Trump on releasing the JFK records

Roger Odisio · March 26

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

As I said, I am no expert on this. And I have no intention of becoming one. Because of that I cannot confront what your journalists say.

Your response, that the journalists who debunked Russiagate, did so because they were duped by "Trump friendly fake news sites", rather than as a result of their journalistic work, is no answer at all. It's a way of avoiding confronting the substance of what they said.

Sandy: As I said, I am no expert on this. And I have no intention of becoming one. Because of that I cannot confront what your journalists say.

RO: Then maybe you should not have said, several times, that you believe or suspect that the journalists who debunked Russiagate did so only because they were fooled by Russian propagandists. They are too stupid to reach that conclusion by themselves based on the facts as they saw them. I don't think you realize how insulting your claims have been to these people, each of whom I respect.

Sandy: But there's no doubt in my mind that Putin's guys are doing whatever they can think of to get Trump elected, given that is in Putin's best interests. Also given that Trump just adores Putin and has had many business deals in Russia.

RO: Ok. I've been holding back this comment because I can anticipate its reception. But it's still worth making you aware of it. Putin recently said he had actually preferred Hillary in the 2016 election, for a very simple reason. He didn't like her. He didn't agree with her. But he had worked with her for a couple of decades and thought he understood her. He could work with her. On the other hand, he saw Trump as utterly unpredictable. That uncertainty was dangerous.

Kirk Gallaway · March 26

30 minutes ago, Roger Odisio said:

RO: Ok. I've been holding back this comment because I can anticipate its reception. But it's still worth making you aware of it. Putin recently said he had actually preferred Hillary in the 2016 election, for a very simple reason. He didn't like her. He didn't agree with her. But he had worked with her for a couple of decades and thought he understood her. He could work with her. On the other hand, he saw Trump as utterly unpredictable. That uncertainty was dangerous.

Wow Roger, I can see why you were holding back, because that's a real bombshell! Did he then say anything about what the reality was when he did end up working with Trump as President? Because that would be important, would it not?

Do you believe Putin's assertion that he had nothing whatsoever to do with Prighozin's death as well? .

Roger Odisio · March 26

8 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Wow Roger, I can see why you were holding back, because that's a real bombshell! Did he then say anything about what the reality was when he did end up working with Trump as President? Because that would be important, would it not?

RO: Not that I'm aware of Kirk. Why would he say anything about that, knowing that Trump is likely to be reelected?

Kirk Gallaway · March 26

9 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Roger, Do you believe Putin's assertion that he had nothing whatsoever to do with Prighozin's death as well? .

You didn't answer the question above, Roger.

*Ok, so you're not at all curious. Putin offers you his 2016 expectation of Trump Vs. Hilary to make him look impartial as to who the next President was to be in 2016, which begged the question of any inquiring mind, "what was the reality of in fact dealing with Trump as President?" If we accept your faith in what Putin says, you could always expect any politician to give you an insight that wouldn't make Trump look bad if he anticipated he might be working with him.

Edited March 26 by Kirk Gallaway

W. Niederhut · March 26

The claim that Putin wanted Hillary Clinton in the White House in 2017, instead of his compromised Kremlin asset, Donald Trump, is simply risible. It reminds me of Putin's recent comment about preferring Biden to Trump, on the grounds that Biden is more "predictable." How ridiculous!

Anyone who has carefully studied the history of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin during the past 30 years surely knows that there is a vast array of circumstantial evidence implicating Donald Trump as a Kremlin asset. Also, entrapping and recruiting compromised assets is one of Putin's areas of expertise, based on his experience as a KGB Lt. Col. in Dresden prior to the collapse f the Soviet Union in 1991.

One former KGB agent opined a few years ago that the Kremlin had targeted and cultivated Trump as a Russian asset for years.

The circumstantial evidence is considerable.

First of all, we know that Putin actively interfered in the 2016 U.S. election to put Trump in the White House, as Felix Sater announced in 2015. And we know that members of Trump's 2016 campaign had numerous contacts with Kremlin assets before and after the election, which they tried to conceal-- before and during the Mueller investigation.

The most important Trump/Russian contacts in 2016, IMO, were Paul Manafort's liaisons with his GRU associate Konstantin Kilimnik. Manafort was so determined to conceal his 2016 contacts with Kilimnik from Mueller that he committed perjury, even after accepting a plea deal to cooperate with Mueller's investigation.

Other 2016 Trump campaign contacts with Russian assets included the Trump Tower meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, (to discuss dirt on Hillary Clinton) Roger Stone's contacts with Assange, (also about Clinton dirt) and Michael Flynn's December 2016 phone calls with Kisylak (about the 2016 sanctions imposed against Russia for interfering in the U.S. election.)

Secondly, as POTUS, Trump openly insulted and alienated our NATO allies, while shamelessly kowtowing to Putin-- most infamously during Trump's Helsinki press conference with Putin, where he publicly denied that Putin had interfered in our 2016 U.S. election. At the time, even conservative columnist, George F. Will, declared that Trump was, obviously, a traitor.

John LeCarre declared that Putin "had Trump by the short hairs."

Moving along... Trump ended Operation Timber Sycamore in the summer of 2017--for better or worse-- effectively surrendering military control of Syria to Putin and the Russian military. Not necessarily a bad thing, ethically, but also possible circumstantial evidence of Trump's status as a Russian asset.

More recently, when Putin illegally invaded Ukraine two years ago, and began bombing non-combatant civilians, Trump immediately declared that Putin was a "genius." Most people in Europe and the U.S. were aghast.

In 2024, Trump has served Putin by blocking U.S. military aid to Ukraine, through his proxy, MAGA Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House.

Edited March 26 by W. Niederhut

Roger Odisio · March 26

2 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Roger, Do you believe Putin's assertion that he had nothing whatsoever to do with Prighozin's death as well? .

You didn't answer the question above, Roger.

