Category: Russia

CNN: Conservatives Leaving Facebook And Twitter For Parler Is A ‘Threat To Democracy’

Posted on by John Hanson

In CNN’s analysis of how conservative voters are handling the presidential election results, reporter Pamela Brown said that conservatives leaving social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook over speech suppression was a “threat to democracy.” 

CNN’s Brian Stelter complained about smaller right-leaning news channels, like Newsmax, getting more viewers recently as conservatives hammer Fox News over its election coverage and what they view as anti-Trump bias.

RELATED: Meghan McCain Confronts CNN Host Brian Stelter On His Network’s Many Failings

Stelter: Conservatives Leaving Facebook And Twitter For ‘Safer Space’

Stelter said to Brown, “I think, big picture, Pamela, here is the concerning trend line here. People are going more and more into their own echo chambers, more into their own bubbles, especially Trump voters.”

“There’s this new social media app, called Parler, getting a lot of attention,” Stelter continued. 

He added, “Because conservatives are leaving, saying they’re leaving Twitter and Facebook, going off to Parler because they believe Parler is a safer space for them.”

“What we’re seeing is even more of a bunker mentality in right-wing media,” Stelter said.“Ultimately, that’s not good for the country.”

That’s when Brown associated freedom of speech and choice with undermining democratic values.

“No, it is not good,” Brown responded (emphasis added). “It is a threat to democracy that these people are in echo chambers and they’re getting fed a diet of lies essentially.”

CNN Is An Echo Chamber

That’s rich.

The freedoms enshrined in our Bill of Rights are not threats to democracy.

The freedom of speech. Freedom of the press. Freedom of association. None of these are threats to democracy. 

It’s the exact opposite. Suppression of these freedoms is a threat to democracy. 

And really, is there a bigger echo chamber than CNN?

For years, Americans were constantly bombarded with “new” or “breaking” “information” that all supposedly pointed to Donald Trump allegedly colluding with Russia to throw the 2016 presidential election his way.

Then the Mueller report ended up as a huge nothingburger. Did the media ever apologize for it?

Impeachment was not an issue in this election. If Joe Biden even said it once, most missed it.

RELATED: What The Media’s Not Talking About: Republican Election Victory That Will Affect The Next 10 Years

Fake News Is A Threat To Democracy

But fake claims about collusion is what animated the Democratic Party for most of Trump’s presidency.

When an entire major political party defines itself by a fantasy of their own making, that’s a bubble.

And save for (sometimes) Fox News and alternative news outlets, the mainstream media protected that bubble.

We all live in our own bubbles to some extent. CNN tries to present its bubble as truth.

Some might call that a threat to democracy.

The post CNN: Conservatives Leaving Facebook And Twitter For Parler Is A ‘Threat To Democracy’ appeared first on The Political Insider.

CIA director hanging by a thread as Trump eyes releasing US intelligence on Russian interference

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

When White House counsel Pat Cipollone opposes something Donald Trump is intent on doing, you know it's got to be bad. But it's exactly where Cipollone stands on Trump's deep desire to declassify U.S. intelligence on Russian interference in the 2016 election, which would be incredibly damaging to national security and U.S. intelligence-gathering moving forward.

Trump has always viewed the Russia investigation as a cloud hanging over his tenure from Day One, delegitimizing his big triumph in 2016 as impossible without the help of foreign interference. It may be the one instance where he's right. But his intention to declassify U.S. intelligence on Russia to support his pet project at any cost to national security has met with stiff opposition from CIA Director Gina Haspel and divided Republicans into two camps, according to The New York Times. You're either a Trumpist or a traitor.

Trump also remains miffed at the CIA over the agency's failure to neutralize the whistleblower complaint regarding the July 2019 call with Ukraine that ultimately led to his impeachment. But releasing the intelligence on Russia appears to be the main motivation behind Trump's fixation on axing Haspel, who has shared her concern with congressional members.

The Times writes that GOP lawmakers "came subtly to Ms. Haspel's defense" Tuesday when Majority Leader Mitch McConnell invited her to a meeting at his office—a signal of support for her, however weak. Of course, McConnell isn't willing to do something more overt because he's too busy kowtowing to Dear Leader so Republicans can get Trump’s help in the upcoming Georgia runoffs, which will decide the fate of the Senate majority.

Trump has already moved to consolidate power in the intelligence community, installing loyalists this week at key intelligence posts at the Defense Department and National Security Agency. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who oversees the 17-agency intelligence apparatus, is already a tried and true Trumpist. So the only major barriers to Trump's near-total takeover of the intelligence community are Haspel and FBI Director Chris Wray, who reportedly have both been on Trump's post-election chopping block.

Just imagine what Trump would have done if he had won.

Giuliani’s smear on Hunter Biden is so ridiculous, Fox News passed on it … then covered it 24/7

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Once upon a time—also know as 2019—Donald Trump tried to blackmail the president of Ukraine into making false claims about Hunter Biden. Trump got caught, got impeached, and got not even a slap on the wrist from Senate Republicans who were willing to allow Trump to do anything in exchange for a flood of conservative judges. After all, when you’ve already waved off the Hatch Act, ignored federal laws over nepotism, and blown off an endless stream of lies … what’s a little extortion of an ally for political advantage?

