for several years now, and on the other, a pseudonym of an unknown someone or some organization with unknown intentions.
Another fine essay by Andrew McCarthy. He takes Congress to the woodshed, and I think for good reasons. I strongly suspect that Trump hasn't acted for two reasons- first, he could be hit with the obstruction charge if he orders his underlings to comply with the Congressional subpoenas, but I also think he might be waiting until it is most politically advantageous to do so- for example, in September or even more personally, in the Summer of 2020.
I am of the opinion that the reason Trump won is because the election was *not* "hacked".
The D's were so absolutely certain of a landslide that their fraudsters weren't out in force like they usually are.
According to the left, it's OK for Mexicans illegally in the county to vote, but it's an outrage for Russians to buy some Facebook ads.
Russians 'hack' the lazy-ass fools in the Clinton campaign - while Obama is President, no less - and Trump's DOJ busts 12 Russians for doing so?
And they blame Trump?
Idiots. Fucking, leftist idiots.
All of them.
Trump is talking with his hands. You know who else talks with their hands? The Italians... fascists. And the Jews. It's the ancient art of prestidigitation.
Just anent Churchill, he wasn't exactly the first of his family to go into politics. And was Romola Garai really in a "starring role" as Churchill's nurse?
Thanks, Bruce Hayden. As you show, they are playing a shell game with the different servers switching the various actions among various servers and making a nonsense of any narrative that tries to respond without sorting out the different references to different servers. That makes for a very clogged response and that clogging is, I suppose, the goal.
I think Trump will be seen as great because he responded to the new conditions and new threats - above all to the digital age and a new form of treason that age enabled. Rebecca West said that Klaus Fuch and other Communist spies committed a new kind of treason because they weren't trying to help the other side but rather in their minds there was only one side and weakening the US was the way to world peace.
In the digital age a secretary of state wouldn't have to smuggle out documents to a waiting agent or send agents into a building like the Watergate, he/she only had to ignore computer security and immediately everyone knew the US negotiating position. If you hate the United States and think that diminishing it is the best way to world peace, then this would be a good move. And it would be difficult to say what the crime was, if it happened, because he/she didn't do anything, he/she did not do something - he/she did not ensure the confidentiality of the US negotiating plans over four years. Yet that "not-doing" seems almost like something done by someone else - the IT administrator. For whatever reason Hillary left confidential negotiations exposed. And Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Clinton person, did the same thing with all the confidential documents of the House intelligence committee through the Awan debacle. And we know that the person in charge of security for that committee was in bed with the press and leaking selectively. But he was also allowing the Awans to take everything. Other intelligence info was actually stolen by Chelsea Manning and she was pardoned which is very telling because she weakened the US. There's single procedure - leave digital stuff unguarded - and a single consequence - US foreign policy and intelligence agencies will be weakened in relation to everyone with two geeks working for their spy system and weakened in every way as hardly be able to define what is going wrong. I think that it will be clear why some many high-up Americans left secrets unguarded by the time they are putting up Trump's statue. Next to Churchill's. And you notice, no one seems to know what his negotiating position is and he is constantly surprising our allies and our enemies. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry always had their plans and fallback plans worked out on computers, saved in a computers and printed in briefing books.
Blogger Bay Area Guy said...
The anti-Trump crowd has already reached peak stupidity.
I keep thinking this must be true. But every time I do, someone comes along says "Hold my beer and watch this" and they kick it up to a whole 'nother level.
One thing important to note about the press conference is that Rosenstein said that there was no evidence of collusion with anyone in the Trump campaign.
I wonder if the indicted Russians will show up in court to answer the indictment? One of the lawyers here can correct me but do they have to show up personally? Can they have an attorney represent them?
Discovery will be interesting.
How come we never hear about the other Russians that Mueller indicted? That influenced the election with a terabyte of RUSSIAN LANGUAGE social media posts. Which Mueller doesn't even know what they say because they have not been translated.
Or about Awan, the Debbie W-S IT guy who had access to all info for abotu 40 Congresspeoples computers, email and such?
Seems like a load of codswallop (a phrase from the chaise) to me.
John Henry
Even if he didn't become president, there would have been a statue. - HT
Then why wasn't there one before? It's not like he hasn't been in the public eye for the last 30 years.
Idiot.
