While the public has been led to believe that a Russian double agent was poisoned by Moscow as payback, evidence shows that he had ties to the author of the Trump/Russia dossier.
The post Gov’t Forcing Media to Suppress Bombshell Skripal Case Details, Effectively Changing the Story appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
(CN) — Things aren’t looking great for the Democratic establishment, which recently admitted that it stacks its primaries against progressive candidates and is currently engaged in a desperate, hail Mary lawsuit against WikiLeaks for its factual publications about the party. So of course you know what that means. That’s right! It’s time for Democratic pundits to begin down-punching Jill Stein. […]
(ZHE) — Weeks after the House Intelligence Committee voted to officially close its investigation into whether President Trump colluded with the Russians, it has finally released its official account of its findings in a heavily redacted 253-page report which unambiguously proclaims that the committee “found no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded, coordinated, or conspired with the Russian […]
This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge
Not The Onion.
Did The Democrats’ “The Russians did it” narrative just jump the shark?
The Washington Post reports that The Democratic National Committee filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit Friday against the Russian government, the Trump campaign and the WikiLeaks organization alleging a far-reaching conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 campaign and tilt the election to Donald Trump.
DNC Chairman Tom Perez said in a statement…
“During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russia launched an all-out assault on our democracy, and it found a willing and active partner in Donald Trump’s campaign,”
“This constituted an act of unprecedented treachery: the campaign of a nominee for President of the United States in league with a hostile foreign power to bolster its own chance to win the presidency,”
The case asserts that the Russian hacking campaign – combined with Trump associates’ contacts with Russia and the campaign’s public cheerleading of the hacks – amounted to an illegal conspiracy to interfere in the election that caused serious damage to the Democratic Party.
We look forward to Trump’s tweeted response to this farce.
As a reminder, the president has repeatedly rejected any collusion or improper activity by his campaign. This week, he referred again in a tweet to the “phony Russia investigation where, by the way, there was NO COLLUSION (except by the Dems).”
The Washington Post notes that the lawsuit echoes a similar legal tactic that the Democratic Party used during the Watergate scandal.
In 1972, the DNC filed suit against then President Richard Nixon’s reelection committee seeking $1 million in damages for the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate building.
The suit was denounced at the time by Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, who called it a case of “sheer demagoguery” by the DNC. But the civil action brought by former DNC chair Lawrence F. O’Brien was ultimately successful, yielding a $750,000 settlement from the Nixon campaign that was reached on the day in 1974 that Nixon left office.
The suit filed today seeks millions of dollars in compensation to offset damage it claims the party suffered from the hacks. The DNC argues that the cyberattack undermined its ability to communicate with voters, collect donations and operate effectively as its employees faced personal harassment and, in some cases, death threats.
Ending a year-long waste of taxpayer dollars into a conspiracy theory generated by the mainstream media and government alike, the House Intelligence Committee has voted to formally end its Russia probe into alleged collusion between Trump and Russia.
The post BREAKING: House Committee Votes to End Russia Probe After Finding ‘No Collusion’ appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
[image: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite]
It’s commonplace in banana republics. The plots show America is much like despotic regimes elsewhere.
On February 16, attorney Alex Van der Zwaan was indicted for making “false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements and representations in a manner within the jurisdiction of the executive branch…to the special council’s office” and FBI.
His indictment includes no evidence of possible Trump team improper or illegal dealings with Russia – nor anything about allegations of Russian US election meddling.
It relates to help he provided former US orange revolution-installed Ukrainian prime minister/billionaire mega-thief Yulia Tymoshenko – imprisoned earlier for embezzlement of hundreds of millions of dollars and abuse of public office.
Van der Zwaan is accused of lying to investigators about communications with Richard Gates – political consultant and lobbyist connected to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, indicted last October on charges unrelated to Trump and Russia.
Van der Zwaan was also accused of deleting and failing to produce emails sought by Mueller’s office.
Years earlier, his law firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate Meagher & Flom, prepared a report defending Tymoshenko’s prosecution and conviction.
It exposed the US/Brussels Big Lie, claiming the case against her was politically motivated.
The Bush/Cheney administration orchestrated the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, replacing its democratically elected government with illegitimate pro-Western rule.
At the time, US and other Western officials praised illegally installed prime minister Tymoshenko as a force for democracy and freedom.
She was up to her ears in wrongdoing, stashing her ill-gotten super-wealth in around 300 secret foreign bank accounts.
Called the “gas princess” for controlling Ukraine’s United Energy Systems, she used her position for grand theft.
She was a US favorite for being militantly Russophobic, caught on tape saying she wanted to mass-murder Russians, wanting Putin dead.
Van der Zwaan’s indictment appears part-revenge, along with Mueller’s witch-hunt attempts to build a case for improper or illegal Trump team connections to Russia.
He’s found no evidence proving it. His indictments have nothing to do with Russia or Trump.
Media scoundrels are using them to suggest otherwise, complicit in the plot to oust him from office.
