Trump - Officially A Pawn & Intel Asset For Putin And The Russsians

The Traitor-in- Chief - Putin's Personal Puppet - who will do or say anything to provide cover for his master.

"The attempts by Giuliani and others to say 'oh no American involvement', is one hundred percent wrong. We now have it documented what transpired now on the Russian side, but we are within kissing distance of the final hook between the Russian government and the Trump campaign."

Harry Litman, former U.S. Attorney on All In last  night.


Even as the Trump protection media insist he is a king  -  e.g. Kimberly Strassel's WSJ op-ed Friday, that "King" Trump can cut taxes on his own without congress, and today's WSJ  editorial ('After The Strzok Stonewall', p. A12) that  Pete Strzok "stonewalled" so Trump can declassify any and all files  "to learn the truth of what really happened in 2016". In fact,  we already know what happened from the Mueller probe indictment of 12 officers from the GRU intelligence directorate,  yesterday. So the Trump protection alliance can spin all the BS it wants but no one with sense and an IQ over room temperature is buying it.  Trump supporters, voters excepted, who as Harvard Professor Harvey Mansfield put it, "come from the lower half of the IQ curve".(WSJ,  Weekend Interview, March 31).

Let's cut all the Foxite balderdash and cut to the chase: Anyone with more than air between their ears now KNOWS Trump is a goddamned traitor and deserves hanging from the nearest tree, especially if he now goes on to meet Vladimir Putin in secret. This isn't "hyperbole"  or unfair characterization but calling a spade a spade. It is straight unvarnished reality after the orange ape tried to cover for his Russkie collaborators by tossing out the "witch hunt" sound bite on being informed (2 days in advance of its public release) of the latest Mueller indictment.  This was of 12 Russian Military Intelligence officers for whom the names, ranks and roles were even specified . This,  barely 72 hours before the traitor was to hold his one -on- one with Putin.  And despite calls for Trump to cancel his coming secret meet with Putin, we know a traitor never surrenders his cover unless he's caught flat- footed, to the extent he can be hung without question.

True to a Traitor's form, instead of obeying the demands to cancel the covert Putin meeting, in which we'll have no remote idea what he's giving away, Trump doubled down his cover (see David Corn's take at end of post).  Rather than acknowledge the detrimental optics for a private Putin meet, like a true traitor he disparaged the news of the Mueller indictment at a press conference with Therese May;

"I think I have a very good relationship with President Putin.  I think we're being hurt very badly by this witch hunt, I would call it the rigged witch hunt. You know,  in the United States we have this pure stupidity but it makes it very hard to do something with Russia"

Oh, you mean like removing all sanctions imposed, without drawing scrutiny and hyper attention? Is that what's made 'very hard', Mr. Traitor?   Or, do you mean it will be very hard for Russia to help you win in 2020?   Hopefully, maybe by then you'll be hanging from the tallest tree in D.C.

As former assistant Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks put it on All In: "We have no witches here, but we do have a male WARLOCK and his head is almost in the noose. Along with his other warlocks.":

Interestingly,  Mueller's indictment -   the most detailed accusation by the American government to date of the Russian government’s 2016 election interference - came mere hours before Londoners protested the arrival of the treasonous orange maggot in their country,  with an inflatable Baby Trump blimp, e.g.



The Baby Trump captured everything odious about this degenerate, from his infantile, narcissistic nature, to his hideous orange hue via fake tanning creams,  to the incessant need to have his Twitter feed at hand. And his big open yap which never ceases bloviating bullshit and self inflation.

Meanwhile, Mueller's indictment revealed for the first time that a team of Russian Military Intelligence hackers- members of the GRU-  initiated their disruption efforts as early as March, 2016,  or 8 months before the election, and targeting 300 people. This was also around the same time Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos  learned from an Aussie diplomat the Russians possessed "dirt" on Clinton.

