The Russian links to the figures behind Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier have come into clearer focus following special counsel John Durham’s indictments. Steele was working for Vladimir Putin-linked oligarch Oleg Deripaska before, during, and after his time targeting then-candidate Donald Trump, and the former MI6 agent was hired to put the dossier together by an opposition research firm, Fusion GPS , which was simultaneously working for Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya of the now-infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. The Clinton campaign hired Fusion.
Steele’s main source, U.S.-based Russian national Igor Danchenko, allegedly relied upon a network of Russian contacts, undermined key collusion claims when interviewed by the FBI, and had previously been investigated as a possible threat to national security due to potential Russian intelligence contacts. And, according to Durham’s false statements charges, he anonymously sourced a claim about Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort to longtime Hillary Clinton ally Chuck Dolan , who spent many years, including 2016, doing work for Russian businesses and the Russian government. Durham's investigation appears to be painting the picture that many of the biggest Trump-Russia collusion claims can be traced back to the Clinton campaign and Democratic operatives.
Durham's investigation has not made anything "appear" to be anything. It has completely dismantled the whole Russian collusion from the ground floor up with sworn admissions from the very people who made it possible. The only remaining questions are how deep it went and to what degree the FBI and Obama Administration was in on it.
This is actually quite simple. Steele was not uncovering anything. He was working for and with the very people who were providing the information, or disinformation as it were. More to the point, he was paid to do exactly this by the Clinton campaign and other Democratic operatives.
62 comments:
Franklin Foer: Russiagate was not a hoax
The usual suspects in the pro-Trump media ecosystem will of course endorse and repeat everything Trump says, no matter how outlandish. But it’s not pro-Trumpers who are leading the latest round of Trump-Russia denialism. This newest round of excuse-making is being sounded from more respectable quarters, in many cases by people distinguished as Trump critics. With Trump out of office—at least for the time being—they now feel free to subordinate their past concerns about him to other private quarrels with the FBI or mainstream media institutions. On high-subscription Substacks, on popular podcasts, even from within prestige media institutions, people with scant illusions about Trump the man and president are nonetheless volunteering to help him execute one of his Big Lies.
The factual record on Trump-Russia has been set forth most authoritatively by the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, then chaired by Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina. I’ll reduce the complex details to a very few agreed upon by virtually everybody outside the core Trump-propaganda group.
Dating back to at least 2006, Trump and his companies did tens of millions of dollars of business with Russian individuals and other buyers whose profiles raised the possibility of money laundering. More than one-fifth of all the condominiums sold by Trump over his career were purchased in all-cash transactions by shell companies, a 2018 BuzzFeed News investigation found.
In 2013, Trump’s pursuit of Russian business intensified. That year, he staged the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Around that time, Trump opened discussions on the construction of a Trump Tower in Moscow, from which he hoped to earn “hundreds of millions of dollars, if the project advanced to completion,” in the words of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Trump continued to pursue the Tower deal for a year after he declared himself a candidate for president. “By early November 2015, Trump and a Russia-based developer signed a Letter of Intent laying out the main terms of a licensing deal,” the Senate Intelligence Committee found. Trump’s representatives directly lobbied aides to Russian President Vladimir Putin in January 2016. Yet repeatedly during the 2016 campaign, Trump falsely stated that he had no business with Russia—perhaps most notably in his second presidential debate against Hillary Clinton, in October 2016.
Early in 2016, President Putin ordered an influence operation to “harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process.” Again, that’s from the Senate Intelligence Committee report.
The Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos “likely learned about the Russian active measures campaign as early as April 2016,” the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote. In May 2016, Papadopoulos indiscreetly talked with Alexander Downer, then the Australian high commissioner to the United Kingdom, about Russia’s plot to intervene in the U.S. election to hurt Clinton and help Trump. Downer described the conversation in a report to his government. By long-standing agreement, Australia shares intelligence with the U.S. government. It was Papadopoulos’s blurt to Downer that set in motion the FBI investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, a revelation authoritatively reported more than three years ago.
In June 2016, the Trump campaign received a request for a meeting from a Russian lawyer offering harmful information on Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump Jr. and other senior Trump advisers accepted the meeting. The Trump team did not obtain the dirt they’d hoped for. But the very fact of the meeting confirmed to the Russian side the Trump campaign’s eagerness to accept Russian assistance. Shortly after, Trump delivered his “Russia, if you’re listening” invitation at his last press conference of the campaign.
You won't read it because you have already made up your mind Scott.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/trump-russia-senate-intelligence-report/620815/?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Not every journalist has to work on every story. Smaller abuses and lesser failures also demand attention alongside the greater abuses and larger failures. But if you choose, as a journalist or a consumer of journalism, to focus on smaller issues, you need to retain your perspective about what is bigger and what is smaller.
So by all means, follow the trail on Steele. But be mindful that much of that trail was prepared by people who want to misdirect and mislead. Take care how far you step along that trail. Be alert to how the twists of the trail block your view of the surrounding landscape. Otherwise, you may discover too late that you have also been misdirected and misled, and that in setting out to explore a small truth, you have become a participant in the selling of a greater lie.
