The End of Russiagate

Aaron Maté
Le Monde Diplomatique

The former special counsel still has a lot he can clarify.

"For two years, Democrats have waited on Robert Mueller to deliver a death blow to the Trump presidency," The New York Times observed on July 20. "On Wednesday, in back-to-back hearings with the former special counsel, that wish could face its final make-or-break moment." The very fact that Democrats had to subpoena Mueller in order to create this final moment should in fact be the final reminder of what a mistake it was for Democrats to have waited on him. If Mueller had incriminating information yet to share, or had been stymied from doing his work, or if Attorney General William Barr had somehow misrepresented his findings, then it stands to reason that Mueller would be welcoming the opportunity to appear before Congress, not resisting it. The reality is that Mueller's investigation did not indict anyone on the Trump campaign for collusion with Russia, or even for anything related to the 2016 election. Mueller's report found no evidence of a Trump-Russia conspiracy, and even undermined the case for it.

That said, there are unresolved matters that Mueller's testimony could help clarify. Mueller claimed to have established that the Russian government conducted "a sweeping and systematic" interference campaign in order to elect Trump, yet the contents of his report don't support that allegation. The Mueller report repeatedly excludes countervailing information in order to suggest, misleadingly, that the Trump campaign had suspect "links" and "ties" to people connected with Russia. And Mueller and other intelligence officials involved in the Russia probe made questionable investigative decisions that are worthy of scrutiny. To address these issues, here are some questions that Mueller could be asked.

I should note that missing from my list is anything related to obstruction. This topic will surely dominate Democrats' line of questioning, but I view it as secondary and more appropriate for a law school seminar. The core issue of the Mueller investigation is alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign's potential coordination with it. The obstruction issue only began to dominate after it was clear that Mueller had found no such conspiracy. Although the report does show examples of Trump's stated intent to impede the Mueller investigation, the probe itself was unhindered.

There is also the fact that Mueller himself declined to make a call on obstruction, and even presented arguments that could be used to refute it. The obstruction section of the report notes that Trump was not "involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference." Although not dispositive, Mueller says that "the absence of that evidence affects the analysis of the President's intent and requires consideration of other possible motives for his conduct." In a joint statement with Barr, Mueller also made clear that "he was not saying that, but for the [Office of Legal Counsel] opinion, he would have found the President obstructed justice." Accordingly, I see no reason why congressional Democrats are so confident that Mueller found otherwise.

1. Why did you suggest that juvenile clickbait from a Russian troll farm was part of a "sweeping and systematic" Russian government interference effort?

The Mueller report begins by declaring that "[t]he Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion." A few paragraphs later, Mueller tells us that Russian interference occurred "principally through two operations." The first of these operations was "a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton," carried out by a Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).  

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Bipartisan Support for Trump’s Aggressive Iran Policy Reveals the Hollowness of Russiagate

Whitney Webb
Mint Press News

In early May, MSNBC news host Rachel Maddow — known as one of the top promoters of the new Cold War and Russiagate in American media — emphatically endorsed regime change in Venezuela after she claimed that President Donald Trump’s hawkishness towards the South American country had changed, all because of a single phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. 
 
Though Maddow’s claims were arguably the most extreme in suggesting that Trump was “taking orders” from Putin on Venezuela, she wasn’t alone in making them. For instance, Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks also made the claim that the Trump-Putin phone call on Venezuela was “direct evidence that he is literally taking orders from Putin.” In addition, several corporate media outlets supported this narrative by suggesting that Trump “echoed” Putin’s Venezuela stance after the phone call and directly contradicted his top staffers and even himself in doing so.

Yet now, strangely, those same corporate media voices remain silent on the Trump administration’s other regime-change project — in Iran — despite the fact that the Putin-led Russian government is set to be the biggest winner as tensions between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic boil over and threaten to send the Middle East into a fresh bout of destruction and chaos.  

As tensions between the U.S. and Iran have grown in recent months, analysts in both corporate and independent media have speculated about what country is set to benefit the most from the U.S.’ campaign of “maximum pressure” and regime change against the Islamic Republic. Of the many analyses, two countries have stood out as likely beneficiaries: Russia and China.

