Attorney's file on Roger Stone, LaRouche and Russia influencing the 2016 presidential election

[Cliff Varnell]

6 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

Matt Taibbi   “It’s Official: Russiagate is this Generation’s WMD”

“The Steele report occupies the same role in #Russiagate the tales spun by Ahmed Chalabi occupied in the WMD screwup. Once again, a narrative became turbo-charged when Officials With Motives pulled the press corps by its nose to a swamp of unconfirmable private assertions…

As a purely journalistic failure, however, WMD was a pimple compared to Russiagate. The sheer scale of the errors and exaggerations this time around dwarfs the last mess. Worse, it’s led to most journalists accepting a radical change in mission. We’ve become sides-choosers, obliterating the concept of the press as an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction.”

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-million

Bullshed.  Pure unadulterated bullshed.

No one -- and I mean no one -- ever promoted the Steele Dossier as hard fact. 

Bush & Co promoted WMD as a fact. An invasion was launched on that premise, killing at least a million Iraqis.

All the Steele Dossier launched was a million late night TV jokes about pee.

The investigation into Trump/Russian collusion started well before the appearance of the Steel Dossier.

Taibbi writes:

  For years, every pundit and Democratic pol in Washington hyped every new Russia headline like the Watergate break-in. </q>

And why was that?  Because of Trump's own behavior.  Because of the lies and colluding in plain sight -- "Russia if you're listening" and all the sound and fury tweets vying daily to dominate the news cycle.

It wasn't the Steele Dossier that created the phenomenon RussiaGate -- it was Trump's own practice of owning the news cycle no matter what.

The Steele Dossier played no central role in any of this.  We knew for sure weeks ago that Cohen hadn't been in Prague.  In the popular culture the pee tape was an on-going joke, not the driver of interest.

Let the useful idiots of Trumpian fascism take a victory lap.  Mueller didn't write any of the conclusions presented by partisan Republican AG Barr.

Let's see the full report.

Edited March 24, 2019 by Cliff Varnell

[Jim Hargrove]

On 3/23/2019 at 2:25 PM, Robert Wheeler said:

Jim, I do not believe you received the memo about never mentioning CrowdStrike, the DNC email leak, or anything to do with Podesta's e-mail.

You see, CrowdStrike and the DNC email leak is what got all of those Burned Out Bernie Supporters all fired up about seeing their $20 contributions going into the Clinton Coffers.

Alas, since you brought up CrowdStrike, don't forget CrowdStrike's co-Founder with George Kurtz, was a Ukranian named Dimiti Alperovitch.

The amount of investigative reporting and detailed technical analysis that destroys the credibility of CrowdStrike is massive.

A decent article to start is linked below. If you start following some of the embedded links within the article, you will be an expert on Ukranian politics in the 21st Century and cyber security.

If the White House had unclassified evidence that tied officials in the Russian government to the DNC attack, they would have presented it by now. The fact that they didn’t means either that the evidence doesn’t exist or that it is classified.

If it’s classified, an independent commission should review it because this entire assignment of blame against the Russian government is looking more and more like a domestic political operation run by the White House that relied heavily on questionable intelligence generated by a for-profit cybersecurity firm with a vested interest in selling “attribution-as-a-service”.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-24/what-crowdstrike-firm-hired-dnc-has-ties-hillary-clinton-ukrainian-billionaire-and-g

CrowdStrike - What is this? 2016?

For those who believe the U.S. Deep State invented the Russian electronic attacks on our 2016 election, isn’t it remarkable that the Deep State exonerated President Trump from conspiring with the Russians but nevertheless said, according to William Barr’s 3/24/2019 summary of the Mueller Report, the following:

The Special Counsel's investigation determined that there were two main Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. The first involved attempts by a Russian organization, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), to conduct disinformation and social media operations in the United States designed to sow social discord, eventually with the aim of interfering with the election. As noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that any U.S. person or Trump campaign official or associate conspired or knowingly coordinated with the IRA in its efforts, although the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian nationals and entities in connection with these activities.

The second element involved the Russian government's efforts to conduct computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election. The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks. Based on these activities, the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian military officers for conspiring to hack into computers in the United States for purposes of influencing the election. But as noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.

[Cliff Varnell]

Taibbi writes:

...Buzzfeed made the historic decision to publish the entire Steele dossier, bringing years of pee into our lives. This move birthed the Russiagate phenomenon as a never-ending, minute-to-minute factor in American news coverage.

Comey was right. We couldn’t have reported this story without a “hook.” Therefore the reports surrounding Steele technically weren’t about the allegations themselves, but rather the journey of those allegations, from one set of official hands to another. Handing the report to Trump created a perfect pretext. </q>

Taibbi overlooks the role of Mike Flynn's lying about discussing sanctions with the Russians and Jeff Session lying to the Senate about contacts with Russians.

When Trump fired Comey he admitted it was to stop the investigation.

That was the "hook" that drove the RussiaGate phenomenon.

 

[Cliff Varnell]

Taibbi:

Still, who knew? It could be true. But even the most cursory review showed the report had issues and would need a lot of confirming. This made it more amazing that the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, held hearings on March 20, 2017 that blithely read out Steele report details as if they were fact. From Schiff’s opening statement:

According to Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who is reportedly held in high regard by U.S. Intelligence, Russian sources tell him that Page has also had a secret meeting with Igor Sechin (SEH-CHIN), CEO of Russian gas giant Rosneft… Page is offered brokerage fees by Sechin on a deal involving a 19 percent share of the company.