When Trump didn’t get what he wanted from from Volodymyr Zelensky, he put both U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr and Rudy Giuliani on the case. Barr grabbed U.S. attorney John Durham and opened up an investigation that saw him flying around the world in an attempt to find someone reputable who would lend the slightest credence to Trump’s incredible claims. Giuliani … just skipped out on the “reputable.” Instead, he grabbed a pair of foot soldiers for a Russian oligarch, latched onto some officials who had been kicked out for corruption, and worked directly with an “active Russian agent” to produce a whole series of false claims and fake evidence. 

That brings us to now. Barr’s efforts have apparently come up dry. One part of his investigation has already shut down, Durham’s top assistant has resigned, and there’s no report worth even a patently false summary before Election Day. The Giuliani side has produced a hard drive. A hard drive supposedly dropped off in Delaware by a man who lived in California, at a shop owned by a vocal Trump supporter, where the security footage was mysteriously wiped, the blind shop owner could not identify the person who dropped it off, there was no name or contact information provided, and no one ever returned for it. 

Giuliani’s story is so ridiculous that both Fox News and the New York Post reporter who was forced to write it both disowned it. After years of trying to smear Biden, this really is the best they can do.

As Mediaite reports, the New York Post was hardly Giuliani’s first choice in trying to get this contemptible last-ditch effort into the media. It’s unclear how many other places he went first, but it is clear that he came to Fox News with his story of an unclaimed laptop. Fox News looked at the story, got out their 10-foot pole, and carefully pushed the whole pile back to Giuliani.

After all, this is far from the first time that Giuliani has come up with supposedly shocking information that just happens to support Trump’s every delusional claim. In September, it became clear that Giuliani was working closely with U.S. Sec. of State Mike Pompeo. It’s since come out that the packet of information that Pompeo shared with Republican lawmakers, but not with Democrats, did not come from sources within the State Department. He was simply laundering pages for Giuliani. Naturally, Trump’s personal attorney could not stop bragging about this. At the start of October, he told CNN that he was the source for the Biden information in Republican’s hands. 

This information was enough that Louie Gohmert and Paul Gosar, DDS were willing to scrawl their signatures on a letter to the Justice Department, along with nine other Republicans out of 250 in the House and Senate. But the many, many places where the Giuliani’s claims weren’t just wholly unbelievable but clearly connected to a known Republican disinformation campaign against Biden did bother a few other people.  

Not only is there the little problem of there being absolutely no provenance concerning the hard drive itself—everything about the story of where it was found has holes the size of ocean liners. The shop owner has given various accounts about how the laptop (or laptops, since he at one point claimed there were three), entered his shop; he’s been completely contradictory about how it came to the attention of the FBI; and when and how Giuliani became involved in the affair is as clear as mud. Also, there’s a little matter of how dates on the files found on the machine seem to be from months after the machine was supposedly dropped off.

But just because Fox News wouldn’t take it directly, that doesn’t mean that Rupert Murdoch wasn’t willing to step in to help out his pals. After the story was turned away from Fox News, it was shuffled over to the Murdoch-owned paper where New York Times reports reporter Bruce Golding was tasked with taking the documents, and Giuliani’s ravings, and turning them into an article. But once he heard the whole tale, Golding refused to put his name to the piece. So did other journalists in the Post news room … and this is a paper that just last year went with a front page emblazoned “Bezos exposes Pecker.”

Instead, the story eventually ran under the byline of Emma-Jo Morris. Morris is a former booker for Sean Hannity’s show on Fox, who made the trip across to the Post just in time for Giuliani’s Russian fabrication to be her very first article. A second name on the article was Post reporter Gabrielle Fonrouge. Fonrouge’s name ended up there in the most efficient manner. The Post’s editors put it there, and didn’t tell Fonrouge until after it was published.

All of this works perfectly for Fox, for the Post, for Giuliani, for Trump, and most importantly, for Putin. Fox doesn’t have to front the story. With the story in the Post, Fox can report on it. They can ask Republicans to comment on it. They can construct great rambling opinions from Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. The Post can then report on the comments their story is getting on Fox. Trump can retweet it all. Republicans in the House can cite all of the above as justification for demanding William Barr whip up a special investigator. And Vladimir Putin … can laugh. 

Kamala Harris Didn’t Make One Mention Of Impeachment During Debate – But Mike Pence Did

Posted on by John Hanson

2020 Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris curiously didn’t have anything to say Wednesday night about her party’s years-long impeachment crusade against President Trump over alleged “Russian collusion.”

But Mike Pence did.

I can’t be the only person in America who finds it strange that neither the Democrat Party’s presidential or vice presidential nominees mentioned that their opponent was impeached (even if the Senate failed to convict).

After all, impeachment is extremely rare. So why don’t the Democrats attack the Trump administration for it?

