A longtime criminal defense attorney, Trump biographer, and chronicler of the Trump-Russia scandal unpacks an irresponsible criminal indictment that has fooled reporters into thinking it significant.
Thanks for pulling this together. The FBI has seemingly been "unclean", going all the way back to the announcement just b4 the 2016 election, which effectively deep sixed Clinton. Durham.is ADDING more misdirection to the cover up Barr was put in to effect. Sadly, this is classic FSB. Speculatively...are there connections to Rohrbacher and what the 2018 GQP Russia trip? It would not surprise me.And moving fwd to today....
The FBI/DoJ foot dragging is extremely odd and concerning. Without meaningful action or any explanation, it is hard not to view them as 'slow walking" all of this into an abyss that I don't want to contemplate...yet. BUT, my sniffer is blinking red hot right now, causing further elevated skepticism of their intent to fully do justice to this whole sordid s*it show. To conclude, history is not kind to the will or ability of our Fed Govt to bring these investigations to full transparency or 100% accountability. Maddening
This whole episode is an excellent example of the KGB's use of "chaff" - throw out enough junk, mixed in with some half-truths - so that any investigators are in a hopeless quagmire for years. And "innocent" people on the sidelines can comment on how nothing really happened, why don't you get on with your lives, look! there's a squirrel....
I have suspected (feared) for a long time now that the Biden admin would not prevent prosecutors from going after the Trump family for financial crimes, but would block or slow-walk anything that touched on National Security or intelligence/counter-intelligence. This hit me again as I read your sentence about Mueller demurring some matters as "too hot to handle". Trump is going to get away with the vast bulk of his crimes, isn't he ?
I wonder if this means we will see some of what you have written about actually discussed in open court and on the record. All the details behind the dossier, etc.
Durham might be opening a can of worms he’s going to regret.
It is time for someone to shut Durham down! My thought is there are no guts in the Justice Department to do this because of fallout! Sad! I honestly believe there are those who are going to let this democracy crumble because of fear of a civil war. Is that too extreme? Hell, they can't even indict Bannon to back up the January 6 committee. If justice is done, our country is saved. If not, it is doomed. My pet peeve, the voting machines are turning the elections, not the voters! The computer scientists have been screaming at the top of their lungs to no avail. The GOP has mastered control of the voting machines and are destroying the one company, Dominion, that created a fool proof paper trail.
Has anyone done a line-by-line analysis of the Steele document to determine which information was accurate, inaccurate, or remains unproven? Would help to evaluate the 70% accuracy claim (also, what information was public knowledge at the time of reporting}
A couple of possible inaccuracies that you might want to address in the article are:
1) “As it turned out, the ultimate source of the money for Steele’s work was in the first instance anti-Trump Republicans…”
This is inaccurate - quoting from your NYT link:
“The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee retained Fusion GPS to research any possible connections between Mr. Trump, his businesses, his campaign team and Russia, court filings revealed this week. Working for them, the firm retained Christopher Steele, a respected former British intelligence officer.”
So Steele is retained *after* the Democrats took over funding…
2) “Indeed, with Trump breathing down AG Barr’s neck (before ultimately firing him for insufficient toadying)”
If you read about the coup in Crimea when Russians took over the Parliament building and rounded up the parliamentarians and made them vote to become independent of Ukraine and to join Russia, it is a lot like what almost happened to us. The Russian military intelligence (GRU) was also involved in the attempted coup in Montenegro. They were going to vote to join NATO.
The Russian operatives go in under the cover of a demonstration/riot that they have created with domestic revolutionaries so it looks like it is not a foreign take-over.
I recently read an article in a Ukrainian paper and a Bulgarian paper that believe the attempted coup in our Capitol building was a Russian operation, but I had my idea on my own from what I know about these new GRU special operations units.
Some special operations GRU units were identified in the Mueller Report for hacking and disinformation. The GRU unit that I am looking at is called GRU Unit 29155. You can read about them in reliable Internet sources such as NYT, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Bellingcat.
Just search GRU Unit 29155.
This unit does subversion (coups), sabotage (blowing up weapons depots in Czech Republic), and assassination (poison).