Enh, "spearphishing." John f'in' Podesta clicking on a bad link. That isn't "hacking." That's "my 7-year-old could do this." Particularly to John Podesta.
Did it take "12 Russian military officials" to do this? So far, all I've seen of this sophisticated Russian hacking is the likes of the above, and that amazing cartoon of Christ arm-wrestling a devil that looked like a red HRC with horns and a tail. Considering that they are reputed to have spent all of a couple hundred thou on this, it's a miracle they got even that much. But, really, this is the Vast Threat To Our National Security? This?
And you notice, no one seems to know what his negotiating position is and he is constantly surprising our allies and our enemies. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry always had their plans and fallback plans worked out on computers, saved in a computers and printed in briefing books.
Queen Elizabeth had her intelligence chief, Walsingham, intercept and decipher Mary Queen of Scots' messages asking for help.
Walsingham instructed Paulet to open, read and pass to Mary unsealed any letters that she received, and to block any potential route for clandestine correspondence.[98] In a successful attempt to entrap her, Walsingham arranged a single exception: a covert means for Mary's letters to be smuggled in and out of Chartley in a beer keg. Mary was misled into thinking these secret letters were secure, while in reality they were deciphered and read by Walsingham's agents.[99] In July 1586, Anthony Babington wrote to Mary about an impending plot to free her and kill Elizabeth.[100] Mary's reply was clearly encouraging and sanctioned Babington's plans.[101] Walsingham had Babington and his associates rounded up; fourteen were executed in September 1586.[102] In October, Mary was put on trial under the Act for the Surety of the Queen's Person in front of 36 commissioners, including Walsingham
Elizabeth ran a very successful intelligence operation.
Clinton was so ignorant, or traitorous, that she ignored common security practices.
Manchester's bio of Churchill is great for anyone interested in him. The third volume, completed by someone else, is worth reading but nowhere near as good.
Churchill was also a hell of a good writer. I've read most of his 6 volume history of WWII, I read a book of his on the Boer War where he served in the army. I've read some of his journalism. I started reading his Life of Marlborough. It looks good but am not yet ready to make the commitment to the whole thing.
Churchill was sort of the Trump of his time, widely reviled right up until he became PM at the start of WWII (Europe). Promptly after WWII he was voted out of office again.
Having read a fair amount about him and by him I can never decide whether I like him or not. He has strong strengths but also has strong weaknesses.
He has a reputation for being a great and inspiring speaker and I fully agree. Two reasons for this, I think:
He wrote his own speeches. I think President Trump largely writes his own too. Moreso than most other presidents, anyway.
He did not usually read his speeches. He spoke from notes. He had carefully planned what he was going to say but he said it rather than reading it. With the exception of someone like Reagan, who read other people's words for a living for much of his career, very few people read speeches well.
President Trump doesn't, generally, even try. He comes up to the podium, lays out a sheet or two of notes and let's loose. When he does read a speech off a teleprompter, he is about as good as most politicians. Which is to say, not very.
Or about Awan, the Debbie W-S IT guy who had access to all info for about 40 Congresspeoples computers, email and such?
That is a really interesting subject that keeps making me think of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" the Le Carre story about how the Soviet master spy turned the Circus (MI6) inside out by convincing them there was a Soviet double agent while the British agent was the real spy.
The TV Miniseries made from it is also excellent.
Discovery will be interesting.
Been there, done that, the Ass brayed... and the caravan passed.
Blogger Achilles said...
Manafort sits in solitary confinement
Some call it solitary confinement, others call it "a private room".
But I do agree with your point, he is in solitary to punish/pressure him and it stinks.
It stinks he is in jail.
It stinks that he was arrested for something not even in Mueller's remit that happened years before the election.
It stinks that this is happening because he knows President Trump.
It just plain stinks.
John Henry
Churchill's "A History of the English Speaking Peoples" is also very good. There are abridged versions but the four volume set is worth reading.
I have one whole bookcase of Churchill, including Roy Jenkins' biography of him as a political leader.
The 1945 election is a bit of a mystery. Did Churchill neglect the The Beveridge Report of 1942 ?
Or was it that the Labour voters tended to have stayed home working in factories while Conservative voters were in the Army and away from home still ?
Blogger David Begley said...