RO: I didn't answer the question in part because I don't know the answer. More important, the question seems to me to be another diversion, since it has nothing to do with the question at hand: did Putin hack the DNC and give emails to Assange as away to help Trump beat Hillary?

Kirk: *Ok, so you're not at all curious. Putin offers you his 2016 expectation of Trump Vs. Hilary to make him look impartial as to who the next President was to be in 2016, which begged the question of any inquiring mind, "what was the reality of in fact dealing with Trump as President?" If we accept your faith in what Putin says, you could always expect any politician to give you an insight that wouldn't make Trump look bad if he anticipated he might be working with him.

RO: I never said I "had faith" in what Putin said was his preference for Hillary. Only that the reason he gave was plausible, which is not the same thing.

No, your claim that Putin said it to make himself look impartial in 2024 is just your speculation. More likely, he was responding to the claim, often seen around here, that it was obvious he wanted Trump to win and so he engineered Russiagate to help him.

Edited March 26 by Roger Odisio

Kirk Gallaway · March 27

17 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

RO: Ok. I've been holding back this comment because I can anticipate its reception. But it's still worth making you aware of it. Putin recently said he had actually preferred Hillary in the 2016 election, for a very simple reason. He didn't like her. He didn't agree with her. But he had worked with her for a couple of decades and thought he understood her. He could work with her. On the other hand, he saw Trump as utterly unpredictable. That uncertainty was dangerous.

You seem to forget Roger, you're the one said you "held back" but offered the post because you thought it was "worth making us aware of it" . Now you''re saying you had no particular faith then in Putin's statement, only that it was "plausible" and you weren't trying to convey his impartiality.

What were you trying to convey then? Why was it at all "worthwhile to make us aware of it " then.?

Keven Hofeling · March 27

On 3/22/2024 at 2:59 AM, Sandy Larsen said:

It represents the official WC and HSCA narratives quite well.

If you read this Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_conspiracy_theories

you'll find that it represents the various conspiracy theories quite well.

This is why Wikipedia cannot be considered to be a reliable source:

Jimmy Dore’s Wikipedia Page Edited By CIA!

The Jimmy Dore Show | Aug 8, 2023

In 2007 a hacker and tech whiz named Virgil Griffith revealed that the CIA, FBI and a host of large corporations and government agencies were editing pages on Wikipedia to their own benefit (or the benefit of associates). Now Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger is reporting that the intelligence agencies are still at it, routinely editing pages relating to the Iraq War body count, treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and China’s nuclear program.

Jimmy and The Convo Couch host Craig Jardula discuss this modern-day version of information warfare taking place on the pages of Wikipedia.

Benjamin Cole · March 27

7 minutes ago, Keven Hofeling said:

This is why Wikipedia cannot be considered to be a reliable source:

Jimmy Dore’s Wikipedia Page Edited By CIA!

The Jimmy Dore Show | Aug 8, 2023

In 2007 a hacker and tech whiz named Virgil Griffith revealed that the CIA, FBI and a host of large corporations and government agencies were editing pages on Wikipedia to their own benefit (or the benefit of associates). Now Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger is reporting that the intelligence agencies are still at it, routinely editing pages relating to the Iraq War body count, treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and China’s nuclear program.

Jimmy and The Convo Couch host Craig Jardula discuss this modern-day version of information warfare taking place on the pages of Wikipedia.

KH--

You are right on this one. The founder of Wikipedia has refuted his own creation.

The intel state can afford to put a dozen guys onto Wikipedia, and it keep it reading the way they want.

Keep posting. I enjoy reading your commentary, even if I disagree at times, and you provide necessary balance to the EF-JFKA.

W. Niederhut · March 27

Nothing new here. I posted articles about CIA editing of Wikipedia many years ago.

43 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

KH--

You are right on this one. The founder of Wikipedia has refuted his own creation.

The intel state can afford to put a dozen guys onto Wikipedia, and it keep it reading the way they want.

Keep posting. I enjoy reading your commentary, even if I disagree at times, and you provide necessary balance to the EF-JFKA.

Nothing new here, Ben.

I first posted some documents about CIA editing of Wikipedia (on another forum) almost 15 years ago.

And I first observed Russian FSB editing of Wikipedia entries (including my own posts) in about 2008 or 2009.

Meanwhile, it's apparent that some people on this thread don't really want to discuss the facts about Putin's ops with Trump and the GOP.

Assange and Wikileaks are merely one small part of that puzzle.

Keven Hofeling · March 27

On 3/19/2024 at 8:44 PM, W. Niederhut said:

Kevin,

There's nothing "radioactive" about discussing the JFK records and Donald Trump. In fact, I started a forum thread on the topic here a few years ago. Redundant falsehoods about Trump's true history need to be corrected.

Nor is there anything "radioactive" about discussing inaccurate comparisons of JFK's peace initiatives (and his historic conflicts with the CIA and Joint Chiefs) and Donald Trump's bribery-based foreign policy record.

Trump was never an heroic adversary of the Deep State. He was elected with the help of some FBI chicanery, and widespread sabotage of Hillary Clinton's candidacy by Russian hackers and the U.S. corporate media.

What I pointed out is that it is simply historically inaccurate to claim that "the Deep State was against Trump before he was even elected."

The truth is that Trump (and his MAGA pundits at Fox and elsewhere) promoted a series of bogus propaganda tropes about Trump being a victim of the Deep State beginning in 2017-- after the FBI initially questioned Michael Flynn about his December 2016 phone calls with Sergei Kisylak, and data began to emerge about Russian interference in the U.S. election on Trump's behalf.

As for your revisionist history claiming that Trump was a peace-seeking adversary of the Deep State, it is inconsistent with a number of historical facts.

1) Trump green-lighted the genocidal Saudi war against Yemen.

