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The Big Rip-Off: Congress Packs Military Spending Bill To Insane Level!
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![]() ![]() The Big Rip-Off: Congress Packs Military Spending Bill To Insane Level! Click on the headline to read the full story from
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![]() ![]() ![]() When the Pentagon used NATO to provoke Russia into invading Ukraine, it had to know that one of the great benefits to such an invasion would be that it would enrich US weapons manufacturers, who, of course, are an important, integral, and loyal part of America’s national-security state form of governmental structure. And sure enough, those weapons manufacturers now have a lot to be grateful for. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal: The world’s biggest arms makers are scaling up production of rocket launchers, tanks and ammunition as the industry shifts to meet what executives expect to be sustained demand triggered by the war in Ukraine.The Pentagon knew that when it was forced to exit Afghanistan, where it had used a massive amount of weaponry for some twenty years to wreak death and destruction on that impoverished Third World country, its loyal army of arms manufacturers might begin to suffer. The crisis that the Pentagon has ginned up in Ukraine has clearly helped to alleviate that suffering. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine had had another beneficiary — the Pentagon itself. That’s because before Americans had a real opportunity to focus on the Pentagon’s 20-year deadly and destructive debacle in Afghanistan, everyone began focusing exclusively on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Thanks to the crisis in Ukraine, the entire Afghanistan misadventure has been relegated to a memory black hole. But we really still need to do some serious soul-searching, examination, and analysis of the Afghanistan debacle. We cannot let the Pentagon use the crisis that it has ginned up in Ukraine as a way to shift our attention away from what happened in Afghanistan. It would be a grave mistake to just “move on” from Afghanistan and permit the Pentagon to focus our attention exclusively on the evil Russians and their invasion of Ukraine. It is important to focus on the Constitution, the document that President Biden and the Democrats and even some Republicans have suddenly discovered and begun revering. It requires a congressional declaration of war before a president can legally wage war. There was never a congressional declaration of war against Afghanistan. That made the Pentagon’s war against Afghanistan an illegal one under our form of constitutional government. Equally important, if President George W. Bush had sought a declaration of war from Congress, it is a virtual certainty that he would not have been able to secure it. That’s because Bush would not have been able to provide any evidence whatsoever of Taliban complicity in the 9/11 attacks. Without any evidence of such complicity, it is difficult to imagine Congress issuing a declaration of war against Afghanistan, especially knowing that such a war would inevitably wreak massive death and destruction on that impoverished Third World country. Bush claimed that his invasion of Afghanistan was morally justified under the principle of “self-defense.” But that claim necessarily depended on showing that the Taliban regime was involved in the 9/11 attacks. No such evidence existed, and Bush knew it. Thus, if he had gone to Congress and sought a declaration of war based on “self-defense,” he would have gone there empty-handed insofar as evidence is concerned. In fact, if Bush really believed that the Taliban regime had attacked the United States, he would never have gone to the United Nations seeking its approval to defend itself by invading Afghanistan. No president would do that. What about the “harboring” charge? Bush claimed that his invasion of Afghanistan was morally justified because Afghanistan was “harboring” Osama bin Laden. Bush’s claim is without validity. To warrant a “harboring” charge, Bush would have to provide evidence that the Taliban regime had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks and was knowingly conspiring with bin Laden to provide him a base to plan the attacks. Bush knew that he had no evidence to support such a charge. What Bush actually meant by his “harboring” charge was that the Taliban was refusing to comply with Bush’s unconditional extradition demand for bin Laden. But under international law, the Taliban regime had every right to refuse Bush’s extradition demand. That’s because there was no extradition treaty between Afghanistan and the United States. When there is no extradition treaty between two nations, neither one is required to comply with an extradition demand from the other. What about the claim that the 9/11 attacks were an “act of war” and, therefore, the United States had the legitimate authority to invade Afghanistan to kill or capture bin Laden, who was living in Afghanistan? It was a bogus justification for invading Afghanistan. Under US law, terrorism is a criminal offense, not an act of war. That’s why terrorism prosecutions are brought in US District Courts. No nation has the legitimate authority to invade another nation to kill or capture a suspected criminal who is residing in that country. One of the most notorious terrorists was a CIA man named Jose Posada Carriles. He is widely considered to be one of the people who brought down a Cuban airline with a bomb over Venezuelan skies. He later safely ensconced himself in the United