But if you choose, as a journalist or a consumer of journalism, to focus on smaller issues, you need to retain your perspective about what is bigger and what is smaller.
So by all means, follow the trail on Steele. But be mindful that much of that trail was prepared by people who want to misdirect and mislead. Take care how far you step along that trail. Be alert to how the twists of the trail block your view of the surrounding landscape. Otherwise, you may discover too late that you have also been misdirected and misled, and that in setting out to explore a small truth, you have become a participant in the selling of a greater lie.
Enjoy the big lie
The only remaining questions are how deep it went and to what degree the FBI and Obama Administration was in on it.
And the deep state conspiracy Koolaid
Hey roger you've posted that very same article many times. Why don't you go back and read the responses so you don't have to keep reposting? Was any of the article changed ?
The Atlantic is not a source of good journalism anymore.
Like the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times etc they were purchased at bargain prices by political activists.
Billionaire activists
I thought the left stood up against the "man"
I guess they sold out too
* multi-billionaire activists
* but I guess the "big guy" approves
whoever that is
Retract Every Russian Collusion Story and Fire Everyone Who Wrote Them
In a healthy society, public apologies, not mealymouthed caveats and explainers buried in the entertainment guide, would be plastered on the front page of every newspaper and website.
...
But the Post should not just unapologetically correct the phony stories on Millian; every single article, column, and video that supports the now-debunked Russian collusion hoax should be retracted with a lengthy explanation. Tom Hamburger, who was in cahoots with Simpson from the start and met with Simpson and Christopher Steele in September 2016 to accelerate the narrative weeks before the presidential election, should be fired. Immediately.
...
Fischer claims a “reckoning” is hitting newsrooms across the country. With the exception of a cowardly response by the Post’s editor, that’s about as accurate as the dossier itself. A true reckoning would involve more than a few editor’s notes or burying collusion coverage down the media’s deep memory hole.
In any other honorable profession, one that still takes itself seriously and is capable of self-policing to preserve the tattered shreds of integrity and accountability that remain, mass firings, not faux “reckonings,” would empty newsrooms. Reporters, columnists, cable news hosts, and paid contributors would be shown walking papers. Editors would step down in humiliation. Public apologies, not mealymouthed caveats and explainers buried in the entertainment guide, would be plastered on the front page of every newspaper and website; talking heads would make amends to the victims—including Donald Trump—for this reckless, destructive hoax and also to their audience for intentionally misleading them for years and then announce their early retirement.
Collusion between Donald Trump and the Kremlin to influence the outcome of the 2016 election never happened—but every news organization, big and small, contributed to spreading this lie. It’s breathtaking malfeasance on a scale unrivaled in American history. The media should not be permitted to proceed with business as usual.
Fire them all.
https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/15/retract-every-russian-collusion-story-and-fire-everyone-who-wrote-them/
roger won't be able to comprehend the entire article so I just took a few slices
American greatness......BWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! One step below Fox News for bullshit opinion and reporting!!!!!!!!! Sad fucked up can only see the Right side which is never factual!!!!!
As explained...
The actual people who created the Steele dossier are under oath exposing that the entire thing was Russian disinformation bought and paid for by the Hillary Campaign.
The NYT, WaPo and others are not correctly their own articles claiming differently. Every reasonable person now understands that the reason that the FBI, Congress and Special Counsel never found Russian collusion was because it didn't exist.
But a single journalist tells Roger something different...
and suddenly what the actual investigation found and what the evidence suggest and what people are testifying to is irrelevant to him. He wants so spectacularly to keep believing the Russian collusion like that he will cling to anything.
This is the most classic and obvious case of media gaslighting that you could possibly provide.
Thank you Roger!
I could not have "mocked up" anything quite this ridiculous!
Can the FBI Be Salvaged?
...
The fired former Director James Comey injected himself into the 2016 political race by constantly editorializing on his ongoing investigation of candidate Hillary Clinton's email leaks.
In a bizarre twist, the public learned later that Comey had allowed Hillary Clinton's own private computer contractor - CrowdStrike - to run the investigation of the hack. The private firm was allowed to keep possession of pertinent hard drives central to the investigation. How odd that CrowdStrike's point man was Shawn Henry, a former high-ranking FBI employee.
During the Robert Mueller special investigation, the FBI implausibly claimed it had no idea how requested information on FBI cell phones had mysteriously disappeared.
It was also under Comey's directorship that the FBI submitted inaccurate requests for warrants to a FISA court. Elements of one affidavit to surveil Trump supporter Carter Page were forged by FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who later pleaded guilty to a felony.
The FBI hired the disreputable ex-British spy Christopher Steele as a contractor, while he was peddling his fantasy - the Clinton-bought dossier - to Obama government officials and the media.