The post Another Mueller Witch-Hunt Investigation Indictment appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
(CN Op-ed) — Jane Mayer of The New Yorker and Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks are the latest progressives to jump on the anti-Trump, pro-Russiagate bandwagon. They have made it crystal clear that, in Mayer’s words, they are not going to let Republicans, or anyone else, “take down the whole intelligence community,” by God. Odd? Nothing is too […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) just said NBC News "misrepresented facts and confused the public" in regard to Russian interference in the US election system.
The post DHS Just Admitted Mainstream Media Has ‘Misrepresented Facts’ on Russian Interference appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
(AP) — With Democrats and self-styled #Resistance activists placing their hopes for taking down Donald Trump’s presidency in the investigation being led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, online groups such as MoveOn and Avaaz are launching campaigns to come to the Special Counsel’s defense in the event of him being removed by the president. In an action […]
Lots more like it are needed, exposing corrupt practices in Washington – high-level officials responsible for serious ethical and legal breaches.
The swamp overflows with wrongdoing. Many officials in the nation’s capital are responsible for what goes on, few ever held accountable.
Deplorable practices continue unabated, release of the FISA memo not likely to change things.
The NYT went all-out to denigrate the Russiagate FISA memo, wanting its contents suppressed, continuing to wage editorial war on Trump for the wrong reasons.
Following the memo’s release, the Times continued its offensive with a barrage of articles and commentaries.
One column headlined “How Trump’s Allies Fanned an Ember of Controversy Into Flames of Outrage,” saying the memo’s release “was broadly greeted with criticism, including by some Republicans. They said it cherry-picked information, ma(king) false assertions…It didn’t live up to the hype.”
Read it and judge for yourself. It’s clear evidence of the Washington swamp filled to overflowing, unaccountable extrajudicial practices. The memo covered one issue. Countless others need exposure to the light of day.
Another Times column headlined “House Republicans Release Secret Memo Accusing Russia Investigators of Bias” – calling it “politically charged, national security officials and outraged Democrats…accus(ing) Republicans of misrepresenting sensitive government information through omissions and inaccuracies.”
What else would scoundrels and their supporters caught red-handed say!
Another headlined “Thank Progressives for the Nunes Memo,” saying:
“The move is nakedly partisan, and it certainly seems as if Republicans are trying to discredit the investigation into Russia’s 2016 election meddling.”
It should have been discredited months ago. No Russian meddling occurred. No evidence proves any.
A day earlier Times column before the memo’s release headlined “The Republican Plot Against the FBI,” saying:
“In a demonstration of unbridled self-interest and bottomless bad faith, the Trump White House and its Republican minions in Congress are on the cusp of releasing a ‘memo’ that purports to document the biggest political scandal since Watergate.”
“To pull it off, they are undermining the credibility of the law enforcement community that Republicans once defended so ardently, on the noble-sounding claim that the American public must know the truth.”
“Don’t fall for it.”
The FBI, DOJ and CIA are enemies of rule of law principles and freedom-loving people everywhere.
Times editors headlined “We’ve Got the Memo. Now What About Trump’s Tax Returns?”
One issue has nothing to do with the other. The Times wants the subject changed, diverting attention from what’s most important, supporting what demands condemnation.
The neocon/CIA-connected Washington Post quoted FBI director Christopher Wray telling bureau employees:
“The American people read the papers, and they hear lots of talk on cable TV and social media.”
“But they see and experience the actual work you do – keeping communities safe and our nation secure, often dealing with sensitive matters and making decisions under difficult circumstances.”
“And that work will always matter more. Talk is cheap; the work you do is what will endure.”
The FBI is America’s Gestapo. We’d all be better off if the bureau was disbanded, ending its longstanding abuses, its contempt for rule of law principles.
WaPo editors headlined “The Nunes memo is a giant, damaging distraction,” saying:
“(T)he infamous Nunes memo does nothing to discredit the Russia investigation, which was President Trump’s transparent aim in authorizing its release on Friday.”
“It also does little to show abuse of surveillance law, which was the pretext on which House leaders justified its disclosure.”
Shameful comments! The memo’s information speaks for itself. The sham Russiagate investigation is the most scandalous abuse of power since Joe McCarthy’s communist witch-hunts.
He hurt many people unjustifiably, ruined careers for political reasons, accomplishing nothing else, leading to his fall from grace and Senate censure. He died a broken man at age-48.
Today’s scandal is worse, aiming to prevent a presidential candidate from winning the nation’s highest office, then trying to oust him for the wrong reasons.
Instead of explaining flagrant abuse of power practices in Washington, media scoundrels want them suppressed.
The post Media Scoundrels Slam FISA Memo Release appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
They come from a four-page memo released to House members – discussed in previous articles.
Investigative journalist Sara Carter’s sources called the memo’s classified revelations shocking and explosive – possibly “lead(ing) to the removal of senior officials in the FBI and Department of Justice,” adding:
It “contains information regarding the (fabricated Christopher Steele) dossier that alleges President Trump and members of his team colluded with the Russians in the 2016 presidential election.”
