October 14, 2021
"By all rights, Russiagate should be dead as a serious news story. But as the Real Time episode showed, 'collusion' is still alive for some..."
"... and the bulk of the case essentially rests now upon the characterization of one person from the above passage as a Russian agent: a former aide to Paul Manafort named Konstantin Kilimnik...."
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"But as the Real Time episode showed, 'collusion' is still alive for some..."
See democraticals LLR Chuck and his mini-me gadfly.
And not just the hoax collusion nonsense, but also the Jan 6 "armed insurrection"! LOL
Actual journalism - right there.
Our press is dogshit. They lie. They run with altered quotes.
Then there’s the matter of the suspect himself. Question to Kilimnik: how many times was he questioned by American authorities, with whom he was so familiar — remember he met with American officials “at least biweekly” at one point pre-Trump — during the entire Russiagate period?
“Not a single person from the U.S. Government ever reached out to me,” Kilimnik says.
Nobody from the Office of the Special Counsel, the FBI, or the Senate Intelligence Committee ever contacted him?
“Not once,” Kilimnik says. “Nobody from Mueller’s team reached out to me, literally nobody.”
They didn't question him because they didn't care...they all knew from the start that the whole 'Russia hacked the election' narrative was a Hillary Clinton campaign op...
I'm waiting for the news outlets to give back their Pulitzers...
where is the lawsuit against that fraud Mueller and that fraud and liar Rachel Maddow?
Russiagate will never die.
Because the lying crapweasels that still for some reason support the Biden Regime will cling to anything to justify censoring and attacking their political opponents.
Anything including obvious lies.
Democrats are just terrible people.
Why we should stop using the word "collusion" in connection with Russia and the Trump 2016 Campaign, from the wonderfully precise and authoritative website JustSecurity.org:
Link.
And it's not even new. The authors are Ryan Goodman (Co-Director of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law and former Special Counsel to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense) and Asha Rangappa (Senior Lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and a former Associate Dean at Yale Law School). They wrote it in February of 2019.
Whenever I hear someone talking about "Russian collusion" this-or-that, I know instantly it is not a serious conversation. Sorry, Bill Maher. You're not always wrong; far from it. But you're a comedian, not a federal investigator.
If you want some really good Bill Maher, check this out!
Oh, boy- Chuck will not like this one bit.
Kilimnik was a Soviet military interpreter years ago.
I myself was a military interpreter many years ago. I reached the rank of major, and I separated from the US Air Force in 1992 after 14 years of military service. I separated because the Cold War had ended, and I saw better employment opportunities elsewhere.
I could not find the dates of Kilimnik's military service, but I did find that he was born in 1970. I figure he joined the Soviet Army in about 1990.
By 1995, Kilimnik was working for a civilian company. So, he served as a military interpreter for a maximum of about five years.
Kliminik's military service is the entire reason why we all are supposed to think that Klimnik secretly works for Russia Intelligence.
There are enough lo-fo voters and devious politicians(e.g. HrC) to keep it alive for decades.
The period between early November 2016 and when Attorney General William Barr finally pulled the plug on Bob Mueller and the Russiagate hoax was a bad time to have a Russian name and even the most remote connection to the Trump campaign. A female Russian student at Cambridge University named Svetlana Lokhova was invited to a dinner whose guests included General Flynn. Next thing the poor woman knew her name was all over the Internet as a Russian spy assigned to seduce General Flynn for blackmail — a “honeytrap” in espionage parlance. Was there ever any evidence? Hey! She had a Russian name, was very pretty, and was in the same dining room as General Flynn. Evidence? That was all the evidence the Nevertrumpers needed.
You’d think perhaps that American feminists might rally to the poor woman’s defense. Being young and pretty is not supposed to be a crime. But you’d be wrong.
By all rights Insurrection should be dead as a serious news story.
But as the Althouse comments section shows, Insurrection is still alive for some.
Maybe in Part 2, intrepid reporter Matt Taibbi will discuss why he never called Kilimnik either for all these years. He even knew the guy and must have had an informed opinion on the quality of the accusations. Physician, .....
How come Carter Page still is walking around as a free man? After all, the FBI knew for sure that Page was colluding with Russian Intelligence to help Donald Trump win the 2016 Presidential election.
The FBI knew for sure that Russian Intelligence stole Hillary Clinton's e-mails. Russian Intelligence intended to use those stolen e-mails to help Trump defeat Clinton. Russian Intelligence needed to work with one member of Trump's campaign staff, and that member was Page.