Former FBI general counsel James Baker was reportedly the subject of a federal investigation. He allegedly conducted prominent meetings both with media outlets that later leaked lurid tales from the Steele dossier. He also met repeatedly with the now-indicted Perkins Coe attorney Michael Sussman.
Comey himself, through third-party intermediaries, leaked to the media his own confidential memos detailing private meetings with President Trump. His assurances both to Congress and to Trump that the president was not the current subject of FBI investigations were either misleading or outright lies.
In sworn testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, Comey on some 245 occasions claimed he could not remember or had no knowledge of key elements of his own "Russian Collusion" investigation.
Comey's replacement, acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, was fired for leaking sensitive information to the media. He then lied on at least three occasions about his role to federal attorneys and his own FBI investigators.
McCabe is now a paid CNN consultant who often has offered misleading information on the Russian collusion hoax that he helped promulgate.
Former FBI director and special counsel Robert Mueller conducted a 22-month, $40 million wild goose chase after some mythical "Russian Collusion" plot. When called before Congress, Mueller claimed he had little or no knowledge about Fusion GPS or the Steele Dossier - the twin sources that birthed the entire collusion hoax.
FBI lawyer Lisa Page was removed from Mueller's investigation, along with her paramour FBI investigator Peter Strzok. Both misused FBI communications, revealing their pro-Clinton biases during their investigations of "Russian collusion," while hiding their own unprofessional relationship.
Mueller himself staggered their firings and delayed explanations about why they were let go from his investigation team.
When the FBI arrested pro-Trump activist Roger Stone, it did so with a huge quasi-swat team - to the tipped-off and lurking CNN reporters.
continues
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/11/18/can_the_fbi_be_salvaged_146751.html
a HOAX on steroids
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
Roger tells us all that he doesn't just listen to the media...
But just cut and pasted the same dumb disproven article for like the 5th time and is back to believing that Trump colluded with Russia in spite of the people involved actually admitting it was Russian disinformation.
Doh!!
BWAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! At you Lil Schitty.......whenever Roger kicks your ass, you go into he doesn't know shit mode......Funny especially coming from you who still denies Trump lost and the GOP is nirvana!!!!!!!!!
You won't read it because you have already made up your mind Scott.
I've read the indictments, the sworn testimony and the evidence that the entire Steele dossier consisted of Russian disinformation. I believe (as the evidence shows) that Steele was not investigating the Russians in question, but working with and for them. People have admitted as such.
These documents prove (and could be used to prove in court) everything that points to the dossier being disinformation.
Why on earth Roger..
Would I read some journalist's "opinion" about all of this, when we have all the raw facts?
Making up your mind is something people should do based on the raw facts. You don't go around reading "other people's opinion" and then decide which one of those opinions to believe.
Get back to us when you have read the indictments, read the sworn statements, and did real research Roger. Reading a journalist is not research and it has zero to do with "thinking for yourself".
Even if you decide to "read both sides" you are still simply choosing which other person is thinking for you. You are not coming to your own conclusions.
So Denny...
You do not agree with the US intelligence, the documents provided, the sworn testimony, or the other evidence... or even the NYT and WaPo who are rewriting their old stories?
You are sticking with old man Roger, huh?
Good call!
C.H. TruthNovember 27, 2021 at 1:35 PM
Will I get any sort of intelligent response from either Roger or the Reverend?
Answer : Nope
BWAAAAAAAAAA!!!! And the stump broken gibberish poster chimes in again!!!!!!!
So Denny...
You do not agree with the US intelligence, the documents provided,
BWAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! I'll believe them as soon as you admit trump lost and there was no fraud,,,,,,,Jerk
Denny with the good old fashioned logical argument...
I will not believe any of the evidence or US intelligence until some person I don't even know decides to do something completely unrelated.
Nice logic there birdbrain!
Yep Lil Schitty.....that is the deal.......BWAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! Too immature to accept trumps loss with zero evidence.....too bad there is sooooo much circumstantial evidence of trumps sucking on Putins ass!!!!!!!! Yeah, another lil schitty lack of logic!!!!!!
Even nazi's get empathy.
At age of 14, in the late 1980s, Picciolini met a charismatic neo-Nazi recruiter in a dark alleyway of Blue Island, Illinois, a working-class Chicago suburb. Within a few years, he would rise to the top of his recruiter's violent, white supremacist organization, recruiting other members, committing hate crimes and even exporting "white power" propaganda on a trip to Europe. Picciolini tells the fascinating details of his redemption story, and how he renounced the white power movement, becoming both antiracist and anti-capitalist, in his memoir, "White American Youth: My Descent Into America's Most Violent Hate Movement — and How I Got Out."
The most heartbreaking element in Piccioini's chronicle of transformation is the murder of his younger brother. They were 10 years apart in age, but Picciolini says when they were young, they were inseparable: "We were each other's entire world." he said. Then Picciolini's world became the white hate movement, and his brother's world fell apart. Two of his close friends became members of the Latin Kings, a criminal street gang on the South Side of Chicago. Picciolini, having left his own violent gang, tried to warn his brother what lay ahead. "I told him, 'I've been on the road you're on, and it is going to end badly,'" he recalled. But his brother's anger over Picciolini's earlier abandonment of the family undermined any advice he could offer.
