https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulro...s-russiagate-really-hillarygate/#1cfddc155cf6 Is Russiagate Really Hillarygate? According to an insider account, the Clinton team, put together the Russia Gate narrative within 24 hours of her defeat. The Clinton account explained that Russian hacking and election meddling caused her unexpected loss. Her opponent, Donald Trump, was a puppet of Putin. Trump, they said, “encourages espionage against our people.” The scurrilous Trump dossier, prepared by a London opposition research firm, Orbis, and paid for by unidentified Democrat donors, formed a key part of the Clinton narrative: Trump’s sexual and business escapades in Russia had made him a hostage of the Kremlin, ready to do its bidding. That was Hillary's way to say that Trump is really not President of the United States—a siren call adopted by the Democratic party and media. Hillary and the Orbis Dossier The most under covered story of Russia Gate is the interconnection between the Clinton campaign, an unregistered foreign agent of Russia headquartered in DC (Fusion GPS), and the Christopher Steele Orbis dossier. This connection has raised the question of whether Kremlin prepared the dossier as part of a disinformation campaign to sow chaos in the US political system. If ordered and paid for by Hillary Clinton associates, Russia Gate is turned on its head as collusion between Clinton operatives (not Trump’s) and Russian intelligence. Russia Gate becomes Hillary Gate. Neither the New York Times, Washington Post, nor CNN has covered this explosive story. Two op-eds have appeared in the Wall Street Journal (Holman Jenkins and David Satter). The possible Russian-intelligence origins of the Steele dossier have been raised only in conservative publications, such as in The Federalist and National Review. The Fusion story has been known since Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a heavily-footnoted letter to the Justice Department on March 31, 2017 demanding for his Judiciary Committee all relevant documents on Fusion GPS, the company that managed the Steele dossier against then-candidate Donald Trump. Grassley writes to justify his demand for documents that: “The issue is of particular concern to the Committee given that when Fusion GPS reportedly was acting as an unregistered agent of Russian interests, it appears to have been simultaneously overseeing the creation of the unsubstantiated dossier of allegations of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians.” (Emphasis added.) Former FBI director, James Comey, refused to answer questions about Fusion and the Steele dossier in his May 3 testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Comey responded to Lindsey Graham’s questions about Fusion GPS’s involvement “in preparing a dossier against Donald Trump that would be interfering in our election by the Russians?” with “I don’t want to say.” Perhaps he will be called on to answer in a forum where he cannot refuse to answer. The role of Fusion GPS and one of its key associates, a former Soviet intelligence officer, must raise the question as to whether the Steele dossier, which was orchestrated by a suspected unregistered agent of Russia, was a plant by Russian intelligence to harm Donald Trump? David Satter, one of our top experts on Russia and himself expelled by the Kremlin, writes: Perhaps most important, Russian intelligence also acted to sabotage Mr. Trump. The ‘Trump dossier, full of unverified sexual and political allegations, was published in January by BuzzFeed, despite having all the hallmarks of Russian spy agency ‘creativity.’ The dossier was prepared by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer. It employed standard Russian techniques of disinformation and manipulation. Much of the credibility of the Orbis dossier hinges on Steele’s reputation as a former M15 intelligence agent. Satter writes, however, that “after the publication of the Trump dossier, Mr. Steele went into hiding, supposedly in fear for his life. On March 15, however, Michael Morell, the former acting CIA director, told NBC that Mr. Steele had paid the Russian intelligence sources who provided the information and never met with them directly. In other words, his sources were not only working for pay. Furthermore, Mr. Steele had no way to judge the veracity of their claims.” If Steele disappeared for fear of his life, we must suspect that he feared murder by Russian agents. The only secret he might have had to warrant such a drastic Russian action would be knowledge that Russian intelligence prepared the dossier.