2) He significantly increased non-combatant casualties committed by U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen, by changing U.S. Rules of Engagement. In fact, General Mattis had to talk Trump down from his demands for the murder of non-combatant women and children!

3) Trump's de-funding of Operation Timber Sycamore in Syria in the summer of 2017 may have been a response to instructions from Putin-- who had intervened against the CIA/MI6/Saudi/Israeli proxy war on behalf of the Assad regime. In effect, Trump turned Syria over to Putin. (I happen to agree with Putin's intervention.)

For those of us who believe that Trump is a compromised Russian asset, this interpretation of Trump's 2017 Timber Sycamore intervention makes sense. It's what Putin wanted Trump to do.

W. Niederhut wrote:

Quote

Kevin,

There's nothing "radioactive" about discussing the JFK records and Donald Trump. In fact, I started a forum thread on the topic here a few years ago. Redundant falsehoods about Trump's true history need to be corrected.

Nor is there anything "radioactive" about discussing inaccurate comparisons of JFK's peace initiatives (and his historic conflicts with the CIA and Joint Chiefs) and Donald Trump's bribery-based foreign policy record.

I think that what Benjamin Cole meant when he wrote "[h]owever, this is a radioactive topic in the EF-JFKA" is that the administrators tend to bump threads out of the JFK debate into the political debate sections when they deteriorate into highly partisan debacles as seems to be the case with this thread.

I agree that any comparison of Trump's motivation for his foreign policy and military decisions to the rationale set forth by JFK in his "peace speech" is not accurate. Trump was not and definitely is not today a peacenick.

But that is not to say that the Trump administration was not opposed by a version of what can be accurately characterized as "the deep state" which originated with the Clinton campaign, as President Obama was briefed about on July 26, 2016:

Obama should have put an end to this out of concern for the effect it could have on U.S./Russian relations, but instead he let it proliferate through the mainstream media, and breed into the monster it became.

And then with the Steele Dossier, which also finds its origins inside of the Hillary Clinton Campaign, it was also allowed to proliferate throughout the mainstream media, which was paradoxically a gift to trump, because it provided Trump with a "Deep State" propaganda theme:

"...Aaron Matte: Look this is the problem, I get it. Trump is a loathsome character from what I can tell. I did not want him to win. I was happy when he lost. I get it. But the thing is, we have to separate our feelings about people from the facts. I mean, the facts don't care about our feelings. And really, ironically, by the way, I thought all this was a huge gift to Trump. Because first of all, the stereotype of the Fox News viewer is that there's a deep state plot to undermine our democracy, and there's always a conspiracy out to get out to get the conservatives. In this case, it was right. In this case, there was really a conspiracy to subvert the vote, and to falsely portray their hero, Trump, as this Russian agent. He was able to use that to say, “look at the swamp coming after me”. And it was a good excuse for him, by the way, to not drain the swamp, as he promised, because of course, he was never going to drain the swamp. That was a con. He expanded the swamp with his billionaire cabinet. But things like Russiagate, he can use that to deflect any responsibility. He could blame his opponents for locking him down. And there was a certain truth that… Russiagate gave him the gift of really there was a conspiracy against them. And also, it turned the resistance to him into a bunch of conspiracy theory maniacs, where instead of looking at his actual policies, coming up with alternatives organizing around it, [being part of] Trump's opposition meant being glued to MSNBC and CNN and waiting for Robert Mueller to deliver the smoking gun of collusion. Like, what bigger gift to Trump could there be? And then, of course, when it all collapsed, that gave him the gift of being vindicated, and it was a huge gift to him. I mean, among many others...."

The Steele Dossier was a HUGE Mistake
Independent journalist Aaron Maté talks about Russiagate—and how a new indictment demonstrates that the Steele Dossier was even more flawed and corrupt than previously known.

MATT LEWIS | NOV 20, 2021 | https://mattklewis.substack.com/p/steele-dossier-huge-gift-to-trump

And of course the real Deep State operating through the FBI repeatedly used the Clinton campaign's Steele Dossier to obtain FISA warrants to conduct surveillance against Trump and associates both before and after Trump's inauguration.

FBI Lied To FISA Court In Russiagate Investigation

The Jimmy Dore Show | Dec 10, 2019 | https://youtu.be/Lb0gyt9Vriw?si=Y6Zo-gev2PlJ0f0S

I'm sure you remember all the mainstream media claims that Trump's accusation that the FBI had wiretapped him was false, and yet here on the front page of the New York times was the report of wiretapping conducted prior to the election (pursuant to a FISA warrant that would be extended seven more times based upon false representations made to the FISA Court):

With regard to my subject of interest in this thread, which may also be of interest to @Sandy Larsen, attorney Ty Clevenger, on July 26, 2019, attempted to get the Justice Department to declassify the FBI's Seth Rich files pursuant to the authority President Trump designated to Attorney General Barr to declassify all documents related to the accusations of Russian collusion which the FBI would repeatedly claim it did not possess in the Butowsky litigation, a claim that has been proven to be false in the more recent litigation. This is a showing that the Deep State was unresponsive to Trump's Presidential authority and was (and is) pursuing its own agenda.

W. Niederhut wrote:

Quote

What I pointed out is that it is simply historically inaccurate to claim that "the Deep State was against Trump before he was even elected."

Again, the Trump inauguration day edition of the New York Times alone debunks your claim:

W. Niederhut wrote:

Quote

The truth is that Trump (and his MAGA pundits at Fox and elsewhere) promoted a series of bogus propaganda tropes about Trump being a victim of the Deep State beginning in 2017-- after the FBI initially questioned Michael Flynn about his December 2016 phone calls with Sergei Kisylak, and data began to emerge about Russian interference in the U.S. election on Trump's behalf.

As set forth above, the tragedy of the Russiagate hoax is that it gave Trump the ability to divert attention from his actual crimes:

The Steele Dossier was a HUGE Mistake
Independent journalist Aaron Maté talks about Russiagate—and how a new indictment demonstrates that the Steele Dossier was even more flawed and corrupt than previously known.