You meant John Podesta. And we don't know anything about Podesta's sexual activity
Well, we do know that, according to the Washington Post, he has numerous photos of nude teens, male and female, full frontal, hanging in his house.
If you or I had them in our houses we would be arrested for child porn. Not to mention problems with our wives. But, they are by an artiste and Podesta is one of the chosen, so it's all OK.
His computer was not hacked. He got a message asking for his password, asked his IT guy if he should give it, was told "NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!" then gave it anyway.
He should be in jail for stupidity.
John Henry
It was also voter fatigue the Tories had been in power for nearly 20 years.
"Churchill's "A History of the English Speaking Peoples" is also very good.",
Churchill is an excellent and engaging writer, as indicated in that four-volume series. My original volumes are pretty tattered, but I look forward to re-reading them again when I have time.
I visited his wartime headquarters when in London 10 years ago. He smoked, drank and ate poorly, but lived a long, productive and highly consequential life. He would never be elected in today's climate.
Winston started out as a Liberal, but with experience and intelligence, saw the light. He is remembered as saying "A man who is not liberal at 20 has no heart. That same man who is not conservative at 30 has no head."
The DNC hired a private firm to analyze the DNC server. That firm, Crowdstrike is a CIA contractor. Low and behold, they found it was the Russians!!
Who runs Crowdsrike?
A former Mueller top deputy that joined Crowdstrike shortly before Mueller left the FBI.
Blogger Michael K said...
That is a really interesting subject that keeps making me think of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" the Le Carre story about how the Soviet master spy turned the Circus (MI6) inside out by convincing them there was a Soviet double agent while the British agent was the real spy.
The TV Miniseries made from it is also excellent.
I'd not thought of the similarities before. Are you saying that there is a long time mole deep in the DNC? Whose mole, American? Russian? Government? Party? Private interest? Now you've given me something to chew on.
I am a huge LeCarre fan. Agree about the miniseries and I've watched it a dozen or more times. It is available on YouTube. Be sure to look for the 7 episode version. It is only a little longer than the 6 ep version but for those like me who just can't get enough, every minute counts.
Also on YouTube is Smiley's People. Also 6 episodes, also starring Alec Guinness
If you enjoy LeCarre, his latest book "Legacy of Spies" is about a now elderly and retired Peter Guillam (George Smiley's sidekick at MI6) being dragged in and charged with shenanigans in the Alec Leamas affair of 50 years previous (The spy who came in from the cold) I just reread it for the 3rd or 4th time. (Yeah, in about 6 months. It's that good)
John Henry
the Hillary lost butt-hurt party never ends
I like this. It should have caps:
The Hillary Lost Butt-Hurt Party!™
Maybe it's on late at night after Playboy After Dark.
I will look for "Legacy of Spies." La Carre got very anti-American although he was never a fan of ours.
Probably with good reason.
Suvarov (Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun) defected to the British because he considered the Americans to be amateurs.
I read his "Inside the Aquarium" years ago. In one scene from the book, he saw a Soviet GRU colonel put into a crematorium alive. That was probably Penkovsky and he may have believe the Americans betrayed him somehow.
"On or about June 15, 2016, the Conspirators logged into a Moscow-based server used and managed by Unit 74455 and, between 4:19 PM and 4:56 PM Moscow Standard Time, searched for certain words and phrases..."
I'm most curious about how we managed to find evidence (if we actually have evidence) which links specific computer activities to specific Russian agents. In the quote above it certainly seems that in the cited instance we hacked our way into their server.
What happens if a Russian investigator/judge indicts Mueller for criminal hacking?
I think a key problem for Churchill was that the Conservative party was rotten at least since the Khaki Election of 1900. We didn't realize how bad it was in the early days of WWII until recently when it came out that Churchill basically had to grab them around the throat in a cruical cabinet meeting to stand down the settlers. It never got any better either, thus the defenestration of Thatcher and the total lack of Thatcherism in the party today. And May, of course.
Awan is Mossad is the word on the street, which is why he walked...Trump and Bibi made a deal to let him go. Why do we always let Mossad spies go? They steal our nuclear and military tech - we'd GIVE it to them, happily, if they just asked politely. It's insane.