House Republicans want the document made public. So does Trump. According to Carter, it reveals “problematic” issues on how FISA warrants were obtained for the Russiagate investigation – serious abuses, according House members who’ve read the memo.
An unnamed GOP House member said “(w)e probably will get this stuff released by the end of” January. The House Intelligence Committee voted to make it public.
Another unnamed source said the House Intelligence “committee document…deals with the assessment on the Department of Justice, FBI and the oversight work that is being conducted by the committee.”
Since initiated by CIA director John Brennan in 2016, Russiagate is all about delegitimizing Trump for the wrong reasons and bashing Russia – a colossal scam.
Not a shred of credible evidence supports the allegations, nothing warranting endless witch-hunt congressional and special counsel investigations.
If serious wrongdoing was committed by FBI, Justice Department and perhaps other US officials, it should be made public – followed by accountability, the way to end the Russiagate scam.
The NYT supports coverup. It wants Russiagate investigations continued, Russophobic anti-Trump federal officials free to continue their witch hunt – instead of responsibly ending the scam, along with sacking and prosecuting culpable US officials.
The Times mocked House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, saying:
“In nearly every crime-caper movie there’s a shifty guy on the street corner who, seeing the cops in hot pursuit, flips over a fruit cart to slow them down and give the culprits a chance to get away.”
“In Trump-era Washington, that role is being played with impressive conviction by Devin Nunes…supported by a rotating coterie of conspiracists in Congress and the usual suspects on right-wing cable news…tossing out sinister-sounding allegations of wrongdoing by federal law enforcement officials.”
If wrongdoing was committed by federal officials, it should be revealed, not suppressed.
Clearly Russiagate investigations lack credibility. They never should have been initiated. They should be ended straightaway.
Evidence of high-level wrongdoing in Washington is how how to end the most disgraceful chapter in Capitol Hill history since the shameful Joe McCarthy era – a despicable figure Harvard Law School dean Ervin Griswold once described as “judge, jury, prosecutor, castigator, and press agent, all in one.”
The Times: “The whole point of (Nunes’) game is to make the job of the actual investigators harder while confusing the public about where the true scandal lies.”
It lies in DNC headquarters, the offices of undemocratic Dem leaders and other party members, as well as in scoundrel media editorial board rooms – plotting ways to remove Trump and endlessly bash Russia.
The Times: “Democrats have called the memo ‘profoundly misleading’ and have said its factual allegations are taken out of context.”
How do they know? They haven’t seen it. Fact-checking is vital to learn if information it contains is shocking and explosive as claimed. Coverup is complicity with wrongdoing if it occurred.
The Times disgracefully suggested Russia may be involved in wanting the memo’s information released. It mocked an FBI “secret society” allegation, instead of calling for an investigation to learn if it exists.
It relates to a possible high-level FBI cabal wanting Trump’s presidency undermined. If true, the truth should be revealed with credible evidence supporting it, along with individuals involved held accountable.
The Times: “Mr. Nunes and his ilk are causing real and possibly lasting damage for nothing more than a short-term political win.”
Sunshine is the best disinfectant. It’s absent in Times reporting. The same goes for other media scoundrels.
It’s sorely needed to expose wrongdoing in the Washington swamp.
The post The NYT Wants Alleged Russiagate FISA Abuses Suppressed appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
The US Senate Intelligence Committee is demanding Google, Facebook, and Twitter hand over information on Russian Medling in 2016, the only problem is there is none.
The post Despite Senate Demands, Twitter, Google, Facebook Can’t Show Evidence of ‘Russian Meddling’ appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
[image: AP]
Russiagate is a scam. Special counsel Mueller never should have been appointed – his mission a witch-hunt, not a legitimate investigation.
His conflicts of interest should have disqualified him. He’s close to fired FBI director Comey. He sought reappointment as agency head, serving in the post for 10 years under Bush/Cheney and Obama.
Reportedly he interviewed for the job the day before being appointed special counsel.
The NYT broke the story about Trump allegedly wanting Mueller fired last June – appointed special counsel on May 17, 2017 by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
His witch-hunt investigation involves probing “any links and/or coordination between Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump, and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”
Not a shred of evidence suggests just cause for his investigation. After eight months on the job, he found nothing. Nor have House and Senate committees after over a year of fruitless work.
According to the Times, “(a)fter receiving the president’s order to fire Mr. Mueller, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, refused to ask the Justice Department to dismiss the special counsel, saying he would quit instead,” according to unnamed sources.
Mueller learned about Trump’s intention before he backed down, the Times added. Reportedly he cited three Mueller conflicts of interest as justification for sacking him:
• a dispute over fees at Trump’s National Golf Club in Sterling, Va. involving Mueller;
• his work for the law firm that earlier represented his son-in-law Jared Kushner; and
• as explained above, he interviewed for FBI director after Trump fired Comey the day before his appointment as special counsel.
