Not a peep…
Tag: trump derangement syndrome
Democrats Framed And Spied On Trump While He Was President
Enemies of Donald Trump surveilled the internet traffic at Trump Tower, at his New York City apartment building, and later at the executive office of the president of the United States, then fed disinformation about that traffic to intelligence agencies hoping to frame Trump as a Russia-connected stooge.
A tangential filing on Friday in the criminal case against former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann revealed these new details uncovered by Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation. The revelation came in the middle of a 13-page motion Durham’s prosecutors filed in the criminal case against Sussmann. The special counsel’s office charged Sussmann in September 2021, in a one-count indictment of lying to James Baker during a meeting Sussmann had with the then-FBI general counsel in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election.
During Sussmann’s September 19, 2016 meeting with Baker, Sussmann allegedly provided the FBI general counsel information that purported to show the existence of a secret communication channel between the Trump organization and the Russian Alfa Bank. The indictment charged that Sussmann told Baker during that meeting that he was not working on behalf of any client, when, according to the indictment, Sussmann was actually acting on behalf of “a U.S. technology industry executive at a U.S. Internet company”—later identified as Rodney Joffe—and “the Hillary Clinton Presidential Campaign.”
While the special counsel’s indictment of the Clinton campaign lawyer was, by itself, huge news, the details Durham sprinkled throughout the 27 pages of the talking indictment suggest even more bombshells are to come. Those allegations suggested “a scandal much deeper than merely Sussmann’s role in a second Russian hoax — a scandal that entangles the Clinton campaign, multiple internet companies, two federally-funded university researchers, and a complicit media.”
Eyes turn to Hillary Clinton, not Trump in the Russiagate scandal
So there you have it.
Russiagate, the collective delusion that Donald Trump was secretly a Russian agent aided and abetted by the Kremlin, the topic of uncountable inches of Washington Post and New York Times copy and the entire primetime lineup of MSNBC, was a dirty trick by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Not just part of it. All of it. One of the most diabolical, successful misinformation campaigns ever concocted.
We already knew that the Steele dossier was garbage. Christopher Steele was paid indirectly by the Clinton campaign to dig up dirt, which he did by turning to other Clinton operatives, laundering every outlandish rumor about Trump he could find into an “investigative” document.
He shopped it to the FBI, which couldn’t verify his sources or any of his stories, but the agency dragged out the investigation to cast maximum suspicion on the new president. In the meantime, Steele found willing accomplices in the media to push his propaganda. The dupes at BuzzFeed even decided to print the whole pack of lies, with the flimsy rationale of “Well, why not?”
Congress’s 1/6 Committee Claims Absolute Power as it Investigates Citizens With No Judicial Limits
In its ongoing attempt to investigate and gather information about private U.S. citizens, the Congressional 1/6 Committee is claiming virtually absolute powers that not even the FBI or other law enforcement agencies enjoy. Indeed, lawyers for the committee have been explicitly arguing that nothing proscribes or limits their authority to obtain data regarding whichever citizens they target and, even more radically, that the checks imposed on the FBI (such as the requirement to obtain judicial authorization for secret subpoenas) do not apply to the committee.
As we have previously reported and as civil liberties groups have warned, there are serious constitutional doubts about the existence of the committee itself. Under the Constitution and McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases interpreting it, the power to investigate crimes lies with the executive branch, supervised by the judiciary, and not with Congress. Congress does have the power to conduct investigations, but that power is limited to two narrow categories: 1) when doing so is designed to assist in its law-making duties (e.g., directing executives of oil companies to testify when considering new environmental laws) and 2) in order to exert oversight over the executive branch.
What Congress is barred from doing, as two McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases ruled, is exactly what the 1/6 committee is now doing: conducting a separate, parallel criminal investigation in order to uncover political crimes committed by private citizens. Such powers are dangerous precisely because Congress’s investigative powers are not subject to the same safeguards as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. And just as was true of the 1950s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that prompted those Supreme Court rulings, the 1/6 committee is not confining its invasive investigative activities to executive branch officials or even citizens who engaged in violence or other illegality on January 6, but instead is investigating anyone and everyone who exercised their Constitutional rights to express views about and organize protests over their belief that the 2020 presidential election contained fraud. Indeed, the committee’s initial targets appear to be taken from the list of those who applied for protest permits in Washington: a perfectly legal, indeed constitutionally protected, act.