^^^ According to a Vanity Fair article, Fusion GPS was first funded by an anti-Trump Republican donor, but, after Trump’s nomination, Fusion and Steele were paid by Democratic donors whose identity remains secret. Writes Satter: “Perhaps the time has come to expand the investigation into Russia’s meddling to include Mrs. Clinton’s campaign as well.” As someone who has read every word of the Steele Trump dossier and has studied the Soviet Union/Russia for almost a half century, I can say that the Steele dossier consists of raw intelligence from informants identified by capital letters, who claim (improbably) to have access to the highest levels of the Kremlin. The dossier was not, as the press reports, written by Steele. No matter how experienced (or gullible) Steele might be, there is no way for him to know whether his sources are clandestine Russian intelligence agents. In Stalin's day, some of the most valued KGB (NKVD) agents were called "novelists," for their ability to conjure up fictional plots and improbable tales to use against their enemies. Some of Steele's sources claim detailed knowledge of the deepest Kremlin secrets, such as Putin's personal control of Clinton emails or negotiations with Putin's head of the national oil company. If they truly had such knowledge, why would they "sell" it to Steele? The most likely explanation is that the Steele dossier is the work of Russian intelligence "novelists" charged by the Kremlin with defaming Trump and adding chaos to the American political system. Mueller’s Difficult Task While leaks from within the investigation focus on possible obstruction of justice, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s writ – to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election – requires him to consider “matters” that Dems would prefer be left alone. Special Counsel Mueller has been given a broad charge and no deadline -- a formula for trouble. He is supposed to “investigate Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election.” Given the many accounts of Russian contacts of Trump campaign officials and hangers-on, Mueller must follow these leads, which apparently have lead nowhere over a nine month investigation as reported even by Trump unfriendly sources like CNN. Mueller, therefore, should not require much time to rule out coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia state actors. Mueller must be careful to avoid detours into loosely related issue by scalp-hunting investigators. Mueller also must shut down leaks from within his office, if he wishes his reports to be credible to the American people. Mueller must also conduct an investigation which is perceived as fair to both sides. On the Clinton/Democratic side, there are a number of unanswered questions related to Russian electoral intervention. Among them is the question of whether the “wiped clean” Clinton e-mails are in Russian hands (as asserted by the Steele dossier), whether the tarmac meeting of Bill Clinton and the Attorney General quashed the investigation of Hillary’s e-mails, and whether the Clintons and Russian uranium interests engaged in quid pro quo and “pay to play” operations. The most important unanswered question is whether the Clinton campaign funded the Orbis Trump smear campaign and did they understand the campaign could be conducted by Russian intelligence? Mueller must question Steele himself on his sources and some of the sources themselves, investigate whether they could be Russian intelligence agents, and determine the role of Clinton donors and campaign officials in the funding of the anti-Trump dossier. The Fusion-Steele matter is explosive because it suggests that Russia’s most damaging intervention in the 2016 campaign may have been its creation of the Steele Dossier, remarkably paid for by the Clinton campaign! If so, the Clinton campaign (not Trump) was the prime sponsor of Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election.
yet another false narrative by Trumpanzees, convenient suppositions built upon convenient suppositions. Facts, Fredo Trump's email chains, blow this weak bleep outta water.
Prominent conservative columnist and frequent Fox News contribution, Charles Krauthammer, has written this op-ed piece. Incompetent collusion is still collusion, folks The Russia scandal has entered a new phase and there’s no going back. For six months, the White House claimed that this scandal was nothing more than innuendo about Trump campaign collusion with Russia in meddling in the 2016 election. Innuendo for which no concrete evidence had been produced. Yes, there were several meetings with Russian officials, some only belatedly disclosed. But that is circumstantial evidence at best. Meetings tell you nothing unless you know what happened in them. We didn’t. Some of these were casual encounters in large groups like the famous July 2016 Kislyak-Sessions exchange of pleasantries at the Republican National Convention. Big deal. I was puzzled. Lots of cover-up, but where was the crime? Not even a third-rate burglary. For six months, smoke without fire. Yes, President Trump himself was acting very defensively, as if he were hiding something. But no one ever produced the something. My view was: Collusion? I just don’t see it. But I’m open to empirical evidence. Show me. The evidence is now shown. This is not hearsay, not fake news, not unsourced leaks. This is an email chain released by Donald Trump Jr. himself. A British go-between writes that there’s a Russian government effort to help Trump Sr. win the election, and as part of that effort he proposes a meeting with a “Russian government attorney” possessing damaging information on Hillary Clinton. Moreover, the Kremlin is willing to share troves of incriminating documents from the Crown Prosecutor. (Error: Britain has a Crown Prosecutor. Russia has a State Prosecutor.) Donald Jr. emails back. “I love it.” Fatal words. Once you’ve said “I’m in,” it makes no difference that the meeting was a bust, that the intermediary brought no such goods. What matters is what Donald Jr. thought going into the meeting, as well as Jared Kushner and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, who