We must admit that one rapid consequence of Barr's "summary" of the Mueller report has been a massive mindfuck, mainly amongst the Neolib corporo media. But also affecting too many (originally) critical pundits in said media, including Joe Scarborough and George Will. Both now seem to believe "democracy has been vindicated" on the basis of a 3 1/2 page crib sheet from Barr, and all is well in the land of the free and home of the brave. Well, it's no where near clear that Barr's effort was anything more than a get out of jail free card for Trump . Worse, a license for this thug to commit even more depredations on our nation - even as it gives license for the rat protectors to mount specious investigations of their own. Into who or what? Well, Hillary Clinton - loser of the 2016 dumpster fire election!
Thus one beholds imps like the WSJ's William McGurn and lesser moron Lindsey Graham, charging forward with crimes against Clinton under nutso conspiracy ideations. They have now proven they've joined the "pizzagate" crackpot wing of the Republican party. McGurn, in his WSJ column yesterday ('Don't Lock Hillary Up', p. A15) claims:
"Thanks to two lucky breaks Hillary Clinton got away with political murder in 2016. The biggest break came when opposition research produced by one of her hired hands ended up being used by the FBI to spy on her rival's campaign".
Ok, hold strain there, Billy. We know you've already shown ample signs of senility and dementia, but we can't let that twaddle pass - even in a WSJ op -ed. Hard as it is for McGurn to wrap his febrile brain around, the fact is the Fusion GPS oppo research was originally launched by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news site. The relevant WSJ editorial at the time noted it was funded by big GOP donor Paul Singer. Singer wanted oppo research done on the Donald - a two bit Queens' chiseler and lowlife he didn't trust. Singer and a group of old guard GOP donors hired Fusion to do the job of digging up dirt on the Queens' real estate crime boss and scumball.
Subsequently, after Trump won the Repub primary, the material was handed off to the Clinton campaign. This was NOT in any way sinister or illegal as McGurn tries to portray - and certainly not a whit to do with "political murder" . Nor in any way conspiratorial, certainly like seeking the help of a hostile foreign power to meddle in a presidential campaign. Like Trump, who up to now has not disdained or objected to the Russians' help.
What was illegal was the Trump team holding more than 100 meetings - that we now know of - with Russians, including GRU intelligence agents. Specifically, as the NY Times has shown, "Trump and His Associates Had More Than 100 Contacts With Russians Before the Inauguration,"
If Mueller lacked the intestinal fortitude to call out what was staring him in the face - in terms of Trump's conspiracy with Putin and the Russkies - then that's on him. We can say he was the wrong guy for the job. Or maybe he fell victim to membership in the 'chickenshit club" noted several posts earlier. See e.g.
But don't blame Adam Schiff for now sticking to the facts, and open evidence for what Trump has thus far gotten away with.
As for McGurn's complaint about the FBI getting involved, that wasn't because of the Clinton team - or the Steele dossier. That was because multiple personae in Trump's campaign orbit were making contact with GRU agents. (Which led Mueller to indict no fewer than 12 of them last summer.) What? Everyone all of a sudden forgot that? Did Barr's BS summary spatter that much gray matter in the nation's collective hippocampus?
We know that contacts were made by at least 17 campaign officials and advisers who had contacts with Russian nationals and Wikileaks intermediaries. Nor were these merely crumpets and tea gatherings at the (Trump) Tower.
Further, foreign intercepts of meetings of Trump cronies, e.g. Carter Page, with Russian (GRU) agents meant that the U.S. FBI had to enter the picture with its own FISA warrants, surveillance, etc. Not to do so would have violated agreements with foreign intel sources, assets, and would have amounted to dereliction of duty.
Hence, there was no evil conspiracy by the FBI. It only exists in McGurn's mind as when he babbles later "there are those Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Warrants the FBI took out on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page". Uh, no, "there aren't." The FBI needed to do a surveillance on Page after he disclosed he was a Russkie stooge by making contacts with the GRU.
So don't even think of egging Graham on to instigate another special counsel (and another investigation) to go after Clinton. That dog is done and will no longer hunt.
McGurn then names the second "lucky break" enabling Hillary to "get away with political murder" (ibid.):
"She'd also lucked out in early July when the FBI director himself, even though he lacked the authority to do so, publicly and personally cleared her of any charges for having taken her emails as secretary of state off grid."
Ok, let's leave out for the moment that Ivanka and Jared have done the same - indeed worse - not even bothering to try to secure their messages on What's App. But never mind the double standard, in his high dudgeon and dementia McGurn seems to forget then FBI head Comey dumped all over Hillary with a 2nd interjection 10 days BEFORE the General Election!
Most sentient observers of normal intelligence took that to be a totally undesirable intrusion that essentially sunk whatever chances Hillary had to win. Seems to me McGurn - and other Trumpies- ought to be thanking Comey for helping knock HRC out instead of accusing her of "political murder" and "putting fingers on the scales of the election." What planet or parallel universe do these mutts inhabit anyway?