Mueller was appointed under 28 CFR 600.7. It state “(t)he Special Counsel may be disciplined or removed from office only by the personal action of the Attorney General.”
“The Attorney General may remove a Special Counsel for misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or for other good cause, including violation of Departmental policies.”
Mueller’s conflicts of interest make him a potential witness in his own investigation – alone what should have disqualified him for the special counsel job. It warrants his dismissal – though sacking him would be politically disastrous.
It would give Trump opponents just cause for impeachment on obstruction of justice charges – despite the illegitimacy of Mueller’s witch-hunt investigation.
Appearances are everything in Washington. Dark forces want Trump ousted. So far, there’s no justification for removing him.
Sacking Mueller in the middle of his investigation could create one, undemocratic Dems and perhaps some Republicans jumping on the chance to call for his impeachment and removal from office.
Surely this was explained to Trump. He backed off to save his presidency, not because White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II threatened to quit – a minor issue compared to the main one.
The post Trump Wanted Mueller Fired? appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge
House GOP members have approached Speaker Paul Ryan about incorporating a vote to make public an explosive new FISA abuse memo as part of government shutdown negotiations.
The four-page document, circulated to the full House yesterday, is said to detail egregious abuses of surveillance by the FBI, DOJ and Obama administration against the Trump campaign during and after the 2016 US presidential election.
The facts contained in the Republican majority-authored report is said to be “jaw-dropping and demand full transparency,” according to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), while the top ranking Democrat on the House Intel Committee, Adam Schiff (D-CA) dismissed the memo as “profoundly misleading” talking points drafted by Republican staffers.
“Rife with factual inaccuracies and referencing highly classified materials that most Republican Intelligence Committee members were forced to acknowledge they had never read, this is meant only to give Republican House members a distorted view of the FBI,” said Schiff, adding “This may help carry White House water, but it is a deep disservice to our law enforcement professionals.”
The effort to integrate the Memo’s public release with the stopgap government shutdown bill is being led by Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows of North Carolina along with caucus co-founder Jim Jordan of Ohio.
Jordan confirmed that some conservatives had “highlighted” in continuing resolution talks that it was “extremely important” that the memo go public. He said it was not something they were requiring of the Republican leadership in return for votes. “But it was something we definitely talked about — that needs to happen,” Jordan added.
Meadows earlier referred to “subplots” of promises the Freedom Caucus was able to extract from the leadership before he agreed to support the continuing resolution.
“Mr Meadows and Mr. Jordan and many conservatives want to include in this negotiation a requirement that the House make public intelligence documents that highlight the unfair treatment of the president” by the FBI and the Justice Department, Gaetz said. –Bloomberg
“Part of me wishes that I didn’t read it, because I don’t want to believe that those kinds of things could be happening in this country that I call home and love so much,” said Meadows.
Several other GOP Congressmembers have weighed in as well. “I have read the memo,” tweeted Rep. Steve King (R-IA), adding “The sickening reality has set in. I no longer hold out hope there is an innocent explanation for the information the public has seen. I have long said it is worse than Watergate. It was #neverTrump & #alwaysHillary. #releasethememo.”
Calls for the memo’s release have dominated social media since its existence was made known, with many suggesting it be leaked in similar fashion to Dianne Feinstein’s publication of transcripts of a closed-door testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by opposition research firm Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson.
.@SenFeinstein is it possible for you to get a bladder infection long enough to leak
the FISA Memo?
America is asking. #ReleaseTheMemo #MAGA pic.twitter.com/uKwSmvkKSV— Carrie❤️America
(@carrieksada) January 19, 2018
So leak the memo. What"s all this nonsense. Leak it.
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) January 19, 2018
Dear conservatives: you cannot fall for this fraud they"re perpetrating on you. They want you to focus on a memo that *only they* (Trump & GOP leaders) have the power to let you see. The only reason you can"t see it is because they"re concealing it. You must realize this, right? https://t.co/QQU16vcfZp
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 19, 2018
Meanwhile…
Please be on lookout for the following individuals buying one-way tickets out of the US:
– Hillary Clinton
– James Comey
– Andrew McCabe
– Peter Strzok
– Bruce Ohr
– Barack Obama
– Nellie Ohr
– Susan Rice
– James Clapper
– Lisa Page
– Huma Abedin— thebradfordfile (@thebradfordfile) January 19, 2018
While Trump is correct in accusing the mainstream media of spreading false information and misleading the public, WikiLeaks pointed out that Trump himself has the same reputation.
Trump collusion with a foreign terrorist regime who he directly profits from and deals with is proven—but it"s not Russia, so corporate media is silent.
The Russia-gate prosecutors have taken the scalp of ex- National Security Adviser (and retired Lt. Gen.) Flynn for lying to the FBI. But this case shows how dangerously far afield this “scandal” has gone.
(CN) — Russia-gate enthusiasts are thrilled over the guilty plea of President Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI about pre-inauguration conversations with the Russian ambassador, but the case should alarm true civil libertarians.