At the very least, Page violated the Foreign Agent Registration Act. However, Page still has not been prosecuted for any crime at all.
If the colluder wasn't Carter Page, then the colluder must have been General Michael Flynn, the former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. General Flynn must have been the secret agent working for Russian Intelligence.
Hang on the Trump-Russia collusion , dear hiveminders.
All while the democrat party goes full Soviet on our nation.
Hillary and Marc Elias sure got their money's worth from Mueller and the FBI.
Useful lies tend to stay in circulation.
"By all rights, Russiagate should be dead as a serious news story. But as the Real Time episode showed, 'collusion' is still alive for some..."
------------
nice evasion of fact that accusers and investigators were the colluders.
here I thought Taibbi was finally capable of honesty
I recently read Peter Strzok's book Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump.
I summarize the book as follows:
* Everything that Donald Trump ever did made him vulnerable to Russian blackmail.
* Nothing that Hillary Clinton ever did made her vulnerable to Russian blackmail.
It will NEVER end as long as we have people like Chucky here that still believe the lies the Progressives and their compliant mouthpieces in the MSM have spewed and belch them out like gospel every chance they get. That is why the rest of us LAUGH at him daily...and the others who are still in denial that the Progressive Deep State set up Trump, and they failed....
Great headline that for a change says exactly what the linked story is about. I clicked through and read Taibi's tale. Excellent to know the very last thread of Russiagate is done being pulled and the whole shebang has come unraveled. Of course the myths will live on, as it is their side who constantly rewrites history to keep them alive. Matt Taibi recounts several in there. Good times! Amazing how the loudest voices against misinformation and disinformation are the same ones that win awards for spreading the most, like the NYT.
Here we go again. The Mueller report says that some Trump campaign officials had declined to testify under the 5th Amendment or had provided false or incomplete testimony, making it difficult to get a complete picture of what happened during the 2016 campaign. The special counsel wrote that he “cannot rule out the possibility” that unavailable information could have cast a different light on the investigation’s findings.
Given this, for an investigative reporter to say there is nothing left to investigate is silly.
The story absolutely should not be dead. Instead it must shift focus to the lies and dishonesty of the Democratic Party, MSM and deep state in their conspiracy against a sitting president.
"the bulk of the case essentially rests now upon"
There is no case. It has no bulk. It does not rest on anything.
As the notion of interference by a hostile power "resting" on one obscure gentleman proves, ipso facto.
Lefties are now faking the fakery, faux-pretending to believe the hoax. In the Harry Frankfort sense, it's bullshitting all the way down.
Yabcey - Chuck won't read anything at Ann's link. He a devoted hiveminder.
The idea that Chuck would read that link... is laughable. He has his Bullshit sources, and that is all he needs. *hivemind!
oops= Yancey.
Big Mike said...
The period between early November 2016 and when Attorney General William Barr finally pulled the plug on Bob Mueller and the Russiagate hoax
-------------
So Barr hung around till the deed was done to D's satisfaction!
he could have closed it down when he was confirmed AG
Three year investigation, Mueller's people tracked down all the accusations and found them trivial nothings. They had subpoena power and sometimes warrants and couldn't find a thing.
What do you do next? Well, if you don't know how to think, you move to everything they didn't track down because it was a three year investigation instead of a five year investigation. Every single thing they didn't worry about, you worry about now. "How do you explain __??"
If you know how to think, you say, Well, if everything I was worried about the first time turned out to be nothing, it sounds like I should re-examine my thinking processes and sources that led me to be worried. Obviously they are leading me astray.
The updated blame Trump and Russia for Hillary's loss and all bad things is to move the goal posts and update the language. Stop saying "Collusion" you sound like a conspiracy Maddow nutjob. use other words to hate-on Trump. Update the language you use to associate Trump with all things Russia.
Did you get the memo?
closing down the BS old man Mueller would have lead to more screaming from the left about RUSSIAN COLLUSION. *why- Barr is a Russian agent too!*
Question the lies flowing from the corrupt left? - why you just proved you're a Russian agent.
Remember- the assholes on the Maddow-Clinton liar left called Tulsi a Russian agent.
Remember too - there's a Russian under every bed! Except the Clinton Foundation Bed - hush hush on that one.