Mueller released the indictment day before Trump's planned secret sit down with Putin, obviously as a warning shot over Trump's bow, to behave himself. Or else.  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. '

Most interesting, this happened on the very same day Traitor Trump appeared in front of the media cameras and pleaded with Russia to hack Hillary's emails.  In front of millions, the Orange Turd had baldly blurted:

"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."

So Trump, in full public view, asked Russia to hack his political opponent.  Did this just come out of the blue as a brain fart blurt? Not at all, given we know Russia has been funding Trump since the late 1980s.  On account of that funding and other Kompromat materials (e.g. the piss video revealed in the Steele dossier), we know Donnie Dotard is  Putin's puppet,  with multiple strings that can be puled at will.

As per The New Republic (Aug./Sept. 2017, . p. 29):

"A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, or even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money .....Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics....It's entirely possible that Trump was never more than a convenient patsy for Russian oligarchs and mobsters."

 And his July 27 invitation to hack Hillary's emails disclosed he was also by then (likely even before) a convenient gopher, puppet and collaborator to the Russkies, who he hoped would help deliver the White House via enough electoral votes in key swing states. Hell, it's been known since earlier this year that Mueller's investigators have been asking witnesses if Trump was advised to make the comment about the Clinton emails from someone outside his campaign.  So Trump tried to coordinate the release of the emails to do the most damage to Clinton, and the GRU provided him with all the material.

In the indictment (see  end of post) we now know one GRU unit engaged in active cyber operations by stealing information, while a second, different unit was responsible for disseminating the stolen information.  Much of this was done via the entity known as "Guccifer 2.0" - who then passed the information on to Wikileaks.

I admit that at the time the initial  (DNC) hacking incidents were exposed (two days before the Clinton email hacks), I wasn't 100 percent convinced it was the Russians, I posted about it (e.g. July 25th, 2016) and wrote at the time:

There was a "claim" - still no evidence - by a DNC -hired bunch of "experts" ('CrowdStrike") that the DNC's email system was breached by "Russian hackers". Even if true, and I haven't seen anything to convince me yet, this doesn't mean the Russian government or Putin was behind it. Further, people need to read this before they jump on that suspicious political meme bandwagon:

http://www.csoonline.com/article/3084594/security/dnc-hacker-slams-crowdstrike-publishes-opposition-memo-on-donald-trump.html

So, until the illustrious 'CrowdStrike' team can provide firm evidence that Guccifer 2.0 was in fact Russian or the "Russian hackers" I will withhold accepting the DNC claim."
  
However, I now believe the case has been made and the details in the indictment have convinced me (at last) we can blame the Russkies for those early hacks.  Also, that Wikileaks was collaborating as when they responded to Guccifer 2.0", i.e.:

"Send any new material (stolen from the DNC) here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact then what you are doing."

That single statement totally altered my perceptions of Wikileaks, from a respectable group  of global citizens out to get the truth (as when they exposed the horrific videos of U.S. helicopter gunships slaughtering civilian Iraqis some 10 years ago), to a detestable bunch of vermin cooperating to undermine a U.S. election.

We now return to the core issue: Was the  July 27, 2016  televised Trump invitation to the Russkies a signal sent to the GRU to launch its hack attack? We don't know, but it sure appears there's enough 'smoke' to infer a fire, one started by the Donald.

According to journalist David Corn, appearing on All In last night, made these remarks concerning the Mueller indictments:

"What this is is a reminder of reality.  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 iindictment 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. "

In other words, Trump - aka "the Donald" - is effectively a Russian intelligence asset and blatant actor on Putin's behalf, to undermine the U.S. national security interests. This is by way of enabling meddling in our elections to propel Trump to power and act as said agent on Putin's behalf, as well as disrupting friendly alliances and kowtowing to autocrats and dictators - especially Putin.

Readers can believe what they will, I believe this guy should be hung.

[Read the indictment here.]