I am amazed that more people aren't wondering if GRU Unit 29155 was involved in our Capitol insurrection. It was done under the cover of a demonstration/riot. The plan seems to have been to prevent a legal vote from being counted. Smaller attacks also happened in other American cities.
Hopefully, the FBI, CIA, DOJ are looking at the possibility that the GRU was involved in the attempted coup at the Capitol. I am not saying I have proof, but that's what this looks like to me.
If this coup was planned by some Americans in knowing coordination with GRU operatives in order to overthrow an election, that seems like treason to me. Of course, probably most plotters who participated, even at a criminal level, would not have known the Russians were involved.
Evil creeps like Trump, Bannon, and Stone would have been in on the secret and probably some of the leaders of the militias.
Maybe our government would take this up privately with the Russians, but it is an act of war.
Russian operatives may also have been involved in some of the violence in our cities in order to discredit peaceful demonstrators. That's what they do.
This is just my speculation based on how similar our coup attempt looks like what GRU Unit 29155 does.
Seth A's telling critique of SP PROS DURHAM's shoddy indictment of Dolan is spelling binding, revealing Durham (revealing him to be a clone for Bill Barr & Trump) to be intent on sowing confusion on Trump's financial & political ties to Putin. Trump's behaviour toward Putin was consistently that of a submissive small country leader. From the Muller Report we knew that Russians were like the proverbial flies on s*it, all over the place - from Manifort & Stone using Greg Craig to vilify Putin opponents in Ukrain on behalf of traditional Russian paranoid ag-
agression toward Ukrain, & any country near the border with Russia. The Putin obsession was the Majenski Sanctions, which cut deeply into Rus Oil & Gas exports. Slimy creeps like former DIA Chief Mike Flynn, the later a litany of partisan hacks, like Eastman, Chs Flynn, etc all promoting an assault on Democracy Jan 6 as Insurrectionists fought to resurrect the very Fascist foes we fought WWII to defeat. Now Durham has thrown up chaff to obscure the reality of Trump Inc captivity by Putin Inc.
Democrats Are Profoundly Committed to Criminal Justice Reform -- For Everyone But Their Enemies
Principles of rehabilitative justice, reform of the carceral state, and liberalized criminal justice evaporate when Democrats demand harsh prison for their political adversaries.
Democrats Are Profoundly Committed to Criminal Justice Reform -- For Everyone But Their Enemies - by Glenn Greenwald - Glenn Greenwald (substack.com)
WHO will be the first current or former Democrat Congresswoman/man or Senator to publicly acknowledge and confirm the scam of the century -- the Russia-gate conspiracy – concocted by Hillary-Obama-Biden? There is no possibility of "unity and healing" in the US until that.
Most of "our" representatives are millionaires, some even billionaires, especially among “hidden” but controlling DNC oligarchs – some might be tempted to confirm the obvious truth, many of their family members or close friends or lovers might provide detailed testimonies, etc.
My personal hope is that heroic Tulsi Gabbard might state it, now that despicable Trump has defeated himself and is gone. Her brilliant and epic response after Hillary criminally called her -- “Russia’s asset” is still ringing in my ears:
“Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton . You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly”.
By far the highest interest of Biden government and its oligarch cabal is that Russia-gate immense hoax – the scam of the century -- will NOT / will NEVER be fully exposed. The entire anti-Russian fairytale is a deliberate fabrication -- the worst scam in US history is DNC/CIA Russia-gate hoax.
They lost to a TV host and instead of reflection, they latched onto a moronic conspiracy theory -- this includes the completely (proven) false accusations that Russia gave WikiLeaks Hillary's emails (hence the TOTAL silence on Assange persecution and torture). The publisher of our century and the leading free speech advocate, Julian Assange must be silenced -- ALL the plotters/players agree...
There has been collusion between media, Democrat party, Hi-Tech companies and the deep state (CIA, FBI, NSA) for now five years. The Russia-gate hoax and impeachment “entertainments” were concocted by Obama, Hillary, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, Maxine Waters, Jamie Raskin, etc. and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors. That lying war-mongering team is now back in power – note that Kamala Harris (and her sister) and Neera Tanden are Hillary's protégés; Pete Buttigieg was promptly rewarded for his role of election theft in Iowa, etc.
