One of our readers who assumes the sobriquet “Democracy” posted the following comment. Like most people, I did not read the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Report on the 2016 election.
He/she writes:
From the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the 2016 election, volume five:
“the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election…Manafort’s presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manafort’s highlevel access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat…Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. Moscow’s intent was 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…While the GRU and WikiLeaks were releasing hacked documents, the Trump Campaign sought to maximize the impact of those leaks to aid Trump’s electoral prospects. Staff on the Trump Campaign sought advance notice about WikiLeaks releases, created messaging strategies to promote and share the materials in anticipation of and following their release, and encouraged further leaks. The Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort.”
Click to access report_volume5.pdf
From The Washington Post, two days ago:
“Some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them…Documents about such highly classified operations require special clearances on a need-to-know basis, not just top-secret clearance. Some special-access programs can have as few as a couple dozen government personnel authorized to know of an operation’s existence. Records that deal with such programs are kept under lock and key, almost always in a secure compartmented information facility, with a designated control officer to keep careful tabs on their location.”
“… the FBI has recovered more than 300 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago this year: 184 in a set of 15 boxes sent to the National Archives and Records Administration in January, 38 more handed over by a Trump lawyer to investigators in June, and more than 100 additional documents unearthed in a court-approved search on Aug. 8…Among the 100-plus classified documents taken in August, some were marked ‘HCS,’ a category of highly classified government information that refers to ‘HUMINT Control Systems,’ which are systems used to protect intelligence gathered from secret human sources, according to a court filing.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/06/trump-nuclear-documents/
Trump is a traitor to the Constitution and the rule of law and he is a clear and present danger to the American democratic republic.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Unfortunately, his followers just don’t believe any of it.
And even if some of them eventually do believe some of it, they will simply move on to another dictator wannabe.
So it would be a DeSantis without a difference.
One point is and will certainly be true in the years to come- the conservative religious will vote against democracy at every chance.
Debbie is correct about GOP voters discounting the truth. The two major conservative religions in the U.S., evangelicals and conservative Catholics (together, a bit less than 40% of the pop.) will ignore facts that stand in their way of telling other people how they must live and that prevent them from getting tax dollars for their sects.
As proof, many of them are creationists.
The thing that they all have in common is belief in authoritarianism, which always involves a strong dictatorial father figure.
They support it for the family, support it for their religion (God the father) and support it for the government (Leader of the Fatherland)
So at least they are consistent.
Unfortunately, James Comey, who was hailed as an impartial FBI agent, really was a partisan GOP member that cast aspersions on HRC’s emails right before the 2016 election. This action contributed the rise of DJT and his motley basket of deplorables that usurped power and placed our national security in jeopardy.
They support it, SomeDAM, right up until the day when the Glorious Leader’s goons show up at their own door to drag away a son or a cousin. And some of them even after that.
And yeah, the history of world fascism could be entitled Daddy Issues.
I’ve also agreed with the “his followers just don’t believe any of it” argument for years and come to realize that it’s a false, dangerous point of view if saving democracy is the goal. It doesn’t matter whether they believe it or not—I would bet gobs of money I do not have on the fact that the DO believe it. Their devotion is closer that of a devoted sports fan than a political creed. It is based almost wholly on contrived resentment of the “other”, most especially the libs, which is a category that only grows. But their enemies are not political, they are based on fictions. And those fictions are eternal, not subject to the whims of political give and take—which in and of itself is perceived as a fundamental error, often with evil intent to take away what they perceive as their privilege. The thread that ties them together, as Walter Johnson distilled so perfectly, is “the hollowed collegiality of shared skin.” As in sports, they will stick with the political views that support this view and do so through thick and thin, through losing seasons when pestering the opponent is a victory to winning seasons when they can use the time available to radically change laws and norms. Political arguments don’t matter. The opponent is always evil, good ideas are just a ruse to hide that evil, so don’t fall for them. In fact, demonize the issues along with the opponents.
Near the conclusion of Victor Klemperer’s diaries of life in the Third Reich, he describes an encounter with a woman, one of hundreds of thousands in caravans of refugees fleeing south toward the advancing Americans and away from the feared Russians. Despite the evidence all around them of despair and destruction that unequivocally demonstrated the evils of Naziism, she still said, “Liberalism is to blame for everything bad.” After the liberation of the death camps, the Allies rounded up Germans in the region and forced them to walk through and witness the horrors of their government’s political choices. Many of them were required to bury the remaining bodies and cleanse the areas. A number of them still would not admit what they saw and experienced was real; according to them, they were all staged events.