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/elizabeth-preza/80167/he-doesn-t-read-ex-us-ambassador-to-russia-details-putin-s-strategic-advantage-over-trump-ahead-of-

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/cody-fenwick/80138/a-moment-in-american-history-ex-gop-lawmaker-argues-muellers-latest-charges-should-make-us-fearful-of-

Excerpt:

"The president has known for days about this and he did not pivot in the press conference today to change his message nor is he changing the meeting," he continued. "And what Americans should feel today — and I say this carefully — but we should feel fear. The Department of Justice today issued a statement on behalf of the United States government saying that one of our greatest adversaries in the world, Russia, had intelligence agents interfere with our elections. ... We should be fearful about the allegation. We should be fearful about the statement of facts. At the end of the day, we should be fearful we have a president who has known about this and did not change his behavior."

AND:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/chiara-giaccari/80153/the-trump-putin-helsinki-summit-why-a-meeting-behind-closed-doors
 

What Happened To Civility? TRUMP!

                     "I wanna punch demonstrators in the face, knock out teeth!"



"'Roseanne' was not canceled because it is mean or HORRIBLE to compare a black person to n ape (though it is both of those things). It was canceled because it carries the weight of past horrors and current atrocities - because comparing a black person to an ape nods to an historically rooted yet increasingly emboldened far right movement whose chosen figurehead - Donald Trump -is the president of the United States.

Because it is our collective responsibility not to let that movement win, to fight to be a better country and right now cultural power is all we have. ...Canceling 'Roseanne' is not society regulating 'mean speech'; it is regulating our collective morality so we don't atrophy into a moral vacuum."  

- Lindy West, NY Times. June 1, p. A23.

It's truly laughable to behold all the Righties now in high dudgeon and overcome by self-righteous fervor after Samantha Bee's little 48 second riff on Ivanka Trump on TBS.  These goddamned hypocrites are intent on making a case for a "double standard" despite Bee delivering one scripted word (part of her team's effort) as opposed to randomly spewing racial hate in tweets like Roseanne Barr.   To me,  the monologues comedians use as vehicles of outrage -such as Michelle Wolf's and now Samantha Bee's-   are no biggies because they are expressing vehement disdain at a totally corrupt and gangster administration that not only flouts norms, but laws,  as it enriches itself while it makes fools of a backward, gullible base. Just look at the trade war the Dotard has begun. Do any of his groupies really believe it won't affect them, their lives?  Look at the drastic limitations of H2B visas which are impacting businesses adversely across the country. To the point it will jeopardize economic growth, and the life quality of Dotard's base.

Getting back to Samantha Bee, she was expressing righteous anger and outrage at the Trump border policy of ripping small children from their migrant parents and separating them - then dispatching the kids to often cold, distant facilities.

Bee delivered her statement with the poster 'Migrant Kids' in the background and said:

"Tearing children away from their parents is so evil,  it's the inciting incident in almost every movie we've ever cared about  You know, Ivanka, that's a beautiful photo of you and your child, but let me just say, one mother to another, do something about your father's disgusting immigration practices,  you feckless c***!"

Outrageous? Yeah, ok, maybe. But understandable in context, and as CNN's Peggy Drexler has pointed out:

"Bee is not Barr — she is not spewing random and racist, anti-Semitic, conspiracy-theory views over years on Twitter, as Barr  has, and often in the service of supporting the President's policies. Nor, let's be honest, are we living in a time of particularly polite discourse. .  . It's important, too, to remember that Bee is a comedian known for delivering a standup monologue which, like that of other comedians, often uses outrageous, boundary-pushing and, to some, offensive comedy to make strong points about politics. "

The point here is to distinguish vulgarity from overt racism such as Barr delivered. Also, to process that Barr just tweeted her foul racist hits on Valerie Jarrett out of the blue, because the little racist demon nestled in her lizard brain prompted it. Meanwhile, Bee was reacting to a genuine abomination which has already seen 658 kids ripped from their parents' arms at the border because the degenerate Trump cabal want to punish migrants for even attempting to come here.