were copied on the correspondence, invited to the meeting, and attended. “It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame,” Donald Jr. told Sean Hannity. A shame? On the contrary, a stroke of luck. Had the lawyer real stuff to deliver, Donald Jr. and the others would be in far deeper legal trouble. It turned out to be incompetent collusion, amateur collusion, comically failed collusion. That does not erase the fact that three top Trump campaign officials were ready to play. It may turn out that they did later collaborate more fruitfully. We don’t know. But even if nothing else is found, the evidence is damning. It’s rather pathetic to hear Trump apologists protesting that it’s no big deal because we Americans are always intervening in other people’s elections, and they in ours. You don’t have to go back to the 1940s and 1950s when the CIA intervened in France and Italy to keep the communists from coming to power. What about the Obama administration’s blatant interference to try to defeat Benjamin Netanyahu in the latest Israeli election? One might even add the work of groups supported by the U.S. during Russian parliamentary elections — the very origin of Vladimir Putin’s deep animus toward Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, whom he accuses of having orchestrated the opposition. This defense is pathetic for two reasons. First, have the Trumpites not been telling us for six months that no collusion ever happened? And now they say: Sure it happened. So what? Everyone does it. What’s left of your credibility when you make such a casual about-face? Second, no, not everyone does it. It’s one thing to be open to opposition research dug up in Indiana. But not dirt from Russia, a hostile foreign power that has repeatedly invaded its neighbors (Georgia, Crimea, Eastern Ukraine), that buzzes our planes and ships in international waters, that opposes our every move and objective around the globe. Just last week the Kremlin killed additional U.N. sanctions we were looking to impose on North Korea for its ICBM test. There is no statute against helping a foreign hostile power meddle in an American election. What Donald Jr. — and Kushner and Manafort — did may not be criminal. But it is not merely stupid. It is also deeply wrong, a fundamental violation of any code of civic honor. I leave it to the lawyers to adjudicate the legalities of unconsummated collusion. But you don’t need a lawyer to see that the Trump defense — collusion as a desperate Democratic fiction designed to explain away a lost election — is now officially dead. http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2017/jul/15/opinion-incompetent-collusion-still-collusion-folk/
It's incredible the lies these people tell and how people like sugar-robot and bigtexxx-robot and bobby-the-drone all believe it like it was written in the holy bible. Meanwhile even Republicans now know we have a Russian operative running the country.
More evidence that Trump and his team knew of Junior's meeting with Russians well before the "a few days earlier" the president claimed...
My question is how long have Congressional intelligence committees known about all this bull****, hoping it wouldn't come to light.
The Trump campaign for 2020 reelection is paying for his legal fees which means the GOP (Mercers and Koch family) is paying his legal fees essentially. No coincidence six months into his first term he's already campaigning and holding fund raisers. The RNC head was interviewed this morning about this and didn't entirely seem thrilled. Of course the Koch brothers recently donated 400 million dollars so it's not like there isn't money to last for the GOP even with Trump paying himself through them which has to be borderline illegal but let's face it, the law doesn't apply to him and the GOP and ethics sure as help doesn't apply.
My question is if anyone in the Republican Party will stand up for anything but the brand. Good luck with the Tea Party nutters.
Even if more evidence shows up, nothing will happen until after 2018 election (if the Democrats win).
good op-ed on how the Republican party has gone full r****d: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/15/...about-russia-in-the-world-breitbart-made.html The revelation that Donald Trump’s son, son-in-law and campaign manager met with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer promising information that would “incriminate” Hillary Clinton was a true bombshell in an era when we have become almost inured to them. Here was proof that members of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign had, at the very least, been eager to collude with Russia to influence the 2016 election. No one could gainsay the facts: Mr. Trump’s own son published them on Twitter. As recently as five or 10 years ago, every major news outlet would have treated this set of facts as front-page news and a dire threat to Mr. Trump’s presidency. The conservative press and Republican voters might disagree on certain particulars or points of emphasis. But their view of reality — of what happened and its significance — would have largely comported with that of the mainstream. You’d have had to travel to the political fringe of right-wing talk radio, the Drudge Report and dissident publications like Breitbart News to find an alternative viewpoint that rejected this basic story line. Not anymore. Look to the right now and you’re apt to find an alternative reality in which the same set of facts is rearranged to compose an entirely different narrative. On Fox News, host Lou Dobbs offered a representative example on Thursday night, when he described the Donald Trump Jr. email story, with wild-eyed fervor, like this: “This is about a full-on assault by the left, the Democratic Party, to absolutely carry out a coup d’état against President Trump aided by the left-wing media.” Mr. Dobbs isn’t some wacky outlier, but rather an example of how over the last several years the conservative underworld has swallowed up and subsumed more established right-leaning outlets such as Fox News. The Breitbart mind-set — pugnacious, besieged, paranoid and determined to