This abuse of power is not merely abstract. The Congressional 1/6 Committee has been secretly obtaining private information about American citizens en masse: telephone records, email logs, internet and browsing history, and banking transactions. And it has done so without any limitations or safeguards: no judicial oversight, no need for warrants, no legal limitations of any kind.
Smollett just one in a string of false accusations by Trump opponents
The sad case of actor Jussie Smollett and his now-proven-false claims that he was viciously attacked by racist Trump supporters is not an isolated case.
But the media holds a great deal of blame for reporting initial instances and claims without using normal journalistic practices and standards that would have protected against misreporting.
Lessons should have been taken from numerous cases of high-profile wrongly-accused, whether it’s Richard Jewell falsely blamed (and later cleared) in the Atlanta Olympic bombings, Officer Darren Wilson falsely blamed (and later cleared by the Obama Justice Dept.) in the shooting of Michael Brown (the Justice Dept. concluded the “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” claims were fabricated), Wen Ho Lee accused (but never charged and then prevailing in libel lawsuits against media) in the Chinese theft of our most sensitive nuclear secrets, Kyle Rittenhouse accused (but later cleared) of wrongful shootings of his attackers during a riot, the Covington Catholic kids falsely portrayed as being aggressive against a Native American protester, the University of Virginia frat brothers falsely accused of sexual abuse in a Rolling Stone article, Steven Hatfill falsely accused by the FBI in anthrax attacks, Trump and campaign associate Carter Page as supposed Russian spies, well– the list goes on. You can think of others.
If only the media were to follow normal standards and practices when these cases arise (reporting fairly, attributing claims, reporting both sides of a story), then we wouldn’t ultimately shoulder so much of the blame for the out-of-control false narratives that derive from the news reports.
When it. are to Smollett’s accusations, some media outlets responsibly reported and properly attributed allegations. But others did not. Some unskeptically furthered the narrative that Smollett, who is black, was attacked by Trump-supporting racists who put a noose around Smollett’s neck, shouted racial slurs, told him it’s “MAGA” (Make America Great Again) country, and poured bleach on him. The New York Times deserves special mention here for adding a biased non sequitur in its early reporting that treated skepticism of Smollett’s story as if it were unfounded, and fit in a dig at President Trump’s son.
New York Times reporting on the Smollett claims
But the lack of progress in the investigation has fueled speculation about whether the report was exaggerated. The president?s son Donald Trump Jr., who is known to disseminate conspiracy theories on his Twitter feed, retweeted an article this week about Smollett declining to turn over his cellphone to the police.
Here are but a few of the other cases whereby Trump opponents staged fake attacks or made false claims. The initial accusations were widely reported; the follow ups were not so widely reported.
DC bar restores status of convicted ex-FBI lawyer who deceived the FISA court during Russia probe
Kevin Clinesmith, the former senior FBI lawyer who was placed on probation as a convicted felon for falsifying a surveillance document during the Trump-Russia investigation, has been returned to “good standing” as a member of the D.C. Bar Association.
In August of 2020, Clinesmith pleaded guilty to doctoring an email that was then used to justify a surveillance warrant that targeted former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. As a result, Clinesmith was sentenced in January to 12 months probation, though the D.C. bar did not seek his disbarment.
MSNBC’s Heilemann Claims ’30 Million People Right Now’ Ready to Take Up Arms for Trump
MSNBC network national affairs analyst John Heilemann said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that there were “30 million people right now who are ready to take up arms” for former President Donald Trump.
Anchor Chuck Todd said, “I want to read what Bart Gellman wrote in the cover story for The Atlantic. Some might say it is hyperbolic, but John Heilemann, I’m curious if you think it is? The headline is Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun. ‘Trump and his party convinced a dauntingly large number of Americans, that the essential workings of democracy are corrupt, that the made-up claims of fraud are true, that only cheating can thwart their victory at their polls, that tyranny usurped their government and that violence is a legitimate response.’ Hyperbolic or fact?”