Indeed, before accepting an award last night for her show 'Full Frontal', Bee made the following point regarding how the comment would be received: 

"We spent the day wrestling with the repercussions of one bad word, when we all should have spent the day incensed that as a nation we are wrenching children from their parents."

Spot on and accurate!  But typical now when perceptions and processing of events have fallen down a rabbit hole thanks to the traitor and tyrant fouling the highest office in the land. Who should be setting the best tone, but is defecating on civility and norms with each tweet literally and setting the worst. Those who are aghast and against this perfidy may go overboard at times, like Bee, Michelle Wolf and even yours truly, but our visceral, vehemence ought to be grasped in context. Not made the orphan example of some ludicrous existence of a "double standard" by the same despicables who applaud Trump's policies.

Let us agree then that one of the roles of a President is to project decorum and respect for this office, and from this office to the world - and to his fellow citizens.  But over the past 16 months of the Trump occupation he has done exactly the opposite.  From spewing the most verminous, atrocious lies, such as blaming Dems for the separation of kids from parents at the border - to attacking the very rule of law by undermining his own Dept. of Justice. The latter has included not only ginning up fake issues like "spygate" - which even House oversight committee chair Trey Gowdy now concedes  is spurious - to granting mock pardons outside the brief and policies of the DOJ.   With every move we see a fell gangster in office, who needs to be removed in the most expeditious way possible, and hopefully soon - before this nation falls into total civil disorder, never mind a constitutional crisis (which I believe is ongoing) 

Sadly, Peggy Drexler's point that we will now be mostly consumed by one bad word that Bee used in a spasm of rage, instead of on the odious immigration policy, is coming to pass.  But this is understandable given we have never been a people known for judiciously weighing actions and the ultimate  import of issues.  Often letting them be clouded or trumped by trivial distractions.  

The warning last night from a number of pundits (E.g. Jill Wine-Banks, Matthew Miller)  that our democracy is being weakened by those at the top should not be taken lightly. Every lie they spew, every vile policy they enact and enforce, and every attack made on the rule of law - including Trump's specious "pardons" -  is another nail in the coffin of our Republic. In the case of the latter, as Lawrence Tribe, David Corn, Matt Miller and others have warned, Trump is "discrediting this institution of his own government"  and his issuance of these pardons is a "complete perversion of the pardon process".  The combined effect of which is to delegitimize one branch of government - his own. This is given he's using these pardons to "punish prosecutors who brought the original cases" against the convicted and admitted culprits. (Dinesh D'Souza, for example, already admitted wrongdoing.)

Since civility will be in greater regress if democracy fails, there must be payback for the Trumpies' actions. The desire to move toward civility - while worthy in itself- cannot be used as a smokescreen (or bludgeon)  to inhibit or prevent robust outrage or protest when and where it's justified, such as in the case of these draconian immigration practices - which cross the line into proto-Nazism.

Those who rue the absence of civility and decency ought to have thought hard about those virtues before electing Trump, the antithesis of both.  As we've been reminded by smirkingchip.com blogger Roy Edelson about Trump's behavior during the campaign, e.g.

"In Burlington,, Vermont, Trump ordered his security personnel to 'Throw them (protesters) out into the cold.  Don’t give them their coats. No coats! Confiscate their coats. 

In Las Vegas, Nevada, he told the crowd, 'I’d like to punch him in the face” and reminisced about earlier days when demonstrators would be “carried out on stretchers.”

 Carried out on stretchers.  Just like our nation is about to be now, thanks to millions of low IQ muggles voting into power a monstrous maggot pussy grabber.

See also:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/05/how-late-night-comedy-alienated-conservatives-made-liberals-smug-and-fueled-the-rise-of-trump/521472/

And:

https://www.salon.com/2018/06/01/trumps-sexist-samantha-bee-double-standard-ted-nugent-calls-hillary-clinton-a-ct-gets-wh-invite/

Bob Mueller Scuttles Russia "Hoax" Meme With Indictment Of 13 Russian Operatives

Bob Mueller - left - with his 13 indictments of Russian intel operatives shows the Dotard the Russian intervention in 2016 election is no "hoax".