What is arguably most disturbing about this case is that then-National Security Adviser Flynn was pushed into a perjury trap by Obama administration holdovers at the Justice Department who concocted an unorthodox legal rationale for subjecting Flynn to an FBI interrogation four days after he took office, testing Flynn’s recollection of the conversations while the FBI agents had transcripts of the calls intercepted by the National Security Agency.
In other words, the Justice Department wasn’t seeking information about what Flynn said to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak – the intelligence agencies already had that information. Instead, Flynn was being quizzed on his precise recollection of the conversations and nailed for lying when his recollections deviated from the transcripts.
For Americans who worry about how the pervasive surveillance powers of the U.S. government could be put to use criminalizing otherwise constitutionally protected speech and political associations, Flynn’s prosecution represents a troubling precedent.
Though Flynn clearly can be faulted for his judgment, he was, in a sense, a marked man the moment he accepted the job of national security adviser. In summer 2016, Democrats seethed over Flynn’s participation in chants at the Republican National Convention to “lock her [Hillary Clinton] up!”
Then, just four days into the Trump presidency, an Obama holdover, then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates, primed the Flynn perjury trap by coming up with a novel legal theory that Flynn – although the national security adviser-designate at the time of his late December phone calls with Kislyak – was violating the 1799 Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from interfering with U.S. foreign policy.
But that law – passed during President John Adams’s administration in the era of the Alien and Sedition Acts – was never intended to apply to incoming officials in the transition period between elected presidential administrations and – in the past 218 years – the law has resulted in no successful prosecution at all and thus its dubious constitutionality has never been adjudicated.
But Yates extrapolated from her unusual Logan Act theory to speculate that since Flynn’s publicly known explanation of the conversation with Kislyak deviated somewhat from the transcript of the intercepts, Flynn might be vulnerable to Russian blackmail.
Yet, that bizarre speculation would require that the Russians first would have detected the discrepancies; secondly, they would have naively assumed that the U.S. intelligence agencies had not intercepted the conversations, which would have negated any blackmail potential; and thirdly, the Russians would have to do something so ridiculously heavy-handed – trying to blackmail Flynn – that it would poison relations with the new Trump administration.
Yates’s legal theorizing was so elastic and speculative that it could be used to justify subjecting almost anyone to FBI interrogation with the knowledge that their imperfect memories would guarantee the grounds for prosecution based on NSA intercepts of their communications.
Basically, the Obama holdovers concocted a preposterous legal theory to do whatever they could to sabotage the Trump administration, which they held in fulsome disdain.
At the time of Flynn’s interrogation, the Justice Department was under the control of Yates and the FBI was still under President Obama’s FBI Director James Comey, another official hostile to the Trump administration who later was fired by Trump.
The Yates-FBI perjury trap also was sprung on Flynn in the first days of the Trump presidency amid reverberations of the massive anti-Trump protests that had arisen across the country in support of demands for a “#Resistance” to Trump’s rule.
Flynn also had infuriated Democrats when he joined in chants at the Republican National Convention of “lock her up” over Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and other alleged offenses. So, in targeting Flynn, there was a mix of personal payback and sabotage against the Trump administration.
The two-page complaint against Flynn, made public on Friday, references false statements to the FBI regarding two conversations with Kisylak, one on Dec. 22, 2016, and the other on Dec. 29, 2016.
The first item in the complaint alleges that Flynn did not disclose that he had asked the Russian ambassador to help delay or defeat a United Nations Security Council vote censuring Israel for building settlements on Palestinian territory.
The New York Times reported on Friday that Russia-gate investigators “learned through witnesses and documents that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the Trump transition team to lobby other countries to help Israel, according to two people briefed on the inquiry.
“Investigators have learned that Mr. Flynn and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, took the lead in those efforts. Mr. Mueller’s team has emails that show Mr. Flynn saying he would work to kill the vote, the people briefed on the matter said,” according to the Times.
Breaking with past U.S. precedents, President Obama had decided not to veto the resolution criticizing Israel, choosing instead to abstain. However, the censure resolution carried with Russian support, meaning that whatever lobbying Flynn and Kushner undertook was unsuccessful.
But the inclusion of this Israeli element shows how far afield the criminal Russia-gate investigation, headed by former FBI Director Robert Mueller, has gone. Though the original point of the inquiry was whether the Trump team colluded with Russians to use “hacked” emails to defeat Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the criminal charge against Flynn has nothing to do with election “collusion” but rather President-elect Trump’s aides weighing in on foreign policy controversies during the transition. And, the first initiative was undertaken at the request of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, not Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The second item, cited by Mueller’s prosecutors, referenced a Dec. 29 Flynn-Kislyak conversation, which received public attention at the time of Flynn’s Feb. 13 resignation after only 24 days on the job. That phone call touched on Russia’s response to President Obama’s decision to issue new sanctions against the Kremlin for the alleged election interference.
