I have a feeling that when this entire, sordid scandal is finally laid bare, this text message from Lisa Page to her erstwhile lover Peter Strzok, will be the smoking gun. It’s a kill-shot in much the same way that the question on the bipartisan Watergate panel asked some forty years ago: “What does the President know and when did he know it?”
Think of it as a coda, a distillation of a complex scandal to its bare essence. It’s totally understandable. And it is evidence that then-President Barack Obama was at the apex of this imbroglio, that he was the master-mind behind the desire to take down then-candidate Donald Trump.
And yes, that’s illegal. That’s why Richard Nixon was driven from office. This is worse than Watergate, much worse.
Why? Because Watergate was a botched, third-rate burglary which eventually spun out of control as the various actors were caught in their lies. Nixon was not the author of the break-in but the head of an Administration that kept an enemies’ list. This scandal is worse because it threatens to expose the shadow government which really controls our country. It’s going to lay bare the kabuki theater that is our electoral so-called democracy.
And that’s why they’re screaming like scalded dogs.
Now it’s rather delicious. And ironic: I have a sneaking suspicion that the Mueller probe is in on the joke —on Trump’s side. Yes, you read that right. Stop laughing. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that the Mueller team has so far indicted 25 different Russian actors, none of whom are going to see the inside of an American courtroom? (One of them has called Mueller’s bluff and shown up in a Federal Court pleading Not Guilty and asking to see the evidence against him.)
It gets even more delicious. Consider the fact that Mueller’s deputy, the oleaginous Rod Rosenstein, announced the indictments, live, on television. (And of course, no Americans were named, nor was their any evidence of collusion or vote tampering.) Because Rosenstein likes the limelight, the indictees now know that there is a warrant for their arrest. This is only one aspect of many that shows that this is not a serious investigation.
If Mueller was serious, he would have issued sealed indictments so that when (say) Lt Col Yuri Danielovich Grishnikov of the GRU landed in Miami for his annual January vacation with his mistress in tow, he would be arrested the minute he stepped foot on American soil. This is the equivalent of the Chief of Police announcing that he’s going to do a drug raid tomorrow at noon somewhere in the vicinity of 4th and Main Streets. Does anyone think that the drug dealers are not going to get the hell out of Dodge?
Now I realize that this sounds too conspiratorial for many (myself included –I’m just throwing it out there). But it makes a certain amount of sense. In much the same way James Comey’s near-indictment of Hillary Clinton on July 5, 2016, then his somewhat exoneration of her, then his re-opening of the case just eleven days before the election makes a kind of quasi-pro-Trumpian sense.
In any case, both Mueller’s actions as well as Comey’s have a certain play-both-ends-against-the-middle sense to them. It’s almost as if chaos is what is intended.
So let’s go down this rabbit-hole if you will. Why would Mueller be secretly working for Trump? Well, how about we try these on for size:
1. It smokes out who the Deep Staters are (I’m not so sure about numbers 1, 2 and 3; see #4 below for an opposing view).
2. It gives the Democrats some tenuous hope.
3. It’s a seductive move, designed to have the Democrats concentrate their firepower on something which doesn’t exist, all the while causing them to forgo actually having to come up with any ideas. Or, more likely:
4. By engaging in an interminable, unending witch-hunt, one which is based on a chimera and for which there can be no resolution, this ensures that those who comprise the Deep State are never found out.
There are probably others. It’s all rather opaque if you ask me.
Now, let’s look at this from the Russians’ point of view. Right off the bat, let’s lay aside the idea that they wanted Trump to win. Barack Obama was right: there is no way that any foreign actor could affect the outcome of an American election. In his own words, “it’s too decentralized”. He’s right. Mueller agrees. In both sets of indictments, it’s clearly stated that “no votes were changed” because of alleged Russian hacking.
So, assuming that the Russians were involved, why did they do it?
Because the Russians were putting their eggs in Hillary’s basket, not because they wanted her to win but because they thought she was actually going to win. They wanted to compromise the winner. When she didn’t win, then their trolls started buying Facebook ads after the election in order to destabilize the actual winner (i.e. Trump). Several of their agents also started organizing the Pussy-hat riots/demonstrations for good measure.