MATT LEWIS | NOV 20, 2021 | https://mattklewis.substack.com/p/steele-dossier-huge-gift-to-trump

As for the Michael Flynn calls with Sergei Kisylak, you seem to be unaware that those calls have since been declassified only to reveal that, like everything else about the Russiagate hoax, there was simply nothing there.

For the uninitiated, the following is a summary of the hoopla about the Flynn/Kisylak calls written by Matt Taibbi:

"...Whatever one’s opinion of Flynn, his relations with Turkey, his “Lock her up!” chants, his haircut, whatever, this case was never about much. There’s no longer pretense that prosecution would lead to the unspooling of a massive Trump-Russia conspiracy, as pundits once breathlessly expected. News that Flynn was cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller inspired many of the “Is this the beginning of the end for Trump?” stories that will someday fill whole chapters of Journalism xxxxs Up 101 textbooks.

The acts at issue are calls Flynn made to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak on December 29th, 2016 in which he told the Russians not to overreact to sanctions. That’s it. The investigation was about to be dropped, but someone got the idea of using electronic surveillance of the calls to leverage a case into existence.

In a secrets-laundering maneuver straight out of the Dick Cheney playbook, some bright person first illegally leaked classified details to David Ignatius at the Washington Post, then agents rushed to interview Flynn about the “news.”

“The record of his conversation with Ambassador Kislyak had become widely known in the press,” is how Deputy FBI chief Andrew McCabe put it, euphemistically. “We wanted to sit down with General Flynn and understand, kind of, what his thoughts on that conversation were.”

A Laurel-and-Hardy team of agents conducted the interview, then took three weeks to write and re-write multiple versions of the interview notes used as evidence (because why record it?). They were supervised by a counterintelligence chief who then memorialized on paper his uncertainty over whether the FBI was trying to “get him to lie” or “get him fired,” worrying that they’d be accused of “playing games.” After another leak to the Washington Post in early February, 2017, Flynn actually was fired, and later pleaded guilty to lying about sanctions in the Kislyak call, the transcript of which was of course never released to either the defense or the public.

Warrantless surveillance, multiple illegal leaks of classified information, a false statements charge constructed on the razor’s edge of Miranda, and the use of never-produced, secret counterintelligence evidence in a domestic criminal proceeding – this is the “rule of law” we’re being asked to cheer.

Russiagate cases were often two-level offenses: factually bogus or exaggerated, but also indicative of authoritarian practices. Democrats and Democrat-friendly pundits in the last four years have been consistently unable to register objections on either front.

Flynn’s case fit the pattern. We were told his plea was just the “tip of the iceberg” that would “take the trail of Russian collusion” to the “center of the plot,” i.e. Trump. It turned out he had no deeper story to tell. In fact, none of the people prosecutors tossed in jail to get at the Russian “plot” – some little more than bystanders – had anything to share.

Remember George Papadopoulos, whose alleged conversation about “dirt” on Hillary Clinton with an Australian diplomat created the pretext for the FBI’s entire Trump-Russia investigation? We just found out in newly-released testimony by McCabe that the FBI felt as early as the summer of 2016 that the evidence “didn’t particularly indicate” that Papadopoulos was “interacting with the Russians.”

If you’re in the media and keeping score, that’s about six months before our industry lost its mind and scrambled to make Watergate comparisons over Jim Comey’s March, 2017 “bombshell” revelation of the existence of an FBI Trump-Russia investigation. Nobody bothered to wonder if they actually had any evidence. Similarly Chelsea Manning insisted she’d already answered all pertinent questions about Julian Assange, but prosecutors didn’t find that answer satisfactory, and threw her in jail for year anyway, only releasing her when she tried to kill herself. She owed $256,000 in fines upon release, not that her many supporters from the Bush days seemed to care much.

The Flynn case was built on surveillance gathered under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, a program that seems to have been abused on a massive scale by both Democratic and Republican administrations.

After Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations about mass data collection, a series of internal investigations began showing officials were breaking rules against spying on specific Americans via this NSA program. Searches were conducted too often and without proper justification, and the results were shared with too many people, including private contractors. By October, 2016, the FISA court was declaring that systematic overuse of so-called “702” searches were a “very serious fourth Amendment issue.”

In later court documents it came out that the FBI conducted 3.1 million such searches in 2017 alone. As the Brennan Center put it, “almost certainly… the total number of U.S. person queries run by the FBI each year is well into the millions.”

Anyone who bothers to look back will find hints at how this program might have been misused. In late 2015, Obama officials bragged to the Wall Street Journal they’d made use of FISA surveillance involving “Jewish-American groups” as well as “U.S. lawmakers” in congress, all because they wanted to more effectively “counter” Israeli opposition to Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. This is a long way from using surveillance to defuse terror plots or break up human trafficking rings.

I can understand not caring about the plight of Michael Flynn, but cases like this have turned erstwhile liberals – people who just a decade ago were marching in the streets over the civil liberties implications of Cheney’s War on Terror apparatus – into defenders of the spy state. Politicians and pundits across the last four years have rolled their eyes at attorney-client privilege, the presumption of innocence, the right to face one’s accuser, the right to counsel and a host of other issues, regularly denouncing civil rights worries as red-herring excuses for Trumpism...."

Democrats Have Abandoned Civil Liberties
The Blue Party’s Trump-era Embrace of Authoritarianism Isn’t Just Wrong, it’s a Fatal Political Mistake
MATT TAIBBI | MAY 15, 2020 | https://www.racket.news/p/democrats-have-abandoned-civil-liberties

Absolutely fatal to the claims of the Russiagate hoaxers about the Flynn/Kisylak calls were the actual transcripts of same:

Read the transcripts of Michael Flynn’s calls with Russian diplomat
PBS News Hour Politics | May 29, 2020 6:28 PM EDT | https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/read-the-transcripts-of-michael-flynns-calls-with-russian-diplomat
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration’s new national intelligence director waded into political waters in his first week on the job, declassifying documents that allies of the president say bolster their contention that former national security adviser Michael Flynn was wrongly pursued.