States. When Venezuela demanded Posada’s extradition, US officials protected him by refusing to comply, notwithstanding the fact that there was an extradition treaty between Venezuela and the United States. Would interventionists who supported the deadly and destructive invasion of Afghanistan to kill or capture bin Laden have supported a similar deadly and destructive Venezuelan invasion of the United States to kill or capture Posada? I think not. Using NATO to gin up the crisis in Ukraine is bad enough. While US arms manufacturers are clearly a beneficiary of that crisis, so is the Pentagon because it has caused people to forget what the Pentagon did to the people of Afghanistan and to just “move” on to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We must not let that happen, especially given the massive death and destruction that the Pentagon wreaked in its immoral and illegal war against an impoverished Third World country. Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation. We Must Not Forget the US War on Afghanistan Click on the headline to read the full story from New Twitter Bombshell: 'Former' FBI Agent Caught Removing Files Before 'Twitter Papers' Release!12/7/2022 ![]() ![]() New Twitter Bombshell: 'Former' FBI Agent Caught Removing Files Before 'Twitter Papers' Release! Click on the headline to read the full story from 'Fool Me Once . . . ' Why the Public is Not Buying the Latest Media Campaign Against Twitter12/7/2022 ![]() ![]() ![]() Below is my column on the media response to the “Twitter Files,” including misleading narratives being repeated across various media platforms. The effort is to assure the public that there is “nothing to see here” but it may backfire. After Twitter employed one of the most extensive censorship systems in history to prevent people from reading opposing views on subjects from Covid to climate change, media figures are now insisting that the public should really not be interested. The public, however, is not buying it. They are buying Twitter. With users signing up to Twitter in record numbers, a majority supports Musk’s efforts to restore free speech protections and to force greater transparency despite an unrelenting counter campaign in the media. Some of the media claims would meet the very definition of disinformation used by Twitter and its allies previously to censor information and discussions. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal has noted that the greatest purveyors of disinformation turned out to be former intelligence officials who worked to kill the story before the election as “Russian disinformation.” The public seems to be following the old adage “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Here is the column: In the aftermath of the release of the “Twitter Files,” the media and political establishment appear to be taking a lesson from Karl Marx who said, “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” The censoring of the Hunter Biden scandal before the 2020 election by Twitter and others was a tragedy for our democratic system. That tragedy was not in its potential impact on a close election, but the massive (and largely successful) effort to bury a story to protect the Biden campaign. It has now ended in farce as the same censorship apologists struggle to excuse the implications of this major story. The Twitter Files confirmed that Twitter never had any evidence of a Russian disinformation campaign or hacking as the basis for its decision to censor the New York Post story. Indeed, some at Twitter expressed concern over preventing the sharing of the story. Former Twitter Vice President for Global Communications Brandon Borrman asked if the company could “truthfully claim that this is part of the policy” for barring posts and suspending users. Those voices were few and quickly shouted down as the company barred the sharing of the story, including evidence of a multimillion-dollar influence peddling scheme by the Biden family. The back channel communications between Biden campaign and Democratic operatives show a willing use of the company to suppress political discussion of the scandal before the election. It was an all-hands-on-deck moment for the media and Twitter was eager to lend a hand. Over a year ago, I discussed how the brilliance of the Biden campaign was to get the media to become invested in the suppression of the story. After two years, major media finally but reluctantly admitted that the laptop was authentic as well as the emails detailing massive transfers of money from foreign interests (including some with foreign intelligence links). Many have responded by shrugging that influence peddling is not necessarily a crime, ignoring that it is still a massive corruption scandal with serious national security concerns. After all, as Heather Digby Parton argued in Salon on December 5, “There is nothing there other than a man making money by trading on his family name.” After the release of the “Twitter Files,” many of these same figures have shifted to excuse the censorship done at the request of Biden campaign or Democratic operatives. For some of us who come from long-standing liberal Democratic families, it has been chilling to see the Democratic Party embrace censorship and denounce free speech, including organizing foreign and corporate interests to prevent Musk from restoring free speech protections. Beyond personally attacking Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi, many have resorted to two claims that are being widely repeated in the media to avoid discussing the coordinated censorship efforts between this company and Democratic