Yesterday was a bad day for all the purveyors of the "Russian election interference is a hoax" meme - including the Fox & Friends 3 stooges, and the WSJ's  stable of resident deniers (William McGurn, Kimberley Strassel, Dan Henninger, and Holman Jenkins).  The reason?  Robert Mueller, announced that thirteen Russians have been criminally charged for interfering in the 2016 U.S. election to help catapult Donald Trump into office.  As Shepard Smith  - the only FOX News host with any integrity -  put it in his Friday p.m. hour: "Mr. President you can no longer say this Russian campaign  interference is a hoax."     Shep didn't go so far as to allege any witting Trumpie conspirators, but he did mention (several times) how the 37 page detailed indictment referenced "co-conspirators".  

Mueller alleged that Russian operatives “communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign”, but the indictment did not address the question of whether anyone else in Trump’s team had knowingly colluded.  But let's be frank, these are minor details which will soon be "the next shoes to drop" as Mueller'e team consolidates and presents its abundance of evidence.

One defendant, Irina Kaverzina, is accused of admitting her involvement in the operation and a subsequent coverup in an email to a relative in September last year, after Mueller’s inquiry had begun. “We had a slight crisis here at work: the FBI busted our activity,” Kaverzina allegedly wrote, “so I got preoccupied with covering tracks together with the colleagues.”

Others  charged were Mikhail Ivanovich Bystrov, Mikhail Leonidovich Burchik, Aleksandra Yuryevna Krylova, Anna Vladislavovna Bogacheva, Sergey Pavlovich Polozov, Maria Anatolyevna Bovda, Robert Sergeyevich Bovda, Dzheykhun Nasimi Ogly Aslanov, Vadim Vladimirovich Podkopaev, Gleb Igorevitch Vasilchenko, Irina Viktorovna Kaverzina, Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin and Vladimir Venkov.  All were charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States. Three defendants were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and five defendants were charged with aggravated identity theft.


Separately, Mueller’s office announced that Richard Pinedo, of Santa Paula, California, had pleaded guilty to identity fraud. Pinedo, 28, admitted to running a website that offered stolen identities to help customers get around the security measures of major online payment sites.  Basically, Pinedo was responsible for facilitating monetary support for the Russkie operations by making it possible for dumb Americans to PayPal donate or buy ad space on assorted (VPN) platforms  to air bogus anti-Hillary or pro-Trump material. 

Viktorovich Prigozhin is accused of using companies he controlled – including Concord Management and Consulting, and Concord Catering – to finance the operations against the US. The operation at one stage had a monthly budget of $1.25m, according to Mueller, which paid for operatives’ salaries and bonuses.

So what were the deviant Russkies up to?  Basically, sophisticated  psychological and information warfare to snare as many gullible or clueless Americans as possible to help  stir up shit storms and internecine hatreds during the 2016 campaign.  For example,

In August 2016, Russian operatives communicated with Trump campaign staff in Florida through their “@donaldtrump.com” email addresses to coordinate a series of pro-Trump rallies in the state, according to Mueller, and then bought advertisements on social media to promote the events.  At one rally in West Palm Beach, a Russian operative is even alleged to have paid Americans to build a cage on a flatbed truck and to have an actor posing as "Killary"  in a prison uniform stand inside.

Thousands of 'Muricans turned into instant raving zombies screaming "YESSS!" amd made their own signs e,g, "Lock her up!" as divisions rent the country asunder.  But that was merely the beginning, and the Russians had planned their gambit from 2014. 

The Russians also worked to suppress turnout among ethnic minority voters. They  created an Instagram account posing as “Woke Blacks” and railed against the notion that African Americans should choose Clinton as “the lesser of two devils” against Trump.  Then in early November 2016, according to the indictment, the Russian operatives used bogus “United Muslims of America” social media accounts to claim that “American Muslims [are] boycotting elections today.”