We like to believe such extreme views will, over time, move to the fringes of society and be ignored. I remember when we were kids with our parents in grocery checkout lines and wondered who the weirdos were that actually spent their money on the National Enquirer. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone buy one, but the bins seemed to get emptier. The good news was that there were few of them. But with the internet, as a German comic once observed, the idiots “found out about each other.” Rather than being a distraction, they are getting elected and shaping our lives. That’s the goal. Impose, not legislate based on open, honest political debate.
Between 40-46% of the American population fits this profile. They are gone and no amount of argument about what is true or false will matter to them. They know what their goal is, or at least they have convinced themselves. This election and every election in the coming years will be about slowing marginalizing the 40-46% and picking off doubters. But it will take time and even close losses will be victories for them. This election is about turnout, not issues, not about about what the negotiable “truth” is. Klemperer’s response to that woman provides a guide for us: “I must explain to her: A liberal is someone who stands by the sentence: In my father’s house there many rooms. A scholar who does not agree with that sentence is no scholar.” We are working to build a complex representative democracy that adds rooms for all. It’s as simple as that. I hope enough people will believe that and act on it continuously.
Thank you for your wise comment, Greg.
And how far back do Stone and Manafort go?
Stone and Trump go ?
Yet we have Mueller preforming exactly as was predicted in a Politico article within 2 weeks of his appointment (to land the plane). I nor that author are asserting that he was corrupt. Merely that he was chosen because he was the only person in America that could say with a straight face that he could not prove that Goodell and the Ravens management had no knowledge of Rice slam dunking his girl friend like a sack of potatoes in the elevator.
In his report on Trump he could not prove what happened to the information once it got back to Russia nor that Manafort had consulted with
Trump. As Stone who had a decades long relationship with Manafort and Trump was in contact with both almost daily.
Are you ——————- kidding me.
Way, way back in 1987, Trump took his first trip to Moscow, AT THE INVITATION OF THE SOVIET AMBASSADOR, ON A KGB AIRPLANE. Flash forward a few years, Trump, ever the terrible businessman, had vastly overspent to build casinos in New Jersey with which to bilk money from gamblers. Hundreds of millions in loans on these were coming due, and he didn’t have the money to repay them. He faced utter bankruptcy. So, he took another trip to Moscow. Here he was, bankrupt, and no American bank would touch him, but after the trip to Moscow, Deutsche Bank, which had enormous deposits from Putin’s kleptocrats, decided to extend a billion-dollar loan to the bankrupt guy. Because banks always look, of course, to loan to bankrupt people. (Recently, btw, Deutsche personnel with ties to Trump and the Russians back then have been “killing themselves.”) Then, Russian kleptocrats and mobsters started showing up in the U.S. with suitcases full of cash to buy Trump properties, including apartments in Trump tower. After that, Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald, Jr., each told friends that the Trump organization had no problem with financing because they were “rolling in money from the Russians.” Then, Sessions, Bannon, and Miller were looking around for someone to carry their white supremacist agenda forward, and Trump fit the bill. He had taken out a full-page ad in the NY Times to accuse the Central Park 5 and continued to insist on their guilt after DNA evidence absolved them. He and his father had marked with a “C” for “Colored” the rental applications from prospective black tenants. He was a prominent “birther” conspirator. So, Sessions, Bannon, and Miller made him the candidate and fed him the whole “build the wall” shtick. That’s how we got candidate Trump, who literally AND IN PUBLIC called on the Russians to commit espionage against his opponent, which they did. The Russians got behind Trump’s candidacy enthusiastically. Putin spent enormous resources to get his dog, Trump, elected. And then Trump started the repayments: insisting that the intelligences services were all lying about the Russians helping him get elected, calling for the U.S. to get out of NATO, alienating all our allies, befriending dictators around the globe, delaying military aid to Ukraine and insisting that they would get no aid if they didn’t finger Biden and his son, sharing U.S. intelligence secrets IN THE WHITE HOUSE with the Russian ambassador and defense chief, and withdrawing from the INF and Open Skies treaties at the very time when Putin was fielding hypersonic nuclear missiles.