Most sentient observers of normal intelligence took that to be a totally undesirable intrusion that essentially sunk whatever chances Hillary had to win. Seems to me McGurn - and other Trumpies- ought to be thanking Comey for helping knock HRC out instead of accusing her of "political murder" and "putting fingers on the scales of the election." What planet or parallel universe do these mutts inhabit anyway?
But at least McGurn is gracious enough to admit that the Trumpies and their goons shouldn't lock her up.
Then there is the cowardly poltroon and political pipsqueak Lindsey Graham, also referenced in the piece. He also seeks to be magnanimous...sort of...sputtering :
"I'm not so much worried about retrying her, but I want to make sure the public understands that she got away with something they wouldn't get away with."
Oh, please, you ridiculous piece of shit! She "got away" with nothing, She fucking lost! Get over it! Trump, meanwhile, got away with blatant conspiracy with the Russians and is still getting away with crimes and misdemeanors galore - every damned day. As former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah put it back in January in an MSNBC appearance:
"Remember that GRU indictment - if you go back to that- one of the objects of the conspiracy is not just hacking but hacking and disseminating. You can't look at them alone, you have to go back to everything we know, the Trump Tower meeting, the calling out by Trump to Russia (to grab Hillary's emails)...there's just so many other things."
Note here the crimes to do with Hillary's emails were not on her side, but Trump's goons hacking them in the first place, especially after he egged on Russian bad actors, e.g. on July 27, 2016:
"I will tell you this, Russia if you're listening, I hope that you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. You will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens."
The emails showed Russkie contact and Brit music promoter Rob Goldstone telling Trump's dumbo son Don Jr. that “the crown prosecutor of Russia” had offered “to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father”.
Goldstone added, in the exchange of June 3rd, 2016: “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
He didn't mince words or soft soap it, absolutely pointing out the "support for Mr. Trump". Any sensible individual with more than air between the ears would have run - not walked - to the nearest FBI office and turned in the material. What did Don Jr. do instead?
Seventeen minutes later, the jug-headed imp welcomed the email with the reply: “If it’s what you say, I love it, especially later in the summer.” He then forwarded the incriminating material to his comrades in crime, as his email betrays:
------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Donald Trump Jr.
Sent: Yesterday, June 8, 2016, 12: 55 p.m.
To: Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort
Subject: FW: Russia - Clinton - Private and Confidential
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Just a few weeks later the first batch of DNC emails were released. If that isn't conspiracy - as Bill Maher so quaintly put it Friday night, then "what the fuck is it?"
Goldstone added, in the exchange of June 3rd, 2016: “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
He didn't mince words or soft soap it, absolutely pointing out the "support for Mr. Trump". Any sensible individual with more than air between the ears would have run - not walked - to the nearest FBI office and turned in the material. What did Don Jr. do instead?
Seventeen minutes later, the jug-headed imp welcomed the email with the reply: “If it’s what you say, I love it, especially later in the summer.” He then forwarded the incriminating material to his comrades in crime, as his email betrays:
------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Donald Trump Jr.
Sent: Yesterday, June 8, 2016, 12: 55 p.m.
To: Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort
Subject: FW: Russia - Clinton - Private and Confidential
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Just a few weeks later the first batch of DNC emails were released. If that isn't conspiracy - as Bill Maher so quaintly put it Friday night, then "what the fuck is it?"
Still not buying it? Let's refer to the words of Mueller's own indictment of the Russkie GRU agents from last summer:
According to the indictment:
"On or about July 27, 2016, the conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts on a domain hosted by a third party provider and used by Clinton's personal office. They also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton campaign. '
"On or about July 27, 2016, the conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts on a domain hosted by a third party provider and used by Clinton's personal office. They also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton campaign. '
Got the lingo there? Conspirators! Of course, this referred to the gang of GRU hackers and thugs doing the spearphishing. But were they just doing it by coincidence or happenstance? No, they did it the very same day Traitor Trump appeared in front of the media cameras and pleaded for the Russians to grab Hillary's emails. Only a certified imbecile would not infer conspiracy or at least coordination here, certainly after the Trump Tower meet.
So why didn't Mueller call it out? Well as I pointed out in my March 30 post on the 'Chickenshit theory', quoting Larry Beinhart:
"White collar cases are the toughest to make and there are multiple reasons for this. They tend to take place in linguistic fogs. Instead of money taken at the point of a gun, it's taken by promises and claims that can be made to appear as merely over-ambitious, misunderstandings of complex rules, just careless, or actually made by underlings."
I added:
It's all about manipulating the language so that - by the end of the judicial process- there is no clear proof "beyond a reasonable doubt" by which to rest a case. In other words, like the agnotologists who muddied the waters on the causes of climate change - delaying action by sowing doubts for decades- it's nearly impossible to prove a crime attributed to a white collar crook. Especially one with tons of cash to toss around, i.e. to buy the best lawyers, meaning the best at manipulating the language for their client's own ends.