The cases for China and Russia’s benefit are somewhat similar given that the Trump administration’s focus on Iran results in less pressure on both Russia and China. This is despite the fact that, officially, the U.S.’ current National Defense Strategy explicitly calls for focusing attention on preparing for a “long war” against Russia and China to prevent either from superseding the U.S. as a global superpower. Yet, with the U.S. focused on regime change in Iran and Venezuela, Russia and China can avoid bearing the brunt of U.S. military adventurism, either directly or by proxy, while the U.S. wears itself thin by trying to do it all at once.

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Jared Kushner, Not Maria Butina, Is America’s Real Foreign Agent

Philip Giraldi
Strategic Culture

Maria Butina is in jail for doing nothing while Jared Kushner, who needed a godfathered security clearance due to his close Israeli ties, struts through the White House as senior advisor to the president.

The Mueller Special Counsel inquiry is far from over even though a final report on its findings has been issued. Although the investigation had a mandate to explore all aspects of the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election, from the start the focus was on the possibility that some members of the Trump campaign had colluded with the Kremlin to influence the outcome of the election to favor the GOP candidate. Even though that could not be demonstrated, many prominent Trump critics, to include Laurence Tribe of the Harvard Law School, are demanding that the investigation continue until Congress has discovered “the full facts of Russia’s interference [to include] the ways in which that interference is continuing in anticipation of 2020, and the full story of how the president and his team welcomed, benefited from, repaid, and obstructed lawful investigation into that interference and the president’s cooperation with it.”

Tribe should perhaps read the report more carefully. While it does indeed confirm some Russian meddling, it does not demonstrate that anyone in the Trump circle benefited from it or cooperated with it. The objective currently being promoted by dedicated Trump critics like Tribe is to make a case to impeach the president based on the alleged enormity of the Russian activity, which is not borne out by the facts: the Russian role was intermittent, small scale and basically ineffective.

One interesting aspect of the Mueller inquiry and the ongoing Russophobia that it has generated is the essential hypocrisy of the Washington Establishment. It is generally agreed that whatever Russia actually did, it did not affect the outcome of the election. That the Kremlin was using intelligence resources to act against Hillary Clinton should surprise no one as she described Russian President Vladimir Putin as Hitler and also made clear that she would be taking a very hard line against Moscow.

The anti-Russia frenzy in Washington generated by the vengeful Democrats and an Establishment fearful of a loss of privilege and entitlement claimed a number of victims. Among them was Russian citizen Maria Butina, who has a court date and will very likely be sentenced tomorrow.

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Russia Releases Big 120-Page Report on Russophobia, Russiagate Hysteria in US

Sputnik

Numerous politicians, officials, political experts, and media outlets in the US have been pushing a narrative about an alleged conspiracy between President Donald Trump and Moscow for the past three years. Their speculations were cut short by the publication of Special Counsel Mueller's report - which indicates there were no signs of collusion.

The Russian Embassy in the US has published a comprehensive report on the three-year-long Russiagate hysteria, including comments from political figures and media personalities accusing Moscow of allegedly meddling in the US elections in 2016.

The embassy indicates in the report that this period has seen a "case of severe Russophobia" based not on facts, but on attempts by different groups to push an anti-Russian narrative in their interests with wild claims, such as an alleged conspiracy between the Donald Trump campaign and Moscow to "rig the elections".

The paper points out that following the release of the results of the 22-month investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, no reason remains to believe that any collusion took place. The embassy also indicated that no proof has also been presented on Russia's alleged involvement in cyberattacks on the US, despite numerous probes over the course of the last three years.

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See also:  Game Over, No Collusion With Russia - Trump on Mueller Probe

Mueller Report Reveals an Empire of Bullshit

James Howard Kunstler
kunstler.com

After two years of gaslighting the public while it blew smoke up America's ass, the Jacobin news media enjoyed its final feeding frenzy with the release of the 400-page Mueller report. They expected 1000 pounds of raw filet mignon, but it turned out to be tofu fried in olestra. The ensuing fugue of hyperventilating hysteria was also duly expected and William Barr stoically endured their hebephrenic peevings at the release ceremony - a press conference which itself offended the media.