"Why we should stop using the word "collusion" in connection with Russia and the Trump 2016 Campaign, from the wonderfully precise and authoritative website JustSecurity.org:"
The article is 3 years old and was written before the Mueller report came out. If you don't like the word "collusion", you might want to talk to all of the folks in the press and congress who used it. In any case, nothing in the report turned up a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Further, it is now obvious the entire issue was based on opposition research done by the Clinton campaign. So yeah, it's time to let it go.
Chuck at 11:33 AM
Why we should stop using the word "collusion" in connection with Russia and the Trump 2016 Campaign, from the wonderfully precise and authoritative website JustSecurity.org: Link.
Chuck, I read the article you recommended.
The article rejects the words collusion and conspiracy. I expected the article to recommend some alternate, better word, but it does not do so.
Instead of using some one word, we all are supposed to use a different way of asking and framing “the question of collusion” to obtain more analytic precision, and to get to the heart of Trump campaign associates’ possible relationships with Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Instead of using some one word, we all are supposed to use five lines of inquiry may help commentators in analyzing and writing about these issues.
The first line of inquiry is as follows (emphasis in the original):
1. Are you aware of any direct or circumstantial evidence that Trump campaign associates coordinated with, cooperated with, encouraged, or gave support to Russia’s 2016 election interference activities?
In my view, this question presumes that Russia's 2016 election interference activities were some real and significant phenomenon.
What if Russia did not "interfere" in the US election at all?
If so, then how are we supposed to evaluate whether Trump's associates coordinated, etc., in such imaginary activities?
By the way, I think the USA has "interfered" in Russian elections much more than vice-versa.
jim5301 at 1:09 PM
... The Mueller report says that some Trump campaign officials had declined to testify under the 5th Amendment or had provided false or incomplete testimony, making it difficult to get a complete picture of what happened during the 2016 campaign. The special counsel wrote that he “cannot rule out the possibility” that unavailable information could have cast a different light on the investigation’s findings.
Given this, for an investigative reporter to say there is nothing left to investigate is silly.
People will continue to investigate the matter forever. After all, people still are investigating whether Richard III murdered his two nephews in 1483.
However, the US Government is done investigating the particular issue of whether some Trump associates actually colluded or conspired (or whatever other word Chuck prefers) with the Russian Government to use Hillary Clinton's e-mails in some sneaky manner to affect the USA's 2016 Presidential election.
The government investigation is done. Amateur investigations will continue forever.
For example, some amateur investigators still suspect Konstantin Kilimnik of being a secret agent of Russian Intelligence. After all, he was a military linguist for about five years at the beginning of the 1990s. Therefore, for sure, Kilimnik was collecting US election information from Paul Manafort on behalf of Russian Intelligence.
Who knows? Maybe that is true about Kilimnik. After all, that possibility was not ruled out by Robert "The FBI Whitewasher" Mueller. We might know for sure, if only some Trump associates had not refused to testify, claiming the Fifth Amendment.
how about Barr writes memo calling hoaxers /domestic terrorists/
did he not write patriot act or something for Bush
1:1. Are you aware of any direct or circumstantial evidence that Trump campaign associates coordinated with, cooperated with, encouraged, or gave support to Russia’s 2016 election interference activities?
See - you can move the goal posts and switch the language around and use vague BS to insinuate that Trump is a Russian asset.... *Trump gave the green light, baby.*
Nevermind that Biden jumped into Poot's bed on day one, cutting off our oil supply and handing Putin a major win with a pipeline deal and mega-bucks for Russian oil.
Chuck and the corrupt left are all in.
“Trump campaign associates coordinated with, cooperated with, encouraged, or gave support to Russia’s 2016 election interference activities” — Excuse me for getting all legal about this, but if Trump or his associates did any of those things, they would be guilty of conspiracy (or aiding and abetting). The special prosecutor’s failure to indict any American for conspiring with Russian Intelligence seems to me to be dispositive evidence that there was no such conspiracy.
I always thought of russiagate as birtherism for liberals, but it I guess it can also be thought of as WMD for liberals.
Can of Cheese: "Chuck and the corrupt left are all in."
Indeed. And just today we have ABC and LLR Chuck's beloved George Stephanopolous making sure their upcoming whitewash "interview" with Christopher Steele put the hoax dossier/pee tape accusation right back front and center.
Considering how Chuck and his democratical allies have failed and produced sheer misery for our country, resurrecting their previous lies about Trump, which LLR Chuck is pushing again on this very thread today, is quite literally the only political strategy they have left.
