Published on Mar 27, 2019
Russiagate diehards can’t let the collusion narrative go, come up with new theories instead
The conspiracy known as ‘Russiagate’ should have ended with the news that, after intense investigation, no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was found — but die-hard collusion truthers are finding it hard to move on.
Attorney General William Barr sent a four-page letter summarizing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s findings to Congress on March 24. Quoting the report directly Barr wrote that the investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government” in 2016.
That unambiguous conclusion was reached with the help of 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents, intelligence analysts and forensic accountants, among other professionals. In pursuit of any evidence to prove Trump colluded with Moscow, Mueller issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses.
But none of that was enough to satisfy or dent the resolve of the Russiagate true believers (on social media or in the mainstream media) who are still convinced that they were right all along and are coming up with new theories in a last-ditch effort to prove it.
‘Barr is lying for Trump!’
Following the letter, the first instinct of the Russiagaters was to cast Barr as the new villain. It was too early to turn on Mueller (who had been held up for two years as a Messiah-like figure who would save them from the Trump presidency).
“Barr is a Trump appointee!” they shouted on Twitter, suggesting that the AG lied or misconstrued the contents of Mueller’s report while he sat by and said nothing. Former Hillary Clinton adviser Adam Parkhomenko even accused Barr of engineering a “coverup” of Mueller’s real evidence.
This was followed by demands for the release of the report in its entirety, which is a fair request. Trump himself in the past has said he would have “no problem” with the full report being released, so time will tell whether he’ll stick to that position or not. Regardless, what the Russiagaters are expecting to find in the full report is a bit of a mystery, since we already know there was no evidence of collusion established by Mueller.
‘Mueller didn’t investigate the right things!’
Perhaps realizing that accusing Barr of spinning the report in Trump’s favor wasn’t going to cut it, collusion enthusiasts finally began to set their sights on Mueller himself. A piece in the New York Times noted the “sense of mourning” that had set in among “disappointed Mueller fans” who were now beginning to “rethink the pedestal they built for him.”
“Mueller’s scope was too narrow!” the former fans insisted, after pledging their hopes on his investigative skills for two years and hanging on every “bombshell” and “turning point” the media — including the Times — had offered them. Some were so disillusioned that they decided the whole thing must have been “a setup” from day one.
‘Forget Mueller, the evidence is in plain sight!’
Others maintained that Mueller (“a Republican!”) was simply ignoring all the “evidence” of collusion that was in “plain sight.” The “plain sight” narrative was boosted by the unrelenting Rep. Adam Schiff, who led the Democrats’ collusion charge and even claimed that he seen the evidence of collusion himself. Yet, on Tuesday, Schiff told CNN that the problem was an inability to establish proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” and promised that Congress would continue its own investigations of Trump to prove that he was “compromised” by Russia.
Some did stick by Mueller, however, insisting that they trust him and will accept whatever is in the report. Whether they will stand by that assessment if they are disappointed by the contents of the full report remains to be seen.
‘But what about *insert theory*?’
Then there were those who went back to basics and dug up all the old theories. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia Evelyn Farkas suggested that maybe Trump secretly owes buckets of money to Russians “close to Putin.”
What about that Trump Tower meeting? What about WikiLeaks? What about Trump saying nice things about Putin? Come on, there must be something they can catch him on.
Media madness
US media has taken two different approaches to the Mueller news. There are the ones who are eager to move on and forget Russiagate ever happened (no need to reflect on the role journalists played in hyping the conspiracy) — and there are those who are doubling down.
Preferring the ‘let’s all move on’ option, two CNN reporters penned an unintentionally funny article suggesting that the finding of no collusion was an opportunity to quickly “move past a dark period,” but worried that the president “isn’t prepared to let go.” One assumes they haven’t recently encountered any of the congressional Democrats who are insisting that investigations of Trump will continue indefinitely.
Coming as a surprise to no one, MSNBC’s chief Russiagate prophet Rachel Maddow is one who has opted to double down, barely acknowledging on her Monday night show that no collusion had been found and pouring ample skepticism on Barr’s letter. Poor, desperate Maddow was then unironically dubbed the “queen of collusion” in the Washington Post, which was hardly a beacon of reason and moderation over the last two years.