The threats and raving continued all the livelong day and far into the peeper-filled night with CNN's Chris Cuomo blustering "It's time to rumble," and the lugubrious hack David Gergen muttering soulfully, "This was not fake news," and The Times' Maggie Haberman fuming that the White House had played the "Nazi anthem" Edelweiss - very fake news, it turned out, since the tune was written for Rodgers' and Hammerstein's 1959 Broadway show, The Sound of Music (and sung by the anti-Nazi hero Baron von Trapp). Meanwhile Rachel Maddow had the balls to confab in prime time with disgraced former FBI mandarin Andy McCabe, officially identified as a liar by his own colleagues at the agency. What a circus of perfidious freakery!

Understand that the Mueller Report itself was the mendacious conclusion to a deceitful investigation, the purpose of which was to conceal the criminal conduct of US government officials meddling in the 2016 election, in collusion with the Hillary Clinton campaign, to derail Mr. Trump's campaign, and then disable him when he managed to win the election. Mr. Mueller was theoretically trying to save the FBI's reputation, but he may have only succeeded in injuring it more gravely. 

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Why the 'Intelligence Community' aggressively pushed RussiaGate conspiracy theories

Debra Heine
PJ Media

James Clapper behind John Brennan and Robert Muller

Why did anonymous members of the intelligence community and top Obama administration officials like James Comey, James Clapper, and John Brennan so aggressively push the Russia collusion narrative for over two years in the midst of ongoing investigations? Who does that? Why have these Obama alumni been so conspicuously loud in their protestations against the president?

"They doth protest too much," Monica Crowley explained in her Washington Times piece this week, as she fleshed out what many of us have been thinking from the beginning.

The best defense, the saying goes, is a good offense.

The key orchestrators of the Big Trump-Russia Collusion Lie seem to have hewed tightly to that tactical advice.

Over the past two years, one of their biggest "tells" has been their hyper-aggressive and gratuitous attacks on the president. Given that special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation found no collusion or obstruction of justice, their constant broadsides now look, in retrospect, like calculated pre-emptive strikes to deflect attention and culpability away from themselves.

By accusing Mr. Trump of what they themselves were guilty of, they created a masterful distraction through projection.

We now know that former FBI Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, are hip-deep in the conspiracy. Both wrote supposed "tell-all" books and carpet-bombed the media with interviews in which they regularly flung criminal accusations against the president. Whenever asked about their own roles, they reverted to denouncing Mr. Trump.

With Mr. Mueller's findings, Mr. Comey's and Mr. McCabe's media benders look increasingly suspicious.

As do those of their comrades in the Obama national security apparatus, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and his partner in possible crime, former CIA Director John Brennan, who, apart from former President Barack Obama himself, may be the biggest player of them all.

Every clip of Brennan fulminating against the president on MSNBC, every insufferable tweet from James Comey, and every pearl clutch from James Clapper on CNN should be seen with this in mind.

Because there is so much corruption and malfeasance to cover up.

For instance, The Daily Caller investigative reporter Luke Rosiak recently discovered a provision in a 2012 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court motion that expanded the FBI's ability to share information with foreign officials, laying the groundwork for the 2016 abuses against U.S. citizens. To put it bluntly, "the UK and Australia would be able to trade information back and forth with the U.S. about campaign workers who are American citizens." Like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, for instance.

Ace of Spades explained how it works:

Remember the US intelligence trick? They can't spy on US citizens without a warrant sufficient to clear the probable cause evidentiary hurdle. But if they tell foreign intelligence services to do the spying and slip the results back to the US intelligence community, they get their spying done by proxy, avoiding a judge's scrutiny and any intersection with the US Constitution at all.

Former prosecutor Sidney Powell told The Daily Caller that the language in the 2012 FISA provision was "very concerning." 

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Russiagate in 3 minutes

corbettreport 

TRANSCRIPT: https://www.corbettreport.com/russiag

Everything you wanted to know about Russiagate but weren't stupid enough to ask.

See also: Russiagate Might Be Dead, but Big Tech Censorship Is Here to Stay

“The Russians are Still Coming” “Without RussiaGate”: The “Fake News” Witch-hunt against the Independent Media

Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research

From one day to the next,  following the release of the Mueller report, the shaky RussiaGate consensus created by the corporate media has collapsed.  

What the Mueller investigation contends is that there is no proof that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 presidential elections. 

The demise of the RussiaGate narrative, however, does not mean that the Trump administration will renew its relations with the Kremlin. “The Russians are still coming”… without RussiaGate. Russia is still portrayed as a threat to America’s National Security. 

