The history is already being written (Part I)
The following is an excerpt from Mollie Hemingway's book "Rigged." I regard this as the first definitive history of the Russia Collusion hoax
From Chapter 2: Taking on the Establishment.
When Hillary Clinton, other Democrats, and the media pushed the Russia lies her campaign had secretly funded, many Republican office-holders either believed them or declined to fight back against them. The Russia collusion hoax had been invented by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, fed to compliant reporters, and weaponized by Obama's Department of Justice. Following her loss, Clinton hoped that campaign operation could become a bigger story and began pushing the narrative that the election had been stolen from her by collusion between Trump and Russia.
The operation had been so successful prior to the election that the FBI had sought and obtained the first four secret warrants to spy on Carter Page, a Trump campaign affiliate and Naval Academy grad whom the Clinton campaign operation had falsely fingered as a high-level conduit to Russia. It woulf later turn out that warrants had been sought on the basis of the false campaign information operation the Clinton campaign secretly purchased. But the Clinton campaign's involvement in the operation wasn't even known at that point.
The group that Clinton and the Democrats had hired to run the Russia operation had invented a dossier of salacious gossip, unsubstantiated innuendo, and punlicaly available information with the help of Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer. They shared the dossier or information within it with media outlets throughout D.C. and New York, but nobody could verify anything in it, and so it wasn't getting the traction they'd hoped for. The people pushing the collusion story needed to provide reporters a way to report on it even though the information in it was false or couldn't be proven true.
Before Trump's inauguration, Obama-era officials plotted to "brief" the dossier to both Obama and Trump, for the sole purpose of leaking the fact of the meeting to CNN. Once CNN reported on the meeting, BuzzFeed published the dossier, which told a story of massive collusion with the Trump campaign to steal the 2016 election.
In response to the information operation, Republicans in both the House and Senate began investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, just as Democratic operatives had hoped.
To keep the Trump administration from finding out what the Department of Justice had done during the campaign, much less what it planned to do during his administration, several key officials needed to be sidelined before they got access to the information about the operation.
Trump's incoming national security advisor, Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, who would have been told about the Justice Department's secret investigation into Trump, was accused of violating the Logan Act, an obscure and never-enforced law prohibiting private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments in a dispute with the United States. Not only did most legal experts agree the law un constitutionally violated the First Amendment, but it wouldn't have applied to Flynn regardless, because he was talking to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in his official capacity as working for the President-elect.
The media went wild with the story anyway. As Obama-era officials continued to leak against Flynn, nearly every Republican on the Hill sat idly by. "Congressional Republicans divided on whether to support Flynn," was the headline in the Washington Post. Senator Marco Rubio, one of the top Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Flynn's contact with the Russian ambassador would be a part of the ongoing bipartisan investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. Under mounting political pressure, Flynn was pushed out of the administration.
The Russia operation then moved against Jeff Sessions, the Alabama senator whom Trump had appointed his attorney general. Sessions had failed to mention two routine and uneventful meetings he held with Kislyak when he was senator. For this grave sin, the media suggested Sessions was a Russian spy. And yet, rather than mock the idea, many Republicans called on him to recuse himself from the oversight of the Department of Justice's Russia investigation. He did.
When the Democrats were able to get Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel to probe the Russia collusion story, Republicans cheered.
(Part II to follow.)
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History is being written and one day the American left will have a reckoning.
Hey Vic. Still waiting on 'the Kraken'. When?
You may want to check with Bob.
Battery operated boyfriend?
In what universe is the statement "battery operated boyfriend" a COC violation? What the FUCK? Can someone reel this guy in?
Damn Vic. You have no sense of humor. The winking face should have told you that I was just having a little fun with you for once.
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www.washingtonpost.com /opinions/2020/08/19/yes-there-was-collusion/
As it turns out, there really was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia
Jennifer Rubin 6-8 minutes 8/19/2020
The investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III ended anticlimactically. Although Mueller’s report detailed evidence of Russian interference and the Trump team’s welcome receipt of help from Moscow, there was insufficient evidence on the so-called “collusion” — that is conspiracy — to rise to the level of criminality. However, thanks to the misleading spin from Attorney General William P. Barr, the extent of the cooperation — collusion, in laymen’s terms — was obscured.
On Tuesday, the Republican-chaired Senate Intelligence Committee released a report with damning details of the extent of cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence operatives.
The Post reports : “The long-awaited report from the Senate Intelligence Committee contains dozens of new findings that appear to show more direct links between Trump associates and Russian intelligence, and pierces the president’s long-standing attempts to dismiss the Kremlin’s intervention on his behalf as a hoax.” These include a determination “that a longtime partner of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was, in fact, a Russian intelligence officer.”