Anyway, best to stay tuned; who knows what new theories the Russiagate devotees will come up with next.
Danielle Ryan RT
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With Mueller done, is it time to investigate the FBI? (DEBATE)
THE FBI IS PART OF THE DEEP STATE
With the Mueller report finished and President Trump cleared of colluding with Russia, the spotlight is now on the FBI leadership that opened the investigation. RT’s Crosstalk guests think the agency has a lot to answer for.
After a two year media circus, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report cleared President Trump of colluding with Russia to rig the 2016 election, a conclusion that Trump says brings him “complete and total exoneration.”
However, constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz argued that Mueller should have never been appointed in the first place. “It was a mistake to appoint a special counsel because there was no evidence of a crime,” Dershowitz said. Rather, he argued, Mueller’s appointment by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was a knee-jerk reaction to the firing of former FBI Director James Comey.
Mueller’s probe was launched just over a week after Comey was unceremoniously fired in May 2017. Before then, the FBI had been conducting its own investigation into the supposed collusion. That investigation, Dershowitz continued, was based on lies.
A dossier of salacious gossip – gathered by former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of the Clinton campaign – was presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as evidence to authorize the wiretapping of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, even though Comey later admitted he knew the dossier was unverifiable.
“I think the FISA court was defrauded,” the lawyer told RT. “You can show information to the FISA court which isn’t particularly compelling, as long as you tell the court what the source is, and alert it to the… conflicts of interest. You cannot provide material to the court, claiming it’s credible, when you yourself know that it lacks credibility.”
Troublingly, former National Security Agency leader William Binney added,
Among Republicans, talk of investigating the FBI and Department of Justice has risen above a chatter in recent days. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) told reporters on Monday that he will investigate the FBI’s alleged FISA abuse and subsequent investigation, an investigation that Trump called “an illegal takedown that failed.”
“What makes no sense to me is that all of the abuse by the Department of Justice and the FBI – the unprofessional conduct, the shady behavior – nobody seems to think that’s much important. Well that’s going to change, I hope,” he said.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) gave Graham his blessing on Tuesday, saying the issue of whether the FBI conspired to hinder Trump’s election is “a legitimate question.”
“We’re headed that way,”presidential historian Doug Wead noted.
GOOGLE Helping Beijing Build ‘Global Digital Dictatorship’…
By Gordon G. Chang
Google’s decision to help China is paving the way for Beijing’s ‘digital dictatorship.’ Ultimately, Washington must make a political decision to criminalize such collaboration.
General Joseph Dunford, America’s top military officer, has announced he will be meeting with Google representatives this week to talk about the company’s assistance to China’s People’s Liberation Army.
Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, first stoked the controversy over Google on March 14 during his appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The work that Google is doing in China is indirectly benefiting the Chinese military,” he said.
“We watch with great concern when industry partners work in China knowing that there is that indirect benefit,” he added later. “Frankly, ‘indirect’ maybe not be a full characterization of the way it really is. It’s more of a direct benefit to the Chinese military.”
Google issued a firm denial in response to Dunford’s comments. “We are not working with the Chinese military,” a spokesperson said. “We are working with the U.S. government, including the Department of Defense, in many areas including cybersecurity, recruiting and healthcare.”
But Dunford is correct. The denial, even if technically accurate, is nonetheless misleading. Google maintains arrangements that it either knows or should know directly benefit the Chinese military.
For instance, in December 2017 the company announced the formation of the Google AI China Center in Beijing.
Due to Chinese ruler Xi Jinping’s announced policy of “civil-military fusion,” there is no longer any meaningful distinction between civil and military research, especially in areas like AI that Xi has determined China must dominate. As Bob Work, once U.S. deputy defense secretary, said of the new facility in the Chinese capital, “Anything that’s going on in that center is going to be used by the military.”
Similarly, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan sounded the alarm at that Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on March 14. “The fusion of commercial business with military is significant,” he said. “The technology that is developed in the civil world transfers to the military world. It’s a direct pipeline. Not only is there a transfer, there’s also systematic theft of U.S. technology that facilitates even faster development of emerging technology.”
Dunford, in comments last Thursday, pointed to the requirement of having Communist Party cells in companies. The cells, he said, will lead to the transfer of intellectual property to the Chinese military.