Heilemann said, “Fact, I think. The strength of that Gellman piece is it lays out this extraordinary reality that there is this research that shows something like 8% and maybe as many as 12% that say Joe Biden was illegitimate and violence is an appropriate tool to removing him and restoring Donald Trump. That’s between 20 and 30 million people. That’s a mass movement in America in favor of political violence, which is a new thing. We’ve been political violence before, lynching many things over the course of time that African-Americans have suffered, but this is 30 million people right now who are ready to take up arms.”
Top 10 Democrats Who Fell For Convicted Felon Jussie Smollett’s Hate Crime Hoax
Disgraced actor Jussie Smollett became a convicted felon on Thursday evening after a jury found him guilty on 5 out of 6 felony disorderly conduct charges stemming from a hate crime hoax that he staged on himself in 2019.
“He was found guilty of telling a police officer he was a hate crime victim, telling an officer he was a battery victim, telling a detective he was a hate crime victim, telling a detective he was a battery victim and then telling a detective again he was battery victim,” Fox News reported. “He was not found guilty on a sixth charge of telling a second detective he was an aggravated battery victim.”
Numerous top Democrats rushed to pounce on Smollett’s initial claims that he had been attacked by purported Trump supporters.
CNN Uses Pearl Harbor Anniversary To Warn of Second Civil War
CNN’s John Avlon joined CNN Tonight host Michael Smerconish on Tuesday for another of of his pretentious “reality check” segments. This particular instance involved using the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor to hype the possibility of a second civil war.
Coming out of a commercial, Smerconish suggested that 2021 is not that different than 1941, “Today marks 80 years since the infamous surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, a day that would change the course of our nation’s history. Just as the strength of our democracy was tested then, we find ourselves yet again in a different but just as dangerous war on truth and democracy and science.”
He then tossed things over to Avlon, who continued with this theme, and without any self-awareness declared:
Over the past six years, America has endured sustained assaults on truth, democracy, and science. Leading to reduced trust in our institutions and each other. Those breaches don’t heal overnight. It has a downstream effect, tainting a rising generation with a sense of pessimism. And perhaps the most stark snapshot of that came from a new poll of young people age 18 to 29 conducted by the Harvard Institute of Politics. It shows that a majority believe that our democracy is at risk. And who could blame them, after seeing a president lie about election results, incite an insurrection, and then see one party follow him into la la land.
Getting further and further away from any credible Pearl Harbor analogy, Avlon reported: “…when it comes to the science of confronting climate crisis, Republicans are clearly on the back foot when it comes to young Americans. A solid 55% say that the federal government is not doing enough to combat climate change, which includes 68% of folks with a college degree and 50% without. A small slice, just 14%, think the feds are doing too much. Which lines up with the do-nothing climate change denial of Donald Trump.”
The Corrupt Media Did Not Fall For The Russia Collusion Hoax. They Were Part Of It
Soon after Special Counsel John Durham indicted Igor Danchenko, the “Primary Sub-Source” of the Steele dossier, on five counts of lying to the FBI, the press paused to feign a moment of public introspection. The corrupt media’s attempt to frame their failings as mere confirmation bias, however, holds no truer than the Russia-collusion hoax they peddled for five years.
The proof of this reality is seen in the prostitute sex tapes: the non-existent “golden showers” one and the verifiable, but ignored, Hunter Biden videos.
The first step of what appeared, at least momentarily, to be the kick-off of a mea culpa parade came earlier this month when the Washington Post amended large segments of two articles covering the Russia-collusion storyline, one from March 2017 and the second from February 2019.
Both articles had named Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-American businessman, as the individual identified as “Source D” in the Steele dossier. While Millian had long denied speaking with Danchenko or having any role in the dossier, it was only after Durham charged the Russian-born Danchenko and former Brookings Institute employee with lying about receiving a telephone call from Millian that the Post and other media outlets removed the claims.
Then, last week, The New York Times ran a “guest essay” by professor of journalism and former Columbia Journalism School dean Bill Grueskin, headlined, “How Did So Much of the Media Get the Steele Dossier So Wrong?”
Hellbound and Down 
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