In 2004, at the age of 20, Picciolini's brother, riding in a car with his friends to an apparent drug transaction, was killed by members of a rival gang. "For a long time, I felt like my brother got the bullet that was meant for me," Picciolini said. "I've tried to be the guy for other young men that my brother needed before he died. I've tried to be the guy who can help people like my brother. When everyone else sees the monster, I can still see the child, and I try bringing that child back."
Since Picciolini's disavowal of white supremacy, he has worked as an advocate for hate crime prevention, racial equity and progressive politics, through books, speaking tours and a three-episode documentary series for MSNBC, which shares the title of his second book, "Breaking Hate: Confronting the New Culture of Extremism." Picciolini now describes himself as a "white nationalist translator," saying, "I still understand their language, symbols and movements. That enables me to go to law enforcement, policymakers and journalists and explain what is happening."
As Picciolini has transitioned from hate leader to democratic healer, he has watched significant sectors of American society, including a major political parties, defend, excuse and sometimes embrace the ideology of white supremacy.
"Everything happening right now is the skinhead's dream of the 1990s coming true," Picciolini told me. "Donald Trump's ideas are not new, but he has made people in influential positions comfortable in expressing racism. In a relatively short time, we've gone from not talking about these things, even if they were always there, to no longer feeling shame about it. Tucker Carlson, other right-wing pundits, congressional representatives like Paul Gosar and Mo Brooks, are saying exactly what I was saying when I was a Nazi. They are using softer terms, but the message is the same."
Picciolini says he understands how this strategy has played out. "We advised infiltration," he said, "infiltration of law enforcement, the military and political offices with low barrier of entry, like the school board, town council, county election positions. And that's exactly what we are seeing now: a widespread, coordinated effort for the far right to take power at the local level."
He specifically means the use of racial paranoia and panic, through invented culture-war issues like "critical race theory" and "voter fraud," as a pretext for far-right political victories.
RELATED: Right's cynical attack on "critical race theory": Old racist poison in a new bottle
What hangs in the balance is the survival of American democracy. Picciolini sees all the political momentum on the right, aided by disruptive foreign agents who manipulate social media to encourage hatred, division and extreme partisanship. Meanwhile, the combination of voter suppression and the "big lie" subversion of faith in fair elections has brought America, in his words, "to the edge of disaster." At the more immediate level, Picciolini joins many experts, such as genocide scholar Alexander Laban Hinton and political scientist Anthony DiMaggio, in predicting the possibility of mass violence.
White supremacists, according to all the available data, are already responsible for more political violence than any faction since the 9/11 attacks. Hate crimes from lone actors or small groups have steadily increased over the past 12 years, and Picciolini warns, "With people becoming more radicalized, it isn't a big step for these groups to coordinate larger attacks, especially with leaders like Donald Trump giving encouragement."
Scott won't read anything but what he already believes.
https://www.salon.com/2021/11/27/famous-ex-neo-nazi-has-had-enough-america-now-is-the-skinheads-dream-of-the-1990s/
I read both sides and make up my own mind.
The Washington Examiner is a highly partisan organization funded by rich white people.
I read it before I said anything.
This is a perfect example of gaslighting on your mind Scott. Not mine.
Even if you decide to "read both sides" you are still simply choosing which other person is thinking for you. You are not coming to your own conclusions.
I am coming to my own conclusion without political bias.
Some people just can't think outside the box.
That's why propaganda works on millions of people
I read both sides and make up my own mind.
There is only one side here Roger...
The evidence as presented by those indicted surrounding the Steele dossier. The evidence that ties Steele back to Russians (that he was working for not actually investigating). The admission in all of this is that he provided false information that he knew was false.
Because that is what he was paid to do.
Have you even read any of that?
Obviously not.
Because you believe a journalist from Salon.
https://share.newsbreak.com/6xkiulkq
So Roger believes that the New York Times and WaPo are now going back and changing their stories regarding their Russian collusion pieces...
Not because US intelligence and sworn confessions prove those stories were wrong.
But because the NYT and WaPo are gaslighted by right wing journalists?
Are you really "trying" to just be stupid?
Like I said before that I read both sides Scott and make up my own mind Indy is right
They were gaslighted by the Hillary Clinton campaign and even the FBI has fooled..
I actually read other non partisan like you used...
They were gaslighted by the Hillary Clinton campaign and even the FBI has fooled..
I actually read other non partisan like you used
Almost uniformly (88% to 11%), Republican voters who like getting their news from those conservative media outlets believe President Joe Biden did not legitimately get enough votes to win the presidency. In other words, almost all of the Republicans in the conservative media audience think a glaring falsehood is true.
LMAO at you Scott.