operatives. What Censorship? One of the old saws of censorship apologists is that without a government directing the suppression of free speech, it is not censorship. That is clearly untrue. Many groups like the ACLU stress that “censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups.” The same figures insist that if, there is not a violation of the First Amendment (which only applies to the government), there is no free speech violation. The First Amendment was never the exclusive definition of free speech. Free speech is viewed by many of us as a human right; the First Amendment only deals with one source for limiting it. Free speech can be undermined by private corporations as well as government agencies. Corporations clearly have free speech rights. Ironically, Democrats have long opposed such rights for companies, but they embrace such rights when it comes to censorship. It is also worth noting that this censorship (and these back channels) continued after the Biden campaign became the Biden administration — a classic example of censorship by a surrogate. Moreover, some of the pressure was coming from Democratic senators and House members to silence critics and bury the Hunter Biden influence peddling scandal. To his credit, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California reached out to Twitter’s leading censor, Vijaya Gadde, and tried to get the company to reconsider this action even though he identified himself as a “total Biden partisan.” He noted that “[t]his seems a violation of the First Amendment principles.” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., expressed concerns over Twitter’s decision to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. (Reuters) It is a violation of free speech principles and Khanna was one of the few on the left unwilling to discard those principles for politics in this controversy. “It is all about the Dirty Pictures” Another claim is that this was not an effort to censor the story but merely to block the vulgar images that Hunter took of himself having sex with prostitutes or exposing himself. This claim adds the specter of propaganda to that of censorship. As the Twitter files reveal, Twitter officials discussed whether the whole story might be Russian disinformation or hacking. For former Deputy FBI General Counsel Jim Baker (who was hired by Twitter after the Russian collusion scandal) it is all about supporting others from sharing the story because “caution is warranted.” Even at the time of the suppression, it was clear to many on the left that the move was being justified by the false claim of a hack. Rep. Khanna noted in his letter to Gadde that “a journalist should not be held accountable for the illegal actions of the source unless they actively aided the hack. So, to restrict the distribution of that material, especially regarding a presidential candidate, seems not in the keeping of [the Supreme Court case] New York Times vs. Sullivan.” More importantly, it was not lost on Twitter employees including one who said that “They just freelanced [the censorship]. . . hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.” Moreover, Twitter later admitted that it was a mistake to suppress the story and allowed such sharing, including articles with the pictures. While the “Biden team” did want the company to censor any tweets containing references like “Hunter Biden porn,” it was not the explicit pictures that caused the company to suppress the story before the election. However, there is a brilliant, if counterintuitive, spin of this argument. As stated in Salon, “mostly what the Hunter Biden laptop ‘scandal’ is about is the dirty pictures.” If the scandal is all about dirty pictures, it is not about dirty politics or influence peddling. It is also not about censorship. End of discussion. The effort to dismiss these disclosures will not work — any more than earlier efforts to suppress the story itself. We are still expecting more files to be released. Moreover, the House is expected to investigate the use of these companies to carry out censorship for Democratic allies. That investigation is important because there is always the risk that Twitter officials (who were long aware of the threat of such inquiries) may have avoided or even destroyed written communications. Indeed, the increasingly shrill chorus that “there is nothing to see here” may only prompt a closer look from many skeptical citizens. After all, nothing draws a crowd as much as a farce. Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org. 'Fool Me Once . . . ' Why the Public is Not Buying the Latest Media Campaign Against Twitter Click on the headline to read the full story from ![]() ![]() ![]() Five years ago today (Dec. 5th), Congress learned from sworn, horse’s-mouth testimony that there is no technical evidence that Russia (or anyone else) hacked the DNC emails showing how the DNC had stacked the deck against Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton’s rival for the Democratic nomination. I can almost hear readers new to this website cry out in disbelief: "That cannot be. Official Washington and the media assured us that the Russians hacked those emails in order to help Trump win. And didn’t Obama throw out 35 Russian diplomats in reaction? And what about those 12 Russian intelligence agents indicted for hacking?" Were US officials and media mistaken? No, not mistaken. They were lying. "But … but, does this mean Special Counsel Robert Mueller knew there was no concrete evidence of Russian hacking just six months into his 22-month investigation into Trump-Russia collusion?" Get Him Under Oath