Following Trump’s victory, the Russian operation promoted allegations of voter fraud by the Democratic party, according to Mueller’s team. Around that time, Trump repeatedly claimed without evidence that he would have won the popular vote if not for large-scale voter fraud.  As former Justice Dept. spokesman Matt Miller pointed out last night on All In, this was right out of the KGB-FSB playbook, i.e. to cast doubt on the integrity of the election process. It's worked in eastern Europe to the point of getting a number of Rightist authoritarians into power - including most recently in Austria.

In a statement on Friday, Trump suggested that what he called “outlandish partisan attacks, wild and false allegations, and far-fetched theories” relating to possible collusion were serving to further the Russian agenda.  But in fact, it's been Trump's obstinacy in imposing sanctions or doing anything to halt the next assault - on the midterms this year- that have done most to further the Russian agenda. That and continually denying any involvement by hitherto calling it a "hoax".  Right out of the Kremlin  agitprop playbook according to Matt Miller, former DOJ guy.

One could also suspect the WSJ editors of operating from the same playbook. Cue their  delirious, irritating, spin-infused  editorial today ('The Russia Indictments', p. A16) which also continued to bamboozle with the likes of this twaddle

"The 37- page indictment contains no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign but it does show a systematic effort to discredit the results of the 2016 election, On the evidence so far President Trump has been the biggest victim of that effort."

This absurd take is oblivious to the fact the Russians wanted a TRUMP win, not a Hillary Clinton win  - and how all the operatives in the U.S. were working feverishly to attain it  Hence, it's difficult to process this doggerel as little Donnie Doturd being the "victim" when he was the one handed the election based on a 77,000 voter differential in three states.  A margin so narrow that it can be easily explained by adept hacking into states' voter rolls, e.g. to disqualify or remove voter names.

As for the "no evidence of collusion" claim, the WSJ is too quick to jump on the premature conclusion bandwagon,  forgetting that  evidence of absence doesn't mean absence of evidence.  As former Watergate assistant prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks spelled it out last night on 'Last Word', this is only the beginning, adding:

"The indictments show there's a reason why there's been an obstruction of justice. We now have proof that the Russians meddled and that there was at least unwitting cooperation with Americans including Trump campaign aides.  

But that's not the end of it Just because this indictment doesn't set if forth doesn't mean there's not another one coming, and that will set out just who cooperated with this."

Then there was former DOJ spokes man Matt Miller, rebutting Trump's BS that the indictment "vindicates" him:  "This indictment does no such thing. There could well be multiple conspiracy charges in the months to come."  Adding:

"You have to remember we had the then candidate, now president of the United States, out there publicly not just benefiting from the Russian operation but actively encouraging Russian interference. Actively encouraging it in July when he asked them to hack Hillary Clinton's emails, (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnY7D4M4k68 )

and encouraging it in the fall when he was talking about the Wikileaks hacks (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUtT0b0EnSw )

He has been actively promoting the Russian interference in the election for now a year and a half."

Richard Painter, former ethics counsel in the Bush White House, was even more blunt appearing on 'Am Joy' this morning:

"Look, we already know there was collaboration, that was what the meeting in Trump Tower in 2016 was all about.  This indictment covers the social media side of what the Russians were doing....taking advantage of group identity politics, especially on the Right. Where you have all these people whose identity is tied to their guns.  Sure there were some unwitting people, but there were others - as I said in Trump Tower - who in June, 2016 were knowingly meeting with Russian agents who had dirt on Hillary.  That whole part of the operation has nothing to do with this indictment. That is yet to come."

So the WSJ editorial nabobs would do well to withhold their daft opinions until all indictments and evidence have been submitted. We know they are in a hurry to pardon Trump from any wrong doing, but their unseemly eagerness to paint this traitor as a victim does them no service. Indeed, it further puts them on the same yellow journalism  basis as say, The National Enquirer.