Remember, Clapper, Brennan & Hayden trio were among Obama's 50 intelligence officials stating that Hunter-laptop is -- a classical “Russian disinformation”.
-- They were also key promoters of the by now five-year Russia-gate hoax.
-- They were also key intelligence executives in Obama/Biden/Hillary government – the government which hunted Snowden (forcing Bolivian plane with Bolivia’s president to land to search it) and armed Al Qaeda (including brazen “white helmets” hoax) and staged ALL chemical attacks in Syria to remove its government.
When asked about Hunter's corruption laptops - Pelosi brazenly stated "All roads lead to Putin"; commenting on Capitol invasion Schumer said - "worse than Pearl Harbor and 9/11"...
Lying Russia-gate team is fully back in power and working at full speed -- massive censorship is mandatory for them to preserve power..
WHO among Democrat politicians will be the first whistleblower, demolish the silence and misinformation barrier, and confirm what most of the population already knows for years -- the Russia-gate hoax is the largest crime against democracy in the US..
And -- a bit more on St. Obama and his CIA, FBI and NSA executives:
Barack Obama was/is a spook (i.e., CIA operative/spy ), from a spook family, and his political campaigns were financed by spooks… ). Snowden disclosed the all-encompassing surveillance of US population under St. Obama after Clapper directly lied about it in Senate and to all of us.
In 1965 CIA organized a coup against Indonesia founding president Sukarno by CIA-trained generals. The US considered Sukarno too progressive (he implemented land-reform – same reason for CIA coup in Guatemala which resulted with a genocide of high-land Mayas). CIA installed one of the most murderous military regime (under Suharto dictatorship) on Earth which killed more than two millions ( 2M ) civilians – the massacres are known as “The Jakarta Method” (see book by Vincent Bevins) used subsequently in Africa (Angola, Mozambique) and throughout Latin and Central America.
What is important here is that Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, worked for U.S. government agencies and allied NGOs—the Ford Foundation, Asia Foundation, Development Alternatives Inc., and United States Agency for International Development (USAID)—in Indonesia in the 1960s and 1970s as well as later in Ghana, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and Thailand.
Obama’s mother married Indonesian Lt. Col. Lolo Soetoro; they had a daughter Maya Soetoro when Barack Obama was four. The colonel was from an aristocratic family which lost out in Sukarno’s land reform; the marriage was likely arranged, Obama’s mother may have acted as a female “honeypot” for the CIA whose job was to recruit assets
Obama always lied and claimed that his mother did not know about the countless atrocities that were committed by the Suharto government, which is implausible given her CIA background and the fact that they were much reported on by mainstream newspapers at the time (although mostly favorably by right-wing media). Of significance, Obama underplayed his stepfather Lolo’s army rank in his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope.
Soetoro went on to become an executive at Mobil Oil and its liaison to Suharto, whose policies Obama’s mother praised. And – Obama became a labor and community “organizer” – while he actually worked for a large corporate foundation.
A Company Family: The Untold History of Obama and the CIA
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - October 1, 2021 ( Note: Photos themselves are truly fascinating )
A Company Family: The Untold History of Obama and the CIA - CovertAction Magazine
I am a little disappointed you haven't commented thoughtfully on my perspective. I read that the Steele Dossier was circulating widely and perhaps in different versions. I think it's pretty accurate; however, I expect the GRU or SVR got a copy and decided it would be cool to see that it was released as kompromat right after the election in order to intimidate/blackmail Trump.
Dr. Fiona Hill said in her Congressional testimony or deposition that the Russians attack both sides of the political spectrum in our country in order to divide us and make us fight. You assume that if the document is fairly accurate that it couldn't come from the Russians. I think it was fairly accurate too, but that the Russians made sure it was circulated to Western anti-Trump media in order to make trouble.
It's even possible that Russian intelligence had some role in getting unwitting Western experts to research Trump. After all, this research started as a Republican effort and was passed along to the Democrats. Probably a lot of people knew about this research. There are lots of possibilities.