Article was very good and detailed, and I learned some new details on Russiagate I did not realize.
I am astonished he was never interviewed by anyone from the US Government, but goes along with everything else that happened, sigh.
I agree with Michael K., amazing value for money spent on getting the Government rolling on this, including the DOJ, FBI, and various intel agencies.
>Hillary and Marc Elias sure got their money's worth from Mueller and the FBI.
I am still astonished that Trump survived all the investigations, just amazing.
Mike Sylwester;
I say again to you now, as I have before, that I acknowledge your earnest attempts at respectful interaction. I know that you know I have said this to you before, during and after our many substantive disagreements on issues. This is yet another one of those.
And I don’t feel the need to always try to rebut every single thing that you write. You clearly don’t do that to me.
What I say to you this time, Mike, is that on the one big issue that is of paramount that importance — did Russia, through its national intelligence services, deliberately interfere in the 2016 election with the intent of assisting Trump versus Clinton? — is something which all of the United States intelligence services at all levels agree upon. In the affirmative.
Mike, this matter is not a subject of dispute. The Senate Committee with the relevant oversight UNANIMOUSLY affirmed the finding that Russia interfered, and the interference was calculated to help Trump.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/senate-committee-unanimously-endorses-spy-agencies-finding-that-russia-interfered-in-2016-presidential-race-in-bid-to-help-trump/2020/04/21/975ca51a-83d2-11ea-ae26-989cfce1c7c7_story.html%3foutputType=amp
Thanks Mike I wish you well, and I hope you enjoy your reading.
Chuck has been on many, many snipe hunts in his life. He simply can't help himself.
The left GET to re-assert old lies. That's how they roll. Losers.
Perhaps Russiagate is dead as a news story, but the redacted parts of the Mueller report are still being litigated over. At a hearing on a media company appeal from an order refusing to unredact portions of the report, 2 of the 3 judges expressed their inclination to order unredacted the portions of the report explaining the decisions not to charge Kushner, Corsi, and possibly others, with 2016 campaign violations.
Can’t find the post I wanted to respond to, but…
AG Barr was hired in good part because the previous summer ,he had written a legal memo that discredited and demolished the Wittes/Weissman LawFare Obstruction of Justice legal theory being used against Trump and his people to keep their Mueller investigation open and Congress from investigating the RussiaGate scandal. They were using Obstruction to keep their own investigation open well beyond the time that they knew it to be a wild goose chase. Barr immediately shut it down the only way that it really could be shut down. He asked Mueller and his clowns what evidence they had of collusion, and what they were investigating. They had not evidence, and had just been pursuing process crimes for most of the previous two years. His view was that you couldn’t have Obstruction of Justice or really even perjury without materiality, and without material questions and research being hindered, there cannot be either Obstruction nor Perjury. The sort of Perjury Traps being sued to keep the investigation open were over immaterial, and thus, non criminal matters (very similar to what he had the DOJ request dismissal of the charges against Flynn). No substantial investigation, meant that there was no legal reason to keep the investigation open. He told Mueller then to close it ASAP. Grudgingly, Mueller’s highly partisan crapweasel prosecutors complied.
jim5301 at 1:09 PM
... The Mueller report says that some Trump campaign officials had declined to testify under the 5th Amendment or had provided false or incomplete testimony, making it difficult to get a complete picture of what happened during the 2016 campaign. The special counsel wrote that he “cannot rule out the possibility” that unavailable information could have cast a different light on the investigation’s findings.
“Given this, for an investigative reporter to say there is nothing left to investigate is silly.”
This was the response by the Mueller crapweasel prosecutors being told to shutdown their investigation if they didn’t have anything substantial against Trump. They admitted that they had nothing, and had had nothing for most of the previous two years. But they responded that if only they could unconstitutionally push these Trump people a little harder through manufacturing process crimes against them, then maybe they could find something. That was after having admitted that they had known from almost their first day that the entire Russian Collusion claims were based on the long discredited Steele Dossier, essentially LLP created by agents of the opposing Clinton campaign. AG Barr was not impressed. They had nothing. Never had. Which is why the Mueller prosecutors earned the name of crapweasels
"The Senate Committee with the relevant oversight UNANIMOUSLY affirmed the finding that Russia interfered, and the interference was calculated to help Trump."
We aren't talking about whether the Russians tried to interfere with the election. I assume they did as a matter of policy. The 20 million dollar question was to what extent (if any) did the Trump campaign was working with them. As Mueller came up empty (well empty enough that none of his work found its way to the impeachment) I would say the question has been answered.