In this regard, the objective of the Neocons has been achieved. The Trump administration, with its hawk team of  advisers including Pompeo and Bolton, not to mention Gina Haspel at the CIA, is towing the line. 

Corporate and Political Rivalries

The RussiaGate narrative was required to sustain the multibillion dollar contracts in favor of the military industrial complex including the 1.2 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program.

What was at stake in 2016 were fundamental rivalries within the US establishment marked by the clash between competing corporate (and political) factions, each of which was intent upon exerting control over the incoming US presidency.

In this regard,  Trump was not entirely in the pocket of the lobby groups. He was not a groomed politician. As a member of the business establishment, he had his own corporate sponsors and fund raisers. His stated foreign policy agenda including his “commitment” to revise Washington’s relationship with Moscow did not fully conform with the interests of the defence contractors.

Prior to the elections, a smear campaign was launched by the media on behalf of the  “Clinton faction”. At the height of the election campaign Trump was portrayed by the US media as  “an agent” of the Kremlin, a modern Manchurian candidate.  Barely a month before the November 8 2016 elections, former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leo Panetta  intimated that Trump represented a threat to National Security. The Atlantic (October 8, 2016),  described Trump is a “Modern Manchurian Candidate”. 

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It's Official: Russiagate is This Generation's WMD

Matt Taibbi
taibbi.substack.com

Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media.

As has long been rumored, the former FBI chief's independent probe will result in multiple indictments and convictions, but no "presidency-wrecking" conspiracy charges, or anything that would meet the layman's definition of "collusion" with Russia.

With the caveat that even this news might somehow turn out to be botched, the key detail in the many stories about the end of the Mueller investigation was best expressed by the New York Times:

A senior Justice Department official said that Mr. Mueller would not recommend new indictments.

Attorney General William Barr sent a letter to congress summarizing Mueller's conclusions. The money line quoted the Mueller report:

[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

Over the weekend, the Times tried to soften the emotional blow for the millions of Americans trained in these years to place hopes for the overturn of the Trump presidency in Mueller. As with most press coverage, there was little pretense that the Mueller probe was supposed to be a neutral fact-finding mission, as apposed to religious allegory, with Mueller cast as the hero sent to slay the monster.

The Special Prosecutor literally became a religious figure during the last few years, with votive candles sold in his image and Saturday Night Live cast members singing "All I Want for Christmas is You" to him featuring the rhymey line: "Mueller please come through, because the only option is a coup."

The Times story today tried to preserve Santa Mueller's reputation, noting Trump's Attorney General William Barr's reaction was an "endorsement" of the fineness of Mueller's work:

In an apparent endorsement of an investigation that Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked as a "witch hunt," Mr. Barr said Justice Department officials never had to intervene to keep Mr. Mueller from taking an inappropriate or unwarranted step.

Mueller, in other words, never stepped out of the bounds of his job description. But could the same be said for the news media?

For those anxious to keep the dream alive, the Times published its usual graphic of Trump-Russia "contacts," inviting readers to keep making connections. But in a separate piece by Peter Baker, the paper noted the Mueller news had dire consequences for the press:

It will be a reckoning for President Trump, to be sure, but also for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, for Congress, for Democrats, for Republicans, for the news media and, yes, for the system as a whole...

This is a damning page one admission by the Times. Despite the connect-the-dots graphic in its other story, and despite the astonishing, emotion-laden editorial the paper also ran suggesting "We don't need to read the Mueller report" because we know Trump is guilty, Baker at least began the work of preparing Times readers for a hard question: "Have journalists connected too many dots that do not really add up?"

The paper was signaling it understood there would now be questions about whether or not news outlets like itself made galactic errors by betting heavily on a new, politicized approach, trying to be true to "history's judgment" on top of the hard-enough job of just being true. Worse, in a brutal irony everyone should have seen coming, the press has now handed Trump the mother of campaign issues heading into 2020.

Nothing Trump is accused of from now on by the press will be believed by huge chunks of the population, a group that (perhaps thanks to this story) is now larger than his original base. As Baker notes, a full 50.3% of respondents in a poll conducted this month said they agree with Trump the Mueller probe is a "witch hunt."