Gaslighted by newsmax aka the Washington Times article
������������
Truly pathetic that Lil schitty can be 100% certain trump won and thatNOTHING went on with the Russians!!!!!
Naive or brainwashed are the only explanations!!!!!
Roger...
Let me make this simple for you.
Because obviously you need "simple" to understand.
Did you go to school?
Ever take a test?
Ever had a textbook or study materials or have a lecture to listen to?
Back before you took your test... did you review the lecture notes, review the study materials or possibly even read the textbook?
Or did you ask other people to provide their opinions on what it all meant and then chose the opinion you thought sounded correct?
Because I read the materials, studied what I was provided, and listen to what was being provided. I didn't rely on anyone else to tell me what it meant.
I don't know. Perhaps you had to have tudors because you couldn't understand it on your own. Perhaps that is why you seem to have an excessive need to let other people actually absorb the information and garner what it means... for you. Once other people have reviewed the textbook and got what they thought it meant. Then you listed to them and took the test.
Either because you are lazy or don't trust yourself.
But I never had tudors or needed another student to explain the materials to me. If I had questions I might ask the teacher for clarification, but ultimately I studied the materials on my own... never did I allow other people to make the determination and ask for their opinions.
99% of these things do not have "two sides". They have different people providing their own opinions. I personally simply do not believe that a writer from Salon has a better understanding of any of this than I do. We both have access to the same exact information. Why on god's green earth would I allow other people to provide that opinion for me?
Do you do it because as a young child you were not able to get through school on your own? Why otherwise, would you let other people do your research and then provide "their" opinion that you then decide is your own as well?
I just don't understand that need to rely on others.
But then again, I have confidence in my own abilities to research and understand without help. Must be the difference between you and I?
Back before you took your test... did you review the lecture notes,
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! WELCOME TO THE THEATRE OF ABSURD BULLSHIT!!!! If you spent as much time posting facts instead of warped logic....there may be hope for you!!!!
Roger Amick said...
They were gaslighted by the Hillary Clinton campaign and even the FBI has fooled..
I actually read other non partisan like you used
Ignoring the word salad so now the argument is Durham is indicting FBI personnel because they were gaslit ?
Who can be this stupid to believe that ?
Oh, roger and VERY lo iq
carry on
ROFLMFAO !!!
Well hopefully Durham does get to Hillary and her gang.
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
Perhaps you had to have tudors because you couldn't understand it on your own.
Never I was reading at college level at 12. My vocabulary is probably as good or better than your.
I understand what I read and I was tested with far superior at recalling exactly what I read.
I learned from others because i knew I didn't know everything.
You actually do have confidence in my abilities, but you simply can't comprehend differences between your and me.
I just don't understand that need to rely on others because I don't know everything.. it's called education
Perhaps that is why you seem to have an excessive need to let other people actually absorb the information and garner what it means... for you. Once other people have reviewed the textbook and got what they thought it meant. Then you listed to them and took the test.
Shiloh Sheridan
@ShilohSheridan
So have you heard? This new #Omicron variant is supposedly going to wipe out the children.. FU€K OFF
They are coming to get rid of white children or molest them like pastor James
you simply can't comprehend differences between your and me.
In a nutshell Roger... for example:
When the Maricopa County Audit came out...
I read the PDF supplied by the Auditors to help me determine what they found. You read a variety of opinion writers telling you what they thought it meant.
Then while quoted what the auditors wrote in their report. You argued with what the media reported it said.
The reality is that there was not two sides to the report.
The report stated what it stated and supplied the analysis and how they did their audit. They didn't really provide as much of an opinion, but rather provide raw data to a variety of issues that they found. It listed things like how many mail in ballots had of no signatures, how many had been returned from the wrong address, how many ballots sent to the wrong addresses had people who now lived outside of Maricopa, and how many were currently living out of state. It showed how many people voted in person who no longer lived in Maricopa or even Arizona. It provide a ton of raw date... and no, they did not provide any "recount numbers" that confirmed any victory. It wasn't a recount.
The report was just raw data. Not an opinion. Those who actually read the report could come up with their own opinions as to what that data meant. Which means there was virtually as many opinions as there was people who read the report.
Not just two opinions.
But you simplistically decided that the report could be defined into two "sides". You then searched liberal websites looking for liberal writers who would tell you that the audit didn't find anything wrong.
You never actually read the audit report yourself... did you?
I can say that with 100% confidence because you continued to post things about the audit that were not actually part of the audit report. You would not have done that had you read the audit report.
What would have been better is if you had taken the time to read it (as I did)... and then you and I would have at least been using the same facts to draw whatever conclusions we might have drawn. But you didn't read it... and then relied on the opinions of others, many of whom did not read it and were just repeating things they heard (which turned out to be false).
Understand?
Earlier this month, however, a Russia analyst who was a primary source for the dossier was charged with five counts of lying to the FBI about where he got the information he passed on to Steele. That indictment came from special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by former Attorney General William Barr to determine whether the intelligence community broke any laws while investigating Trump-Russia connections.
