Spygate is unravelling

[Sean Hayden]

So, Russia works to help get Trump elected, but our "intelligence community" is unsure whether a "discovered" claim that it was actually Clinton who worked with the Russians is a fabrication? And this despite their apparently agreeing to just that not too long ago? And, and, despite concerns about Ratcliffe being willing to politicize intelligence being raised before this incident?

What intelligence community would this be exactly?

[Sean Hayden]

...and, and, and, fuck Trump Jr. Why are we still being given the family opinion on matters?

[L'Emmerdeur]

If you think this is something, wait until Jr. is president.

[pErvinalia]

Has it unravelled yet? Maybe it will by the time Cunt returns.

[Joe]

Well, the Durham report has to drop first.

[Brian Peacock]

Well, the #FakeDurham #FakeReport has to drop first.

[Joe]

Well, the #FakeDurham #FakeReport has to drop first.

I suspect the report itself will be an honest attempt to get at whatever truth is there, but it will have to go through Bill Barr's funhouse mirror to spin it into a proper #fakeScandal.

[L'Emmerdeur]

The FBI and US Department of Justice have been carelessly including spurious dates in evidence (photocopies of notes) in the Flynn matter. It's a pure coincidence that they did it a few times, giving a false date that aligns with a lie that Trump tells about Biden. They have assured the court that the other false date included elsewhere in the evidence was a mistake as well.



'Justice Department acknowledges "inadvertently" altering Flynn document with sticky note'

What happened: The Justice Department "inadvertently" altered a document it filed in court in its ongoing effort to dismiss charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, prosecutors said Wednesday, attributing it to a wayward "sticky note" that was scanned onto a key piece of evidence department officials have cited in seeking to abandon the case.

The document is a set of undated notes from former FBI agent Peter Strzok summarizing a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting at which President Barack Obama, FBI Director James Comey and other national security officials discussed Flynn's contact with Russian officials. The scanned sticky note, however, included a date range of Jan. 4-5, 2017.

...

"You gave the idea for the Logan Act against General Flynn," the president said at the Sept. 29 debate.

But other documents released by the DOJ indicate that the notion of pursuing a Logan Act charge against Flynn first emerged inside the FBI on Jan. 4, 2017, a day before the Oval Office meeting occurred. Messages exchanged between Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page on that day reveal a discussion of the obscure law. Strzok provided the text of the statute to Page, as well as an analysis by the Congressional Research Service that noted the Logan Act had been in relative disuse for more than 200 years and could be unconstitutional.

The erroneously dated notes also mark the third time the DOJ and Flynn's legal team misdated the meeting as potentially occurring before Jan. 5. On June 24, the DOJ filed an earlier version of Strzok's notes that included an inaccurate date range as well.

[Brian Peacock]

"Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia."

[rainbow]

The FBI and US Department of Justice have been carelessly including spurious dates in evidence (photocopies of notes) in the Flynn matter. It's a pure coincidence that they did it a few times, giving a false date that aligns with a lie that Trump tells about Biden. They have assured the court that the other false date included elsewhere in the evidence was a mistake as well.

More proof of the Deep State controlled by the Illuminati.

[L'Emmerdeur]

The magical elixir damning report that Durham was supposed to have concocted and delivered about now has failed to appear. Not only that, but the resignation of Durham's aide--charging political pressure--has poisoned the well.

Trump is openly calling for the arrest of his electoral opponent, and it's not happening. In Trumpistan, Dear Leader's astounding apparent recovery from the deadly lurgy is cause for great rejoicing but a key element of the narrative is missing. MAGA's "LOCK X UP!" mantra has always rung hollow (a fascist wet-dream) and remains so. Even if the report does make an appearance before the election, it doesn't seem likely to have the desired magical effect. True believers will be all over it, but its potential to transform people into Trump voters is probably extremely limited.

'Team Trump Admits Its ‘Russiagate’ Head Fake Has Been a Flop'

With coronavirus running through his body in competition with a heavy steroidal dose, President Trump is frustrated that a country where over 210,000 people have died from the virus seems uninterested in the “hoax” of Russiagate.

Trump spent part of his week demanding the latest version of his Russia counter-narrative—that the intelligence officials teamed up with Democrats to invent Russian collusion in 2016—be used to prosecute his political enemies. “I say, ‘Bill [Barr], we have plenty [of evidence], we don’t need any more,” Trump told Maria Bartiromo on Thursday. On Friday, he fumed to Rush Limbaugh that Republicans are “afraid they’re going to influence the election… they don’t play the tough game.”

Providing that “evidence” to Attorney General William Barr’s special prosecutor is loyalist Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. Intelligence veterans are seething as Ratcliffe helps Trump concoct a narrative to aid him in an election. “Everyone knows the deal here,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA officer. “They know Ratcliffe is irresponsible. It’s just everything goes.”

Yet Trump and his aides, in recent weeks, have recognized that the public isn’t captivated by the Breitbart-friendly accounts of uncovered notes from former CIA officials four years ago, according to two sources familiar with the private complaints.

“Mainstream media isn’t covering it. So most voters aren’t aware of the facts,” John McLaughlin, a top Trump pollster, told The Daily Beast. “You’re [the] first reporter who’s ever asked me and it has yet to be a question in the debates.”