W. Niederhut wrote:

Quote

As for your revisionist history claiming that Trump was a peace-seeking adversary of the Deep State, it is inconsistent with a number of historical facts.

1) Trump green-lighted the genocidal Saudi war against Yemen.

2) He significantly increased non-combatant casualties committed by U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen, by changing U.S. Rules of Engagement. In fact, General Mattis had to talk Trump down from his demands for the murder of non-combatant women and children!

3) Trump's de-funding of Operation Timber Sycamore in Syria in the summer of 2017 may have been a response to instructions from Putin-- who had intervened against the CIA/MI6/Saudi/Israeli proxy war on behalf of the Assad regime. In effect, Trump turned Syria over to Putin. (I happen to agree with Putin's intervention.)

For those of us who believe that Trump is a compromised Russian asset, this interpretation of Trump's 2017 Timber Sycamore intervention makes sense. It's what Putin wanted Trump to do.

You reveal the problem concerning your inability to interpret "facts" when you directed the following to me:

"As for your revisionist history claiming that Trump was a peace-seeking adversary of the Deep State..."

You see, I have never once in this thread, or anywhere else, ever characterized Trump as a peace maker. Nor have I ever used any evidence or interpretations from the right-wing media echo chamber. Nor have I ever claimed to be a Trump supporter of any kind.

Yet you rail on like you do as these are not the facts.

And I think this generally demonstrates the relationship of W. Niederhut with "facts," as well as with "research."

Everything you have written in this thread indicates that you have a factual repertoire of the Trump Russia collusion allegations that dates back to 2017. You may have read a book or two regurgitating those 2017 allegations as well, but then you stopped there.

Completely missing the lessons from the final year of JFK's life about Russophobia and the stakes of the military industrial complex's unrestrained thirst for war (and the hoax that it represents), you were for whatever reason not emotionally prepared to apply those very lessons to the false propaganda themes that were deployed against Trump, and you are even more emotionally unprepared at present to deal with the reality that said propaganda onslaught diverted time and energy from the pursuit of the real crimes that were perpetrated by the Trump empire. You've blindly participated in, and continue to blindly participate in, a hoax that allowed Trump to survive to run for the Presidency yet again.

And that is as much of a fact as it is a fact that your confirmation bias has prevented you from objectively reading a single word I have written about Donald J. Trump in this thread.

The problem confronting the Russiagate hoax from the very beginning has been lack of evidence, and your posts and their ranting diatribes about the state of the evidence in 2017 (prior to the declassifications and journalism that have revealed it to have no foundation) have done absolutely nothing to remedy that state of affairs.

Face it, Mr. Niederhut, you and the evidence have been estranged since at least 2017.

Edited March 27 by Keven Hofeling

Keven Hofeling · March 27

3 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Nothing new here. I posted articles about CIA editing of Wikipedia many years ago.

Nothing new here, Ben.

I first posted some documents about CIA editing of Wikipedia (on another forum) almost 15 years ago.

And I first observed Russian FSB editing of Wikipedia entries (including my own posts) in about 2008 or 2009.

Meanwhile, it's apparent that some people on this thread don't really want to discuss the facts about Putin's ops with Trump and the GOP.

Assange and Wikileaks are merely one small part of that puzzle.

What most surprises me is that you seem to be unaware that this has all been exposed as a hoax, and/or that you have somehow compartmentalized and rationalized away all of the disclosures that have debunked your Rachel Maddowesk belief system.

The saddest part about all of this is the McCarthyism type environment it has imposed upon U.S. Russian relations. It is as if you are unaware of the lessons about this that JFK lived for at the end of his life, and then was murdered for, back when the USSR was truly a monolithic power, rather than the current country it is with a GDP roughly equivalent to that of the State of California.

JFK would be highly ashamed and disappointed in this state of affairs, and you should be too.

The USSR was monolithic in size and scale compared to modern day Russia, and yet President John F. Kennedy was ready and willing to set aside the American McCarthyism mentality and do away with the self-defeating aims of the military industrial complex in order to engage in a bona fide detente.

Do you think President Kennedy's ideals in this regard were misguided, Mr. Niederhut?

Just what does your rabid Russophobia have to offer you personally, Mr. Niederhut, or more generally to the world, other than the progression toward the brink of nuclear war, as is the world trajectory at the current time?

How do you rationalize away the meaning of what President Kennedy advocated for in his Peace Speech at American University and died in his quest to implement for the world?

Don't you understand that these things are more important than your hyperbolic dislike of Donald J. Trump?

Edited March 27 by Keven Hofeling

Roger Odisio · March 27

3 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

You seem to forget Roger, you're the one said you "held back" but offered the post because you thought it was "worth making us aware of it" . Now you''re saying you had no particular faith then in Putin's statement, only that it was "plausible" and you weren't trying to convey his impartiality.

What were you trying to convey then? Why was it at all "worthwhile to make us aware of it " then.?

You've created no great mystery, Kirk as much as you tried. I thought it was worth bringing to the attention of all of those who had assumed Putin favored Trump, on their way to claiming he interfered in the election on Trump's behalf. Putin said that wasn't true; he actually preferred Clinton.

I've taken no position on the truthfulness of his statement, but at the moment I know of nothing that contradicts it. Perhaps you can look into it, and find something.

Benjamin Cole · March 27

4 hours ago, Keven Hofeling said:

What most surprises me is that you seem to be unaware that this has all been exposed as a hoax, and/or that you have somehow compartmentalized and rationalized away all of the disclosures that have debunked your Rachel Maddowesk belief system.