Why there’s debate
The indictment has launched a new round of debate about the response to the dossier’s release and the continuing impact of its many shaky claims.
A number of prominent media outlets — including the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post — have published lengthy reevaluations of their own coverage of the dossier in the past few weeks. Many conservatives have argued this is merely an effort to save face from organizations that spent years promoting the report’s dodgy claims as a way to build suspicion against Trump. There have also been calls for a deeper examination into how much the intelligence community relied on the dossier in its broader investigations into the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia.
While few will defend the substance of the dossier at this point, mainstream and left-leaning commentators have accused Trump’s defenders of trying to use its shortcomings to discredit all investigations into the former president’s behavior. Those inquiries, like the Mueller report and the bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, have found substantial evidence of impropriety that have nothing to do with Steele’s report.
What’s next
Durham’s inquiry into the Russia investigation is ongoing and it’s unclear whether it might produce more indictments or new information about the Steele dossier’s origins in the future.
Perspectives
Steele accomplished his goal of undermining Trump from the start of his presidency
“The purpose was to present the FBI with oppo-research that masqueraded as ‘intelligence,’ and it worked. Mrs. Clinton lost the election, but the Russia tale sabotaged an incoming President with relentless media assaults and a special counsel investigation.” — Editorial, Wall Street Journal
The Steele dossier is largely irrelevant to the question of Trump’s Russia ties
“Even if every single word in the Steele dossier was wrong, that would not change the fact that the Russians sought to manipulate the U.S. election using hacked material and a disinformation campaign. Nor would it change the fact that the Trump family welcomed this intervention.” — Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic
The real issue is how the intelligence community treated the dossier’s allegations
“Too good to check is an impulse that never serves journalists well, and it’s even worse when it is the policy of a law-enforcement agency wielding awesome powers. At best, the FBI allowed itself to get duped into playing along with a political hit against, first, a presidential candidate and, then, the duly elected president of the United States.” — Editorial, National Review
The media has a duty to acknowledge its failures in covering the dossier
“Addressing the shortcomings over the dossier doesn’t mean ignoring the corruption and democracy-shattering conduct that the Trump administration pushed for four years. But it would mean coming to terms with our conduct and whatever collateral damage these errors have caused to our reputation.” — Bill Grueskin, New York Times
The dossier was a distraction from the real scandal
“The Steele dossier is a sideshow. Like many raw intelligence reports, it was full of uncorroborated information — a lot of which doesn’t check out. But the Steele dossier did not launch the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, and discrediting it does not undermine the evidence that the Kremlin helped Trump win the election with his campaign’s eager encouragement and cooperation.” — Max Boot, Washington Post
The report’s most important accusation remains unproven
“Steele's findings on Russian election-meddling, which were ahead of the curve at the time, now seem more like prescient geopolitical observations rather than insider information. Plus, his final and most consequential takeaway — that Trump's campaign worked hand-in-hand with the Kremlin — was essentially debunked by special counsel Robert Mueller's sweeping investigation.” — Marshall Cohen, CNN
The media won’t ever truly hold itself accountable for its failures
“Those who perpetuated the Russia collusion deception — and this means editors and pundits, not only reporters — still hold premier jobs in political media. Many, in fact, have been rewarded with better gigs. … Journalism is ostensibly about transparency and truth, and yet not one of these sentinels of democracy has explained how they were supposedly fooled for years, exhibiting not a modicum of skepticism — one of the most vital components of good journalism.” — David Harsanyi, New York Post
Coverage of the dossier pushed conservative readers away from mainstream media
“The certain fallout of this is that going forward, many Republican candidates will run as much or more against the media as against their Democratic opponents. That’s likely to happen even if the main media organizations that amplified phony Steele dossier claims retract and apologize for large swaths of their reporting.” — Chris Reed, San Diego Union-Tribune
The dossier was a gift to those looking to discredit inquiries into Trump’s impropriety
“It was a clever ploy on the part of the Trump gang: Deny the unfounded — that Trump was caught on tape consorting with urinating prostitutes and that he conspired directly with Putin — to sidestep the damning reality that Trump and his aides betrayed the nation by both encouraging the Russian attack and trying to cover up Putin’s sinister intervention.” — David Corn, Mother Jones
Anything coming out of Durham’s investigation should be treated with suspicion
“[Durham was] tasked by Trump’s attorney general, Bill Barr, with investigating the Russian investigation itself to try to prove the whole thing was a hoax like Trump said all along, to try to prove that it was criminal to investigate the Russia matter.” — Rachel Maddow, MSNBC
https://news.yahoo.com/the-lessons-of-the-steele-dossier-132654310.html
But the Steele dossier did not launch the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, and discrediting it does not undermine the evidence that the Kremlin helped Trump win the election with his campaign’s eager encouragement and cooperation.”
He did get help in the 2016 election.
Get over it.
I understand that you believe the big lie!
Despite bipartisan analyst says no credible evidence. So did Bill Barr, a very conservative lawyer who was the Chairman of the Department of Justice.