Poor dumb Chuck. After all these years you still remain obtuse. All the money on an “education” was wasted. Overwhelming evidence, yet you cite a Washington Post article? Oh my. 🤷♂️🤔. There is a box with some rocks in it somewhere in your vicinity. Possible on your bed pillow.
"The Senate Committee with the relevant oversight UNANIMOUSLY affirmed the finding that Russia interfered, and the interference was calculated to help Trump." So what?
At this point Chuck is just trying to keep gadfly on board the crazy train.
Those political appointees who unanimously affirmed that Putin preferred to have Keystone XL completed and to have his pipeline into Europe opposed, they wouldn't happen to be the same people who lied to the FISA court?
Hunter Biden's laptop is probably a bigger story than Russia, Russia! ever was, yet the press is so quiet about this you'd think it didn't exist.
The old who/what/where/when has been reduced to who/whom, or as Taibbi puts it who’s the vampire squid and where exactly is he jamming the blood funnel now.
Russia interferes in our elections. We interfere in Russian elections. Whether Russia's goal in 2016 was to help Trump, rather than to sow confusion is a matter of opinion. Whether Russian efforts had any effect on the election results is unlikely. And no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians has turned up. Also, the dossier that was so often talked about may also be considered a product of Russian efforts. It certainly didn't help Trump, and it served as a basis for the intelligence agencies own efforts against the Trump campaign, efforts which make their later findings questionable.
Chuck at 4:51 PM
What I say to you this time, Mike, is that on the one big issue that is of paramount that importance — did Russia, through its national intelligence services, deliberately interfere in the 2016 election with the intent of assisting Trump versus Clinton? — is something which all of the United States intelligence services at all levels agree upon. In the affirmative.
As far as I know, the only intelligence agencies that studied and opined on the matter are the CIA, FBI and NSA. See the document titled Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions
in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber
Incident Attribution, page 1, the paragraph titled "Scope".
It's my understanding that no National Intelligence Assessment ever was conducted. Therefore, the agencies that have not opined include the DIA, the State Department, the military services, etc. Maybe you can correct me about that.
As I recall, all the US Intelligence agencies said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and all those agencies were wrong about that.
=====
By the way, in a previous thread, about Critical Race Theory being taught in elementary schools and high schools, I made a very late comment that you probably did not see. I commented that you made a "good point" that consultants have been paid to make presentations about CRT to school administrators and faculties, but that CRT is not being taught significantly to students in such schools. I think that was a good point.
I enjoy reading your comments, Chuck, and I am sure that many others do likewise.
Taibbi is in a dream world because he wants to be, I guess. This update came from the Treasury Department in April supports the Republican SSCI report that acknowledges that Russia interfered in our election in 2016 and says Kilimnik has continued his dirty tricks into 2020:
Konstantin Kilimnik is a Russian and Ukrainian political consultant and known Russian Intelligence Services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kilimnik provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy. Additionally, Kilimnik sought to promote the narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In 2018, Kilimnik was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice regarding unregistered lobbying work. Kilimnik has also sought to assist designated former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych. At Yanukovych’s direction, Kilimnik sought to institute a plan that would return Yanukovych to power in Ukraine.
Kilimnik was designated pursuant to E.O. 13848 for having engaged in foreign interference in the U.S. 2020 presidential election. Kilimnik was also designated pursuant to E.O. 13660 for acting for or on behalf of Yanukovych. Yanukovych, who is currently hiding in exile in Russia, was designated in 2014 pursuant to E.O. 13660 for his role in violating Ukrainian sovereignty.
readering: "Perhaps Russiagate is dead as a news story, but the redacted parts of the Mueller report are still being litigated over."
Don't stop, believin', hang on to thst feelin'!...
gadfly at 2:27 AM
Konstantin Kilimnik is a Russian and Ukrainian political consultant and known Russian Intelligence Services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf.
What is the Treasury Department's evidence that Kilimnik is a Russian Intelligence Services agent?
gadfly at 2:27 AM
Konstantin Kilimnik is a Russian and Ukrainian political consultant and known Russian Intelligence Services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf.
The FBI said the same thing about Carter Page five years ago. Page still walks around freely in the USA and has not been charged at all.
Putin preferred a pragmatic businessman to an ideology-driven harridan.
Go figure.
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