Ann Althouse represents the 'mushy middle' of America that is rapidly growing disgusted with the Democrats being utterly insane. She doesn't want to vote GOP because they are icky and all that. However, she also believes in 'the lesser of 2 evils' approach to voting which means a 2020 vote for Trump is very likely. Scale her to all the other 'mushy middle' in the swing states and you have a Trump re-election by the same margin as 2016.
Winston started out as a Liberal
No, he was a Tory like his father, switched to the Liberals in 1904 at 30, then switched back in the 20's. That's one reason he was despised by the political class.
Awan is Mossad is the word on the street, which is why he walked..
Evidence shows he is Pakistani intelligence/arms dealer.
I have been reading as much as I can about CrowdStrike and how the lead investigator was highly regarded, they would do cyber security for the Pentagon etc. etc. The FBI contends that this 3rd party provider would do as good a job as their own forensics team and the most they will admit is they "prefer" to have the hacked computer and hard drive in question so they can run baseline scans and other programs to evaluate exactly when a hack has occurred. This has since be blown out of the water by other forensic teams who are hired by the Feds who prosecute cybercrimes who say they always need to have the original hardware and show chain of custody to create an ironclad case. Considering how many "short cuts" the FBI took in investigating Hillary I don't trust the FBI got this one right either.
you have a Trump re-election by the same margin as 2016.
Unless the Democrats get their shit together and come up with a rational platform, it will look like 1984.
And I don't mean Eric Blair.
Trump, like Hillary, and McCain will either be dead or in a nursing home by 2020.
Time to get a candidate in there who can speak the language of the American west:
Castellano Centroamericano.
You can't make it in Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico si vous ne parlez pas castellano...
@CJ ... Can Israel trust US Intelligence?
Some of us may be just starting to suspect, others have known for sometime.
Of course Churchill would never get selected as PM. Too bald, too fat, too drunk and as the article states, too weird in speech.
He was also too egoistical and much of a "maverick". This is a man who went from the Conservative party to the Liberal party and then back to the Conservative party.
And one reason he had so little influence in the 1930's is everyone thought of him as a brilliant - but unstable - man, but stuck in the past. Against Indian Independence, the architect of the Dardanelles disaster, and a warmonger who wanted to go war with the Kaiser, and now with Hitler.
Its an irony of history, that Chamberlin was brought down because he followed Churchill's advise, declaring war on Germany, and then sending troops to Norway.
Had the King decided to choose Halifax to replace him, I wonder if we would even remember Winston.
I've been watching some BBC and other British TV broadcasts and they aren't anymore honest about Trump than the US Press.
For example, still repeating the lie that Trump replaced the MLK bust with Churchill.
I only go on Facebook to visit relatives sites. They know I don't like it, so they don't go to my page for anything.
the Conservative party was rotten at least since the Khaki Election of 1900.
I could make a fair argument that the Boer War caused WWI.
Wilhelm wanted to support the Boers but was threatened by the British ambassador in Paris, Bertie who was virulently anti-German. because Germany had no High Seas Fleet.
So he began to build one.
Etienne said...
Trump, like Hillary, and McCain will either be dead or in a nursing home by 2020.
Day drinking again, coupé?
Had the King decided to choose Halifax to replace him, I wonder if we would even remember Winston.
Probably not but England would have been a German colony. A lot of the English upper class was pro-Nazi.
It might make an interesting counter-factual.
Would Hitler have invaded the Soviets if England had surrendered? They would have called it an armistice but France was an armistice, too.
There was a lot less opposition to the Germans in France before 1944 than the folklore would have you believe.
A lot of the French underground were communists.
"Why do we always let Mossad spies go? "
Jonathan Pollard might argue with you.
He was finally paroled under harsh terms after 30 years.
@Sydney said...
I unfollowed all my Trump demented Facebook friends. All except my son, that is. He doesn't post very often, but once in a while he puts some anti-Trump thing up. It makes me sad more than anything else because I thought we raised him to think critically and to not follow the crowd.
Sadly, Sydney exposes the pure hypocrisy that exists inside the minds of Trumpsters. As a panting social network participant, Syd doesn't want to read about or hear counter-viewpoints from friends, acquaintances and most significantly from that SOB, Sonny - who likely sees "Corrupt Donald" as he has always been, so he writes anti-Trump criticisms!
In fact, Trump has the perverse habit of accusing opponents of the very sins he is guilty of himself: “Lyin’ Ted”, “Crooked Hillary”, “Crazy Bernie” and he has asserted that there was collusion between the Russians and Hillary's Democrats.