Putin hated Hilary Clinton, so he wanted Trump to win, but then perhaps he kept Trump in-line with truthful "kompromat" developed by Western investigators.
If Democrats had controlled this research, it would have been released BEFORE the election when it could have done some good.
I do have a background in Soviet/Russian studies, but I am nothing special. This kind of stuff can be very complicated. It's pretty obvious that Trump got help from the Russians and that his agent Manafort gave election information to the SVR or GRU operative Kilimnik. We know that Bannon was on the board of Cambridge Analytica. We don't need the Steele Dossier to see what thieves and traitors these people are.
This document could be fairly accurate. The information could have been collected by honest Western researchers, but the Russians may have played a role in its genesis as the project was passed along and certainly by providing (fairly accurate?) information to the researchers. The Dossier damaged the reputations of Western experts as well as intimidating and blackmailing Trump to keep him in-line.
Fiona Hill says she thinks Chris Steele may have been "played," but that doesn't mean that the information isn't fairly accurate. It would have to be fairly accurate to scare Trump as much as it did.
I fully expect that our security agencies are wondering if GRU Unit 29155 was involved in the attempted coup. After all other GRU special units were involved in the hacking and disinformation.
I still find it suspicious that Dolan would give information to Danchenko, but when the Dossier was published by Buzzfeed he ran right to his client Gubarev and informed him that his name appeared in the Dossier. Gubarev ended up suing Steele, but he lost.
In the UK, it is not uncommon for Russians to sue Brits who reveal embarrassing information about them. This has been a problem for many years. There is even an old book about this called "The KGB Lawsuits." The libel laws in the UK are different than they are in the US.
Maybe Dolan told Gubarev about the Dossier immediately because he was trying to make sure his client didn't suspect his involvement.
I wonder about that. There might be many explanations, but that bothers me. Many times, people end up getting used by the Russians even when they are loyal Americans.
If the reports in the Steele Dossier were true, they would scare Trump more than if they were fake, and Trump sure seems scared of Putin.
I agree that Durham does not really say the Dossier is fake information. He says that they couldn't really confirm the information in it because Danchenko didn't tell them about his source Dolan. That seems like a valid complaint. I also think that Dolan might be arrested.
Personally, even if the Dossier didn't exist, we would know that Trump is a political criminal who is afraid of Putin.
I think it is possible that the Dossier may have been pretty accurate but was used for kompromat against Trump. The Russians want to hurt both sides. They wanted Trump to win. but they could control him better if Trump knew that the Russians could leak kompromat on him if he didn't play ball with them.
Please read Fiona Hill's Congressional testimony. You seem to think she is an expert, but she thinks Christopher Steele was "played." Her big point was that the Russians try to damage both political parties. You seem to assume they would not try to damage Trump because he was their choice.
The Dossier leaked to Buzzfeed in January 2017--after the election. It would not have changed the election, but TRUE information would have scared Trump into further collaboration.
It's difficult to figure out Russian motives, but that's my best guess.
I read your huge report very carefully; but all of this is so confusing and can be looked at in multiple ways.
Still, you never addressed something really, really important: To my great surprise, Fiona Hill testified in Congress that she thought Steele may have been played by the Russians. She said that the Russians try to discredit BOTH sides. I took this to mean that the Russians might want to make Trump look bad, too. [Certainly, the Russians would also like to burn Steele, because he used to be the head of the Russia Desk at MI6, so I read.]
Hill testified in Congress that it was inappropriate for Steele ( a person she knows and admires) to create this dossier.
Your essay repeatedly assumes that the Russians would not try to expose/damage/intimidate Trump. A bit of TRUE information coming out would really scare Trump into not betraying the Russians.
The effect of this operation was to terrify/blackmail Trump and the Republicans about further exposures of their collaboration.
Small point: wasn't Danchenko's childhood friend who worked in Cyprus? a woman?
I think this Dossier is pretty-much true, but I feel pretty clueless about what is going on.
There are a lot of media sources that tell what Fiona Hill testified to in Congress.