It’s all rather exciting if you ask me. And ironic. Think of it: there was no underlying crime (Russian collusion with the Trump campaign) but already several heads are rolling, most all of whom are Trump antagonists. The American people are now fully aware that there is a Deep State/Shadow Government and that the system is rigged. They’ve bought into Trump’s mantra that this is so. Because there is no evidence, Trump is continuously immunized from all the noise.
And this is the delicious cherry on top of this hot-fudge chocolate sundae: the screams of the anti-Trumpers are getting more hysterical by the day. Just the other day, some silly talking head on MSNBC said that Trump’s joint press conference was the equivalent of Kristallnacht and Pearl Harbor. John Brennan, a former Communist and known liar said that Trump committed “treason”.
Chew on all that for a minute.
During The Night of Broken Glass, hundreds of German Jews had their houses and businesses ransacked. It was a pogrom in every sense of the word. At Pearl Harbor, thousands of young men were slaughtered or maimed in one of the worst sneak-attacks in military history. As for treason, that’s a crime punishable by death.
Yes, Trump is very lucky in his enemies.
Obama…….the most corrupt president in history. I hope enough layers of the onion are peeled in my lifetime to see justice served.
This is such a tremendous heap of stupid fantasy it has me convinced George Michalopulos secretly knows Glorious Leader is hopelessly compromised to the Russians.
No. Because the key remit of the Special Council is to investigate Russian meddling and potential links to the Trump campaign.
It must strike George Michalopulos as odd when a task force charged with catching a bank robbery ring and investigating inside bank connections with the ring ends up indicting some people who rob banks. The only possible explanation is a nebulous shadow government!
Wrong. Nobody from either the team doing the extraction or the team doing the management/dissemination was likely never traveling anywhere outside the Russian Federation again, much less to Western Europe, much less a FVEY country. Because the teams were long blown by private sector infosec groups limited to open source data. The GRU would have had to assume that the US IC would be able to unmask the individuals on the teams. Which they did.
In other words, the Russians have had to operate under the assumption their operators were blown for quite some time. Quite correctly as it turned out, the level of detail in the indictments is rather impressive. I suspect elements of some of the details were rather embarrassing.
“Yes, I wanted him to win.” – Vladimir Putin
This is pretty much the only thing in your entire travesty of an essay that is actually correct. Part of the goals of the Russian operations were to sow dissent and undermine faith in American institutions and in the democratic process.
But that could never work, right? You wouldn’t end up with people on the internet ranting about shadow governments and Deep States that don’t actually exist?
You wouldn’t end up with say, a gullible pharmacist from the midwest spreading fantastic conspiracy theories invented by basement dwelling virgins who masturbate to japanese anime porn involving innocuous campaign emails about ordering pizza, right?
Right? Oh. Oh dear.
Nate, I’m glad that you agree with me that previous Glorious Leader (Obama) was a liar! What’s that? Are you disagreeing with the fact that he said that “there was no way” for a foreign power to hack our election systems?
I see you also think that Mueller & Rosenstein are liars as well. Towit that there was “no collusion” between the Russians and “any American”.
I take it you’re not a lawyer (I’m not either). But prosecutors return sealed indictments if they really want to capture miscreants, especially if they’re foreign nationals.
Finally, what crime was there that triggered the Special Counsel in the first place? None. “Collusion” is not a crime.
Careful Nate, you’re cognitive dissonance is showing.
You mean like the sealed indictment/guilty plea of George Papadopoulos? I keep wondering if Carter Page has himself a sealed indictment, too… And perhaps now Michael Cohen? None of those folks are Russians.
The trigger for the Special Counsel was not a “crime”, but rather the appearance of a conflict of interest created by a president who publicly stated that he fired the FBI Director because he didn’t like the investigation into “Russia/Trump”.
Mueller was appointed in bad faith, a lackey of Comey, et al.