"Probably not but England would have been a German colony. A lot of the English upper class was pro-Nazi"
Oh, Good Grief. Halifax supported the decision to go to war in 1939. He might have made peace with Hitler in 1940 but ONLY on good terms. Probably, including a demand Hitler withdraw his troops form Belgium, Holland, and Norway, along with easy terms for France.
Nobody in England was in favor of being a "German Colony". Despite the myth, everyone knew Hitler has zero ability to conquer England. He had no Navy, the RAF Fighter Command was too strong, and FDR had signaled his intent to Help the UK no matter what.
Operation Sea Lion was always a bluff. And the Luftwaffe was built for ground support, not strategic bombing.
Churchill later wrote the only thing that worried him during the war was the U-boat menace. He knew England was safe from invasion.
Indicted Russians will need visas?, or diplomatic passports?, Then waive immunity.
Mueller will use his current playbook, may work with different judge.
If convicted we may end up hostage swapping.
Or Trump pardons, proven collusion!!
Sydney exposes the pure hypocrisy that exists inside the minds of Trumpsters.
gadfly is his hilarious self.
Complaining about someone posting that demented left wingers are posting on facebook, gaddie posts more demented crap.
Gaddie, tell us the Democrats' plans for the economy and the issue of immigration.
I'll try not to laugh.
Oh, Good Grief. Halifax supported the decision to go to war in 1939.
The huge mistake Chamberlain made was the Polish guarantee. There was no chance that it could do anything to help.
The fact the Halifax supported the lunatic decision to declare war then sit for a year, is not in his favor.
In 1940, by the way you should read Lukacs book "Five Days in London, May 1940" Halifax was seriously thinking about quitting the war.
Do you really think Hitler would have left them alone with the fleet and the colonies ?
And his statue will have brass balls.
Gadfly asserts that a trump supporter (and I think he believes this applies to trump supporters in general) "doesn't want to read about or hear counter-viewpoints from friends, acquaintances and [family members]"
It has been my experience that Trump opponents have an equal (or surpassing) unwillingness to hear from opposing view points.
Here's what I propose for Gadfly: Find a coherent and well reasoned pro-Trump comment from Althouse (or from anywhere else). If you believe you can't find one single coherent and well reasoned pro-Trump comment, then you've proven my point. If you can find one, cut and paste or rephrase it, and post it as a comment to a relevant article in Washington Post or NYTimes.
If I am right, you will receive no responses except vituperation: "Go back to Russia" "Hey Drumph-idiot", etc. That is you will receive no thoughtful rebuttal of the post.
Then (if we can find a equally respectable pro-Trump website -- National Review? Althouse? WSJ? Instapundit? I'm open to suggestions, though I can't say that one comes to mind) post an equally coherent and well reasoned anti-Trump comment and see if you don't get a number of reasonably polite and on-topic and rational responses.
Lukacs?
Yes, I have read him. He's a Churchill worshiper and a Hungarian Emigre, who in my opinion has never truly understood the USA or England of the 30s and 40s.
1-He's called Stalin a "Russian Nationalist" - think about that!
2-He's called Pat Buchanan a neo-nazi, for his book "Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War"
3-In his sometimes excellent book "The last European War" - he called the 1940 American Isolationists (aka 75% of the USA) pro-German.
Lukas never seemed to understand that most Americans and English wanted what's best for the British Empire and the USA and were *NOT* interested in going on another crusade to "Save the World For Democracy". To Lukas there were only two sides: people who hated Hitler and wanted to fight, and people who liked Hitler and wanted to not fight.
A view that could only be held by a foreigner, not deeply conversant with America/UK of the 1930's and 1940's.
"How the fuck could he "tamper" with people that he had not been informed might be witnesses?"
-- It doesn't take a genius to figure out who the witnesses might be. The real question is whether he was or was not trying to influence potential witnesses, and if he did, how is that any different from Clinton retaining one of the other witnesses as her lawyer?
"No, he was a Tory like his father, switched to the Liberals in 1904 at 30, then switched back in the 20's. That's one reason..."
.. I should not rely on long-term memory.