Thanks for pulling this together. The FBI has seemingly been "unclean", going all the way back to the announcement just b4 the 2016 election, which effectively deep sixed Clinton. Durham.is ADDING more misdirection to the cover up Barr was put in to effect. Sadly, this is classic FSB. Speculatively...are there connections to Rohrbacher and what the 2018 GQP Russia trip? It would not surprise me.And moving fwd to today....
The FBI/DoJ foot dragging is extremely odd and concerning. Without meaningful action or any explanation, it is hard not to view them as 'slow walking" all of this into an abyss that I don't want to contemplate...yet. BUT, my sniffer is blinking red hot right now, causing further elevated skepticism of their intent to fully do justice to this whole sordid s*it show. To conclude, history is not kind to the will or ability of our Fed Govt to bring these investigations to full transparency or 100% accountability. Maddening
This whole episode is an excellent example of the KGB's use of "chaff" - throw out enough junk, mixed in with some half-truths - so that any investigators are in a hopeless quagmire for years. And "innocent" people on the sidelines can comment on how nothing really happened, why don't you get on with your lives, look! there's a squirrel....
I have suspected (feared) for a long time now that the Biden admin would not prevent prosecutors from going after the Trump family for financial crimes, but would block or slow-walk anything that touched on National Security or intelligence/counter-intelligence. This hit me again as I read your sentence about Mueller demurring some matters as "too hot to handle". Trump is going to get away with the vast bulk of his crimes, isn't he ?
I wonder if this means we will see some of what you have written about actually discussed in open court and on the record. All the details behind the dossier, etc.
Durham might be opening a can of worms he’s going to regret.
It is time for someone to shut Durham down! My thought is there are no guts in the Justice Department to do this because of fallout! Sad! I honestly believe there are those who are going to let this democracy crumble because of fear of a civil war. Is that too extreme? Hell, they can't even indict Bannon to back up the January 6 committee. If justice is done, our country is saved. If not, it is doomed. My pet peeve, the voting machines are turning the elections, not the voters! The computer scientists have been screaming at the top of their lungs to no avail. The GOP has mastered control of the voting machines and are destroying the one company, Dominion, that created a fool proof paper trail.
Has anyone done a line-by-line analysis of the Steele document to determine which information was accurate, inaccurate, or remains unproven? Would help to evaluate the 70% accuracy claim (also, what information was public knowledge at the time of reporting}
Seth - nice work!
A couple of possible inaccuracies that you might want to address in the article are:
1) “As it turned out, the ultimate source of the money for Steele’s work was in the first instance anti-Trump Republicans…”
This is inaccurate - quoting from your NYT link:
“The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee retained Fusion GPS to research any possible connections between Mr. Trump, his businesses, his campaign team and Russia, court filings revealed this week. Working for them, the firm retained Christopher Steele, a respected former British intelligence officer.”
So Steele is retained *after* the Democrats took over funding…
2) “Indeed, with Trump breathing down AG Barr’s neck (before ultimately firing him for insufficient toadying)”
By all accounts I’m aware of Barr resigned.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/william-barr-resigns-trump-attorney-general/2020/12/14/0389c9a0-1796-11eb-aeec-b93bcc29a01b_story.html
If you read about the coup in Crimea when Russians took over the Parliament building and rounded up the parliamentarians and made them vote to become independent of Ukraine and to join Russia, it is a lot like what almost happened to us. The Russian military intelligence (GRU) was also involved in the attempted coup in Montenegro. They were going to vote to join NATO.
The Russian operatives go in under the cover of a demonstration/riot that they have created with domestic revolutionaries so it looks like it is not a foreign take-over.
I recently read an article in a Ukrainian paper and a Bulgarian paper that believe the attempted coup in our Capitol building was a Russian operation, but I had my idea on my own from what I know about these new GRU special operations units.
Some special operations GRU units were identified in the Mueller Report for hacking and disinformation. The GRU unit that I am looking at is called GRU Unit 29155. You can read about them in reliable Internet sources such as NYT, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Bellingcat.
Just search GRU Unit 29155.
This unit does subversion (coups), sabotage (blowing up weapons depots in Czech Republic), and assassination (poison).