On December 5, 2017, Shawn Henry, head of the cyber security firm CrowdStrike, testified to the House Intelligence Committee that there was no technical evidence that Russia hacked the DNC emails that WikiLeaks published in July 2016. CrowdStrike had been hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign (with the FBI’s blessing) to investigate "Russian hacking". Shawn Henry is a protégé of former FBI Director Robert Mueller (from 2001 to 2012), for whom Henry served as head of the Bureau’s cyber-crime investigations unit before he went to CrowdStrike. What are the chances that Shawn Henry did not keep his former mentor, the Special Counsel, informed of this critical factoid? Why are some of you readers just now learning about this – five years after that testimony? Short answer: Adam Schiff (D-CA), chair of the House Intelligence Committee was able to keep Henry’s unclassified testimony secret from Dec. 5, 2017 until May 7, 2020, when he was forced to release it. Schiff gave the silencer-baton to friends in the corporate media, who have now suppressed Shawn Henry’s testimony for longer than even Schiff could. In sum, five years (and counting) after Henry’s testimony, the corporate media are still keeping viewers/listeners in the dark. Were we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) not banned from corporate media, those interested in the "hacking" hoax could have learned what was going on by reading our Memorandum "Allegations of Hacking are Baseless", of December 12, 2016 – a year before Shawn Henry, under oath, came clean. Henry’s confession came as no surprise to us. (Updates are available here and here.) Yet, the New York Times, for example, keeps up the drumbeat. Charlie Savage was careful last week to insert the following, in an article about Julian Assange (don’t miss what the New York Times itself embedded): His [Assange’s] public image shifted significantly after WikiLeaks published Democratic emails that had been hacked by the Russian government as part of its covert operation to help Donald J. Trump win the 2016 presidential election.Thus the words of Charlie Savage and the Gray Lady. There is always some clown who does not get the word – but Charlie is no clown. He knows what the narrative still has to be, and adheres to it (and, thus, to his job). The reasoning behind suppressing Shawn Henry’s testimony appears to have gone something like this: The truth about "Russian hacking" cracks the centerpiece of Russia-gate; it pulls the rug from under what we corporate media have been saying about the evil Putin and what we label Trump’s "bromance" with him. Worse, the truth could deny the MICIMATT the image of the threatening "enemy" it needs to "justify" building and selling weapons. Besides, Americans probably can’t handle the truth. And what they don’t know won’t hurt them. What Americans Don’t Know Humorist Will Rogers had it right: “The problem ain’t what people know. It’s what people know that ain’t so; that’s the problem.” What Americans "know" is that President Vladimir Putin is evil and that Russia must be stopped in Ukraine. This comes of six straight years of indoctrination/brainwashing. Putin and his colleagues, of course, are aware of this. It must seem to them that people in the US an Europe are being steeled with the propaganda basis for wider war. This gets extremely dangerous. What people don’t know can really hurt them and lead them into another misbegotten war – this one far worse than other recent misadventures. If the sophomores advising President Joe Biden refuse to acknowledge that Russia has escalation dominance in Ukraine, the likelihood of wider war in the coming months looms large. And despite recent optimistic projections by top intelligence officials, Ukraine and NATO are far more likely to run out of ammunition before Russia does. Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Reprinted with permission from Antiwar.com. Americans Dumbed Down on Russia Click on the headline to read the full story from ![]() ![]() What Are 'Rights'? Supremes Take On LGBTQ 'Discrimination.' Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity ![]() ![]() ![]() It’s a “done deal.” Congressional sources tell The Dossier that there is a strong enough appetite in Congress, given the unanimously pro-war Democratic voting bloc, and the significant amount of Republicans who support the perpetual funding of the Zelensky government in Ukraine, to pass a bill by the end of next week that will deliver tens of billions of dollars into Kiev’s coffers. The Dossier discussed the voting blocs with congressional staff multiple representatives on Capitol Hill, and it is clear that there is indeed some strong resistance to additional heaps of war funding among some factions of the GOP. However, Republican leadership and a majority of Republicans in the Senate continue to support the blank check Ukraine policy. On Wednesday, the Senate will convene for a classified briefing on Ukraine, through which unnamed intelligence officials in the Biden Administration will make senators feel more comfortable about the merits of forcing the US taxpayer to involuntarily support the White House’s proposed $38 billion overseas grant. The Ukraine aid will be attached to a mammoth spending bill set to be approved by Congress this month. Republican and Democratic leadership is negotiating on several attachments to the bill, but according to multiple sources, the Ukraine aid is considered a lock. Congressional leadership has decried calls for oversight of the money transfers, describing such transparency measures as “Russian propaganda.” Notably, the $38 billion