Stories have been coming out for some time now hinting Mueller's final report might leave audiences "disappointed," as if a President not being a foreign spy could somehow be bad news.

Openly using such language has, all along, been an indictment. Imagine how tone-deaf you'd have to be to not realize it makes you look bad, when news does not match audience expectations you raised. To be unaware of this is mind-boggling, the journalistic equivalent of walking outside without pants.

There will be people protesting: the Mueller report doesn't prove anything! What about the 37 indictments? The convictions? The Trump tower revelations? The lies! The meeting with Don, Jr.? The financial matters! There's an ongoing grand jury investigation, and possible sealed indictments, and the House will still investigate, and...

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Finally The Wicked Witch-hunt is Dead! But Can Washington Survive The Russiagate Fallout?

Robert Bridge
RT

The hype and hysteria of the Mueller investigation has ended with a whimper, not the anticipated bang. There was no Russian collusion. Now the US must contend with partisan hysteria that threatens the nation.

For 675 long days and nights, Americans were the captive audience of a $25 million dollar show trial known as Russiagate, which ranks as one of the zaniest political circuses in US history, sharing the accolades with the likes of Zippergate and Watergate. Now, after spending the last of its ammunition, the media-inflamed investigation promises to become yet another lasting monument to Washington's impeccable political genius. The debacle is finally over; the wicked witch hunt is dead.

Attorney General William Barr announced on the weekend what many people had already long suspected: the Mueller probe had zero evidence that Trump's campaign "conspired or coordinated" with Russia in order to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. On the point of Trump "obstructing the inquiry," possibly through his Tweeting compulsion, Mueller gave no definitive answer.

Vice President Mike Pence called the conclusions a "total vindication" of Donald Trump and "our campaign," emphasizing that there would be no more indictments. 

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How the 'Illusory Truth Effect' duped millions into believing in Russiagate

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.com

"Mueller Finds No Trump-Russia Conspiracy", read the front page headline of Sunday's New York Times. Bit by bit, mainstream American consciousness is slowly coming to terms with the death of the thrilling conspiracy theory that the highest levels of the US government had been infiltrated by the Kremlin, and with the stark reality that the mass media and the Democratic Party spent the last two and-a-half years monopolizing public attention with a narrative which never had any underlying truth to it.

There are still holdouts, of course. Many people invested a tremendous amount of hope, credibility, and egoic currency in the belief that Robert Mueller was going to arrest high-ranking Trump administration officials and members of Trump's own family, leading seedy characters to "flip" on the president in their own self-interest and thereby providing evidence that will lead to impeachment. Some insist that Attorney General William Barr is holding back key elements of the Mueller report, a claim which is premised on the absurd belief that Mueller would allow Barr to lie about the results of the investigation without speaking up publicly. Others are still holding out hope that other investigations by other legal authorities will turn up some Russian shenanigans that Mueller could not, ignoring Mueller's sweeping subpoena powers and unrivaled investigative authority. But they're coming around.

The question still remains, though: what the hell happened? How did a fact-free conspiracy theory come to gain so much traction among mainstream Americans? How were millions of people persuaded to invest hope in a narrative that anyone objectively analyzing the facts knew to be completely false?

The answer is that they were told that the Russiagate narrative was legitimate over and over again by politicians and mass media pundits, and, because of a peculiar phenomenon in the nature of human cognition, this repetition made it seem true. 

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Russiagate skeptics rightly boast about being proven 100% correct

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.com

There is nothing more epic than a Youtube video by Jimmy Dore immediately after he has been proven right about something. It's thunderous. It's unequivocal. And it happens a lot.

"Now, I've gotten Russiagate right here," Dore said in a new video following revelations about the finalized Mueller report that there will be no further indictments, leaving the grand total of Americans charged with Russian conspiracy at exactly zero.

"I did that in my garage," Dore added. "Those other stations didn't do that. Not because they don't have the resources I have. They did that 'cause they didn't want to. They did that 'cause they weren't interested in the truth. They did that because what they wanted to do was fuckin' get Donald Trump so bad they were willing to turn off their critical thinking skills and just listen to their lizard brains. And they wrecked America in the process. And we stood up against it, and we got smeared for standing up against it, and we still get smeared."

"Congratulations to everyone here, congratulations to our crew," Dore said. 