Trump has long been a Russian asset. There’s a history there. Again and again and again and again the tit for tat with the Soviets, then the Russians. And now some judge has let him slide, for now, on hundreds of classified documents, many of which have simply gone missing, some of which had the highest security ratings, that Trump had lying around his freaking beachhouse.
MAGA: Moscow’s Asset Governing America
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/19/trump-first-moscow-trip-215842/
Agent Orange Goes to Washington, a tragifarce
What happens when a failed American businessman turns to running a Russian laundromat and then takes over a U.S. political party
What the critics are saying: Life is stranger than fiction is, isn’t it?
https://newrepublic.com/article/150646/young-trump-went-russia
Tsar Vladimir’s dog, Trump
How much damage has Trump done so far to the security of the U.S. and its allies? That is the question. Perhaps one day, when Putin is a bad dream from which the world has awakened, the Russian intelligence files will be opened, and we shall know the full extent of Trump’s traitorousness over decades.
Note that the Senate Committee that issued these reports was chaired by a Republican, Marco Rubio (acting chair) and had a Republican majority.
the intelligence committee
Willie leaks and the Trump campaign’s 2016 strategy is an interesting connection.
Willie Leaks
Will he leak or will he not?
Will he leak inside the pot?
Willie will if Willie wishes
Leak and kill the little fishes
MAGA: Moscow’s Asset Governing America
Governing?
Ha ha ha
Good one
How about Moscow’s Agent Groping Miss America
(MAGMA)
Way, way back in 1987, Trump took his first trip to Moscow, AT THE INVITATION OF THE SOVIET AMBASSADOR, ON A KGB AIRPLANE. Flash forward a few years, Trump, ever the terrible businessman, had vastly overspent to build casinos in New Jersey with which to bilk money from gamblers. Hundreds of millions in loans on these were coming due, and he didn’t have the money to repay them. He faced utter bankruptcy. So, he took another trip to Moscow. Here he was, bankrupt, and no American bank would touch him, but after the trip to Moscow, Deutsche Bank, which had enormous deposits from Putin’s kleptocrats, decided to extend a billion-dollar loan to the bankrupt guy. Because banks always look, of course, to loan to bankrupt people.
Then, Russian kleptocrats and mobsters started showing up in the U.S. with suitcases full of cash to buy Trump properties, including apartments in Trump tower. After that, Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald, Jr., each told friends that the Trump organization had no problem with financing because they were “rolling in money from the Russians.”
Then, Sessions, Bannon, and Miller were looking around for someone to carry their white supremacist agenda forward, and Trump fit the bill. He had taken out a full-page ad in the NY Times to accuse the Central Park 5 and continued to insist on their guilt after DNA evidence absolved them. He and his father had marked with a “C” for “Colored” the rental applications from prospective black tenants. He was a prominent “birther” conspirator. So, Sessions, Bannon, and Miller made him the candidate and fed him the whole “build the wall” shtick. That’s how we got candidate Trump, who literally AND IN PUBLIC called on the Russians to commit espionage against his opponent, which they did. The Russians got behind Trump’s candidacy enthusiastically. Putin spent enormous resources to get his dog, Trump, elected.
And then Trump started the repayments: insisting that the intelligences services were all lying about the Russians helping him get elected, calling for the U.S. to get out of NATO, alienating all our allies, befriending dictators around the globe, delaying military aid to Ukraine and insisting that they would get no aid if they didn’t finger Biden and his son, sharing U.S. intelligence secrets IN THE WHITE HOUSE with the Russian ambassador and defense chief, and withdrawing from the INF and Open Skies treaties at the very time when Putin was fielding hypersonic nuclear missiles.
Oh, and withdrawing from northern Syria and leaving it to Asaad and the Russians–a complete betrayal of our allies, the Kurds, who had helped us defeat ISIS. And, of course, Trump did this against the wishes of ALL his senior military people, incluing SECDEF Mattis, who resigned because of this.
Trump has long been a Russian asset. There’s a history there. Again and again and again and again the tit for tat with the Soviets, then the Russians. And now some judge has let him slide, for now, on hundreds of classified documents, many of which have simply gone missing, some of which had the highest security ratings, that Trump had lying around his freaking beachhouse.