The saddest part about all of this is the McCarthyism type environment it has imposed upon U.S. Russian relations. It is as if you are unaware of the lessons about this that JFK lived for at the end of his life, and then was murdered for, back when the USSR was truly a monolithic power, rather than the current country it is with a GDP roughly equivalent to that of the State of California.

JFK would be highly ashamed and disappointed in this state of affairs, and you should be too.

The USSR was monolithic in size and scale compared to modern day Russia, and yet President John F. Kennedy was ready and willing to set aside the American McCarthyism mentality and do away with the self-defeating aims of the military industrial complex in order to engage in a bona fide detente.

Do you think President Kennedy's ideals in this regard were misguided, Mr. Niederhut?

Just what does your rabid Russophobia have to offer you personally, Mr. Niederhut, or more generally to the world, other than the progression toward the brink of nuclear war, as is the world trajectory at the current time?

How do you rationalize away the meaning of what President Kennedy advocated for in his Peace Speech at American University and died in his quest to implement for the world?

Don't you understand that these things are more important than your hyperbolic dislike of Donald J. Trump?

Keep posting Keven.

I note how you correctly spell your first name.

Lots to talk about out there, big election coming up.

Keven Hofeling · March 27

On 3/20/2024 at 9:29 AM, W. Niederhut said:

Kevin,

Geez. A little knowledge is, indeed, a dangerous thing.

You, frankly, lose all credibility here by repeating the bogus Donald Trump/Fox News propaganda trope about the "Russiagate hoax." Russiagate was never a hoax.

Like Ben Cole, you need to do some remedial reading about Putin's broad-based interference in the 2016 U.S. election on Trump's behalf. It happened. Did you study the U.S. Senate Intel Report on the subject?

Among other aspects of Russiagate, Trump's 2016 Campaign Manager, Paul Manafort, was a long-term Kremlin employee who shared sensitive polling data with his Russian colleague, GRU agent Konstantin Kilimnik, during the 2016 Trump campaign.

Manafort's partner, Roger Stone, also conferred with Julian Assange about hacked Russian "dirt" on Clinton, which was used to launch the 2016 Trump/Russian "Email-gate" psy-op.

Manafort even committed perjury by lying about his 2016 campaign contacts with Kilimnik-- even after he had agreed to cooperate with Mueller's half-hearted, aborted investigation of Russiagate. Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, also lied to the FBI about his December 2016 phone calls with Sergei Kisylak.

We've been around and around this Trump/Russiagate mulberry bush with your fellow MAGA media fan, Ben Cole, in recent years. And, unfortunately, the facts always tend to go into one MAGA ear and out the other in these discussions. Then the bogus MAGA narratives about history get re-posted, ad infinitum.

As for my comments about Putin, Trump, and Operation Timber Sycamore, this is now the second time that you have misrepresented my comments.

What I said (above) is that an alternative explanation for Trump de-funding Timber Sycamore in the summer of 2017 is that Putin may have instructed him to do so. It's an hypothesis, not an assertion of fact.

Your claim is that Trump de-funded Timber Sycamore because he wanted to pursue peace-- as an heroic adversary of the Deep State, etc.

But Trump's history of allegedly pursuing peace was checkered, at best, as I described above.

Trump is not an idealist, nor a foreign policy wonk, like JFK.

He's more analogous to an ass who responds to carrots and sticks-- bribes, and possible blackmail.

He kowtowed to the Saudis in Yemen, and he has consistently kowtowed to Putin.

John LeCarre probably said it best, after Trump's humiliating press conference with Putin in Helsinki. LeCarre said, "Putin, obviously, has Trump by the short hairs."

W. Niederhut wrote:

Quote

Kevin,

Geez. A little knowledge is, indeed, a dangerous thing.

You, frankly, lose all credibility here by repeating the bogus Donald Trump/Fox News propaganda trope about the "Russiagate hoax." Russiagate was never a hoax.

Yes, I agree that "a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing" as you are demonstrating with your regurgitation of 2017 era Russiagate propaganda which has all been debunked per subsequent disclosures and revelations. Disclosures and revelations that you know nothing about as is made so obvious by your failure to address any of them that I and others have attempted to bring to your attention.

Credibility? Credibility according to who? Intellectual dwarfs such as yourself who are still going round and round in circles over propaganda that has been firmly discredited since the release of the Mueller report on April 18, 2019, FIVE YEARS AGO, and continues to be further demolished with the declassification of further details, such as the role the Hillary Clinton campaign and the firms hired by her campaign -- Fusion GPS and CrowdStrike -- played in that sordid state of affairs. If that is your idea of credibility -- LOL -- I want no part of it.

W. Niederhut wrote:

Quote

Like Ben Cole, you need to do some remedial reading about Putin's broad-based interference in the 2016 U.S. election on Trump's behalf. It happened. Did you study the U.S. Senate Intel Report on the subject?

You are telling me that I need to do remedial reading? What are you, some kind of comedian? I read the Senate Collusion Report and found it to be a nothing burger. Aaron Matte's analysis is right on, and if you want to dispute that analysis, or to advance claims about something else you believe to be damning in the Report, then please do so, and be very specific so that I can demonstrate to all readers of these posts exactly how frivolous your claims are about this Report and Russiagate as a whole.

'ANALYSIS: THAT SENATE 'COLLUSION' REPORT? IT'S GOT NO SMOKING GUN ... BUT IT DOES HAVE A FOG MACHINE' Aaron Matte | RealClearInvestigations | September 21, 2020 | https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/09/21/analysis_that_senate_collusion_report_has_no_smoking_gun__but_it_does_have_a_fog_machine_125229.html

W. Niederhut wrote:

Quote

Among other aspects of Russiagate, Trump's 2016 Campaign Manager, Paul Manafort, was a long-term Kremlin employee who shared sensitive polling data with his Russian colleague, GRU agent Konstantin Kilimnik, during the 2016 Trump campaign.