The frustrating thing about Trump is the effective decentralization of the Executive Branch. He does not have control over or the loyalty of his own subordinates. So he must circle the wagons and assume the worst.
The Russians weren’t doing anything they haven’t always done and nothing we ourselves haven’t done in Eastern Europe. It’s standard operating procedure and that is why the entire wave of rage about it is hopelessly hypocritical; a political stunt designed to impede or remove Trump.
Theoretically, Trump, Putin and the rising Right in Europe have the potentiality to fatally wound Progressive Liberalism and the Borg it has created to run the West. PL types equate this with America, which is the source of their meltdown and hype.
But the Right simply isn’t listening anymore. Trump really isn’t. Putin is amused by people naive enough to ask the types of questions posed at the first joint press conference between him and Trump.
I mean, it should be obvious by this point that the Right is trying to destroy the Left by any means necessary. It is only a matter of choosing sides. For the Right, it is a matter of self defense and the continued existence of what is left of Civilization. The Left, including Progressive Liberalism and all its lackeys in the Center and the RINO’s are an existential threat to the continuance of Western society. Their ideology has resulted in suicidal, sub-replacement fertility rates, among other heinous crimes. They are a clear and present danger to society.
No quarter.
Critics speak as if the US were already at war with Russia. “Aid and comfort to the enemy” type stuff. But Russia, though not a Western style democracy, is in fact organized as a democratic federation. It is simply that Putin understands intimately how to manipulate the structure of government. He has the loudest voice in the media there. Just like the Borg controls the lion’s share of the media here. That’s what makes him a “dictator” in some people’s eyes. And that too is hypocritical. Besides, his popularity is astronomical in Russia. Russians favor authoritarian leadership. It’s not just Putin but the Russian character that the Left is labeling “evil”.
We have dealt in normal relations with the Saudis and the Chinese. Purely dictatorial regimes, both. Again, sheer hypocrisy vis a vis Russia.
What irks the Left, really, is that they sense a civilizational threat from Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church:
https://spectator.org/john-brennan-misses-communist-russia/
Here is where the Left’s beloved Brezinsky proposed to break up Russia into three parts and bolster China:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1254548/posts
And don’t forget our exchange here at Monomakhos about his hatred of Russia and Orthodoxy:
https://www.monomakhos.com/more-on-the-eu-and-orthodoxy/#comment-75655
That is the general sentiment of everyone in the West left of center. But centrists go along in droves as even do some clueless types on the right.
Russia has made some inroads through Franklin Graham to the Christian Right and through the NRA; however, the task of educating America is daunting. You have conservatives who can’t seem to shake the Cold War mentality of seeing Russia as a communist empire and the Left who cannot forgive it for abandoning communism and re-embracing Christianity (which should not happen according to their historical constructions).
Russia, in short, is a living, breathing testimony to the fact that the Left is dying.
I see George Michalopulos is already laying the groundwork for the inevitable pivot from “there was no collusion!” to “collusion is not a crime!” I suspect future indictments will demonstrate otherwise. There has been a fair bit of various legal analysis of what assorted actors might end up being charged with, and what the Russians have been charged with is likewise instructive.
If I thought you actually knew better this would be bad faith arguing. But by now I know it isn’t, you really are just incapable of grasping the slightest bit of nuance.
You are interpreting Rosenstein’s comments on previous indictments as ruling out any future indictments of Americans for involvement/interaction with previously indicted or non-indicted Russian actors. In other words, you attach a final judgement to Rosenstein’s public statements that isn’t actually there.
So what is going to be your argument when those indictments start? (we already know the answer to that don’t we?)
Both positions are not mutually exclusive. According to Mueller, there was no collusion with the Trump campaign.
And collusion is not a crime.
And collusion is not a crime. Nope, neither is free speech, but the left is working on that one as well. Tolerance a one way street for the left, THEIR SPEECH is the only free flowing speech allow by the PC Pigs. Speaking of PC Pigs, one that makes me gag every time I see her face, and hear her voice, is Whoopi Goldberg.