RELATED: Mike Pence: Democrats Don’t Talk About Joe Biden’s Agenda, ‘And If I Were Them, I Wouldn’t Either’

Pence to Harris: Democrats Spent The Last 3.5 Years Trying To Overturn The Last Election

Democrat reticence to attack Trump for being impeached is especially ironic, given the deluge of claims from the media and Democrats that Trump will “refuse to peacefully transfer power” if he loses the election.

The impeachment scam was the culmination of Democrats refusing to accept the results of the 2016 election.

Some are even saying the left will refuse to accept the results again in 2020, should Trump emerge victorious.

When Susan Page, the moderator of the first and only 2020 vice presidential debate, asked if President Donald Trump would accept a “peaceful transfer of power” should he lose in November, Pence decided it was a good time to bring the issue up.

“When you talk about accepting the outcome of the election, I must tell you, Senator, your party has spent the last three and a half years trying to overturn the results of the last election,” Pence charged.

“It’s amazing,” he added.

Pence Says Democrats Spied On Trump-Pence 2016 Campaign

Vice President Pence took it a step further – noting that the left’s refusal to accept the results of the 2016 election came even before the election happened.

“When Joe Biden was vice president of the United States, the FBI actually spied on President Trump and my campaign,” Pence said.

He continued, “There were documents released this week that the CIA actually made a referral to the FBI documenting that those allegations were coming from the Hillary Clinton campaign, and of course, we’ve all seen the avalanche, what you put the country through for the better part of three years until it was found that there was no obstruction, no collusion, case closed.”

Just before the debate, the Director of National Intelligence declassified files that show Pence is right.

Don’t forget, an investigation into the Obama administration’s actions during the 2016 campaign is ongoing.

And one FBI lawyer has already pled guilty to making false statements.

It’s not hard at all to follow the string that leads from “spying on the Trump campaign” to “refusing to accept the election results” to “impeachment.”

And it’s something they don’t want to talk about much these days. Just ask Kamala Harris.

Vice President Pence added, “And then, Senator Harris, you and your colleagues in the Congress, trying to impeach the President of the United States over a phone call.”

Hillary Clinton to Biden: Don’t Concede The Election

On left-wing charges that Trump won’t accept a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election, Pence flipped the script.

“And now, Hillary Clinton actually said to Joe Biden that, in her words, under no circumstances should he concede the election.”

The media bias is plain as day.

Why haven’t reporters or debate moderators harangued Team Biden about accepting the results of the election should they lose?

RELATED: Mike Pence Eager To Debate Biden’s Hotheaded VP Nominee Kamala Harris And Set The Record Straight

Only Republicans Seem To Talk About Impeachment These Days

In the first presidential debate, impeachment was not mentioned by the moderator Chris Wallace, though President Trump cited it a few times.

In the vice presidential debate, it was only mentioned when Mike Pence did so.

For years, impeachment seemed to be the only thing Democrats wanted to talk about.

Now you won’t hear about it – unless Republicans remind us of the duplicity the Democrats perpetrated.

The post Kamala Harris Didn’t Make One Mention Of Impeachment During Debate – But Mike Pence Did appeared first on The Political Insider.

Trump Dossier Source Was a Suspected Russian Spy, and the FBI Knew It

Posted on by RealClearWire

By Eric Felten for RealClearInvestigations

The FBI long suspected that a major source for Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier was a Russian spy, according to newly declassified documents.

In other words, the bureau knowingly relied on the word of a suspected Russian spy to spy on a Trump campaign aide wrongly smeared as a Russian spy: Carter Page.

Republicans seized on the disclosure.

Rep. Devin Nunes told RealClearInvestigations: “The revelations are further proof of what we already knew – that the Democrats, and only the Democrats, colluded with Russians to swing the 2016 election.”

The material declassified by Attorney General William Barr shows that as far back as 2009 the FBI was investigating as a potential Russian intelligence operative the Brookings Institution researcher who in 2016 would become the dossier’s “primary sub-source.”

RELATED: If James Comey Was That Incompetent At The FBI, How Did He Keep His Job?

He was identified by RealClearInvestigations this past summer as Igor Danchenko, 42, who confessed to the FBI in 2017 that his dossier fabrications were largely inspired by gossip and bar talk among him and his drinking buddies, most of whom were childhood friends from Russia.

The bureau used the now-debunked dossier based on Danchenko’s falsehoods in four applications before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in order to spy on Page – and people Page communicated with.

Democrats including Rep. Adam Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee chariman, had long described the dossier – which was opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign – as credible, and said its claims demanded a broader investigation of Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia.

But according to Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on Department of Justice abuses of FISA court applications, “Steele himself was not the originating source of any of the factual information in his reporting.”

Instead, Steele turned to the “primary sub-source” to bring him information supposedly gathered from a network of highly placed Russian sources.

And the FBI surely knew Danchenko was probably not one to trust, according to a newly “unclassified summary of classified investigative case file reports” provided by the Justice Department to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham.

RELATED: Trump Calls For Arrest Of Former FBI Director James Comey

It says the FBI commenced its Trump-Russia investigation “based on information by the FBI indicating that the Primary Sub-source may be a threat to national security.”

