Russiagate

 Russiagate 

Date	November 2016 - 2019
Interest of	7th floor group, Father Andrew, Naz Durakoğlu, Fazze, Mark Hackard, Avril Haines, Stefan Halper, Deborah Haynes, Aaron Maté, George Papadopoulos, Joy Reid

Russiagate was a string of ever-mutating revelations about the Russian government having taken control of the American presidency, by blackmailing Donald Trump, starting influence campaigns on social media, supporting Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein and then by apparently not actually supporting Trump, or Trump not knowing of this support, but by "creating division in American society".

In the never-ending cavalcade of supposed dramatic revelations of Russian collusion and meddling in corporate media, one noticeable factor is the way every of the hundreds of accusations and insinuations melted into thin air the moment their were scrutinized by alternative media. Still, by their sheer amount and domination of the corporate news, the accusations left an impression of being solid, and have entered the "common knowledge" as something true in large sections of the population, including in the ruling class.

Given that Donald Trump consistently has expanded the US military presence near Russia's borders, introduced heavy economic and political sanctions and quit most arms treaties, one can say that if the accusations of Trump being a Manchurian Candidate were true, the Russian government certainly hasn't got its money's worth (the official narrative mentions a $100.000 investment in social media campaigns).

Background

Actual example of the 'Russian' social media influence campaign that turned the election, from the (deadpan) Senate report

Historically in the USA, semi-private deep state/intelligence networks have formed whenever a president is seen as unfit. The most infamous is the group that assassinated John F. Kennedy, but also the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard M. Nixon and the October Surprise that got rid of Carter, were arranged by 'former' intelligence operatives half-in-half-out of the official intelligence apparatus.

Career spooks and diplomats were in on the Russiagate conspiracy very early, as Trump had publicly declared against escalating CIA's covert war on Syria (2011-). The CIA attempt to topple the Syrian government, part of a bigger plan to control the Middle East, had bogged down, and would require a full military intervention to succeed. Hilary Clinton stated she wanted to establish no-fly zones and safe-havens, old humanitarian pretexts used in other interventions, like Libya, but in Syria this might lead to a war with Russia.

Trump had also declared he did not want to escalate the situation in the Ukraine by sending arms there, escalating a civil war and tense situation with Russia after a U.S. directed coup there in 2014.

Instigators

When Donald trump unexpectedly won the presidential election in 2016, a deep state faction in the Obama administration with loyalty to the Clinton network, decided to start a psychological operation to topple Trump. This group overlapped with career spooks wanting Trump to follow a specific pre-planned foreign policy, especially on the covert wars in Syria and Ukraine.

Democrat minority leader Chuck Schumer in early January 2017 about Donald Trump: "Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,"

• The 7th floor group, part of the Clinton network, started running a series of “deputies meetings” from July 2016 onwards, until closer to the election. As Election Day approached Susan Rice, Avril Haines and White House homeland-security adviser Lisa Monaco convened meetings in the White House Situation Room "to weigh the mounting evidence of Russian interference and generate options for how to respond." At first, only four senior security officials were allowed to attend:CIA director John Brennan, Director of national intelligence James R. Clapper, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and FBI Director James B. Comey. Aides ordinarily allowed entry as “plus-ones” were barred. Gradually, the circle widened to include Vice President Joe Biden and others. Agendas were sent to Cabinet secretaries — including John F. Kerry at the State Department and Ashton B. Carter at the Pentagon.

• President Obama’s former acting CIA chief Michael Morrell published a hearty endorsement of Clinton in the New York Times and claimed “Putin ha[s] recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation,”George W. Bush’s post-9/11 CIA and NSA Chief, General Michael Hayden, writing in the Washington Post, echoed Morrell by accusing Trump of being a “useful fool, some naif, manipulated by Moscow” and sounding “a little bit the conspiratorial Marxist.”

British intelligence services were early active in the case.

The leaked Clinton emails

According to the expert report, the Russians targeted Black populations groups, "which were presented with distinct historical conspiracies – intended to reinforce cultural identity as well as create discord." One repeated idea was "that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was Black".(Reassuringly "debunked by fact-checker Snopes")"

The official story goes that the Russian government hacked into the servers of the Democratic Party (DNC), where files incriminating Hillary Clinton were found and later given to Wikileaks. This storyline is part of the basis for the attempt to crack WikiLeaks and imprison Julian Assange.

Alternative media have solidly shown that the files were downloaded to a USB, not hacked online; that the whistleblower probably was DNC insider Seth Rich, who later were shot and killed in an alleged robbery; and Craig Murray has stated that he personally transferred the files from the whistleblower to WikiLeaks.