Apparently Whoopi didn’t like what HER GUEST, Judge Jeanine Pirro, had to say on her show, The View. Whoopi cannot have a civil debate, even when the entire View panel, as usual, is ganging up on their conservative guests. Whoopi got triggered by Jeanine diagnosing her with TDS and then completely lost when the Judge said,”You know what’s horrible? When people who shouldn’t be here end up murdering the children of American citizens. What’s horrible is we have sanctuary cities.”
Well slam the breaks. Whoopi then halts conversation,”Say goodbye I’m done!” Go to commercial break, and Jeanine is gone. Except Whoopi wasn’t finished!
NOOO! Whoopi went Horse Poopi, and then goes off screaming at Jeanine Pirro. Whoopi the tolerant, follows Jeanine off stage, and after Jeanine says,’Whoopi I’ve fought my whole life for victims.” Well then Whoopi gets right into her face, and as Jeanine tells the story:
This IS leftist tolerance! Buckle up, it will get worse!
There are two things that I personally can tell you about Mrs. Pirro. Through most of the 1990’s, I was a consultant to the Westchester County, NY Dept. of Probation, training the supervisors and pre-sentencing investigators in identify and referring individuals for assessment for chemical dependency and comorbid mental health; and training supervizors and monitoring probation officers of individuals sentenced to probation in identifying individuals with the same needs. At the same time, several floors below, Jeanine Pirro was establishing what was to become a pioneering model for specialized domestic violence units with a sexual crime unit across the US. When Jeanine Pirro says, “I’ve fought my whole life for victims,” I say there have been few better pioneers nor advocates.
I will never, ever forget being in a court room for a jury trial when Jeanine Pirro cross-examined a big biker-type for domestic violence that was to constitute a “strike,” (he had beaten the living hell out of a tiny woman, fracturing her nose and both orbits of her eyes – his testimony was that she had grabbed his testicles and he had “reacted”), and she basically was face-to-face with the dude, with dead silence in the courtroom, and she slowly said, “Exactly how much pressure did this tiny woman have to exert on your [NY accent] bawls..” “OBJECTION, your honour!” “Council, rephrase the question.” And she yelled in his face, “on your testicles, sir, that you reacted by breaking nearly every structure in her face?” Holy Cow! His fists were clenched. His face was bright red. No one was near enough to have save her fast enough. She turned toward the judge, and in a normal voice said, “I have no more questions, your honour.” Another time, she and I taught an evening section at Fordham’s graduate social work program at Lincoln Center on interacting with the legal system – she did the first 2-hrs and I did the second. I saw her leaving so I was making my way through the group to say hello. Now, mind you, Jeanine Pirro is a beautuful woman, but she was approaching several young men (lotharios, to be exact) leaning against the wall near the exit, shades propped just below their eyes, scanning Mrs. Pirro.I distibctly heard the, “Um, um, um.” She whipped around and was in their faces in a second: “I spent all day with victims of sex offenders. I will not come on my own time and be rudely hit on by punks like you. You got it?” They got it.
I would politely suggest to you that, while Judge Pirro may have been treated unfairly, she was brought on that show because she is a “showman/showperson.” Do you imagine they would have given her the “Judge Pirro” or “Judge Jeanine” or whatever it was “People’s Court” knockoff show on Fox if she was an uninteresting dolt? She is outspoken & outrageous from the moment the red light goes on. She’s as loud, and as obnoxious, and as toting the company line on her own network. That’s the name of the game. But, honestly, Jeanine Pirro is also a fine person in my estimation.
YES, agreed she is outspoken and outrageous at times, but because she is a fine person as you say, she knows what lines should never be crossed. After that line is crossed, all rules of civility are off the table.
I guess George Michalopulos is a time-traveler, having returned from the future to proclaim the results of an investigation that is still ongoing in the present day. Who wins the next Super Bowl? Asking for a friend.
Again, there has been a lot of speculation and legal analysis about what criminal acts people will likely be charged with, it’s amusingly pedandic to claim collusion is not a crime when in order to collude on the subject matter ends up exposing one to a host of criminal liability.
Who told you?