"Congratulations to Ron and Steph and everybody, congratulations to Aaron Maté and Max Blumenthal and Kyle Kulinski, and whoever else got this right; it's a small club, it's a short list. And we took a lot of slings and arrows for it, and we're still taking. People hate you when you out-left them. We out-lefted everybody, and we did it in the right way. And so congratulations to you guys, congratulations to myself, congratulations to this show, and thank God I didn't try to get into journalism school but I tried to get into comedy first. 
Because if I was trying to get into that club, I would be just as shitty as the reporters at the Washington Post, the New York Times, MSNBC and CNN, and half the Youtubers, and we're not. We did a much better job."

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Russiagaters Ramp Up Narrative Management as Mueller Report Nears

Caitlin Johnstone
Strategic Culture

Both CNN and the Washington Post are reporting that Robert Mueller’s investigation into a possible conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government will be wrapping up as soon as next week. This report comes without a single American having been charged with any such conspiracy during the investigation up to this point, and we’re seeing a very revealing uptick in narrative management from the people who have been making a name for themselves promoting the Russiagate conspiracy theory.

A Washington Post article titled “Mueller’s ‘winding down’ may be less than it appears” by Jennifer Rubin (a member of WaPo’s large lineup of neoconservative empire loyalists) argues that while it is very possible there won’t necessarily be anything earth-shattering in the report itself, “the host of other investigations will continue while the focus moves to Congress.” A New York Times article titled “The Mueller Report Is Coming. Here’s What to Expect.” argues much the same thing. Both articles effectively tell the reader that they should brace themselves for disappointment, but definitely still keep their tinfoil pussyhats on.

“I’VE EXPRESSED SKEPTICISM ON #MUELLER FROM DAY ONE,” tweeted the totally calm and unbothered former Hillary Clinton advisor Peter Daou. “Trump obstructed justice in plain sight and bragged about it to Russian operatives in the Oval Office. THAT’S UNQUESTIONABLY AN INDICTABLE/IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE. If he remains in office, it is an abject failure of our system.” 

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Russiagate Is Finished

Moon of Alabama

For more than two years U.S. politicians, the media and some bloggers hyped a conspiracy theory. They claimed that Russia had somehow colluded with the Trump campaign to get him elected.

An obviously fake 'Dirty Dossier' about Trump, commissioned by the Clinton campaign, was presented as evidence. Regular business contacts between Trump flunkies and people in Ukraine or Russia were claimed to be proof for nefarious deals. A Russian click-bait company was accused of manipulating the U.S. electorate by posting puppy pictures and crazy memes on social media. Huge investigations were launched. Every rumor or irrelevant detail coming from them was declared to be - finally - the evidence that would put Trump into the slammer. Every month the walls were closing in on Trump. 

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“Soft Coup” Ongoing Against Trump? Impeachment is the End Game

Stephen Lendman
Global Research

Turkey’s Daily Sabah broadsheet believes a soft coup is ongoing to oust Trump. It’s been brewing since his triumph over Hillary and inauguration in January 2017 – my view, not the newspaper’s.

Last year, I said pro-Hillary dark forces and other anti-Trump coup plotters keep throwing endless amounts of dirt against the wall, hoping enough sticks to oust him or undermine his presidency if removal efforts fail.

Things aren’t getting easier for him. Special council Mueller’s Russiagate witch hunt continues – despite discovering no evidence of Kremlin US election meddling nor an improper or illegal Trump connection to Russia.

Controlling the House, the undemocratic Dems plan investigations into Trump’s affairs, likely to continue to harass him for the wrong reasons, ignoring what’s most important – US policies both right wings of the nation’s war party agree on, along with serving privileged interests exclusively at the expense of ordinary people.

Once Mueller’s probe ends and a report is issued, House impeachment of Trump may follow – a likely futile effort to remove him from office with Republicans controlling the Senate.

The Constitution’s Article I, Section 2 empowers House members to impeach a sitting president, Senate members with sole power to try them – a two-thirds super-majority required to convict, what’s highly unlikely with Republicans controlling the upper house.

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The Real 'Russian Trolls': Hamilton68 and The Alliance for Securing Democracy

Joe Quinn
Sott.net

Given that most people have already taken a position on the topic, it seems a bit late in the day to be pointing this out, but there is now clear evidence to suggest that the 'Russia hacked our election' claim is not only entirely false, but the people who made the claim in the first place - members of the US intelligence, political and corporate establishment (as well as other ideologues) - were and are themselves the creators of the only "Russian troll" social media accounts that have actually been shown to have done any 'hacking'.