Specifically cite the evidence that you maintain proves that "Trump's 2016 Campaign Manager, Paul Manafort, was a long-term Kremlin employee who shared sensitive polling data with his Russian colleague, GRU agent Konstantin Kilimnik, during the 2016 Trump campaign."

Those claims were certainly not proven by the Senate Report on collusion, nor in the Mueller Report.

You seem to believe that if you put the name of one of these individuals in the same sentence as mention of the Mueller Report or the Senate Intelligence Report, that it somehow proves something, when it does no such thing.

So from this point on I am going to be looking for VERY SPECIFIC details from you on the evidence you believe proves your claims. And when you fail to do so, we will all perfectly understand that you don't describe the evidence because you can't. There simply isn't such evidence.

W. Niederhut wrote:

Quote

And Kremlin asset, Natalia Veselnitskaya, met with numerous Trump campaign staffers in 2016 to discuss Russian intel on Hillary Clinton.

Like so many of the other Russiagate clickbate stories, the story of Natalia Veselnitskaya didn't pan out to be what the Russiagaters claimed:

"...Mueller also asks about the notorious Trump Tower meeting of June 2016, where Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya sat down with top campaign officials after offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. The meeting plays a central role in the hypothesis about how the Trump campaign and the Kremlin cooperated on the subsequent release of stolen Democratic Party e-mails. But Veselnitskaya’s pitch, as transmitted by music publicist Rob Goldstone, was for “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia,” not stolen e-mails, and the leaked questions offer nothing to indicate that Mueller has uncovered further information.

Veselnitskaya has just reemerged in the news with a lead New York Times story reporting that she “Had Closer Ties to Kremlin Than She Let On.” The impetus was Veselnitskaya’s statement in an NBC News interview that she had “been actively communicating with the office of the Russian prosecutor general,” Yuri Chaika, since 2013, as well as the disclosure of hacked e-mail exchanges between them.

These exchanges, however, had nothing to do with the 2016 campaign or even the Kremlin. Instead, they pertain to Veselnitskaya’s work on behalf of the Russian firm Prevezon Holdings for a civil fraud case brought by the Justice Department in 2013 under the Magnitsky Act, which allows for US sanctions on Russian nationals. Veselnitskaya has even previously acknowledged her dealings with the prosecutor, telling congressional investigators last year that she has “interacted with the [Russian] Prosecutor General several times in the capacity of a lawyer.”

The New York Times and NBC News also failed to mention a bizarre twist to the story. On that same trip where she visited Trump Tower, Veselnitskaya also met with Fusion GPS, the opposition-research firm behind the Steele dossier, the DNC-funded report alleging a high-level conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Prevezon’s US law firm had hired Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Bill Browder, the driving force behind the Magnitsky Act, for the company’s fight against the Justice Department’s case and US sanction. That very topic—the Magnitsky sanctions—is what Veselnitskaya and Trump officials say was discussed at the Trump Tower meeting. If Veselnitskaya is lying, that means she visited Trump Tower on the Kremlin’s behalf while simultaneously working with the very firm that was trying to uncover such a connection—in which case the Kremlin and the Trump campaign would have made a most unfortunate selection for their nascent collaboration’s intermediary. On the flip side, the plausibility of Veselnitskaya’s claim that she sought to discuss sanctions is bolstered by her contemporaneous work with Fusion GPS on that very issue...."
Don’t Count on Russiagate to Bring Trump Down
Robert Mueller’s questions, Michael Cohen’s troubles, and the DNC’s lawsuit don’t inspire confidence.
AARON MATÉ | THE NATION | MAY 3, 2018 | https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/dont-count-on-russiagate-to-bring-trump-down/

Please disclose the SPECIFIC EVIDENCE upon which you rely for your claim that Natalia Veselnitskaya was involved in a supposed plan of the Russian government to hack the DNC emails.

W. Niederhut wrote:

Quote

Manafort's partner, Roger Stone, also conferred with Julian Assange about hacked Russian "dirt" on Clinton, which was used to launch the 2016 Trump/Russian "Email-gate" psy-op.

What is the SPECIFIC EVIDENCE you are relying upon for this claim?

W. Niederhut wrote:

Quote

Manafort even committed perjury by lying about his 2016 campaign contacts with Kilimnik-- even after he had agreed to cooperate with Mueller's half-hearted, aborted investigation of Russiagate. Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, also lied to the FBI about his December 2016 phone calls with Sergei Kisylak.

On August 21, 2018, Paul Manafort was convicted of eight of the eighteen felony counts of the indictment -- five counts of filing false tax returns, two counts of bank fraud, and one count of failing to disclose a foreign bank account, all arising from his consulting work for the government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine before Yanukovych's overthrow in 2014. On September 14, 2018, during what was technically Manafort's second trial, he pleaded guilty to two charges: conspiracy to defraud the United States and witness tampering, both of which also arose from his consulting work for the government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine before Yanukovych's overthrow in 2014.

Manafort was not charges with perjury: Rather, Mueller's Office of Special Counsel alleged that Manafort had breached the terms of his plea agreement by lying to the FBI and the OSC, and of five such allegations, the Court found in favor of the government on 3, all of which were predicated upon Manafort's consulting work for the government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine before Yanukovych's overthrow in 2014. The Court specifically found that Manafort had not intentionally made false statements concerning Kilimnick's role in the obstruction of justice conspiracy, and that Manafort had not intentionally made a false statement concerning his contacts with the Trump administration.

Judge rules Paul Manafort violated Mueller plea deal by lying
Zachary Basu | Feb 13, 2019 | https://www.axios.com/2019/02/13/paul-manaforted-plea-deal-mueller-investigation

Additionally, and furthermore, you've have it all wrong about Manafort and Kilimnik in general, particularly as it concerns the Senate Intelligence Report on Collusion:

"...The declaration that Donald Trump’s onetime campaign manager employed a Russian intelligence officer was the headline-grabbing finding of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's fifth and final Russian interference report, released Aug. 18 at the time of the Democratic National Convention.