Let us recognize that Donnie J. (for Jackass) Dotard believes many things, most of which are not remotely true. One of those, emitted in another brain fart ....errr tweet earlier yesterday, is that he's convinced he can't be a target of Special Prosecutor Bob Mueller because the 13 indictments handed down yesterday don't mention collusion. Also, since the Russian intervention began in 2014 -  before Trump tossed his hat into the ring.  The dope seized on Rod Rosenstein’s remarks  to falsely claim that the indictment proved there had been no collusion and that the election result had definitely not been impacted. In fact it did no such thing. Mueller has simply provided the net and scaffolding to hang the prick in the next round of indictments.  (Trump in the candidate debates even hung himself  as guilty on multiple occasions, e.g. "Please,  Russia go get those thirty thousand emails!", And "I love WikiLeaks!" (Whose operatives hacked into the DNC)

For the Russians: What better traitor to use than a narcissistic megalomaniac dupe and puppet like Dotard to wreck American institutions and democratic governance ?  Hell, each day this abomination is in power more American norms and principles crash to the sewer and even worse is how a seeming increase in Americans believe him. A poll cited last night by Bill Maher on his show indicated the public now prefers the Trumpkins by 46% to 24% in matters of security.

The entire set of convictions expressed by 40 percent of Americans (now) that the Russian interference is "fake news" would be analogous, as Rep. Gerry Nadler put it (on All In),  to then Americans refusing to accept FDR's speech in December 1941 that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.   It would also be compounded by a GOP congress that refused to declare war. Now we are in an effective cyber war- attack situation and those like FOX News, the WSJ editors and others (e.g. Devin Nunes) want to sit on their hands?  Or twist it around to blame Dems for "doing the Russians' work for them"?

Apart from the 13 Russian individuals Mueller's office also named three Russian entities, including the notorious state-backed “troll farm” the Internet Research Agency. We already - most of us - were aware that IRA's denizens were able to get right inside the heads of the targets. Even before Mueller's revelations we knew (thanks to research published in The Atlantic)  these mind manipulators were mainly elite Russian college students specializing in linguistics, journalism and psychology trained at a central troll farm in St. Petersburg.

These were savvy kids who mastered their "Americana" politics by watching cynical, Machiavellian fare like "House of Cards".   By also using emotions and reading Americans' own emotional responses to race, Trump and immigration they were able to jack up their messages and twist them into fake news to mindfuck millions. How so? By using specially manipulated videos guaranteed to be shared by the gullible.

The Russians  posed as Americans to operate bogus social media accounts, buy advertisements and stage political rallies. They stole the identities of real people in the US to post online and built computer systems in the US to hide the Russian origin of their activity, according prosecutors. 

As for Rod Rosenstein, he said yesterday:

“This indictment serves as a reminder that people are not always who they appear to be on the internet. These individuals worked to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy,” adding: “We must not allow them to succeed."

Two of these subversive Russian groups and bots included "Blacktivists"  and "Secure Borders" . The first was ostensibly run by two Baltimore homies. They professed to be supporting causes in the black community while skewering Hillary Clinton as a "witch" at the same time using hashtags such as #BlacklLives Matter.  The fake videos included police allegedly shooting unarmed black men.

The second featured  xenophobic yahoos who railed against illegal immigration.  Their weaponized shtick was to publish "material such as a photo-shopped image of a woman holding a sign reading 'Give me more free shit!'"  Such an image alone was worth about a million and a half shares - say on Facebook, or a half million retweets- multiplying the mindfuck effect.  The reason? It deliberately embodied sentiments already felt by millions of the weaker-minded  in key states, descendants of those who used to riff on about "welfare queens" in the Reagan era.

Now for some reality checks: Rosenstein also said at his press conference in Washington: “There is no allegation in this indictment that any American had any knowledge.”

Of course, Rosenstein wasn't going to put himself out on a limb because he planned to keep his job. Apart from the fact,Mueller is still building his prima facie case of Trumpie conspiracy  - knowing and witting - with the Russian interlopers.  The "ducks" are all being lined up in a row, just waiting to be taken down.