The complaint alleges that Flynn didn’t mention to the FBI that he had urged Kislyak “to refrain from escalating the situation” and that Kislyak had subsequently told him that “Russia had chosen to moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of his request.”
The Dec. 29 phone call occurred while Flynn was vacationing in the Dominican Republic and thus he would have been without the usual support staff for memorializing or transcribing official conversations. So, the FBI agents, with the NSA’s transcripts, would have had a clearer account of what was said than Flynn likely had from memory. The content of Flynn’s request to Kislyak also appears rather uncontroversial, asking the Russians not to overreact to a punitive policy from the outgoing Obama administration.
In other words, both of the Flynn-Kislyak conversations appear rather unsurprising, if not inconsequential. One was taken at the behest of Israel (which proved ineffective) and the other urged the Kremlin to show restraint in its response to a last-minute slap from President Obama (which simply delayed Russian retaliation by several months).
While Flynn’s humiliation has brought some palpable joy to the anti-Trump “Resistance” – one more Trump aide being taken down amid renewed hope that this investigation will somehow lead to Trump’s resignation or impeachment – many of the same people would be howling about trampled civil liberties if a Republican bureaucracy were playing this game on a Democratic president and his staff.
Indeed, in the turnabout-is-fair-play department, there is some equivalence in what is happening over Russia-gate to what the Republicans did in the 1990s exploiting their control of the special-prosecutor apparatus in the first years of Bill Clinton’s presidency when interminable investigations into such side issues as his Whitewater real-estate deal and the firing of the White House travel office staff plagued the Clinton administration.
Similarly, Republicans seized on the deaths of four U.S. diplomatic personnel on Sept. 11, 2012, in Benghazi, Libya, to conduct a series of lengthy investigations to tarnish Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tenure and raise questions about her judgment. Democrats understandably called these attacks partisan warfare in legal or investigative garb.
What I have heard from many Hillary Clinton supporters in recent months is that they don’t care about the unfairness of the Russia-gate process or the dangerous precedents that such politicized prosecutions might set. They simply view Trump as such a danger that he must be destroyed at whatever the cost.
Yet, besides the collateral damage inflicted on mid-level government officials such as retired Lt. Gen. Flynn facing personal destruction at the hands of federal prosecutors with unlimited budgets, there is this deepening pattern of using criminal law to settle political differences, a process more common in authoritarian states.
As much as the Russia-gate enthusiasts talk about how they are upholding “the rule of law,” there is the troubling appearance that the law is simply being used to collect the scalps of political enemies.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
By Robert Parry / Republished with permission / Consortium News / Report a typo
This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.
A veteran NSA official is exposing "Russiagate" as the operation of intentional deception backed by the military-intelligence industrial complex that it is.
(CN) — Ever since the U.S. government dangled $160 million last December to combat Russian propaganda and disinformation, obscure academics and eager think tanks have been lining up for a shot at the loot, an unseemly rush to profit that is spreading the Russia-gate hysteria beyond the United States to Europe.
Now, it seems that every development, which is unwelcomed by the Establishment – from Brexit to the Catalonia independence referendum – gets blamed on Russia! Russia! Russia!
The methodology of these “studies” is to find some Twitter accounts or Facebook pages somehow “linked” to Russia (although it’s never exactly clear how that is determined) and complain about the “Russian-linked” comments on political developments in the West. The assumption is that the gullible people of the United States, United Kingdom and Catalonia were either waiting for some secret Kremlin guidance to decide how to vote or were easily duped.
Oddly, however, most of this alleged “interference” seems to have come after the event in question. For instance, more than half (56 percent) of the famous $100,000 in Facebook ads in 2015-2017 supposedly to help elect Donald Trump came after last year’s U.S. election (and the total sum compares to Facebook’s annual revenue of $27 billion).
Similarly, a new British study at the University of Edinburgh blaming the Brexit vote on Russia discovered that more than 70 percent of the Brexit-related tweets from allegedly Russian-linked sites came after the referendum on whether the U.K. should leave the European Union. But, hey, don’t let facts and logic get in the way of a useful narrative to suggest that anyone who voted for Trump or favored Brexit or wants independence for Catalonia is Moscow’s “useful idiot”!
This week, British Prime Minister Theresa May accused Russia of seeking to “undermine free societies” and to “sow discord in the West.”
Yet, another core problem with these “studies” is that they don’t come with any “controls,” i.e., what is used in science to test a hypothesis against some base line to determine if you are finding something unusual or just some normal occurrence.
In this case, for instance, it would be useful to find some other country that, like Russia, has a significant number of English speakers but where English is not the native language – and that has a significant interest in foreign affairs – and then see whether people from that country weigh in on social media with their opinions and perspectives about political events in the U.S., U.K., etc.