It also details the FBI’s earlier Danchenko spy investigation, begun when he was at Brookings, working with Fiona Hill, who would later work for the State Department in Ukraine and testify at President Trump’s impeachment hearings.

Two junior researchers at “a prominent U.S. think tank,” the summary says — read, Brookings — were at a “work-related event in late 2008,” sitting at a table when they were approached by a fellow researcher — Danchenko.

What followed was a remarkably bold, if clumsy, invitation to join a criminal conspiracy. Late 2008, of course, was the transition time to the incoming Obama administration.

Danchenko made a proposition to the two at the table: If either “did get a job in the government and had access to classified information” and wanted “to make a little extra money,” he “knew some people to whom they could speak.”

Word of this conversation made it to the FBI months later and the bureau launched a preliminary investigation into Danchenko (who is opaquely referred to in the DoJ summary as “the employee”).

One of the co-workers propositioned by Danchenko expressed “suspicion of the employee” to the FBI, going so far as to entertain “the possibility that the employee might actually be a Russian spy.”

RELATED: Secret Report: CIA’s Brennan Overruled Dissenters Who Concluded Russia Favored Hillary

The FBI converted its Danchenko probe into a full investigation.

The bureau found he was “an associate of two FBI counterintelligence subjects” and discovered that he “had contact in 2006 with the Russian Embassy and known Russian intelligence officers.”

The summary suggests that the FBI had a bug on at least one of those Russians, since the bureau has extensive accounts of the conversations the intelligence officer had with Danchenko:

[T]he Russian Intelligence Officer invited the Primary Sub-source to the Russian Embassy to see his office. The Primary Sub-source told the Russian Intelligence Officer that he/she was interested in entering the Russian diplomatic service one day. The two discussed a time when the Primary Sub-source was to visit. Four days later, the Russian Intelligence Officer contacted the Primary Sub-source and informed him/her they could meet that day to work “on the documents and then think about future plans.” Later in October 2006, the Primary Sub-source contacted the Russian Intelligence Officer seeking a reply “so the documents can be placed in tomorrow’s diplomatic mail pouch.”

The FBI did some asking around and interviewed at least one person who had been troubled by how Danchenko “persistently asked about the interviewee’s knowledge of a particular military vessel.”

By July 2010, the FBI was applying for a FISA warrant to put Danchenko under surveillance.

But before the FISA application was approved, Danchenko left the U.S. The FBI closed the investigation.

Come the end of 2016, the Crossfire Hurricane team at the FBI knew that Danchenko was the source of Christopher Steele’s extraordinary allegations.

The Crossfire crew also knew of the 2009 investigation that gathered evidence Danchenko was a Russian spy.

And yet, even with reason to suspect that the materials produced by Danchenko were Russian disinformation, the FBI agents investigating the Trump campaign continued to treat the Steele dossier as if it were something to be believed.

RELATED: Investigation: The Senate’s ‘Russian Collusion’ Report Had No Smoking Gun

RealClearInvestigations asked Danchenko’s lawyer, Mark Schamel, whether his client is or has ever been a Russian agent.

“As every objective investigation has shown,” Schamel said, “Mr. Danchenko is an exceptional analyst who is truthful and credible.”

Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire

The post Trump Dossier Source Was a Suspected Russian Spy, and the FBI Knew It appeared first on The Political Insider.

This scandal has to be the last, no this scandal has to be the last, no this scandal has to be …

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Since Tuesday, America has been caught up in the effort to process the fact that Donald Trump wasn’t simply ignorant and bull-headed when it came to failing to address the coronavirus pandemic. Trump was fully aware of the danger, repeatedly briefed on necessary actions, and fully cognizant of what was required to save American lives. He choose to … go another way. A way that involved repeatedly lying to the nation and talking about how the virus would “just disappear” even as he was privately admitting that he knew better.

That admitted lie is so shocking that it’s hard to remember that, just a week ago, the nation was busy being shocked to learn about the depth of Trump’s disdain for veterans. Multiple sources both within the White House and the military confirmed that Trump had not only displayed incredible disdain for John McCain, but for fallen soldiers at a military cemetery, calling them “suckers” and “losers.” Even Fox News had no problem confirming the story. Trump even explained to military leaders—military leaders—that he didn’t want veterans in his parade, because he found amputees unsightly.

A week before that was the news that the Department of Homeland Security had deliberately covered up evidence that Russia was working behind the scenes of the 2020 election to assist Trump with false claims about Joe Biden’s competence. That effort included dismissing the official in charge of counterintelligence, telling Congress they would get no more briefings on election security, and refusing to hand over standard reports. All while Trump was not only continuing to lean on the Russian talking points, but making racist claims about Kamala Harris. And in the middle of all this, snippets from Michael Cohen’s book suggested that not only had Trump extorted support from a televangelist with threats of revealing a pool boy three-way, but he gave a pretty good indication that the Russian “pee tape” is a real thing. 