Full article: Seth Rich

The pee-tapes

Full article: Dirty dossier

When looking for dirt on Donald Trump, every huckster in town could strike it rich. There is a British connection here, to MI6 agent Christopher Steele, who presented a dossier to FBI with accusations of the Russian government having filmed Donald Trump in a compromising situation in Moscow (the 'golden shower'/'pee-tapes'), which later were revealed to have been a fan fiction story sourced from the internet. This sourcing of dirt on Trump even has a connection to Sergei Skripal.

Russian influence operation in Social Media

A long Senate investigation into Russian influence on social media having tipped the election to Trump, ended up with concluding that a company in St.Petersburg, the Internet Research Agency ('Russian', thereby automatically 'the Russian government') had spent money on social media campaigns. Facebook, after having dug deeply, eventually came up with the sum of $100.000 spent on ads - this in an election campaign with a total $6.5 billion spend).

The prime examples of 'Russian influence attempts' the report chose to highlight, can only be described as proof of anything but an influence campaign.(see examples spread around the page).

Actual example from the US Senate report (very deadpan) on Russian social media influence campaign

The Senate experts pondered to make sense of certain other memes, except being dead certain that they were in fact 'influence attempts'

Among the other outré claims were that the Internet Research Agency had "tentacles [which] extended to YouTube, Tumblr and even Pokémon Go." As Caitlin Johnstone pointed out: "And of course, as always, when we read beyond the clickbait “Russia propagandized your children with viral video game apps!” headline we find that when CNN says that Pokémon Go was used to interfere in the 2016 election what they really mean is that there is no evidence whatsoever that Pokémon Go was used to interfere in the 2016 election. We learn that some scarcely-viewed media was used to direct attention to police brutality against African Americans (a subject which should get more attention anyway) by a “Kremlin-linked troll farm” whose Tumblr account now posts about Palestine.CNN’s source on this matter? Literally cited only as “A source familiar with the matter”."

The lack of substance behind these claims did not hinder the start of a very extensive U.S./NATO network of fact checkers, media influence operations, social pressure exerted against people disagreeing, and an ongoing extensive corporate censorship effort.

Attempt to entrap George Papadopoulos

There was an early attempt to infiltrate the Trump campaign and preferably entrap campaign workers.

A probable British intelligence operative, professor Joseph Mifsud, presumably on an entrapment mission, allegedly discussed that Russia has ‘dirt’ on Clinton in the form of ‘thousands of emails’ with Trump campaign worked George Papadopoulos in London in April 2016.

The following month,Alexander Downer, Australia’s ambassador to the UK, was sent to get Papadopoulos to say something incriminating on acquiring alleged Russian dirt on Clinton, while they were drinking at a swanky Kensington bar. In late July 2016, Downer shared his tip with Australian intelligence officials who forwarded it to the FBI.

Later, during a visit to Israel, Papadopoulos was handed $10.000 in cash from an Israeli 'campaign donor'. Papadopoulos left the money in trust with an attorney in Greece before going back to the United States. At US customs, he was frisked, making him realieze the money was an entrapment attempt.

Having recorded these statements, the FBI got him to incriminate himself by denying having made them. On October 5, 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to making false statements to FBI agents about the timing and the possible significance of his contacts in 2016.

The Mueller investigation

Actual example of the 'Russian' social media influence campaign that turned the election, from the (deadpan) Senate report

After a 2 year Senate investigation, with endless teasers in media of dramatic revelations, a team led by Robert Mueller concluded “The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 US Presidential Election…the report does not recommend any further indictments, nor did the Special Counsel obtain any sealed indictments that have yet to be made public.”

Robert Mueller did not charge any Americans with collusion, coordination, or criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. The special counsel also considered whether members of the Trump campaign “coordinated,” a much lower standard defined as an “agreement, tacit or express,” with Russian election interference activities. They did not.

The first conclusions to emerge from Robert Mueller’s report will prove discomfiting to the centrist, Clinton-affiliated wing of the Democratic Party, which blamed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election defeat on a Russian plot. They will also be a serious affront to most in the US media, which has for two years made ‘Russiagate’ its biggest story.

Donald Trump, it seems, has been emboldened by the report. Throughout his presidency he has repeated, like an automaton: ‘No collusion!’ Attorney general William Barr’s summary of the document suggests that he was right: ‘The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.’ All the Trump officials who have already been convicted were charged with other crimes: tax fraud, making false statements to a congressional committee, etc.

Democrats on the left could also find strength in Mueller’s verdict. Now, their party may have to abandon the narrative and breathless tone of a bad spy novel, and devote its energy to the issues facing American society. This is its best hope if it wants to beat Trump at the end of next year.

'Big nothing burger'

In a revelation of the cynicism behind the scenes, CNN executive Van Jones termed it a 'big nothing burger' to a hidden recording.

Matt Taibbi wrote in March 2019 that It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD.

The biggest thing this affair has uncovered so far is Donald Trump paying off a porn star. That’s a hell of a long way from what this business was supposedly about at the beginning, and shame on any reporter who tries to pretend this isn’t so.