I took FB off my phone. The Trump hate is too tedious to see every day. I feel very sorry for those who cling to their Trump hatred, blind to the progress made in this Country.
switched to the Liberals in 1904 at 30, then switched back in the 20's
Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.
Ah ah ah
That was really funny! I appreciate your President more and more.
How is it that I always hear the press talking about how the data was leaked, but very seldom about the data content?
Yes, I have read him. He's a Churchill worshiper and a Hungarian Emigre, who in my opinion has never truly understood the USA or England of the 30s and 40s.
1-He's called Stalin a "Russian Nationalist" - think about that!
2-He's called Pat Buchanan a neo-nazi, for his book "Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War"
I am a Churchill fan but think that Chamberlain gave him a terrible mess to untangle that might have been avoided, at least a possibility of avoiding ,if the Brits had taken Churchill's advice in the 30s. I know he was a rake and an Empire enthusiast when that was not popular. The French were the worst problem and Churchill was a Francophile, but Chamberlain and Halifax treated Hitler like a bull with a red cape. Would he have turned east and spent himself on the Soviets if the west had not looked so weak ?
Stalin was a nationalist, which is why Hitler and he might well have come to blows instead of the west.
Suvorov thinks Stalin had plans to bait Hitler into attacking. I don't know if I believe that but it is an interesting thought.
Buchanan's book is interesting but I think he is wrong about Churchill and WWII. I'm still reading about WWI. One problem is that it is not easy to find unbiased sources even about 1914.
I don't think that Halifax could have negotiated an "honorable peace" with Hitler. Once the topic came up resistance by the Brits would collapse.
The Mitford sisters were an example of the pro-Fascist sentiments of the upper classes.
There were a lot of German Jewish refugees in England, for example.
"Trump Told Russia To Get Clinton’s Emails. The Same Day, They Obeyed."
They who? The Clinton's?
I'm most curious about how we managed to find evidence (if we actually have evidence) which links specific computer activities to specific Russian agents.
I agree. Its like we know exactly what keys were typed on what computer by whom. Like a keylogger was placed on a Russia computer to provide us that information.
Rosenstein announcement just seems so FoS to me.
@Bruce Hayden...
It's "sleight of hand" , not slight of hand.
The latter is what Trump is supposed to be, with alleged implications regarding the size of his manhood.
"I am a Churchill fan but think that Chamberlain gave him a terrible mess to untangle that might have been avoided, at least a possibility of avoiding ,if the Brits had taken Churchill's advice in the 30s."
I'm a Churchill fan too. But his advice in 30s wasn't taken, because he was seen as an out-of-date imperialist and warmonger. Churchill had been all in favor of getting involved in WW1, and fighting it to the finish.
After WW1, he wanted to "Strangle the Bolshevik baby" in the cradle. And also fight against Indian Independence. And it was obvious before Munich that he wasn't just against Hitler, he was against ANY re-negotiation of the Versailles Treaty. He wasn't just Anti-Nazi, he was anti-German.
He was thought of as McCain-like figure, always pushing for war. IN fact, after WW2, Eleanor Roosevelt was VERY Upset at his "Iron Curtain" speech and privately called him a warmonger.
So, yes he ended up being right about Hitler. But he probably would've been against ANY German leader wanting to throw off the shackles of Versailles.
Another voice against appeasement - before he died - was Kipling. But he was more of a "Never trust the Hun" type that probably damaged the cause.
I would like to see some comments on Diana West take/recap of history for this period .
I believe she incorporates archives released after fall of Soviet Union and been viciously attacked by excommunists, neocons and FDR worshippers.
A lot of the French underground were communists.
Most of them. And they took their orders from Stalin, not the Brit/American Allies as usually depicted on TV/the movies. And they welcomed the Nazis in with open arms, because they were part of the same Axis at the start of the war. And they turned in their other French neighbors to the Gestapo when they spotted rule breaking/resistance. Their neighbors wound up beaten beaten/shot/jailed--their homes taken away or burned. When Russia was attacked, that all changed, of course. But they still got their neighbors killed because Stalin ordered them to conduct useless attacks that would force Germany to keep a large number of troops in France, rather than sending them to the Russian front. They screwed up many a Brit/American mission when our goals didn't mesh exactly with Stalin's.
Un Village Français, a recent French TV show, was pretty honest about all of this--much to my surprise. Hollywood/British Lefties always hid this, showing friendly smiling French chaps in striped jumpers and berets.