A December 19th 2018 NY Times article revealed that a group of "Democratic tech experts" decided to use "similarly deceptive tactics" (as those imputed to Russian trolls) in the Alabama Senate race contested by Roy Moore in December 2017. An internal report on what is called the 'Alabama effort', obtained by The Times, says explicitly that it "experimented with many of the tactics now understood to have influenced the 2016 elections." The project's operators created a Facebook page on which they posed as conservative Alabamians, using it to try to divide Republicans and even to endorse a write-in candidate to draw votes from Mr. Moore. And how was the division sown?

"We orchestrated an elaborate 'false-flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet," the report says.

One participant in the Alabama project, Jonathon Morgan, is the chief executive of New Knowledge, a small cyber security firm that wrote a scathing account of Russia's social media operations in the 2016 election, and which was released this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Morgan said that the Russian botnet ruse "does not ring a bell," adding that others had worked on the effort and had written the report. He said he saw the project as "a small experiment" designed to explore how certain online tactics worked, not to affect the election. This appears to be a lie on both counts, given that, as the AL Senate race was in process, Morgan tweeted that the "Russian botnet" that he and others had created was "taking an interest" in the campaign. 

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See also: New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in US Politics

The Dummies Guide To The Russia Collusion Hoax: Who, What, Where, When, & Why

Zero Hedge

For your eyes only: A short history of Democrat-spy collusion

How highly placed members of one administration mobilised the intelligence services to undermine their successors...

Who, what, where, when, why? The desiderata school teachers drill into their charges trying to master effective writing skills apply also in the effort to understand that byzantine drama known to the world as the Trump-Russia-collusion investigation.

Let’s start with “when.” When did it start? We know that the FBI opened its official investigation on 31 July 2016. An obscure, low-level volunteer to the Trump campaign called Carter Page was front and centre then. He’d been the FBI’s radar for a long time. Years before, it was known, the Russians had made some overtures to him but 1) they concluded that he was an “idiot” not worth recruiting and 2) he had actually aided the FBI in prosecuting at least two Russian spies.

But we now know that the Trump-Russia investigation began before Carter Page. In December 2017, The New York Times excitedly reported in an article called “How the Russia Inquiry Began” that, contrary to their reporting during the previous year, it wasn’t Carter Page who precipitated the inquiry. It was someone called George Papadopoulous, an even more obscure and lower-level factotum than Carter Page. Back in May 2016, the twenty-something Papadopoulous had gotten outside a number of drinks with one Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat in London and had let slip that “the Russians” had compromising information about Hillary Clinton. When Wikileaks began releasing emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee in June and July, news of the conversation between Downer and Papadopoulos was communicated to the FBI. Thus, according to the Times, the investigation was born.

There were, however, a couple of tiny details that the Times omitted. One was that Downer, an avid Clinton supporter, had arranged for a $25 million donation from the Australian government to the Clinton Foundation. Twenty-five million of the crispest, Kemo Sabe. They also neglected say exactly how Papadopoulos met Alexander Downer.

As it turns out, George Papadopoulos made several new friends in London. There was Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor living in London who has ties to British intelligence. It was Mifsud - who has since disappeared - who told Papadopoulos in March 2016 that the Kremlin had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

Then there is Stefan Halper, an American-born Cambridge prof and Hillary supporter. Out of the blue, Halper reached out to Papadopoulos in September 2016. He invited him to meet in London and then offered Papadopoulos $3,000 to write a paper on an unrelated topic. He also pumped him about “Russian hacking.” “George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?” Halper is said to have asked him. He also made sure Papadopoulos met for drinks with his assistant, a woman called Azra Turk, who flirted with him over the Chardonnay while pumping him about Russia.

Halper also contacted Carter Page and Sam Clovis, Trump’s campaign co-chair. Is Stefan Halper, the “spy” on the Trump campaign, at the origin of the Trump-Russia meme? 

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As Evidence Piles Up, The Media Ignore The 'Other' Trump-Russia Scandal

Investors Business Daily
 

 "...while the Mueller investigation sputters along, the evidence of political abuse at the FBI and Justice is piling up."