So, in effect, the semantic fog succeeds in diluting evidence to the point a special prosecutor may not be willing to use it. But bear in mind Carl Sagan's oft repeated quote: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
And now, given Mueller's finding for "absence of evidence" when faced with language distortion by Trump's lawyers, we see their side emboldened. McGurn and that execrable punk Graham want to turn the tables on Hillary for "political murder" and "putting fingers on the election scales". David Corn, who's done extensive work on the Trump- Russia links has accepted none of it:
So why didn't Mueller call it out? Well as I pointed out in my March 30 post on the 'Chickenshit theory', quoting Larry Beinhart:
"White collar cases are the toughest to make and there are multiple reasons for this. They tend to take place in linguistic fogs. Instead of money taken at the point of a gun, it's taken by promises and claims that can be made to appear as merely over-ambitious, misunderstandings of complex rules, just careless, or actually made by underlings."
I added:
It's all about manipulating the language so that - by the end of the judicial process- there is no clear proof "beyond a reasonable doubt" by which to rest a case. In other words, like the agnotologists who muddied the waters on the causes of climate change - delaying action by sowing doubts for decades- it's nearly impossible to prove a crime attributed to a white collar crook. Especially one with tons of cash to toss around, i.e. to buy the best lawyers, meaning the best at manipulating the language for their client's own ends.
So, in effect, the semantic fog succeeds in diluting evidence to the point a special prosecutor may not be willing to use it. But bear in mind Carl Sagan's oft repeated quote: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
And now, given Mueller's finding for "absence of evidence" when faced with language distortion by Trump's lawyers, we see their side emboldened. McGurn and that execrable punk Graham want to turn the tables on Hillary for "political murder" and "putting fingers on the election scales". David Corn, who's done extensive work on the Trump- Russia links has accepted none of it:
"Trump and his minions have kept saying this didn't really happen, so in a lot of ways this is an indictment of Donald Trump, of all the people who said the Russia attack never happened. Here we have it in granular detail. Read between the lines of this indictment and there's the other half of the equation. That throughout the campaign, and while the attack was going on, Donald Trump and his lieutenants were saying it's not happening. Even when he was briefed by U.S. intelligence he came out and said, 'nope, nothing happening, could be a 400 pound guy, we don't know that it's Russia'
Well, now we know it's Russia. Now we know while they were doing this he was providing cover, he was covering up what they were doing, which was for his benefit. "
But we're not done. Graham is so beside himself with self-righteous punkery and faux outrage at Adam Schiff's sticking to the conspiracy crime that he had the nerve to squawk to McGurn:
"Mr. Schiff really does represent the Oliver Stone wing of the Democratic Party".
Of course, this imbecile probably only has the faintest inkling that it was Stone's film 'JFK' (which he always said was "a counter myth to the myth of the Warren Report") actually paved the way for the JFK Records Act and the millions of files that have since been released from the National Archives. Among those, that Clay Shaw (under the alias "Clay Bertrand") was really a CIA contract agent as Jim Garrison had shown. As then released CIA Doc. (JFK 1993: 6.28.16.07.26.560280) noted:
"A memorandum marked for files says that J. Monroe Sullivan, #280201, was granted a covert security approval as of 10 December 1962 so he could be used in Project QKCHANT [Clay L. Shaw has #402897]"
"A memorandum marked for files says that J. Monroe Sullivan, #280201, was granted a covert security approval as of 10 December 1962 so he could be used in Project QKCHANT [Clay L. Shaw has #402897]"
Does Lindsey know any of this? Of course not! Otherwise he'd not be expelling brain farts about Adam Schiff being from the "Oliver Stone' wing of the Democrats which in retrospect turns out to be a compliment to perspicuity and dogged persistence to get at truth.
As opposed to being a collapsible, spineless worm like Graham, who wifey has even described as akin to a rotten shellfish, "white, slimy all over and yellow on the inside." And especially as this South Carolina putz still wants to appoint his own special counsel to now investigate Hillary.
Echoes of Devin Nunes? Maybe, even a clone. Quislings of a yellow feather stick together, after all. And almost certainly part of the whackadoodle, Pizzagate wing of the Repuke party.
Stay tuned because one thing Barr did accomplish with his inane, skewed summary Mueller's report is to open the floodgates to even more polarization.
See also:
As opposed to being a collapsible, spineless worm like Graham, who wifey has even described as akin to a rotten shellfish, "white, slimy all over and yellow on the inside." And especially as this South Carolina putz still wants to appoint his own special counsel to now investigate Hillary.
Echoes of Devin Nunes? Maybe, even a clone. Quislings of a yellow feather stick together, after all. And almost certainly part of the whackadoodle, Pizzagate wing of the Repuke party.
Stay tuned because one thing Barr did accomplish with his inane, skewed summary Mueller's report is to open the floodgates to even more polarization.
See also:
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