The Daily Beast asked Google if its AI China Center hosts a Communist Party cell but has not received a reply.
Google’s AI center in Beijing is not the only project of concern. “Google is partnering with several state entities for various projects to expedite their research,” Bandon Weichert, a national security analyst specializing in emerging technology, told The Daily Beast.
The company is already participating in AI research at Tsinghua University, one of China’s two premier institutions, and is cooperating with Peking University, the other top institution, and the University of Science and Technology of China.
SPAIN: MIGRANTS GANG RAPE 12-YEAR-OLD, LET HER FRIEND GO BECAUSE SHE’S MUSLIM
Residents accuse local mayor of covering up the attack
MARCH 27, 2019
A group of migrants in Spain subjected a 12-year-old girl to a brutal gang rape but let her friend go because she was a Muslim, with residents complaining that the Mayor of the town helped cover up the incident.
The incident occurred on March 18th last year but full details only just came to light in a report by Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
According to the report, the attack in Azuqueca de Henares began when the 12-year-old girl was playing with several friends in the Lavadero de Azuqueca park just after 1pm in the afternoon.
A group of Moroccan youths and one Nigerian then arrived, some of whom were known to the victim.
The youths then kidnapped the girl and one of her friends, taking them to an abandoned building nearby. After a discussion in Arabic that lasted several minutes, the perpetrators decided to let her friend go free because she was “North African” and a Muslim.
The youths then took the Spanish girl to a bathroom, knocked her down, undressed her, held down her hands and feet, covered her mouth and then began to anally rape her one by one.
https://bit.tube/play?hash=QmWJ3q9KWQ5xF6WDTYp5EVQpXJ8jtgeesTLGLYHPqdGfhi&channel=251530
At least 5 different individuals took part in the attack, according to the victim, one of whom was 18-years-old and therefore legally an adult.
The girl screamed out as she was then raped vaginally. Her friends who were outside attempted to intervene but were threatened to stay away by one of the suspects who was carrying a stick.
“Anyone who comes in doesn’t come out,” he told the girls.
The attack lasted a full 45 minutes before the victim was allowed to leave.
Three of the youths involved in the attack received 3 years of “confinement,” while one of the adults involved received “preventive detention”. Another adult involved in the attack is still at large.
Local municipal groups wrote a letter condemning Mayor Jose Luis Blanco, who they accused of helping to cover up the full details of the incident. No official details were released about the incident, with the newspaper learning of it via pupils at the local school.
CIVIL WAR: Democrat Elite Moves to Crush Grassroots Primary Challengers Before 2020
By Shane Trejo
The powers atop the Democratic Party are scared of socialist upstarts gaining steam and stopping the party from beating Trump next year
The Democratic Party elite has seen enough of its young upstarts like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-MA). They are purging firms and consultants that are willing to work with primary challengers against incumbent Democrats heading into 2020.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) announced last week that they are blacklisting any vendors from work in the party unless they agree to a loyalty oath of sorts indicating that they will not challenge incumbent Democrats.
The form reads as follows: “I understand the above statement that the DCCC will not conduct business with, nor recommend to any of its targeted campaigns, any consultant that works with an opponent of a sitting Member of the House Democratic Caucus.”
The Intercept published an op/ed written by a far-left activist detailing how the restrictive move from the party elite is creating fissures within the grassroots heading into 2020:
“Like many women in their 20s across America, I feel inexplicably hopeful and manifestly seen when I watch Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez take on the stale and insular political dynamics of Washington…
Ocasio-Cortez’s unapologetic energy in Washington cannot be separated from her decision to run against Joe Crowley in Queens, New York. Every action Ocasio-Cortez takes carries the same fearlessness that prompted her not to wait her turn…
Yet instead of embracing Ocasio-Cortez and the fresh path she has opened, the DCCC and other national “Democratic” organizations are wrapping their arms more tightly around the heavily white, male incumbent Democrats in Washington.”
Between this and the disenfranchisement of Bernie Sanders supporters, the grassroots left is beginning to get the picture that the Democratic elite is not on their side. In fact, the Democratic brass treats their constituents in a similar manner that Republican leadership is known to treat theirs.