Perhaps, the U.S. government could devote some of that $160 million to, say, a study of the Twitter/Facebook behavior of Israelis and whether they jump in on U.S./U.K. controversies that might directly or indirectly affect Israel. We could see how many Twitter/Facebook accounts are “linked” to Israel; we could study whether any Israeli “trolls” harass journalists and news sites that oppose neoconservative policies and politicians in the West; we could check on whether Israel does anything to undermine candidates who are viewed as hostile to Israeli interests; if so, we could calculate how much money these “Israeli-linked” activists and bloggers invest in Facebook ads; and we could track any Twitter bots that might be reinforcing the Israeli-favored message.
If we had this Israeli baseline, then perhaps we could judge how unusual it is for Russians to voice their opinions about controversies in the West. It’s true that Israel is a much smaller country with 8.5 million people compared to Russia’s 144 million, but you could adjust for those per capita numbers — and even if you didn’t, it wouldn’t be surprising to find that Israel’s interference in U.S. policy-making still exceeds Russian influence.
It’s also true that Israeli leaders have often advocated policies that have proved disastrous for the United States, such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s encouragement of the Iraq War, which Russia opposed. Indeed, although Russia is now regularly called an American enemy, it’s hard to think of any policy that President Vladimir Putin has pushed on the U.S. that is even a fraction as harmful to U.S. interests as the Iraq War has been.
And, while we’re at it, maybe we could have an accounting of how much “U.S.-linked” entities have spent to influence politics and policies in Russia, Ukraine, Syria and other international hot spots.
But, of course, neither of those things will happen. If you even tried to gauge the role of “Israeli-linked” operations in influencing Western decision-making, you’d be accused of anti-Semitism. And if that didn’t stop you, there would be furious editorials in The New York Times, The Washington Post and the rest of the U.S. mainstream media denouncing you as a “conspiracy theorist.” Who could possibly think that Israel would do anything underhanded to shape Western attitudes?
And, if you sought the comparative figures for the West interfering in the affairs of other nations, you’d be faulted for engaging in “false moral equivalence.” After all, whatever the U.S. government and its allies do is good for the world; whereas Russia is the fount of evil.
So, let’s just get back to developing those algorithms to sniff out, isolate and eradicate “Russian propaganda” or other deviant points of view, all the better to make sure that Americans, Britons and Catalonians vote the right way.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
By Robert Parry / Republished with permission / Consortium News / Report a typo
This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.
(CN) — The revelation that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped pay for the notorious “Steele Dossier” of hearsay claims about Donald Trump’s relations with Russia is not surprising but is noteworthy given how long the mystery about the funding was allowed to linger.
Another mild surprise is that the Clinton campaign would have had a direct hand in the financing rather than maintaining an arm’s length relationship to the dossier by having some “friend of the campaign” make the payments and giving Clinton more deniability.
Instead, the campaign appears to have relied on its lawyer, Marc E. Elias of Perkins Coie, and a confidentiality agreement to provide some insulation between Clinton and the dossier’s startling claims which presumably helped inform Clinton’s charge in the final presidential debate that Trump was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “puppet.” Indeed, how much Clinton personally knew about the dossier and its financing remains an intriguing question for investigators.
Ultimately, the facts about who commissioned the dossier were forced out by a congressional Republican subpoena seeking the bank records of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that hired former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele to compile the opposition research, known as “oppo,” against Trump.
As part of the legal wrangling over that subpoena, the Clinton/DNC law firm, Perkins Coie, wrote a letter releasing Fusion GPS from its confidentiality agreement.
After that letter, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday night that the Clinton campaign and the DNC had helped fund the Steele effort with attorney Elias retaining Fusion GPS in April 2016 and with Fusion GPS then hiring Steele.
The Post reported that “people familiar with the matter” disclosed that outline of the arrangement but still would not divulge how much the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid to Fusion GPS. One source told me that the total amount came to about $1 million.
An irony about Hillary Clinton’s role in funding allegations about Trump’s connection to the Russians, including claims that he cavorted with prostitutes in a five-star Moscow hotel while Russian intelligence operatives secretly filmed him, is that the Clinton camp bristled when Bill Clinton was the subject of Republican “oppo” that surfaced salacious charges against him. The Clintons dismissed such accusations as “cash for trash.”
Nevertheless, just as conspiratorial accusations about the Clintons gave rise to the Whitewater investigation and a rash of other alleged “scandals,” which bedeviled Bill Clinton’s presidency, the Steele Dossier — also known as the “Dirty Dossier” — provided a map that investigators have followed for the ongoing Russia-gate investigation into President Trump.
Much like those Clinton allegations, Steele’s accusations have had a dubious track record for accuracy, with U.S. government investigators unable to corroborate some key claims but, I’m told, believing that some are true nonetheless.
In the 1990s, even though the core allegations of wrongdoing about the Clintons and their Whitewater land deal collapsed, the drawn-out investigation eventually unearthed Bill Clinton’s sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and led to his impeachment in the House although he was acquitted in a Senate trial.
Some Democrats have openly hoped for the impeachment of President Trump, too, and they have hitched many of those hopes to the Russia-gate bandwagon.