According to the report, Paul Manafort's 2016 interactions with his longtime associate, Ukraine-born Russian national Konstantin Kilimnik, "represent the single most direct tie between senior Trump Campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services," and amounted to "a grave counterintelligence threat" to the United States.

To hear Trump-Russia conspiracy advocates tell it, Kilimnik was the elusive missing link that proved the Trump campaign's complicity in Russian electoral interference. "Manafort, while he was chairman of the Trump campaign, was secretly communicating with a Russian intelligence officer with whom he discussed campaign strategy and repeatedly shared internal campaign polling data," five of the committee's Democratic members wrote in a pointed addendum. "This is what collusion looks like."

But the plain text of the Senate report contains no concrete evidence to support its conclusions. Instead, with a heavy dose of caveats and innuendo, reminiscent of much of the torrent of investigative verbiage in the Russiagate affair, the report goes to great lengths to cast a pall of suspicion around Kilimnik, much of which is either unsupported or contradicted by publicly available information.

The office of Democrat Mark Warner, the highest-ranking Senator on the committee through the duration of the probe until the report's release, did not respond to emailed questions about the panel’s work.

Kilimnik: ‘Likely’ Channel to Russia?

For the record, Kilimnik has steadfastly denied that he is a Russian intelligence officer or has ties to Russian intelligence. Much of the Senate's portrayal of him relies on information gathered by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which prosecuted Manafort on financial and lobbying charges stemming from his work in Ukraine prior to the 2016 campaign. Kilimnik, a 50-year-old political consultant, was born in Soviet Union-era Ukraine, attended a Soviet military academy, and maintains homes in both Ukraine and Russia. Starting in 2005, Kilimnik played a central role in Manafort's political operation in Ukraine, representing powerful oligarchs and helping guide Viktor Yanukovych to the presidency.

The Senate committee's claim that Kilimnik is a Russian spy goes far beyond the Mueller report, which stated that the FBI believes Kilimnik has unspecified "ties to Russian intelligence." (A similarly vague formulation was used about the reported spark for the FBI's Trump-Russia probe, Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud, whom the Mueller report described as having "connections to Russia.") The SSCI offers no window into how it went further than the Mueller report for its "assessment." Multiple sections purporting to contain supporting information are redacted. The Senate report also tacitly concedes it has no hard proof that Kilimnik shared information from Manafort with anyone, let alone officials in the Russian government. Kilimnik, it speculates, "likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services," an acknowledgment that it has not uncovered definitive proof.

A critical disclosure by the Mueller team during its investigation – but unmentioned in both the final Mueller and Senate reports – directly contradicts the Senate’s assessment. After Mueller accused Kilimnik of having unspecified Russian intelligence "ties" in 2017, Manafort's legal team made multiple discovery requests for any communication between Manafort and "Russian intelligence officials." In April 2018, Manafort’s attorneys revealed that the special counsel replied that "there are no materials responsive to [those] requests." The Mueller team's response marked a tacit admission that as of 2019, the FBI did not consider Kilimnik a Russian agent.

In recently unsealed notes from the FBI's collusion probe, Peter Strzok – the top FBI counterintelligence agent who opened the investigation – wrote in early 2017: "We are unaware of ANY Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials."

Asked by RealClearInvestigations if the FBI's assessment of Kilimnik has changed, a Department of Justice spokesman said that “the Mueller report speaks for itself,” suggesting that it has not adopted the Senate committee’s determination.

The unredacted sections of the Senate report that attempt to show that Kilimnik is a Russian spy rely on an assortment of emails, discussions, and even Twitter posts. The first visible (but still partially redacted) passage attempts to make an issue out of Kilimnik's discussions with his business partner, Sam Patten, about the nature of Russian intelligence work. Kilimnik, the report notes, trained in languages at a Soviet military school that he "himself admitted to colleagues was used by both the GRU and KGB." The SSCI then accuses Kilimnik of misleading Patten – in emails and perhaps some conversations – about "the type of career these intelligence officers followed compared to his own," and in claiming "that his former classmates were not involved in intelligence matters."

The next section reports that "in 2017, Kilimnik denied in private communications with Patten that there was Russian interference in the U.S. elections." The evidence to support that assertion is that "Kilimnik emailed Patten a Financial Times article on Russian interference in the U.S. elections," and joked that U.S. intelligence "must be having very little sleep chasing those squirrels who they think exist."

Beyond those emails, which prove nothing at all, the Senate report delves extensively into the activity of a Twitter account that it alleges Kilimnik used under the pseudonym "Petro Baranenko" (@PBaranenko). The account's tweets, SSCI says, "centered on efforts to discredit the Russia investigations." The report discloses the email address used to create the Twitter account but does not explain why it believes that Kilimnik is behind it. In a direct message exchange with RealClearInvestigations, the @PBaranenko account user denied being Kilimnik. "I am not Kilimnik and have nothing to do with him," the user wrote. "I have no idea why whoever wrote this report made this allegation."

The account user declined requests for an interview to corroborate that denial. Regardless, even if the account does belong to Kilimnik, the SSCI leaves unexplained how these innocuous emails and tweets amount to evidence that he is a Russian spy...."

Analysis: That Senate 'Collusion' Report? It's Got No Smoking Gun ... but It Does Have a Fog Machine
By Aaron Mate | RealClearInvestigations | September 21, 2020 | https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/09/21/analysis_that_senate_collusion_report_has_no_smoking_gun__but_it_does_have_a_fog_machine_125229.html

And as for the Michael Flynn calls with Sergei Kisylak, you seem to be unaware that those calls have since been declassified only to reveal that, like everything else about the Russiagate hoax, there was simply nothing there.