Biden Admin ask is the exact same number requested by Zelensky to fulfill his country’s expected 2023 budgetary deficit. That’s not a coincidence. The Biden Administration has already acknowledged that they intend on keeping Kiev onsides in Afghanistan-like bribery fashion through subsidizing the salaries of their entire government. Having already sent around $100 billion to Kiev, the United States taxpayer is now financing virtually the entirety of its government. While Europe has become increasingly war weary, the US government has continued to remain all-in on the effort. However, the monetary gravy train that is the Russia-Ukraine war is becoming increasingly more costly, and globalist international monetary organizations are throwing out more and more insane numbers. And given that Ukraine has long been considered one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, most of the money “disappears” upon crossing the border. Reprinted with permission from The Dossier. Subscribe and support here. Uniparty: Congress likely to deliver tens of billions more to Ukraine in coming days Click on the headline to read the full story from ![]() ![]() FBI Plays Central Role In Twitter's Election Manipulation Operation Click on the headline to read the full story from ![]() ![]() ![]() Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the head of the House Armed Services Committee, said Saturday that the growing calls for more oversight of the billions of dollars the US is spending on Ukraine are “part of Russian propaganda.” While the majority of Republicans strongly favor continuing to arm Ukraine, even the more hawkish GOP members have said they favor increased oversight for the aid. Smith said that the concern from Republicans for more transparency “makes me a little crazy.” “Ukraine is spending the money really well; that’s why they’re winning,” Smith said at the Reagan National Defense Forum, according to Defense News. “Yes, we need oversight, but we don’t need that as an excuse to not fund what we’re doing.” Last month, a small group of House Republicans opposed to arming Ukraine led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced a bill that would require an audit of the funds that the US has spent on the war so far. Greene said that if she needed to, she would reintroduce the legislation after the next Congress is sworn in this January. The White House is looking for Congress to approve $37.7 billion in new Ukraine aid during the lame-duck period. If authorized, the new funds will bring total US spending on a proxy war on Russia’s border to about $105 billion. Reprinted with permission from Antiwar.com. Rep. Adam Smith Says Calls for Ukraine Aid Oversight are ‘Russian Propaganda’ Click on the headline to read the full story from ![]() ![]() ![]() As he wraps up his investigation with the prosecution of Igor Danchenko, we are left only with questions about what John Durham did not do. Best to start with what we learned. Durham established what FBI Director James Comey likely knew from near day one, that the Steele dossier was politically-driven nonsense created by the Clinton campaign. The FBI knowingly ran with its false information to obtain legal process against American citizens, to include Donald Trump as a candidate and as president. The FBI knew for sure in early 2017, likely earlier, that Trump was not a Russian spy but allowed the process to run on through the Mueller Report and all the rest. Imagine how different Trump’s term would have been had we all known with the certainty what the FBI did. No Maddow, no walls closing in, no insinuations America’s president was dealing cards to the Russians right out of the Oval Office. What was lost we’ll never know. The 2019 Horowitz Report, a look into the FBI’s conduct by the Justice Department Inspector General, now backed up by Durham’s work, made clear the FBI knew the dossier was bunk and purposefully lied to the FISA court to keep its lies alive. The FBI knew Steele, who was on their payroll as a paid informant, had created a classic intel officer’s information loop, secretly becoming his own corroborating source, and gleefully looked the other way because it supported their goal of spying on the Trump campaign, hoping to bring Trump down. Make no mistake, this was a failed coup. How bad was it? At no point in handling info accusing the sitting president of being a Russian agent — what would have been the most significant political event in American history — did the FBI seriously ask themselves, “Exactly where did this information come from, specific sources and methods please, and how could those sources have known it?” The FBI learned Danchenko was Steele’s near-single, primary source in 2017, via the Carter Page tap, and moved ahead anyway. Were all the polygraphs broken? And that is what we must focus on, what Durham failed to do. FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith plead guilty to Durham’s charge that Clinesmith lied on the FISA application for Carter Page to obtain a court’s permission to electronically surveil Page and, via the two-hop rule, the bulk of Trump’s inner circle. That rule allows those with a direct tap on one person (say, Carter Page) the legal ability to listen in two hops downstream. So if Page called Michael Cohen (one hop) and Cohen later called Trump (two hops) that would have all been legal surveillance. Page was a patsy, and the FBI knew it but needed a patsy bad enough to lie to get one. What was hidden from the courts was that the FBI knew Page was already a source, an agent, for the CIA and was not working for the Russians. It was with the tap