There’s a reason the Fascism Watch ticked down to midnight back on Jan. 31. That’s when Republican senators made it clear that Trump was free to do anything he pleased, no matter how odious. America might not have gotten that message. Trump already knew it. 

It wasn’t until Feb. 6 that the Senate actually voted to give Donald Trump an official pass, despite a mound of evidence that he had used his high office to extort a foreign power into lying about a political opponent under threat of withholding military and economic assistance. It was exactly the sort of abuse of power available only to the White House. Exactly the kind of crime for which impeachment was created. There is not the slightest shred of doubt that Trump did it. But Republicans not only refused to hold Trump accountable—on Jan. 31 they made it clear that they would not even allow a single witness to speak in Trump’s “trial.” They didn’t care about Trump’s misuse of power. They didn’t care about lying to both Congress and the public. They just “owned the libs,” gave themselves a high five, and went on vacation.

Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans handed Donald Trump not just an absolute pass, but a clear signal that they would neither hold him to account for any action, nor challenge any statement he made. Why is it then any surprise that the next day Trump felt free to say that COVID-19 would go away in April? Why is it any surprise that Trump decided to cancel a planned national testing strategy because he thought COVID-19 would kill more people in Democratic states? What possible reason would there be for Trump to not cooperate with Russia in planting rumors about Biden? It’s not like anyone is going to do something about it. 

And, of course, why shouldn’t Trump feel free to lie about COVID-19? It’s not just the Senate that’s happy enough to go along with whatever Trump has to say. The media is right there for him, supporting him in a very special way.

A tale of two front-pages: @nytimes the morning after the Comey letter telling of discovered duplicative emails...and this morning's after we discover Trump knew and lied about a virus which has gone onto kill almost 200,000 Americans. pic.twitter.com/VjdgmvmmR0

— person woman DAN camera tv (@DaytimeDan) September 10, 2020

Following the astounding revelation that the FBI had found some additional copies of unimportant emails it had already seen, The New York Times not only filled every single column of its front page with this critical story, it handed over a large portion of that page for comments from Donald Trump. When Trump admitted lying to the nation about COVID-19, the “paper of record” not only thought this was a good day to devote two-thirds of its front page to an accidental explosion had happened over a month before and 9,000 miles away, but neither Biden nor any other Democratic leader was sought out for comment. Instead, the Times continued to represent the epitome of access journalism. It may seem that they, like much of the media, have learned nothing since 2016, but that’s not really true. They’ve learned exactly what it takes to keep getting interviews with Trump.

Republicans have learned they can get from Trump an endless stream of judges whose reading of the Constitution includes only one amendment, massive breaks for billionaires, and dropping all pretense of fighting corruption. And outlets like The New York Times have also learned that Trump will come through for them with an endless stream of jaw-dropping scandals that make great copy … so long as no one sticks with one story long enough to make impact. All for the low, low price of surrendering any pretense of integrity. A bargain.

Republicans are not about to call out Trump for his murder of 200,000 Americans. Or for his lies. Or for anything else. They made it all possible. So did a media more interested in seeing what the next scandal is than really driving home the impact of the last one.

For both of them, Trump is the fascist goose who laid heaps of gold-plated, if foul, eggs. Propping him up may be distasteful, but they like the results.

The most important accomplishment of impeaching Trump was its impact on Joe Biden

Posted on by Ian Reifowitz

Impeaching The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote was incredibly important, and not only because it was the right thing to do. Yes, he committed crimes and abused the power of his office, and yes he deserved to be impeached and removed from that office—the record of every Republican Senator other than Mitt Romney will be forever stained by their votes to acquit. History will remember their cowardice.

Beyond the morality, impeachment has had a clear, long-lasting political benefit, one that will pay dividends for Vice President Joe Biden this November. Thanks to impeachment, everyone knows that the charges Trump leveled against Joe and Hunter Biden on Ukraine—the ones he tried to blackmail that country’s president into investigating, or least announcing an intention to investigate—are utter malarkey.

Trump always feared running against Biden, and he acted corruptly in a failed bid to get enough dirt to derail the former VP’s quest to win the Democratic nomination. The impeachment process shone a bright light on Trump’s actions, and on his lies about Biden, ensuring that the smear campaign ultimately backfired.

Since the end of the impeachment trial, Trump and his minions have continued to bleat on with their completely invented and thoroughly debunked stories about the Bidens. I won’t dignify them by repeating the specifics here. Recently, Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson, who heads the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, have been “investigating”—i.e., trying to keep the story in the media—this bullshit.

Never mind that by falsely smearing Biden over Ukraine, Johnson and his fellow Republican senators are all but doing the work of Vladimir Putin for him, as this Associated Press article explained. 

But the stark warning that Russia is working to denigrate the Democratic presidential candidate adds to questions about the probe by Johnson’s Senate committee and whether it is mimicking, even indirectly, Russian efforts and amplifying its propaganda.

The investigation is unfolding as the country, months removed from an impeachment case that had centered on Ukraine, is dealing with a pandemic and confronting the issue of racial injustice. Yet allegations about Biden and Ukraine remain a popular topic in conservative circles, pushed by Russian media and addressed regularly by President Donald Trump and other Republicans as a potential path toward energizing his supporters.