Trump is going to get away with it because Garland just got the excuse he needed not to do anything.
I’m sure Garland breathed a huge sigh of relief when that judge said the documents must first be reviewed by a special master because it means Garland most likely won’t have to do anything on that account for the rest of his term as AG.
A Texas Sheriff from the county where the migrants sent to Martha’s Vineyard originally got on the flight has opened an investigation. And he is very angry about the way people who are in this country legally have been effectively used — abused — for political purposes.
Though he was not asked by President Biden, he has offered to cooperate with the DOJ.
If Garland does not open a DOj investigation of this, Biden should fire him.
Here is the real Special Master in U.S. law:
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Trump and the Trump RICO are proofs of that.
There is something very interesting about the brochure handed out to the Venazuelan immigrants to entice them to board the plane that ended up at Martha’s Vineyard.
There is an image that is supposed to be the Massachusetts flag but is not the real flag. A Google image search found that the image was actually taken from a site that had this text with it “Not officially or anything I just think the current one blows so I made this one featuring the state flower”.
It sure seems like whoever put that image in the brochure went out of their way to include something that was NOT actually the Mass flag, but looked enough like it to fool the people in charge of the DeSantis immigrant trafficking project.
Otherwise they would just have taken a flag image from Wikipedia or probably thousands of other sites with an image of the actual flag.
It’s no accident that they just happened to pick the “wrong” image. It was done purposefully.
So, one has to ask “why?”
Could it be a kind of “inside joke” from someone who had been tasked with producing the brochure but actually didn’t approve of what DeSantis was doing?
DeSantis has learned the lesson of Trump well.
If you are powerful enough, you can get away with anything.
As a lawyer, DeSantis certainly knew that flying immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard under false pretenses would violate US and even Florida laws, but he did it because he knew that, like Trump, he would get away with it (knew that Garland would — will — do nothing because Garland has told everyone at DOJ in a memo that they must follow the Bill Barr rule that says you can’t prosecute a person who is or even might be running for office)
Not incidentally, Garland just applied that rule in the case of Matt Gaetz, the subject of an ongoing investigation by DOJ over the the possibility that he trafficked an underaged girl across state lines for sex.
Garland (and his AG hero, Bill Barr, from whom he seems to get his marching orders) wants us to believe that it is more political to reveal what you intend to do (prosecute or not) than to NOT reveal and just let voters guess whether the person they are voting for committed a heinous crime.
In the latter case, most Democrats and Republicans will decide PURELY based on politics. Democrats will think he is guilty and Republicans not guilty.
How is giving people more information to make their decision more political?
Though it is not at all surprising that a Hawvid Law grad like Garland thinks the “ordinary” voter (the person) is better off with no information than with some information.
Not incidentally, if Garland has actually decided not to prosecute Gaetz, how is not revealing that highly relevant piece of information NOT political?
I can think of very few actions by a prosecutor that would be more political than remaining quiet and letting many voters believe that an individual may have committed a crime when the prosecutor knows that the evidence is insufficient to bring charges against that individual. Talk about the appearance of interference in the election.
Thank you, SomeDAM.
Don’t forget the empty folders in his cache. They were already sold or given to Putin.
Shhhhh.
Listen.
Hear that?
It’s DeSantis’s eerie quite about Ukraine.
quiet
If someone had told the story of Trump and Russia back when I was a young man, I would have sworn that this could never happen. It was too ludicrous. Too obvious. Too just RIGHT THERE FOR ANY FREAKING PERSON WITH EYES TO SEE.
Right out in the open. “Russia, if you’re listen, . . .” the guy says, and THIS IS THE NEW NORMAL?
Insane. Our country is run by insane people. People without the sense the Lord gave lettuce.
The FSM Lord only blesses pasta!
Insane or compromised?
Compromised but also insane because those parts of it that aren’t compromised have not moved swiftly to bring the traitor to justice.
But how can we be sure that it is not “compromised all the way down”?
A lot (if not most) of what goes on in Washington is just political theater, so even under the most generous of assumptions, it’s hard to conclude what the underlying reality is.
It certainly seems to be the case that some of Trump’s most prominent supporters were compromised by the Russian intelligence services. It’s the only plausible explanation for their having not only done a 180 with regard to Trump but having become FERVENT in their support of him.