And every single lawsuit was tossed out.
NOT GOOD NEWS
New York Declares Variant State of Emergency
November 27, 2021 at 3:54 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 9 Comments
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) declared a state of emergency to prepare for a new coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa, the New York Times reports.
Washington Post: “As part of the emergency, the state’s health department will be allowed to protect hospital capacity by limiting nonessential and non-urgent care until at least Jan. 15. Hospitals with less than 10 percent staffed bed capacity, or those designated by the state, will be authorized to screen patients and restrict admissions to keep beds open for the most urgent cases.”
Political Wire
NOT GOOD NEWS
Omicron Variant Detected In U.K. and Italy
November 27, 2021 at 4:01 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 44 Comments
“The U.K. and Italy became the latest countries to detect the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, as other European nations investigate suspected cases of a strain that health authorities say could be more transmissible and has been driving a jump in infections in South Africa,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
THIS IS GOOD NEWS FOR THOSE OF US WHO HAVE BRAINS
Booster Shot Beats Natural Immunity
November 27, 2021 at 3:56 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 29 Comments
Los Angeles Times: “A small study that’s among the first to track people’s protective antibodies over time found that those who were immunized against COVID-19 with two doses of an mRNA vaccine and received a booster shot about eight months later saw their levels of neutralizing antibodies skyrocket.”
“Among this group of 33 fully vaccinated and boosted people, the median level of these antibodies was 23 times higher one week after the booster shot than it had been just before the tune-up dose.”
“What’s more, their median post-booster antibody level was three times higher than was typical for another group of people whose antibodies were measured a few weeks after getting their second dose of vaccine, when they’re close to their peak. And it was 53 times higher than that of a group of 76 unvaccinated people who had recovered from COVID-19 just two to six weeks earlier.”
BIDEN FACES CHALLENGES
Biden’s Challenge for the Midterm Elections
November 27, 2021 at 4:04 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 57 Comments
“When President Biden came into office, he had three overriding priorities: The first was to tame the coronavirus pandemic and deal with its effects on the economy.
The second was to persuade Congress to enact the most sweeping domestic policy initiatives in generations.
The third was to unify the country the best he could,” the Washington Post reports.
“The first was a challenge,
the second a gamble,
and the third, given a recalcitrant Republican Party, always a long shot.
As December approaches, none of these goals has been fully accomplished, and that shapes the political environment heading into next year’s midterm elections, which could dramatically affect his presidency.”
The Great Biden Disconnect
November 27, 2021 at 5:07 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 197 Comments
Nate Cohn: “The disconnect between Mr. Biden’s popular policies and his personal unpopularity is a little hard to understand. After all, voters do care about the issues. They’ve proved it by gradually sorting into ideologically divided parties over the past two decades. And it’s clear that presidents can be punished for advancing an unpopular agenda. Just ask Barack Obama about the period after the Affordable Care Act was passed.”
“But if voters often punish a president for pushing unpopular policies, they rarely seem to reward a president for enacting legislation. Instead, voters seem to reward presidents for presiding over peace and prosperity —
in a word, normalcy.”
“Today, Mr. Biden is not seen as presiding over the long promised return to normalcy. Maybe that will change in the months ahead. But Mr. Biden’s policy agenda is not expected to do much to help his approval rating so long as Americans do not believe that agenda responds to the most immediate issues facing the country.”
MEANWHILE REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP HEADS IN THE WRONG DIRECTION
Moderate House Republican Warns McCarthy
November 27, 2021 at 4:13 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 118 Comments
“A moderate House Republican is firing off a warning shot at House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy as he caters to his right flank in a quest for the speaker’s gavel,” CNN reports.
Said the unnamed GOP lawmaker:
“He’s taking the middle of the conference for granted.
McCarthy could have a bigger math problem with the moderates.”
James why did you identify as a woman here?
Joe 41.6 Approval, with a loving press.
Attention-seeking blogger S. Scott Johnson lashed out on his Powerline account on Friday, accusing the organizers of the Jan 6th "Stop the Steal " rally that preceded the Capitol insurrection of being a front for the "Deep State."
He was right about that on January 6th!
He hasn't been brainwashed by the MSM censored Coldheartedtruth!
Biden is not done hiking oil/gas prices.
"Despite record-high gasoline prices impacting American families across the country with winter around the corner, the Biden-Harris administration is recommending Congress hike the cost of oil leases on government lands from 12.50 percent to 18.75 percent."
Compounding stupid policy with more stupid shit.
Roger, why do you follow (stalk) CHT ?
America must be reminded of the glacial afterlives of slavery, without which the country as we know it would not exist.
By John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco
November 26, 2021 9:00 a.m.