Other political advisers don’t even think it’s worth the bother at this point. Some senior Trump aides have privately insisted that amplifying the inquiry from special prosecutor John Durham is a waste of time, at least electorally. “It is not going to move any votes that aren’t already in our column,” one said.

[L'Emmerdeur]

This has to be fake news. The Washington Post via CNN. Enemies of the People™! Maybe Tim Pool has a hot take that will salvage the moment, but it seems like an important strand has given up the ghost.

'Washington Post: Barr's "unmasking" investigation concludes without charges'

The US attorney tasked by Attorney General William Barr to review instances of "unmasking" done around the 2016 election has completed the probe without bringing any charges, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

While Republicans for months have hyped the Obama-era unmasking requests as an enormous scandal, John Bash found no evidence of substantive wrongdoing in his investigation, which has concluded without a public report, the Post said. Bash left his role with the Justice Department last week.

The term "unmasking" refers to the process of releasing the names of American citizens who are caught up in National Security Agency foreign intelligence reports. The names of American citizens in NSA foreign intelligence documents are always redacted, but certain government officials have the authority to request to have the names unredacted, or unmasked.

CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.

The quiet end to the probe caps a months-long effort that added the weight of a senior federal prosecutor behind an issue that President Donald Trump had seized on to underpin unfounded allegations about former President Barack Obama.

[L'Emmerdeur]

There must be some changes made to address the outrageous lack of action taken on this matter before the election. I know, let's have one of the loudest chowderheads of the 'prosecute the Obama administration!' persuasion in charge of oversight of the Washington DC federal courts.

'Trump plans to name conservative activist Tom Fitton to court oversight agency'

President Donald Trump intends to appoint the conservative activist Tom Fitton to a D.C. court oversight body with the power to remove judges in the district’s judiciary.

The White House announced Trump’s intention to name Fitton to the D.C. Commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure on Friday afternoon. Fitton is the head of the conservative group Judicial Watch and has advocated the investigation of former Obama administration officials, including Hillary Clinton. He was also a fierce critic of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 election.

...

Fitton has made a name for himself peddling misinformation on a number of current topics, including the scientific consensus on climate change. He has also called for the end of coronavirus safety precautions, such as mask wearing and working from home.

The commission is composed of two lay members, four attorneys and one federal judge. The president can appoint one of the members, who serves for a five-year term. The commission has the power to remove judges for misconduct or force judges into retirement if they become mentally or physically incapacitated.

Fitton professes to believe that the Russia Hoax™ and associated misdeeds by the Obama administration ('Burisma!') constitute 'the worst corruption scandal in American history.'

[L'Emmerdeur]

Yeah, this is a rotting pile of feces that has been repeatedly shown as such, but the goons ain't fergettin'. It seems rather likely the news will have regular mentions of it for at least a year or so. The Republicans in the US Congress have to have something to do rather than actually participating in governing the country. No doubt we'll be treated to further bleating about it from our leftist brother in the Great White North when he returns in a few months.

'How "Obamagate" and Hunter’s "laptop from hell" fizzled'

In the end, “the biggest political scandal in the history of our country” and “the second biggest political scandal in our history” turned out to be neither.

President Donald Trump’s eleventh-hour efforts to impart a stain of criminality onto President-elect Joe Biden through a series of vague, circuitous and often false allegations, did little but inflame his committed supporters. And the months-long investigations by his Republican allies in the Senate failed to gain traction outside of the Trumpworld echo chamber as Trump hurtled toward an Election Day defeat. Now, Trump is facing his own mounting scandals that are likely to dog him post-presidency.

The Logan Act. Burisma. Tony Bobulinski. John Brennan. Unmasking. The Durham probe. “The laptop from hell.” They were all on Trump’s last-ditch Bingo card, flummoxing voters who hadn’t followed every twist in the tangled narratives. And as Election Day approached, even Trump’s Capitol Hill allies who were supporting ongoing congressional investigations into those issues began to back away, warning that the issues weren’t connecting with the electorate.

...

Trump pushed two factually challenged narratives about Biden in the waning weeks of the campaign. In one, Biden was a mastermind of an effort to spy on Trump’s 2016 campaign, collaborating with top intelligence officials to derail Trump’s incoming administration. In the other, Biden was the secret beneficiary of multi-million-dollar business deals with shady foreign interests carried out by Hunter Biden.

But both stories were riddled with falsehoods, exaggerations and assumptions, often pushed by unreliable narrators who revealed no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden. Though Biden’s son may face legitimate legal problems over his foreign activities — and recent reports suggest he is facing an ongoing FBI investigation — no evidence connects the elder Biden to those allegations, and even Trump acknowledged that top advisers were urging him to back off the Hunter claims so close to Election Day.

“I get a call from all the experts, right? Guys that ran for president six, seven, eight times. Never got past the first round, but they’re calling me up, ‘Sir, you shouldn’t be speaking about Hunter. You shouldn’t be saying bad things about Biden because nobody cares,’” Trump said at a recent rally. “I disagree. Maybe that’s why I’m here and they’re not.”

[Brian Peacock]

The 'Trumpworld echo chamber' is about 48% of the voting public, apparently.