[...] “Particularly as a public official and somebody who’s responsible for keeping the country safe, you should always be suspicious of narratives that are trying to sort of damage or target the electoral process in your country,” said former CIA officer Cindy Otis, a foreign disinformation expert and vice president of analysis at Alethea Group. “You should always be suspicious of narratives that foreign countries are pumping out.”

As Daily Kos’ Kerry Eleveld pointed out, Johnson even admitted that his so-called probe would “would certainly help Donald Trump win reelection and certainly be pretty good, I would say, evidence about not voting for Vice President Biden.” It amazing; these Republicans always manage to say the quiet part out loud, which I guess is helpful. Nevertheless, to paraphrase what Otter said to his nemesis (and professional Republican, according to the character futures provided) Gregg Marmalard in Animal House, “Gee, you’re dumb.”

YouTube Video

Then the Orange Julius Caesar himself got into the act. On August 16 he retweeted material that our own intelligence agencies had previously identified as Russian disinformation—part of its effort to directly influence the presidential election by “denigrating” Biden. As CNN put it: “By retweeting material that the US government has already labeled as propaganda -- and doing so with the 2020 Democratic National Convention kicking off on Monday -- Trump demonstrated once again that he is willing to capitalize on foreign election meddling for his own political gain.” Here’s Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner:

The President of the United States should never be a willing mouthpiece for Russian propaganda. https://t.co/9y6L6uMKbM

— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) August 17, 2020

Then came the four-day marathon of lies known as the Republican National Convention. Former Florida (where else?) Attorney General Pam Bondi went before a national audience and, once again, did Putin’s bidding by lying about the Bidens and Ukraine. The truth? When Joe Biden sought the removal of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shukin he did so, as Greg Sargent of the Washington Post noted, “because the prosecutor was corrupt.” Sargent added some more important facts: “This was U.S. policy, backed by international institutions. GOP senators had no problem with it in real time. As The Post’s fact-checking team puts it, Bondi’s story is ‘fiction,’ and in reality, Joe Biden ‘was thwarting corruption, not abetting it.’” Bondi told some other lies about Hunter Biden, which the WaPo fact-checking team also debunked. 

When these latter day Marmalards now issue their breathtaking press releases or repeat Russian disinformation about the Bidens and Ukraine, the media—thus far at least—has been taking them for what they are: Utter horseshit. I won’t say the media has learned their lesson, but unlike 2016, when “but her emails” was literally the most reported story of the campaign, this year everyone who isn’t directly sucking at the Trump teat is treating these debunked charges with the (lack of) seriousness they deserve. 

For that, we can thank the impeachment of Donald Trump, which exposed the lies against the Bidens for what they are. The impeachment process inoculated the media and the American public by preparing them for what Trump is now trying to pull on this matter. So thank you Nancy Pelosi, thank you Adam Schiff, thank you Val Demings, thank you Jerry Nadler, and thanks to the rest of the Democratic impeachment team. I’m sure Joe Biden is thanking you as well.

Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)

Senate Intelligence Committee report confirms all charges about Trump’s connections to Russia

Posted on (Updated by Mark Sumner

The Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 election was slipped out to the public with less fanfare than a new menu item at Captain D’s. And like the actual Mueller report, released weeks after Attorney General William Barr produced his whitewashed summary, Republicans are just hoping everyone will read their topline statements and ignore what the investigation really found.

Somehow, after Republicans have declared over and over that there was “no collusion,” they’ve been sitting on a report that shows that Donald Trump’s campaign manager was in constant contact with a Russian operative, that both WikiLeaks and Roger Stone knew they were part of a direct pipeline from Vladimir Putin, and that the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort was in fact a meeting with Russian spies designed to get information that could be used against Hillary Clinton. And that Ivanka Trump coordinated the daily drip of words from Moscow.

The Senate report, in fact, proves everything that had been said since before the election—Trump’s campaign directly collaborated with Russia, on multiple occasions and in various ways, to alter the outcome of a U.S. election. It also shows that multiple members of Trump’s campaign lied to investigators about these connections, and that Republican senators have been aware of these facts even as they have scorned the Mueller investigation and defended Trump and his campaign. So what are Republican senators doing about it now? Lying, of course.

The Senate report shows that Manafort was directly involved in passing along information to a Russian intelligence agent and accepting information from that agent. That’s collusion by the head of Trump’s campaign. The investigation could have stopped right there and moved on to providing information to the House for impeachment.

It didn’t stop there. It went on to explore how Ivanka Trump coordinated the use of stolen documents provided by Russia to make Trump’s attacks on Clinton more effective. How Stone helped Moscow coordinate WikiLeaks information to run cover for Trump. And how Manafort’s close coordination with Kremlin sources “represented a grave counterintelligence threat,” The report isn’t just damning, it’s damning to helling. It could not be more conclusive and more authoritative in showing that there was genuine coordination between the Trump campaign and Putin’s plans. Trump took everything Putin would give him, and begged for more.