The truth is, the British people had ZERO desire to go to war to keep the Germans from rearming, or marching into their "own backyard" or even take the Sudetenland, which after all, was full of German Speaking peoples.
Its only after Hitler marched in Prague and made it clear he was a German Imperialist, that the British people thought war might be necessary.
"And they took their orders from Stalin, not the Brit/American Allies as usually depicted on TV/the movies.
In September 1939, the French Government shut down the Paris Communist newspapers, since they were declaring the war against Hitler a "Bourgeois war".
After the Germans took Paris in June 1940, they let the Communist papers open up for business. They shut down again in July 1941, after the attack on the USSR.
"The Poor Man's LLR Chuck" gadfly: ..."and he has asserted that there was collusion between the Russians and Hillary's Democrats."
LOL
Unbelievable.
Clinton campaign/DNC hire Perkins-Coie.
Perkins-Coie hires Fusion GPS.
Fusion GPS was already one of the abusive queries of the FISA 702 program contractors with complete access to all electronic communications of all Trump associates going back years.
Fusion GPS hires Christopher Steele.
Fusion GPS feeds ("intel laundering") the results of abusive queries to Steele.
Christopher Steele uses Fusion fed intel and is in contact with Putin Russian pals to "verify" the info (which he is unable to do because its all lies), but still, in direct comms with Putin pals.
Fusion hires Nellie Ohr.
Nellie feeds hoax Steele dossier to her husband, DOJ NSD employee bruce ohr.
Bruce Ohr feeds info to FBI.
Dem/Russian collusion.
By their own admission.
You know gadfly, you are so pathetic you are beginning to make the sorry LLR Chuck look even worse!
During the Liberation the Communist underground settled a lot of scores and shot a lot of Right-wingers.
Some were collaborators. Some were just anticommunist. One guy got shot just for publishing some antisemitic comments.
Its one reason Celine high-tailed it for Germany August 1944, and ended up in Denmark. He knew the Left.
One can imagine the same thing happening in the USA. How many leftists would love to kill say Ann Coulter, or Mark Levin and say it was because they were "collaborators"?
I'm not as convinced as Buchanan that Churchill bears a significant responsibility for WWI.
Lord Grey, I tend to agree with Buchanan although I have a Grey bio still to read. It will be a hagiography but there may be some hints.
I do think the Boer War is hard to defend. I have an internet friend in South Africa who lives on a farm she says had been in her family for 350 years. I'll ask her for some sources on that war. We might even go visit her in a year or so.
Churchill's strategic sense was accurate as he tried to keep Russia in the war with the Dardanelles campaign.
That was botched by the Royal Navy.
I recently read a book called, "D Day through German Eyes," which has some interesting insights,. The Germans were surprised and annoyed at the French who had been so friendly, suddenly turning on them when the Allies landed.
@rcocean,
During the Liberation the Communist underground settled a lot of scores and shot a lot of Right-wingers.
My French maternal grandparents in Marseilles had multiple friends that the Communists killed in the interregnum between when the Germans/Vichy guys left & the Allies took control.
The French Communists were always some nasty fuckers, & they ranked right up there with the CP-USA when it came to subservience to Moscow, unlike, e.g. the Italian Communist Party.
The "D Day Through German Eyes. link is bad.
Maybe this is better.
@AA,
I know I should have resisted and all my "friends" will see me as jerk, but I couldn't stop myself from responding to 2 things on Facebook just now.
I hear ya, sister! If I spent my time straightening out the misinformation from my FB friends, I'd get absolutely nothing else done.
I think the motto on FB's banner should be: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate!
@Drago - my understanding is that the timing was a bit tighter, with both Steele and Nellie Ohr hired within days of Adm Rogers shutting down FBI access to NSA 702 (USPERS) searching, after having found that maybe 85% of the FBI accesses were questionable, with many illegally having been made by FBI contractors (which appear to have included Crowdstike). In short Rogers found that the FBI was allowing contractors to do opposition research on Republicans using NSA databases, and shut it down. That appears to have been the point at which the entire plot that involved Steele, Ohr, Mysfyp, Downer, Halper, etc was hatched.
So, yes he ended up being right about Hitler.
More importantly, he was right about communism. (Islam too if we're counting)
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