I am amazed that more people aren't wondering if GRU Unit 29155 was involved in our Capitol insurrection. It was done under the cover of a demonstration/riot. The plan seems to have been to prevent a legal vote from being counted. Smaller attacks also happened in other American cities.
Hopefully, the FBI, CIA, DOJ are looking at the possibility that the GRU was involved in the attempted coup at the Capitol. I am not saying I have proof, but that's what this looks like to me.
If this coup was planned by some Americans in knowing coordination with GRU operatives in order to overthrow an election, that seems like treason to me. Of course, probably most plotters who participated, even at a criminal level, would not have known the Russians were involved.
Evil creeps like Trump, Bannon, and Stone would have been in on the secret and probably some of the leaders of the militias.
Maybe our government would take this up privately with the Russians, but it is an act of war.
Russian operatives may also have been involved in some of the violence in our cities in order to discredit peaceful demonstrators. That's what they do.
This is just my speculation based on how similar our coup attempt looks like what GRU Unit 29155 does.
Seth A's telling critique of SP PROS DURHAM's shoddy indictment of Dolan is spelling binding, revealing Durham (revealing him to be a clone for Bill Barr & Trump) to be intent on sowing confusion on Trump's financial & political ties to Putin. Trump's behaviour toward Putin was consistently that of a submissive small country leader. From the Muller Report we knew that Russians were like the proverbial flies on s*it, all over the place - from Manifort & Stone using Greg Craig to vilify Putin opponents in Ukrain on behalf of traditional Russian paranoid ag-
agression toward Ukrain, & any country near the border with Russia. The Putin obsession was the Majenski Sanctions, which cut deeply into Rus Oil & Gas exports. Slimy creeps like former DIA Chief Mike Flynn, the later a litany of partisan hacks, like Eastman, Chs Flynn, etc all promoting an assault on Democracy Jan 6 as Insurrectionists fought to resurrect the very Fascist foes we fought WWII to defeat. Now Durham has thrown up chaff to obscure the reality of Trump Inc captivity by Putin Inc.
Democrats Are Profoundly Committed to Criminal Justice Reform -- For Everyone But Their Enemies
Principles of rehabilitative justice, reform of the carceral state, and liberalized criminal justice evaporate when Democrats demand harsh prison for their political adversaries.
Democrats Are Profoundly Committed to Criminal Justice Reform -- For Everyone But Their Enemies - by Glenn Greenwald - Glenn Greenwald (substack.com)
WHO will be the first current or former Democrat Congresswoman/man or Senator to publicly acknowledge and confirm the scam of the century -- the Russia-gate conspiracy – concocted by Hillary-Obama-Biden? There is no possibility of "unity and healing" in the US until that.
Most of "our" representatives are millionaires, some even billionaires, especially among “hidden” but controlling DNC oligarchs – some might be tempted to confirm the obvious truth, many of their family members or close friends or lovers might provide detailed testimonies, etc.
My personal hope is that heroic Tulsi Gabbard might state it, now that despicable Trump has defeated himself and is gone. Her brilliant and epic response after Hillary criminally called her -- “Russia’s asset” is still ringing in my ears:
“Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton . You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly”.
By far the highest interest of Biden government and its oligarch cabal is that Russia-gate immense hoax – the scam of the century -- will NOT / will NEVER be fully exposed. The entire anti-Russian fairytale is a deliberate fabrication -- the worst scam in US history is DNC/CIA Russia-gate hoax.
They lost to a TV host and instead of reflection, they latched onto a moronic conspiracy theory -- this includes the completely (proven) false accusations that Russia gave WikiLeaks Hillary's emails (hence the TOTAL silence on Assange persecution and torture). The publisher of our century and the leading free speech advocate, Julian Assange must be silenced -- ALL the plotters/players agree...
There has been collusion between media, Democrat party, Hi-Tech companies and the deep state (CIA, FBI, NSA) for now five years. The Russia-gate hoax and impeachment “entertainments” were concocted by Obama, Hillary, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, Maxine Waters, Jamie Raskin, etc. and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors. That lying war-mongering team is now back in power – note that Kamala Harris (and her sister) and Neera Tanden are Hillary's protégés; Pete Buttigieg was promptly rewarded for his role of election theft in Iowa, etc.