Evidence in the report shows that Manafort’s chief contact, Konstantin Kilimnik, was connected not just with providing information to the campaign after the fact, but to the whole plot to break into DNC servers in the first place. The Trump campaign wasn’t the lucky beneficiary of a Russian plot that was already in effect. The whole thing—the break-in at the DNC, the distribution of emails through WikiLeaks, the false claims about Ukraine—was a joint Trump/Putin production from the start. They didn’t just collude, they were partners.

Why they were partners from the start is also underlined in the report, as the fifth volume contains information directly related to the leverage Putin had over Trump. That includes not just witnesses corroborating the existence of the “pee tape,” but a possible affair between Trump and a former Miss Moscow as well as a visit to a Moscow strip club. All of this, along with Manafort’s existing connections to Moscow, meant that Trump and other members of the campaign “presented attractive targets for foreign influence, creating notable counterintelligence vulnerabilities,” according to the report.

Almost as an aside, the report shows that Donald Trump and his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen negotiated repeatedly to cover up evidence in exchange for a pardon—and then everyone involved lied about it to Robert Mueller. Though that part was already known.

So what are Republican senators going to do about a report—their own report—that lays bare Putin’s tawdry leverage over Trump, the openness of Trump’s campaign to foreign influence, and the lies that campaigns staffers told to investigators every step of the way? As Lawfare points out, Republicans have a very simple solution: lying. Over and over, Republican senators have issued statements repeating the idea that the report shows “no collusion,” in direct contradiction of the actual contents.

Republicans in the Senate deserve credit for allowing the investigation to run its course rather than doing a Devin Nunes and popping out a Trump-praising nonsense piece while claiming that everything is good. But they deserve zero credit for running away from their own report or for making claims that the report doesn’t show what it clearly shows.

And while Republicans are scanning Mike Pompeo’s stack of documents looking for possible avenues of attack against Joe Biden, Biden could do a lot worse than simply making advertisements out of segments of the report created by the Republican-led Senate.

Top GOP senators give Trump the Biden probe he got impeached for trying to force on Ukraine

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is using his investigative powers as chair of a Senate panel to push forward with a thinly veiled attempt to stir up Russian disinformation about presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Johnson, who chairs the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, says he's investigating if the hiring of Biden's son Hunter by a Ukrainian gas company posed a conflict of interest for Biden while he was serving as vice president. Hunter Biden, a trained lawyer, served on the board of Burisma Holdings from 2014 to 2019 as the company sought to repair its image following allegations of corruption in its ranks.

No credible news organization has found any meat to the allegation that Biden's diplomacy in Ukraine was improperly influenced in any way. In fact, Biden's work in 2015 and 2016 to help oust the corrupt Ukrainian top prosecutor had the support of U.S allies across the international spectrum.

But however thoroughly discredited this right-wing conspiracy theory is, The Washington Post reports that Johnson is intent on rehashing it along with the help of GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee. And Democrats charge the probe is just a gateway into fanning the flames of a bunch of Russian disinformation about Biden and Ukraine. In other words, Johnson and Grassley are giving Trump the investigation he got impeached over—trying to force Ukraine into doing his dirty work. Ukraine officials ultimately declined to even announce such a probe, let alone conduct one. 

But Johnson and Grassley? Sure, let's give legitimacy to an investigation Ukrainian officials already declared illegitimate. Apparently, there aren't more important things to do right now as Senate Republicans let a relief package flounder that's critical to keeping the country from sliding into an economic depression.

“Senator Johnson is diverting his committee from oversight of the failing response to the pandemic — even though over 4.5 million Americans have been infected — and is instead facilitating a foreign influence operation to undermine our democracy,” Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said.

But Johnson's no neophyte when it comes to doing Trump's bidding on Ukraine. During the House impeachment probe, Johnson admitted to The Wall Street Journal that he had been alerted early to Trump's quid pro quo pressure campaign in which he withheld $400 million in U.S. aide from Ukraine. But Johnson was content to raise the issue with Trump and take his denial of the allegation at face value—because Trump's nothing if not a man of his word. Just FYI, that’s the type of interview a senator gives to a friendly outlet when they want to frame a story before it’s publicly revealed by someone else. In fact, a House impeachment probe might be just the type of incentive that makes a senator want to come clean.

Ukraine is currently a hotbed of disinformation on the topic. "Johnson’s probe is proceeding as Ukrainians with a variety of competing agendas and links to Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani have been releasing apparently pilfered official conversations that Biden conducted while vice president with Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko, aiming to tarnish the presumptive Democratic nominee and his longtime interlocutor in Kyiv," writes the Post. So there's lot of dubious fodder for Johnson to blow up.

When the Post asked Johnson if he was getting information from "pro-Russian Ukrainians," he offered only that he was receiving input from "a variety of sources," including the U.S. government. He also said that they would "verify" all information before publicizing it in a report he's promising to deliver in September. 

In response to the probe, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have asked the FBI to deliver a “defensive counterintelligence briefing” to all members of the House.