impose its own framework on current events regardless of facts — has moved from the right-wing fringe to the center of Republican politics. It’s a process that’s happened organically. “They have an incredible eye for an important story, particular ones that are important to conservatives and Republicans,” Jeff Sessions, now the attorney general, told me in 2015, explaining how Breitbart News was shaping grass-roots conservative opinion by spreading its message across mediums that party leaders in Washington paid little attention to. “They’ve become extraordinarily influential. Radio talk-show hosts are reading Breitbart every day. You can feel it when they interview you.” There have been mileposts along the way: the populist revolt on the right that killed bipartisan immigration reform in 2013, the toppling of House Speaker John Boehner in 2015. And, of course, the rise of Mr. Trump, whose attacks on the mainstream media have conditioned his supporters to dismiss as “fake news” any reporting that is critical of him or his administration — Mr. Trump has even criticized the coverage of his son’s Russia liaison, where the basic facts aren’t in dispute, as coming from the “fake media.” The full scale of this transformation still hasn’t registered, but it’s evident in President Trump’s approval ratings. Despite six months of White House strife, precious few legislative achievements and a metastasizing Russia scandal, Republicans have largely stood by their president. While his national support has dipped below 40 percent, his approval rating within his own party remains strong: Republican support for the president has hovered around 85 percent since his inauguration. These numbers reflect a shift in Republicans’ disposition, of which Mr. Trump is both a major cause and the main beneficiary. So far, there’s little sign that the president’s approval rating with Republicans is in danger of eroding. Earlier this month, a congressional source told me, Democratic strategists looking at a Republican-held swing district that is expected to be in play in next year’s midterm elections were shocked when a private poll they conducted showed that Republican support for Mr. Trump in the district is even stronger now than it was on Election Day. A number of factors have been put forward to explain President Trump’s unexpected resilience. One line of argument is that he’s being buoyed by Republican lawmakers who could abandon him if they lose faith in his ability to deliver results. “The relationship has always been largely transactional,” the G.O.P. strategist Alex Conant told RealClearPolitics this month. “Republicans in Congress can pass laws, and Trump can sign them. Therefore, it’s mutually beneficial.” Another argument holds that Mr. Trump’s efforts to discredit mainstream outlets, echoed by the right-wing media, have stripped his followers of their ability to distinguish what’s real from what isn’t. Both arguments have merit. But the transformation of the Republican mind-set encompasses more than just news or politics. Andrew Breitbart, the founder of Breitbart News, liked to say that “politics is downstream from culture.” Culture has always been a driving obsession of the conservative underworld of Breitbart and its ilk. “Andrew was always more interested in changing the culture than he was in changing what was going on in Washington,” Steve Bannon, who ran Breitbart News and is now Mr. Trump’s chief White House strategist, once told me. (Mr. Bannon left his position at Breitbart News in August of 2016 to take over the Trump campaign.) One reason that an alternative view of reality has taken such deep root among Republicans is that they seem to be focusing more on the broader culture. Last week a new Pew Research Center poll showed that a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents now believes that colleges and universities — the flash point of our current culture wars — have a negative effect on the country. This number is up sharply from the 45 percent who agreed with this same statement last year. If you look at the other side of the aisle, about three-quarters of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents consistently say that colleges and universities have a positive effect on the country. As American politics has become more polarized and tribal, it’s gotten harder to shake voters from their partisan loyalties. At least so far, the news that Donald Trump Jr. was prepared to accept Russian help to subvert a United States election doesn’t appear to have changed this state of affairs. If you’re not a Republican, watching Republicans react to the news can feel a bit like witnessing a mass hallucination. Even more so when some emissary from the alternate Republican universe like Kellyanne Conway teleports onto CNN or another mainstream outlet to state her case. There’s no guarantee that this will endure. Even on Fox News, there are scattered signs that the latest Russia developments may finally be breaking through — at least to a few folks. “This was a bungled collusion,” the Fox pundit Charles Krauthammer said the other night, noting that he had previously been sympathetic to the White House line. “It undoes the White House story completely.” But of course the conservative ranks have always included principled NeverTrumpers, whose resistance to the Republican drift has been mostly ignored by the rank and file. Don Jr.’s travails will be a good test of the resiliency of the new Republican worldview. If special counsel Robert Mueller finds evidence of Russian collusion, it will be followed by a bigger test measuring just what it takes to snap out of a mass hallucination.
Without our world class colleges the USA is a third world country. Not to worry though, all of the top 1% can take their money and go if the shti gets too real. I'm looking at you Koch bros.
People laughing at the Forbes Trump actually colluding with Russians is a lot more ridiculous than the Forbes article
Pretty remarkable how Don Jr. emails correspond to the fake russian dossier (steele)... http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-jr-email-leaked-buzzfeed-trump-russia-document-2017-7