The New York Times received word in 2014, near the peak of the tea party phenomenon, that “top congressional Republicans and their allies” were working to “deny [Tea Party-backed candidates] any Senate primary victories, cut into their fund-raising and diminish them as a future force in Republican politics.”
“I think we are going to crush them everywhere,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said at the time, referring to tea party upstart primary challengers. “I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country.”
McConnell may have been arrogant but was not wrong in making his boast. With the one lone exception of libertarian economist Dave Brat upending Rep. Eric Cantor in Virginia, every single tea party challenger was put down in 2014. State senator Chris McDaniel came the closest to defeating incumbent Thad Cochran, but lost in a run-off election following extreme corruption. The movement would never quite recover.
“I know this: Politics doesn’t like losers. If you don’t have anything to point to, it is kind of hard to keep it going,” McConnell said of his opposition, kicking dirt into their face while they were down.
The Democratic Party elite hopes to replicate the success that the Republican Party bosses had during the Obama presidency in derailing their ascendant grassroots rebellion, but the far left is very much aware of what is happening and does not plan to go down lightly.
With the civil war ongoing for the soul of the Democratic Party, that does not bode well for their chances in 2020. The extremists in their midst will likely cause great division heading into the presidential election, and that has to be music to President Donald Trump’s ears.
Washington told Ukraine to end probe into George Soros-funded group during 2016 US election – report
An NGO co-funded by George Soros was spared prosecution in 2016 after the US urged Ukraine to drop a corruption probe targeting the group, the Hill reported, pointing to potential shenanigans during the US presidential election.
Bankrolled by the Obama administration and Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros, the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC) was under investigation as part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into the misallocation of $4.4 million in US funds to fight corruption in the eastern European country.
As the 2016 presidential race heated up back in the United States, the US Embassy in Kiev gave Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko “a list of people whom we should not prosecute” as part of the probe, the Hill reported. Ultimately, no action was taken against AntAC.
Lutsenko told the paper that he believes the embassy wanted the probe nixed because it could have exposed the Democrats to a potential scandal during the 2016 election.
A State Department official who spoke with the Hill said that while the request to nix the probe was unusual, Washington feared that AntAC was being targeted as retribution for the group’s advocacy for anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine.
AntAC wasn’t just the benefactor of well-connected patrons – at the time it was also collaborating with FBI agents to uncover then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s business dealings in Ukraine. Manafort later became a high-profile target of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into alleged Russian collusion, and was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison for tax fraud and other financial crimes.
Lutsenko divulged in an interview with the Hill last week that he has opened an investigation into whether Ukrainian officials leaked financial records during the 2016 US presidential campaign in an effort to sway the election in favor of Hillary Clinton.
While AntAC may have failed to help the FBI find the Russia collusion smoking gun, the group’s activities constitute yet another link between the anti-climactic Russiagate probe and Soros, a Democrat mega-donor who bet big on Hillary Clinton taking the White House in 2016.
In 2017, the billionaire philanthropist siphoned money into a new group, the Democracy Integrity Project, which later partnered with Fusion GPS to create the now-infamous Steele dossier.
Spokespersons for AntAC and the Soros umbrella group Open Society Foundations declined to comment on the Hill’s scoop.
Ironically, the prosecutor general who had preceded Lutsenko, Viktor Shokin, resigned under pressure from Washington – which accused Shokin of corruption.
Virtuous US officials continue to make similar demands of Ukraine’s justice system. Earlier this month, Washington urged the Ukrainian government to fire its special anti-corruption prosecutor, again over accusations of administrative abuse.
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PROSECUTE THE PROSECUTORS . . .
WHAT IS COLLUSION?
WATCH: USC STUDENTS REACT TO MUELLER’S TRUMP-RUSSIA CONCLUSIONS
Even in one of the most liberal areas of the country, the collusion myth is dead
MARCH 26, 2019
Austen Fletcher of Fleccas Talks interviewed students on the University of Southern California campus to find out if they’re happy the Mueller report concluded President Trump did not collude with Russia to steal the 2016 election.
The majority of students felt Mueller’s findings were positive for America and that those who pushed the false narrative are now exposed as fake news.
With an already decaying trust in mainstream media, the public’s increasing skepticism will presumably help Trump lock-in a 2020 election victory.
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