I was stunned watching this. It’s generally understood that members of congress, like reporters, make an effort to vet at least their prepared remarks before making them public.</q>

I'm stunned reading this.  What part of "according to Christopher Steele" does Taibbi not understand?  If Schiff were reporting this as a fact why did he include the qualifier "reportedly"?

 

[Cliff Varnell]

21 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said:

For those who believe the U.S. Deep State invented the Russian electronic attacks on our 2016 election, isn’t it remarkable that the Deep State exonerated President Trump from conspiring with the Russians but nevertheless said, according to William Barr’s 3/24/2019 summary of the Mueller Report, the following:

The Special Counsel's investigation determined that there were two main Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. The first involved attempts by a Russian organization, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), to conduct disinformation and social media operations in the United States designed to sow social discord, eventually with the aim of interfering with the election. As noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that any U.S. person or Trump campaign official or associate conspired or knowingly coordinated with the IRA in its efforts, although the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian nationals and entities in connection with these activities.

The second element involved the Russian government's efforts to conduct computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election. The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks. Based on these activities, the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian military officers for conspiring to hack into computers in the United States for purposes of influencing the election. But as noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.

Coordinated with the Russian government?

Is the Russian Mafia considered part of the "Russian government"?

Did Trump or his campaign conspire with Russians who were not part of the government?

Didn't AG Barr conclude the report did not exonerate Trump?

Edited March 24, 2019 by Cliff Varnell

[Douglas Caddy]

William Barr's June 2018 memo ripping into Mueller's investigation that led to Trump naming him as U.S. Attorney General

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KPyQWwWfxLZ8dppih88G3yDRvJfAirrG/view

 

Edited March 25, 2019 by Douglas Caddy

[Cliff Varnell]

Trump Aided and Abetted Russia’s Attack. That Was Treachery. Full Stop.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/03/trump-mueller-report-russia/

[Cliff Varnell]

10 minutes ago, Robert Wheeler said:

Aliens

A funny thing happened on the way to that deep state "soft coup"...

[Douglas Caddy]

I hope that the Mueller Report will not cause thoughtful Americans to think about the Warren Commission Report as a precedent to what we are seeing today.

[Cliff Varnell]

3 minutes ago, Douglas Caddy said:

I hope that the Mueller Report will not cause thoughtful Americans to think about the Warren Commission Report as a precedent to what we are seeing today.

The reported conclusion of the Warren Report was that Oswald acted alone.  When you got into the 26 volumes of testimony conspiracy was clear.

Today a partisan Republican Attorney General concluded the Mueller Report indicated no crime was committed.

Will we draw the same conclusion from reading the report ourselves?

[Micah Mileto]

If there will be no prosecutions, will this be considered a "conspiracy theory" now? 

[Ron Bulman]

2 minutes ago, Micah Mileto said:

If there will be no prosecutions, will this be considered a "conspiracy theory" now? 

It already is.  From multiple points of view.  There might be some truth in all of it but it's a deep subject with many suspects and interpretations of what the did/didn't do or say.

[Micah Mileto]

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

It already is.  From multiple points of view.  There might be some truth in all of it but it's a deep subject with many suspects and interpretations of what the did/didn't do or say.

In other words, the evidence for collusion isn't the nothing burger, the nothing burger is the hope for any prosecution.

[Douglas Caddy]

David Talbot wrote on Facebook today:

So now we know that Trump will not be removed from office in handcuffs. It will take an overwhelming majority of American voters to evict him from the White House. And that's how it should be. Trump might not be a traitor -- at least not in the strict legal sense. But he's still a crook of global proportions. In exonerating Trump on treason charges, Robert Mueller exposed many stinking pools of swampy corruption in both Trump Inc. and Trump Campaign 2016. A rogue's nest of Tr...ump associates has already been imprisoned or indicted based on Mueller's probe -- and more evidence of criminality has been referred to state and federal prosecutors by Mueller's office.

But as for Russia-gate, I always feared that Rachel Maddow and the MSNBC/CNN/Washington Post/NY Times media consortium was focused much too heavily on that story. In fact it became Maddow's overriding obsession for two years. Maybe now the liberal cable news channels will rethink outsourcing their programming to the Deep State -- i.e., the countless numbers of former CIA, NSA, DoD officials, national security think tank pundits, and Capitol Hill Intelligence Committee politicians who suck up all the cable news airtime. Trying mightily to stir up a new Cold War with Russia, these Deep State types succeeded in handing Trump a big political victory. He'll be crowing about how he beat the Deep State and its Democratic Party acolytes for the next two years.

Mueller's massive investigation shows once again that FBI types and other high justice officials are not suited to investigate criminal oligarchies like Trump's -- this type of corporate corruption is too embedded in the capitalist system for establishment law officers like Mueller to recognize it as criminal.

It will take crusading members of Congress to keep enlightening the American people about how a gangster like Trump amassed his fortune and power, and who colluded with him to take the White House. Trump's key conspirators were not in the Kremlin -- they are the captains of Wall Street, the energy industry, the weapons trade, the mobbed-up construction business, the casino and sex trafficking racket, etc. House Democrats -- and state law officials -- should keep turning over these rocks so we can see all the creepy-crawlers in Trump's world.

But in the end, Trump will have to be forced from the Oval Office the same way he crawled in -- on Election Day. We have to build an anti-Trump movement so powerful that it will withstand all the treachery and racism and corruption that is built into our electoral system. Then Trump will not only lose -- Democracy (not the Deep State) will win.

[Douglas Caddy]

It seems to me that we don't know what Mueller said. We only know what Barr said about what Mueller said!