Also according to The Post:
Just as Norman Eisen, former counsel for the House impeachment managers, detailed in his book “ A Case for the American People: The United States v. Donald J. Trump ,” the intelligence committee report suggests, according to The Post, that there was evidence Trump had lied about discussions concerning Roger Stone and the WikiLeaks release of stolen Democratic emails. “Collusion simply means Trump and those around him wrongly working together with Russia and its satellites, and the fact of that has long been apparent," Eisen told me. “Indeed, it was clear to anyone with eyes from the moment Trump asked, ‘Russia, if you’re listening.’ ” Eisen added, “The Senate report is a valuable contribution advancing our understanding, including explaining former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort’s nexus to Russian intelligence. The report further elucidates our understanding of collusion via WikiLeaks, which acted as a Russian cut-out.”
In addition, the Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016, with Manafort and Donald Trump Jr. included Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian attorney and, according to the report “part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part with elements of the Russian government.”
That Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the acting committee chairman, declared there was no evidence of collusion is belied by the mounds of evidence in the bombshell-filled report. Eisen tweeted, “I said it was collusion at the time and I have not wavered. Every additional piece of evidence that has come in has only proved it more.”
Max Bergmann , who runs the Center for American Progress’s Moscow Project told me, “He did it. He colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.” He added, “The bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee should erase any lingering doubt that Trump and his campaign deliberately sought out and coordinated with Russia and its influence operations during the election.” Moreover, “the report also demonstrates that the president of the United States is a clear counterintelligence threat to the country. He is not only compromised by his close contact with the Kremlin but he eagerly sought out covert Russian support in 2016.” Bergmann warns that “Trump is certainly willing to cheat again in 2020, and there is no doubt the Kremlin will do what it can to help him.”
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Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) acknowledged proof of the “alarming lengths to which Donald Trump and his campaign welcomed and relied on a hostile foreign power’s interference in the 2016 election.” However, Pelosi stressed Russia’s ongoing efforts to interfere with our election and Trump’s apparent unwillingness to defend our democracy. “America’s intelligence and law enforcement communities have made clear that the Russian Government is continuing to wage a massive intervention campaign to benefit the President, warning of a ‘365-days-a-year threat’ to compromise the 2020 elections and undermine our democracy.”
The bipartisan committee report should leave us with a number of troubling loose ends.
First, it is almost inconceivable that Mueller did not find the same factual tidbits that the Senate did. Whether the special counsel was unable to obtain cooperation of certain witnesses or felt constrained by Trump’s constant bullying is unknown. We come away with the conclusion that he did not find the facts that were there, and that he did not explain with enough clarity and urgency what significance they had.
Second, Rubio and every Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee had access to information pointing to a clear pattern of collusion. For them to continue to defend Trump, look the other way when more evidence of improper conduct with a foreign government (i.e., Ukraine ) and impugn Democrats for following the facts is nothing short of reprehensible.
Finally, we are left with the question of why Trump behaved as he did. Was he trying to cement a business deal underway during the 2016 campaign, or was he simply disloyal to the United States, willing to use an enemy’s help and then lie to cover it up? Given the president’s current behavior and his willingness to wreak havoc on our elections to hold on to power, I suspect it is the latter. Whatever the reason, as Eisen put it: “With this latest and bipartisan exposure of the whole sordid tale, there can be no remaining doubt. Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia to help them win the 2016 election.”
This doesnt even mention the most obvious collusion of all - Trump Jr, Kushner , and Manafort meeting Russians at Trump headquarters for the purpose of receiving Russian government produced dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Which you always memtion and we always shoot down.
lol
Always LOL
Jenifer Rubin is the dumbest person in journalism.
Nice try. They got caught.
Starting in 2014 and continuing right up to election day 2016 Trump was secretly negotiating with the Russian government to build a Trump Tower in...Moscow!
Trump even offered Putin the bribe of a penthouse!
Were the FBI & CIA supposed to look the other way?
At the building of a hotel?
It was never a part of there fake investigations
Trump practically begged to be investigated and that is the whole point. The origins of the FBI and CIA and other foreign intelligence services investigating Trump was completely legit because Trump and Co were actively seeking out clandestine agents of the Russian government. What don't you get about that?
In America a crime is required before investigations are to take place.
No, suspicious activity can legitimately cause criminal investigations and the sharing of intelligence to our enemies is a crime...
When Trump and Co sought out all of those clandestine members of Russian Intelligence Services they then had to be investigated...
Who was charged with the crime of sharing election stats?
When Trump and Co sought out all of those clandestine members of Russian Intelligence Services they then had to be investigated...
You have that backwards. Russians sought them out....Russians sponsored by Fusion GPS.
They got caught!
WRONGO! CIA and FBI investigations of the Trump organization predate the campaign...
We know about the counter intelligence investigation that was only a couterintelligence investigation because such investigations don't need a criminal predicate. All of it came from that little scheme of Hillary's campaign and the conviction of Trump haters that he must have done something!
Don't worry we'll get to all of that history in Part II.
Trump organization. And what, pray tell, were they investigating? Got a link or twelve?
They were spying on private citizens and should have been prosecuted for it.
So who was it telling John that he is obsessed with donald and cannot let it go...
Yet here we are.....