“Congress appears to be the target of a concerted foreign influence campaign, which seeks to launder and amplify disinformation in order to influence congressional activity, public debate, and the presidential election in November,” Pelosi and Schumer wrote in a July letter to the FBI.

Of all people, even Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and former GOP intelligence chair Richard Burr of North Carolina have raised concerns about Senate staffers potentially using Russian disinformation supplied via Ukraine as the basis for a bogus investigation. 

Johnson declined an interview with the Post but issued a statement saying he refused to be deterred by "despicable tactics designed to discredit a legitimate investigation."

Nothing good will come of this. Not with Johnson behind it. He already discredited himself by admitting how easily he let Trump off the hook for soliciting foreign interference in the upcoming election. But now Johnson is actually doing Trump's dirty work for him. Can't imagine why a sitting U.S. senator would do that.

Trump didn’t just break the GOP, he broke conservatism

Posted on by kos

Remember when you could all describe, in one succinct sentence, what the Republican Party was all about? “Family values, lower taxes, and a strong national defense.” Democrats spent decades trying to come up with their own pithy slogan and failed. We are just too diverse a coalition to condense into a single sentence. And turns out, we don’t need to, because the head of the conservative movement, Donald Trump, has exposed just how empty that statement of values always was. 

It was quite the feat, actually, to take the one man with inarguably the worst record on “family values,” and then rally around him with zero sense of irony or shame. Trump had multiples and then cheated on them with pornstars while ignoring his children. He didn’t (and doesn’t) go to church, give to charity, or show any semblance of humility. In fact, the did the opposite of charity—he used a charity to grift. 

In fact, has any one man ever embodied the seven deadly sins more perfectly than Trump? Pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. He is a wretched human being, morally bankrupt and ethically corrupt. And through it all, evangelical Christians have stuck with him, proving that they never ever cared about any actual morality. 

On national defense, Republicans have acknowledged that Trump is a puppet of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. The current House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy, a solid Trump ally, who was recorded saying back in 2017, “There’s …there’s two people, I think, Putin pays: [California Rep. Dana] Rohrabacher and Trump … [laughter] … swear to God.” Then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, another Republican, thought that was funny, ““This is an off-the-record … [laughter] … NO LEAKS … [laughter] … alright?!”

Hilarious. 

We went through a whole impeachment process in which Trump’s attempts to enlist foreign governments to help his reelection campaign were fully exposed, and Republicans did nothing but shrug. 

But nothing tops revelations that Russia paid Taliban fighters in Afghanistan a bounty for every dead American they killed, and Trump couldn’t be bothered to give a damn. Instead, Putin’s loyal lapdog keeps checking in with Moscow every month, to discuss who knows what. You’d think Republicans would care about America’s top historical geopolitical opponent encouraging the murder of our troops, but nah. 

They did get to the “lower taxes” bit, however. Nothing like destroying our nation’s finances in order to justify the cutting of our social nets to really get Republicans excited. … Then again, “bailing out billionaires” isn’t particularly the most populist and popular policy plank on which to hang all your electoral hopes. 

So we know that all of this has utterly crushed the GOP, and we’re headed toward another anti-Republican wave election this fall. But now we’re seeing evidence that this goes deeper than simple anti-GOP sentiment. By exposing its flimsy pretenses, Trump is breaking conservatism itself. Check out Gallup’s polling on self-identified ideology over the course of this year:  

American’s ideology Jan/Frb mar/Apr May/Jun Conservative Moderate Liberal
40 37 34
34 36 36
22 23 26

That’s a stunning collapse in such a short period of time, while the long-demonized term “liberal” is making a strong comeback. (Many Democrats prefer the safer-sounding “moderate,” as you can see if you follow the link above. Black, young, Latino Americans all prefer “moderate” to “liberal,” when we know they are politically liberal.)

More Gallup:

The decline in self-identified conservatism in 2020 has been seen about evenly among men and women, and among all political party groups.

However, it was more pronounced among adults in upper-income households as well as among middle-aged adults (aged 35 to 54) than their counterparts.

The conservative falloff has also been stronger among White and Hispanic Americans than Black Americans. Relatively few Black Americans (25%) identified as conservative in January/February, and thus there may have been less opportunity for the rate to decline.

Among those who earn more than $100,000, the number of self-identified conservatives dropped 11 points, from 40% to 29%. And since we’ve tracked suburban voters so closely for the last several cycles, they are also leaving the conservative fold, from 36% to 28%. In fact, and this is crazy—there are fewer conservatives now in the suburbs than in cities (33%)!

Still, don’t count out rural areas, getting hit harder and harder by COVID-19. They’ve gone from 50% conservative to 43%. That’s why states like Alaska, Iowa, Montana, and Ohio are suddenly back in play at both the presidential and Senate levels. 

Republicans exist only insofar as conservatives exist, as they and Trump fight to make their tent even smaller and unwelcome to anyone who isn’t ideologically pure. Seeing at close range the kind of rampant hypocrisy, corruption, mismanagement, and incompetence inherent in conservatism, Americans are ditching the label and, with it, their votes for Republicans. 

And they still have a lot further to fall.