113
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
The outpouring of protest following the death of George Floyd last year made it painfully obvious that we are far from the postracial dream of not long ago. Those intense divisions have moved from the streets to the classrooms, as half the states have passed or are considering legislation restricting the study of critical race theory. With Governor Doug Burgum’s signature, North Dakota becomes the latest state to ban CRT in public schools. Conservative leadership has made the issue into a cause célèbre for the Republican Party and the culprit for contemporary disharmony. Teaching the centrality of race in U.S. history, they say, foments hatred of America. Structural racism is a thing of the past, they argue. Contrary to what liberals conjure, America is a just and meritorious country.
These policies are having real effects. It cost the job of one high school principal in Texas, and pundits in Virginia turned the governor’s race into a referendum on CRT. Criticism against “woke” politics and the raucous debate surrounding the New York Times’s 1619 Project point to the key question lingering on this stage: How should the nation remember slavery?
Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson famously called enslavement a kind of “social death,” which made its subjects into people without legal recourse or community belonging. It was an economic and racial system that structured modernity as Europeans crossed the Atlantic to the Western Hemisphere. Saidiya Hartman, Professor of English at Columbia University, argues that there is an “afterlife” of slavery, that emancipation did not bring liberation for African-descended people but rather an everlasting battle against devaluation and fractionalized personhood, the legacies of which are found in the chants of Black Lives Matter demands and CRT denouncements.
A more pressing question seems to center on white people’s discomfort with the country’s past, for most of the CRT complaints do not come from communities of color. One reason for this detachment is the value white people put on their immigrant forebears that arrived after slavery’s abolition. The impulse can lead to disavowal: if their ancestors came to the United States after emancipation, they need not identify with, much less atone for, the sins wrought by the “peculiar institution.” Even the first African American female secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, went on “The View” and lamented the persistence of white guilt.
But this misses the larger picture, which is not that white people should feel guilty for slavery (though there are families of multiple racial backgrounds that have direct links to slaveholders) but rather America, white people included, must be reminded of the glacial afterlives of slavery, without which the country as we know it would not exist.
Then there is the vast influence of the millions enslaved. If we look historically, there is a cultural lineage that dates to the plantation, a line we can draw from spirituals to ragtime, to blues and country western, and finally to rock and roll and pop music. The tradition of African American song is the radiant thread of this fabric. We would not have the minstrel music of Stephen Foster, popping melodies of Scott Joplin, or the melancholic dirge of blues performer Ma Rainey without the heinous pretext of bonded labor.
Make no mistake: celebrating the artistic legacy does not mean applauding the history of enslavement. But it does connect the nation—white people included—to a history that critical race theory can illuminate. Rock and Roll, for example, came from Black provenance but became associated with white folks. The music of Elvis Presley and Mick Jagger not only contains these compositional traces but performative ones as well. This is to enter into the long history of blackface minstrelsy and the custom of the white body gesticulating in racialized mimicry. It is the borrowing and imitating of bodily movements culled from American blackness that make white blues and rock performers indebted to Black cultural production. One may think of the young Mick Jagger performing “Honky Tonk Women” or when Elvis was filmed from the waist up on his third appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, his style of dance deemed too risqué for Sullivan’s white middlebrow audience.
By the 1940s, American music differentiated itself into pop, rhythm and blues, and country-western. These became distinct genres according to racial communities. Who performed and listened to the music was more important than the music’s harmonies and rhythm. Thus, Elvis fell into the rock category, whereas Chuck Berry became an R & B celeb. Meanwhile “Hillbilly” became “country-western,” bringing stardom to individuals like Hank Williams. Written ages ago, in the routes and roots of nineteenth-century Americana, this story in all its beauty and glory cannot be told without reference to America’s most ignoble institution.
That history crops up in CRT conversations. It is true that right-wingers are looking to sprout new voters by revamping education to validate their truths. Their sights are set not only on K-12 schools but on college campuses as well, with states like Georgia and South Carolina challenging academic tenure of the professoriate.
But attempts at such a reeducation are destined to fail, for the country cannot spin or vote its way out of this history. Slavery’s afterlives are omnipresent in our society, in the cultural scripts of our violence and entertainment.
Teaching the centrality of race in U.S. history, they say, foments hatred of America. Structural racism is a thing of the past, they argue. Contrary to what liberals conjure, America is a just and meritorious country. In other words.
The United States of America is a great and meritorious place to live without fear because we defeated the Confederacy and got rid of racial discrimination by state governments, and gave African Americans the right to vote.
MAGA is an attempt to reverse course.
The underlying racism, motivates rrb and... to vote for Trump.
Biden banned travel to America from eight African countries. It's the right decision in an information vacuum, and he owes Trump a big apology!
Once COVID finally hit America's shores, we got lockdowns and mask mandates. We were told they would allow hospitals to prepare for the coming contagions, but they became permanent fixtures and seem to have made no difference whatsoever to the virus's spread. It seems that constantly reusing paper and cloth masks is voodoo medicine, not science. Doctor Fauci said the masking was not necessary
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/11/the-week-in-pictures-new-deviant-edition.php
Breaking News: Supreme court has ruled that basic intelligence tests for Election voting is Discriminatory.
The judge said that it is unfair to block all Republicans from voting.
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