Rosenstein added that the charges "did not mean the Russian activity had an effect on the outcome of the election".  But as Salman Rushdie put in on Bill Maher's Real Time, anyone familiar with the state voting stats, i.e. Jill Stein (backed by the Russkie trolls) got 51,000 odd votes in Michigan and Trump took MI with a margin of barely 12,000, knows that is nonsense. Of course the outcome was affected, and we haven't even included the hacking into state election systems yet.

The key point is that the weaponized Russkie psychological warfare attacks - whether videos from Blacktivists or Secure Borders, were superbly designed to send hooks into millions of emotionally susceptible brains. If even a hundredth of them were influenced - say in the "Brexit" states (WI, MI, PA) - it would have tossed the 2016 election to Trump.

It is  also important to grasp here that the election board hacking and social media fake news strategies were not mutually exclusive The hacking attacks in fact complemented the initial propaganda, or information warfare attacks. The latter rendered hundreds of thousands of brains more averse to Hillary while the election hacking delivered dozens of vulnerable systems that might be useful - if compromised-  to reinforce the scale of interference.  If 1000 names in each precinct of the "Brexit" states (MI, WI, PA) could have the names or voter attributes altered, then overturning the election could became a real possibility since their electoral votes  ultimately determined the winner.

So we now know the Russians engaged in a three-pronged attack to subvert our elections and get Trump elected. These included: 1) hacking into the election systems of 21 states, 2) hacking into the DNC - using Wikileaks  and then releasing the negative information into the already polarized political landscape and 3) using social media platforms like Facebook to subvert American minds into being willing pawns.

An intriguing comparison  (to a Russian intervention) made last night by historian Michael Beschloss was  to the events immediately following the  JFK assassination. He noted how some in the political establishment thought maybe the Russians were behind it  because Lee Oswald - the alleged assassin- "had defected to Russia and married the niece of  a Soviet intelligence official."    Added Beschloss:

"The person most worried was Lyndon Johnson, the President, He knew that if Americans believed the Russians were behind a change in power there'd be a huge demand among Americans to retaliate against the Soviet Union, and would quickly lead to a nuclear war. And that's one reason LBJ did the Warren Commission, and told the Chief Justice I hope you will resolve suspicions like this."

Left unsaid was that the whole theme that Oswald was a "KGB -linked assassin"  hired to kill Kennedy was  a narrative  confected by the CIA using fake cables.. It was based on a supposed "Oswald" phone call to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City with a KGB agent, Valeriy Kostikov.   While the "Oswald as KGB assassin"  ruse was never used  or published in its Report by the Warren Commission, "it almost certainly contributed to the Warren Commission's determination to close the case as the work of a lone assassin" (Scott, Deep Politics, 113)   This is actually validated and was foreseen when one examined a key paragraph in the Katzenbach memo which readers can see in full here: http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=756877

Note in particular paragraph (2):

"Speculation about Oswald's motivation ought to be cut off, and we should have some basis of rebutting thought that this was a Communist conspiracy".

When this is interpreted in the context of the rest of the memo, and especially Part (1) pertaining to convicting Oswald, it is clear the Commission was driven to the lone assassin bunkum as the only alternative to the KGB assassin hypothesis.

The surge to do this was reinforced after the Commission was informed  by CIA head Richard Helms* of the Kostikov -Department Thirteen connection ("Department Thirteen" was that KGB Section assigned to assassinations) . Earl Warren evidently became so spooked that he felt the only alternative to a possible nuclear  confrontation  was to find for the lone assassin theory. From then, all evidence, documents and tests became devoted to nailing Oswald as the lone perp. It was either that or find him a KGB- hired contract killer, which many (including LBJ) felt would have led to war. 

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*  Memo of 1/13/ 64 from Richard Helms to the Warren Commission Counsel J. Lee Rankin, CIA Document 509-803.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/p-m-carpenter/77774/fake-news-no-an-illegitimate-president