Remember, Clapper, Brennan & Hayden trio were among Obama's 50 intelligence officials stating that Hunter-laptop is -- a classical “Russian disinformation”.
-- They were also key promoters of the by now five-year Russia-gate hoax.
-- They were also key intelligence executives in Obama/Biden/Hillary government – the government which hunted Snowden (forcing Bolivian plane with Bolivia’s president to land to search it) and armed Al Qaeda (including brazen “white helmets” hoax) and staged ALL chemical attacks in Syria to remove its government.
When asked about Hunter's corruption laptops - Pelosi brazenly stated "All roads lead to Putin"; commenting on Capitol invasion Schumer said - "worse than Pearl Harbor and 9/11"...
Lying Russia-gate team is fully back in power and working at full speed -- massive censorship is mandatory for them to preserve power..
WHO among Democrat politicians will be the first whistleblower, demolish the silence and misinformation barrier, and confirm what most of the population already knows for years -- the Russia-gate hoax is the largest crime against democracy in the US..
And -- a bit more on St. Obama and his CIA, FBI and NSA executives:
Barack Obama was/is a spook (i.e., CIA operative/spy ), from a spook family, and his political campaigns were financed by spooks… ). Snowden disclosed the all-encompassing surveillance of US population under St. Obama after Clapper directly lied about it in Senate and to all of us.
In 1965 CIA organized a coup against Indonesia founding president Sukarno by CIA-trained generals. The US considered Sukarno too progressive (he implemented land-reform – same reason for CIA coup in Guatemala which resulted with a genocide of high-land Mayas). CIA installed one of the most murderous military regime (under Suharto dictatorship) on Earth which killed more than two millions ( 2M ) civilians – the massacres are known as “The Jakarta Method” (see book by Vincent Bevins) used subsequently in Africa (Angola, Mozambique) and throughout Latin and Central America.
What is important here is that Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, worked for U.S. government agencies and allied NGOs—the Ford Foundation, Asia Foundation, Development Alternatives Inc., and United States Agency for International Development (USAID)—in Indonesia in the 1960s and 1970s as well as later in Ghana, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and Thailand.
Obama’s mother married Indonesian Lt. Col. Lolo Soetoro; they had a daughter Maya Soetoro when Barack Obama was four. The colonel was from an aristocratic family which lost out in Sukarno’s land reform; the marriage was likely arranged, Obama’s mother may have acted as a female “honeypot” for the CIA whose job was to recruit assets
Obama always lied and claimed that his mother did not know about the countless atrocities that were committed by the Suharto government, which is implausible given her CIA background and the fact that they were much reported on by mainstream newspapers at the time (although mostly favorably by right-wing media). Of significance, Obama underplayed his stepfather Lolo’s army rank in his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope.
Soetoro went on to become an executive at Mobil Oil and its liaison to Suharto, whose policies Obama’s mother praised. And – Obama became a labor and community “organizer” – while he actually worked for a large corporate foundation.
A Company Family: The Untold History of Obama and the CIA
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - October 1, 2021 ( Note: Photos themselves are truly fascinating )
A Company Family: The Untold History of Obama and the CIA - CovertAction Magazine
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/10/01/a-company-family-the-untold-history-of-obama-and-the-cia/
I am a little disappointed you haven't commented thoughtfully on my perspective. I read that the Steele Dossier was circulating widely and perhaps in different versions. I think it's pretty accurate; however, I expect the GRU or SVR got a copy and decided it would be cool to see that it was released as kompromat right after the election in order to intimidate/blackmail Trump.
Dr. Fiona Hill said in her Congressional testimony or deposition that the Russians attack both sides of the political spectrum in our country in order to divide us and make us fight. You assume that if the document is fairly accurate that it couldn't come from the Russians. I think it was fairly accurate too, but that the Russians made sure it was circulated to Western anti-Trump media in order to make trouble.
It's even possible that Russian intelligence had some role in getting unwitting Western experts to research Trump. After all, this research started as a Republican effort and was passed along to the Democrats. Probably a lot of people knew about this research. There are lots of possibilities.