The story hyped from the start was espionage: a secret relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian spooks who’d helped him win the election.

The betrayal narrative was not reported as metaphor. It was not “Trump likes the Russians so much, he might as well be a spy for them.” It was literal spying, treason, and election-fixing – crimes so severe, former NSA employee John Schindler told reporters, Trump “will die in jail.”

In the early months of this scandal, the New York Times said Trump’s campaign had “repeated contacts” with Russian intelligence; the Wall Street Journal told us our spy agencies were withholding intelligence from the new President out of fear he was compromised; news leaked out our spy chiefs had even told other countries like Israel not to share their intel with us, because the Russians might have “leverages of pressure” on Trump.

Consequences

The narrative of Russiagate has been used to reinforce the new cold war with Russia and creating an external enemy to gather the establishment around. The operation has created the rationale for a new witch-hunting McCarthyism, extensive new propaganda and influence activities, monitoring of internal enemies, military expansion and a systematic corporate/state effort at censorship.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Corporate media/Mendacity	“More and more we are seeing narratives about cyber-threats being used to advance reports of “attacks” and “acts of war” being perpetrated which, as far as the public is concerned, consist of nothing other than the authoritative assertions of confident-sounding media pundits. There was a recent NBC exclusive which was co-authored by Ken Dilanian, who is an actual, literal CIA asset, about the threat of hackers working for the Iranian government. The alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US elections is now routinely compared to Pearl Harbor and 9/11, despite no hard, verifiable evidence that that interference even took place ever being presented to the public.”	Caitlin Johnstone	11 August 2018
Charles Schumer	“"Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you," Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in response to the president-elect challenging allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election. "So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this," Schumer added. "What do you think the intelligence community will do if they were motivated to," Maddow wondered. "I don’t know, but from what I am told intelligence officials are very upset with how [Trump] has treated them and talked about them," Schumer replied. "Do we think he has an agenda to try to dismantle parts of the intelligence community? I mean this form of taunting hostility," she said. "Let me tell you. Whether you’re a super liberal Democrat or a very conservative Republican, you should be against dismantling the intelligence community," Schumer noted.”	Charles Schumer	2017

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Hillary Clinton Did It	Article	20 May 2022	WSJ Editorial Board	Appearing as a witness in John Durham’s trial of Michael Sussmann, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, Robby Mook, says she personally approved a plan to give a false 'Trump, Russia' claim to the news media.
Document:It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD	article	23 March 2019	Matt Taibbi
Document:Julian Assange exposed the crimes of powerful actors, including Israel	blog post	19 April 2019	Alison Weir	Julian Assange has recently been honoured with the 2019 Award for Journalists, Whistleblowers & Defenders of the Right to Information and Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire has nominated him for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.
Document:Media silent on dismissal of DNC suit against Julian Assange	Article	2 August 2019	Oscar Grenfell	Judge Koeltl further undermined the claims of the Trump administration, the Democrats and the media that Julian Assange is a “hacker,” undeserving of First Amendment protections. In other words, the attempt to extradite Assange to the US and prosecute him is a frontal assault on the US Constitution and press freedom.
Document:Mueller Scrambles To Limit Evidence After Indicted Russians Actually Show Up In Court	Article	13 June 2018	'Tyler Durden'	This is probably the first time in the history of litigation that a plaintiff (here, prosecutor) has told a court that it may not have obtained good service of process on a defendant that has appeared to defend the case on the merits. Robert Mueller to US District Court: "We didn’t really mean it, Judge! We had no idea they might actually show up!"
Document:Muellergate and the Discreet Lies of the Bourgeoisie	Blog post	1 April 2019	Craig Murray	The capacity of the mainstream media repeatedly to promote the myth that Russia caused Clinton’s defeat, while never mentioning what the information was that had been so damaging to Hillary, should be alarming to anybody under the illusion that we have a working “free media”.
Document:Pro-Kremlin trolls infiltrating comments on news sites for major influence operation, research says	Article	6 September 2021	Deborah Haynes	A study at Cardiff University shows that "Pro-Kremlin trolls" are influencing opinion in the West by infiltrating the comments sections of news websites. Dissent from the Official Narrative? Must be Russian disinformation.
Document:Why is disgraced MI6 author of the dodgy Trump-Russia dossier involved in a controversial group seeking harsh Covid restrictions?	Article	24 July 2021	Kit Klarenberg	Christopher Steele, the Russiagate spook is involved in lobbying for more lockdowns in the UK.
Document:Would-be German chancellor Scholz jumps the gun on EU expansion eastward, which may provoke more states to follow the UK and exit	Article	15 August 2021	Paul Nuttall	Olaf Scholz is a possible candidate for Chancellor of Germany at the September 2021 German parliamentary election. He has warned Russia to expect further European integration and expansion into Eastern Europe. Will this encourage more countries to follow the UK and leave the European Union?

Rating

17 January 2020 Terje 

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