 

Scandalous Media Bias: There have been two major ongoing investigations involving President Trump. One is looking into whether Trump colluded with Russia. It's borne no fruit. The other involves abuse of power at the highest levels of government to hurt Trump and is producing damning evidence by the bushel. Guess which one the press is ignoring?

National Review reporter John Fund relates an interesting story. He was waiting to go on the air and struck up a conversation with another prominent reporter in the network's green room.

Why, he asked, aren't reporters actively investigating the suspicious activities at the Justice Department and the FBI regarding the Trump/Russia and Hillary/email investigations?

Fund says the reporter "bluntly told me 'There's only room for one narrative on all this. And it's all about Trump.' "

You might think that reporters are chasing facts wherever they might lead, and "speaking truth to power," especially when that power involves the CIA, FBI and Justice Department.

Instead, it's all about the "narrative."

And when it comes to the Russia story, the only narrative the press will consider is that Trump somehow colluded with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. Or if not that, he did something illegal or improper that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will ferret out.

Anything that doesn't fit this narrative gets dismissed as conspiracy talk, fueled by conservatives and Trump supporters, to distract attention from the "real" story. 

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Deep State & mainstream media begin cover up as illegal spying on Trump campaign is revealed

DCWhispers

The Obama era Intelligence community was determined to punish Donald Trump and his supporters for challenging the political status quo. They didn't actually think Trump would win though. So what was initially a punishment operation turned into a search and destroy operation that pitted the Deep State and its media cohorts against a duly elected President of the United States? That attempt is now being uncovered in real time which in turn has led to a flurry of cover-up activity from such powerful players as the New York Times. And not only are they desperate to save their own skins but even more importantly protect the man at the very top of this political conspiracy food chain - Barack Obama himself.
 
"John Brennan should get a good lawyer." That's the advice from former U.S. attorney Joe diGenova who laid out the stunning extent of the Deep State operation against Donald Trump: 

"We know that Hillary Clinton was illegally exonerated. We knew that a year ago," the former prosecutor said.

"We know that there was a substantial effort to frame the current president of the United States with crimes by infiltrating his campaign and then his administration with spies that the FBI had set upon them."

"We have learned that the crimes were committed by the FBI, senior members of the Department of Justice, John Brennan, Mr. [James] Clapper, Mr. [James] Comey and others associated with the Democratic Party," he continued. "And Donald Trump and his associates committed no crimes."

"Categorically and unequivocally, it has been proved that the FBI, in violation of all guidelines, all legislation - and I believe they committed crimes in doing so - purposely sent people into the Trump campaign to plant false information, then force that information to be forwarded back to CIA, and then funneled to the FBI, to be used as false information in FISA applications," he said. 

"Everybody involved in that process, who knowingly participated, committed a crime," DiGenova concluded.  

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US House Intelligence publishes final report on 'Russian collusion'... THERE WAS NONE. Trump cleared

RT

The US House Intelligence Committee has released a redacted declassified version of a report on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which officially clears President Trump of any collusion.

"While the Committee found no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded, coordinated, or conspired with the Russian government, the investigation did find poor judgment and ill-considered actions by the Trump and Clinton campaigns," it said.

The 253-page document was produced based on a year-long investigation into the alleged Russian meddling. Representative Mike Conaway said the heavy redactions of the text were made on the insistence of the US intelligence community.

"I am extremely disappointed with the overzealous redactions made by the IC. Many of the redactions include information that is publicly available, such as witness names and information previously declassified," he said in a statement.

"When we started this investigation, we set out to give the American people the answers to the questions they've been asking and we promised to be as transparent as possible in our final report. I don't believe the information we're releasing today meets that standard, which is why my team and I will continue to challenge the IC's many unnecessary redactions with the hopes of releasing more of the report in the coming months."
Redacted US House Report on Russian Active Measures by RT America on Scribd
The committee announced key finding of their work in March. They accused Russia of attacking western democracies and using cyberespionage to interfere with the 2016 election, but failed to provide any evidence of a collusion between Donald Trump's campaign and Moscow. The lack of a smoking gun disappointed many critics of the US president.

President Trump reacted to the news on Twitter, pointing out that no collusion with Russia took place, a line he has maintained since the investigation began.