on Carter Page that the whole investigation of Russiagate, Crossfire Hurricane, began. Did Clinesmith act alone in formulating his lies? Was he ordered to lie? Was his lie part of any broader pattern of lies on later FISA applications? Who worked with Clinesmith to create the FISA application and when was the lie incorporated? How many people above Clinesmith (McCabe, Comey, et al) knew about the lie and played along? How far up the FBI chain did they know it was all constructed, that Page was a stooge alright, but one clearly documented as working for the American side? Durham never seemed to ask and we the public will thus never know. Though Clinton lawyer Michael Sussman, Durham prosecution Number 2, was found not guilty of perjury, his trial revealed all sorts of questions Durham allowed to fade out. Testimony showed Hillary Clinton herself signed off on the plan to push out the information about the link between Trump and Alfa Bank despite concerns that the connection was dubious at best. This was the first confirmation that Clinton was directly involved in the decision to feed the false Trump-Alfa story to the FBI and MSM. It followed Wikileaks releasing information taken from the DNC servers which showed, inter alia, the Clinton campaign’s efforts to disparage Bernie Sanders. The leaks broke during the Democratic Convention and threatened to split the party. It was crisis time for Dems. Concurrent with the Wikileaks disclosure and the sense of panic inside the campaign at the 2016 Democratic National Convention came Clinton’s sign-off to begin the Russiagate dirty tricks campaign. That is the specific “why” behind the timing of the Russiagate narrative. Durham left Clinton out of his questioning, albeit with the help of the court blocking such “non-relevant” lines of inquiry in Sussman’s trial. Durham appears to be issuing no summary report, so whatever he learned dies with him. The Sussman trial also revealed the extent of spying on Trump. News worthy in Durham’s indictment of Sussman were allegations tech company Neustar and its executive Rodney Joffe accessed “dedicated servers for the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP.)” Joffe then “exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP’s DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.” Joffe also “enlisted the assistance of researchers at a US-based university” (likely Georgia Tech) who had access to “large amounts of Internet data.” This would have been how Joffe got access to data from Trump’s private computers. “[Joffe] tasked these researchers to mine Internet data to establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying then-candidate Trump to Russia,” he added. “In doing so, [Joffe] indicated that he was seeking to please certain ‘VIPs,’ referring to individuals at Law Firm-1 and the Clinton campaign.” Durham never pursued the Joffe line. Who paid him? When did he start monitoring the Oval Office? What did he learn? When did he stop? Was any of the monitoring, likely unconstitutionally, shared with the FBI? Was the FBI aware of the action and what if anything did they do to support it, profit from it, or try and limit it? Durham’s third and final prosecution was of Igor Danchenko. Danchenko, of the Brookings Institute, was the primary Russian source for Steele’s Dossier. He also served as a cover for Charles Dolan, a Clinton operative who simply made things up (such as the pee tape) and washed his lies through Danchenko to give them additional validity. The FBI lapped up what Steele served them and like Steele himself, never seriously questioned where the information they were acting on originated. Even in 2017 when the FBI learned the primary source was Danchenko, Crossfire Hurricane was allowed to proceed. Left unanswered: exactly when did the FBI learn Steele’s source was bogus? When did they learn Dolan was the originator of the pee tape? Why did they not conclude the investigation at that point? How high up the FBI chain of command did knowledge of the lackadaisical sourcing by Steele go? Director Comey? If not, why not? The FBI was actively investigating the President of the United States as a Russian spy and Comey was not aware of the details? Why didn’t Durham walk his indictments up the ladder, ever closer to Hillary? Or instead, why did he not proceed sideways, leaving Hillary but moving deeper into the FBI? Maybe see if Fiona Hill at Brooking’s connects the failed Russiagate coup with the failed Ukrainegate impeachment, both of which she played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in? Why didn’t Durham use the stage of congressional hearings to bypass Joe Biden’s Justice Department and throw the real decision making back to the voters? It is easy enough to say “so what?” Most people who did not support Hillary Clinton long ago concluded that she is a liar and untrustworthy. Her supporters know she’ll never run for public office again, hence the sense of anti-climax. But what matters is less the details of Hillary’s lie than that as someone close to being elected as her would lie about such a thing, treason, claiming her opponent was working for Russia. No doubt that for many Clinton’s manipulations are measured against Trump’s transgressions. But Trump’s win did not absolve Hillary of her sins. And those who worry about elections being stolen via vote miscounts are thinking way too small. If you want to really worry, think like a Clinton. Reprinted with permission from WeMeantWell.com. Wrapping Up: What John Durham Learned Click on the headline to read the full story from |
Ron Paul
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