Day 778 Saturday February 23, 2019
618 Days to the 2020 election and 696 Days to Inauguration Day
Yesterday Corey Lewandowski was on and he was trying to be kind and respectful. That lasted about thirty seconds when he launched into what seems to be a favorite of the Fox News and right wing folks which is this, “You want to talk about Russia and collusion? Why isn’t anyone in the mainstream media talking about Hillary Clinton and the Russians? That’s the only collusion!”
Okay, in a nutshell, the reason no one in the legitimate press is talking about what you claim is that your claim is baseless. No one in the Clinton campaign colluded with Russians. Period. But for Mr. Lewandowski and his folks of a similar ilk, let me “refresh” your memories. The Clinton campaign did pay an American firm to continue it’s opposition research on Donald Trump. In case you forgot this research was started by Republicans. Once Trump secured the nomination the Dems picked up the tab.
The American firm was Fusion GPS. It does research using publicly available materials. When they were approached the first thing they did was to buy all the books on Donald Trump and read them. Then they looked at all the publicly available court cases involving Mr. Trump, of which there are a lot. He is reputed to be the most sued and litigant man in America. They also looked at all publicly available legal records like deeds and corporate documents. Their research left one giant hole. Trump was spending a lot of time in Russia, yet he had little to show for it. The question in their minds was, “What was Trump doing in Russia?” There weren’t many, if any public records. They turned to a man in Britain who is a specialist on Russia. Michael Steele was the British government’s expert on Russia. He not only knew all the players but knew their personalities and foibles. Fusion GPS asked Steele to find out what he could on Trump and Russia. He wasn’t given any particular guidance. The question was open ended.
At the time Michael Steele was first asking around there was quite a bit of general knowledge on the street. In other words people were talking freely. This changed, but at first there was quite a bit that could be gleaned in that fashion. Some of it was shocking. There was the story of Trump staying at the Ritz in Moscow. A place famous for having its rooms bugged. It was said he hired two girls to come in and piss on the bed, because it was the same room President Obama had stayed in. Trump must have still been upset about Obama making fun of him at the Correspondence Dinner. But come on Donnie, be a good sport. It was you who kept saying Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii. It was you who said you had sent people to that state and we’d all be very surprised by what you had found. Yet, nothing was found was it?
Steele wrote up a group of sixteen reports. These were whatever he had heard. It wasn’t confirmed or corroborated, but to date much of it has been verified, and as far as I know, nothing has been shown to be false. His revelations got one person within Putin’s government killed. Steele turned his stuff over to Fusion GPS who in turn gave it to the Dems that paid for it. Some of the things that Steele discovered so alarmed him that he wanted to tell U.S. authorities about it. Fusion GPS demurred. Finally, Steele said he had his own contacts and the firm wouldn’t be involved. Steele met with CIA folks in Italy. His concern was that what he had learned about Trump made him believe “a crime was in progress.” When nothing came of the CIA tip off, Steele gave it to John McCain who gave it to the FBI.
Separately and apart from this the FBI had already launched an investigation into Trump based on the drunken boasting of a Trump operative in London. This was a top “very good man” according to Trump when he appointed him, but after George Papadopolis’ boasting he got reduced to “I hardly knew him” status (ie coffee boy.) This boasting about having dirt on Hillary Clinton and that it came from the Russians, so alarmed the Australian diplomat in London that word filtered back to the FBI and it was this incident that caused the FBI to open a case about the Trump campaign and Russian interference.
Others have boasted about having contacts with Russia, notably Carter Page.
As to the Hillary emails we have Roger Stone, Randy Credico, and Jerome Corsi who have been linked to Julian Assange and Russian GRU fronts (called cutouts. In this case, Gucifer 2.0, and others).
We have meetings between Trump folks and Russians. There is the well known meeting in Trump Tower in which several Russians were there that have been linked to the Russian government. At that meeting were Trump Jr., Manafort, Kushner and others.
There were multiple meetings and conversations between Russians and Michael Flynn. Jeff Sessions had his secret meeting too.
These are just the things I can remember off the top of my head.
Now to be fair let’s look at the meetings between Clinton people and Russians. Total number of contacts between Clinton, Clinton campaign, Clinton people and hangers on with Russians – the total is ….
Wait for it:
0
ZERO
ZILCH
Nadda.
So for Mr. Lewindowski and all those on the right who are jumping up and down about “Why isn’t Hillary being investigated?” The answer is because there is no evidence and hence no reason.
As for Trump? There’s lots to look at.
I hope your memories have been refreshed.
618 Days to the 2020 election and 696 Days to Inauguration Day
PS Flores, Guatemala
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