Putin hated Hilary Clinton, so he wanted Trump to win, but then perhaps he kept Trump in-line with truthful "kompromat" developed by Western investigators.
If Democrats had controlled this research, it would have been released BEFORE the election when it could have done some good.
I do have a background in Soviet/Russian studies, but I am nothing special. This kind of stuff can be very complicated. It's pretty obvious that Trump got help from the Russians and that his agent Manafort gave election information to the SVR or GRU operative Kilimnik. We know that Bannon was on the board of Cambridge Analytica. We don't need the Steele Dossier to see what thieves and traitors these people are.
This document could be fairly accurate. The information could have been collected by honest Western researchers, but the Russians may have played a role in its genesis as the project was passed along and certainly by providing (fairly accurate?) information to the researchers. The Dossier damaged the reputations of Western experts as well as intimidating and blackmailing Trump to keep him in-line.
Fiona Hill says she thinks Chris Steele may have been "played," but that doesn't mean that the information isn't fairly accurate. It would have to be fairly accurate to scare Trump as much as it did.
I fully expect that our security agencies are wondering if GRU Unit 29155 was involved in the attempted coup. After all other GRU special units were involved in the hacking and disinformation.
Ok. My speculation may be way off-base, too.
I still find it suspicious that Dolan would give information to Danchenko, but when the Dossier was published by Buzzfeed he ran right to his client Gubarev and informed him that his name appeared in the Dossier. Gubarev ended up suing Steele, but he lost.
In the UK, it is not uncommon for Russians to sue Brits who reveal embarrassing information about them. This has been a problem for many years. There is even an old book about this called "The KGB Lawsuits." The libel laws in the UK are different than they are in the US.
Maybe Dolan told Gubarev about the Dossier immediately because he was trying to make sure his client didn't suspect his involvement.
I wonder about that. There might be many explanations, but that bothers me. Many times, people end up getting used by the Russians even when they are loyal Americans.
If the reports in the Steele Dossier were true, they would scare Trump more than if they were fake, and Trump sure seems scared of Putin.
I agree that Durham does not really say the Dossier is fake information. He says that they couldn't really confirm the information in it because Danchenko didn't tell them about his source Dolan. That seems like a valid complaint. I also think that Dolan might be arrested.
Personally, even if the Dossier didn't exist, we would know that Trump is a political criminal who is afraid of Putin.
I think it is possible that the Dossier may have been pretty accurate but was used for kompromat against Trump. The Russians want to hurt both sides. They wanted Trump to win. but they could control him better if Trump knew that the Russians could leak kompromat on him if he didn't play ball with them.
Please read Fiona Hill's Congressional testimony. You seem to think she is an expert, but she thinks Christopher Steele was "played." Her big point was that the Russians try to damage both political parties. You seem to assume they would not try to damage Trump because he was their choice.
The Dossier leaked to Buzzfeed in January 2017--after the election. It would not have changed the election, but TRUE information would have scared Trump into further collaboration.
It's difficult to figure out Russian motives, but that's my best guess.
I read your huge report very carefully; but all of this is so confusing and can be looked at in multiple ways.
Still, you never addressed something really, really important: To my great surprise, Fiona Hill testified in Congress that she thought Steele may have been played by the Russians. She said that the Russians try to discredit BOTH sides. I took this to mean that the Russians might want to make Trump look bad, too. [Certainly, the Russians would also like to burn Steele, because he used to be the head of the Russia Desk at MI6, so I read.]
Hill testified in Congress that it was inappropriate for Steele ( a person she knows and admires) to create this dossier.
Your essay repeatedly assumes that the Russians would not try to expose/damage/intimidate Trump. A bit of TRUE information coming out would really scare Trump into not betraying the Russians.
The effect of this operation was to terrify/blackmail Trump and the Republicans about further exposures of their collaboration.
Small point: wasn't Danchenko's childhood friend who worked in Cyprus? a woman?
I think this Dossier is pretty-much true, but I feel pretty clueless about what is going on.
There are a lot of media sources that tell what Fiona Hill testified to in Congress.