There is also no doubt about the significance of the Steele Dossier in spurring the Russia-gate scandal forward.
When Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, offered what amounted to a prosecutor’s opening statement in March, his seamless 15-minute narrative of the Trump campaign’s alleged collaboration with Russia followed the trail blazed by Steele, who had worked for Britain’s MI-6 in Russia and tapped into ex-colleagues and unnamed sources inside Russia, including supposedly leadership figures in the Kremlin.
Since Steele could not reenter Russia himself, he based his reports on multiple hearsay from these anonymous Russians who claim to have heard some information from their government contacts before passing it on to Steele’s associates who then gave it to Steele who compiled this mix of rumors and alleged inside dope into “raw” intelligence reports.
Besides the anonymous sourcing and the sources’ financial incentives to dig up dirt, Steele’s reports had other problems, including the inability of FBI investigators to confirm key elements, such as the claim that several years ago Russian intelligence operatives secretly videotaped Trump having prostitutes urinate on him while he lay in the same bed at Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton used by President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.
That tantalizing tidbit was included in Steele’s opening report to his new clients, dated June 20, 2016. Apparently, it proved irresistible in whetting the appetite of Clinton insiders. Also in that first report were the basic outlines of Russia-gate.
But Steele’s June report also reflected the telephone-tag aspects of these allegations: “Speaking to a trusted compatriot in June 2016 sources A and B, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure and a former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin respectively, the Russian authorities had been cultivating and supporting US Republican presidential candidate, Donald TRUMP for a least 5 years.
“Source B asserted that the TRUMP operation was both supported and directed by Russian President Vladimir PUTIN. Its aim was to sow discord and disunity both within the US itself, but more especially within the Transatlantic alliance which was viewed as inimical to Russia’s interests. … In terms of specifics, Source A confided that the Kremlin had been feeding TRUMP and his team valuable intelligence on his opponents, including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary CLINTON, for several years.
“The Kremlin’s cultivation operation on TRUMP also had comprised offering him various lucrative real estate development business deals in Russia, especially in relation to the ongoing 2018 World Cup soccer tournament. However, so far, for reasons unknown, TRUMP had not taken up any of these.”
Besides the anonymous and hearsay quality of the allegations, there are obvious logical problems, especially the point that five years before the 2016 campaign, virtually no one would have thought that Trump had any chance of becoming President of the United States.
There also may have been a more mundane reason why Trump’s hotel deal fell through. A source familiar with those negotiations told me that Trump had hoped to get a half interest in the $2 billion project but that Russian-Israeli investor Mikhail Fridman, a founder of Russia’s Alfa Bank, balked because Trump was unwilling to commit a significant investment beyond the branding value of the Trump name.
Yet, one would assume that if the supposedly all-powerful Putin wanted to give a $1 billion or so payoff to his golden boy, Donald Trump, whom Putin anticipated would become President in five years, the deal would have happened, but it didn’t.
Despite the dubious quality of Steele’s second- and third-hand information, the June 2016 report appears to have impressed Team Clinton. And once the bait was taken, Steele continued to produce his conspiracy-laden reports, totaling at least 17 through Dec. 13, 2016.
The reports not only captivated the Clinton political operatives but influenced the assessments of President Obama’s appointees in the U.S. intelligence community regarding alleged Russian “meddling” in the presidential election.
Still, a careful analysis of Steele’s reports would have discovered not only apparent factual inaccuracies, such as putting Trump lawyer Michael Cohen at a meeting with a Russian official in Prague (when Cohen says he’s never been to Prague), but also the sort of broad conspiracy-mongering that the mainstream U.S. news media usually loves to ridicule.
For instance, Steele’s reports pin a range of U.S. political attitudes on Russian manipulation rather than the notion that Americans can reach reasonable conclusions on their own. In one report dated Sept. 14, 2016, Steele claimed that an unnamed senior official in Putin’s Presidential Administration (or PA) explained how Putin used the alleged Russian influence operation to generate opposition to Obama’s Pacific trade deals.
Steele wrote that Putin’s intention was “pushing candidate CLINTON away from President OBAMA’s policies. The best example of this was that both candidates [Clinton and Trump] now openly opposed the draft trade agreements, TPP and TTIP, which were assessed by Moscow as detrimental to Russian interests.”
In other words, the Russians supposedly intervened in the U.S. presidential campaign to turn the leading candidates against Obama’s trade deals. But how credible is that? Are we to believe that American politicians – running the gamut from Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren through former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to President Donald Trump – have all been tricked by the Kremlin to oppose those controversial trade deals, which are also broadly unpopular with the American people who are sick and tired of trade agreements that cost them jobs?
Of course, the disclosure that the Clinton campaign and the DNC helped pay for Steele’s opposition research doesn’t necessarily discredit the information, but it does suggest a possible financial incentive for Steele and his collaborators to sex-up the reports to keep Clinton’s camp coming back for more.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
By Robert Parry / Republished with permission / Consortium News / Report a typo
This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.
