Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble
After all, Putin’s reputation until this moment has always been as a shrewd ex-KGB man who eschewed high-risk gambles in favor of sure things …
That Ukraine has allowed itself to be used as a pawn against a powerful neighbor is in part the fault of Kyiv’s reckless and corrupt political class. But Ukraine is not a superpower that owes allies and client-states judicious leadership—that’s the role of the United States. And in that role, the United States has failed Ukraine. More broadly, the use of Ukraine as a goad against enemies domestic and foreign has recklessly damaged the failing yet necessary European security architecture that America spent 75 years building and maintaining.
Why can’t the American security establishment shoulder responsibility for its role in the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine? Because to discuss American responsibility openly would mean exposing the national security establishment’s role in two separate, destructive coups: the first, in 2014, targeting the government of Ukraine, and the second, starting two years later, the government of the United States.
In the last year there have been two attempted “pro-democracy” inter-elite coups in pro-Kremlin states on Russian borders: Belarus and Kazakhstan. Both of those so-called “color revolutions” failed, but Ukraine represents a much more pressing concern, especially given the country’s push for NATO membership, which Biden officials like Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly encouraged last year with no intention or possibility of actually making it possible. Yet rather than compelling the United States to rethink the wisdom of planting the NATO flag on Russia’s border, Putin’s escalating rhetoric—and troop movements—only made the Biden team dig in deeper.
This is a game that Biden and key figures in his administration have been playing for a long time, beginning with the 2013-14 Obama administration-backed coup that toppled a Russia-friendly government in Kyiv. This was the so-called Maidan Revolution, a sequel of sorts to the George W. Bush-backed Orange Revolution of 2004-05. Much of that same Obama foreign policy team—Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland, Susan Rice, and others—is now back in the White House and State Department working in senior posts for a president who personally ran Obama’s Ukraine policy.
What did all these figures have in mind for Ukraine? The White House and U.S. foreign policy experts from both parties are united in claiming that Ukraine is a U.S. ally, a democracy, and a beacon of freedom, which are no doubt fine words to hear when you have been left to fight Vladimir Putin on your own. But to understand what Ukraine truly is, we must start where all geopolitics begins: by looking at a map.
Grab a coffee. This is a good one.
When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal
The Durham Probe Has ‘Accelerated’
Many have expressed frustration with the lack of developments from Durham’s investigation. “Where’s Durham?” Trump asked in a statement released last March. “Is he a living, breathing human being? Will there ever be a Durham report?”
But the lack of developments prior to Friday was not for a lack of progress.
According to the Fox News sources, John Durham, unlike Robert Mueller, has run his investigation “very professionally,” the investigation’s activities are rarely leaked, and more witnesses are “cooperating” and testifying before the federal grand jury than have previously been reported.
Roger Simon (via Instapundit) – [It] was all instigated by people close to Hillary Clinton or, quite possibly, by Hillary herself. We don’t know yet. One of those involved we do know was Jake Sullivan, currently our national security adviser, charged with overseeing the conflict on the Ukraine–Russia border. Think about that. What a disgrace to our country that is. If you and I know about it, every nation in the world knows it.
When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal
This began unfolding yesterday, it’s been sitting on the backburner while we followed events in Ontario and elsewhere.
There’s a thorough analysis at Conservative Treehouse. And another here. (h/t Dos)
Lucky thing Biden has a war to start with Russia.
Today In Biden’s America
Democrats quick to blame white supremacy for hostage taking in Texas.
I wonder if this will be on CNN. Guilty for funneling millions to Clinton campaign.
And your daily smile.
Bill’s Wife
There’s nothing that Trump would relish more than beating her twice;
Bad approval ratings, two-dozen Democratic retirements, and nothing to run on is a recipe for a wipeout year. So, how can Democrats turn things around? Pass a compromised spending bill that can get bipartisan support, clamp down on criminal illegal aliens, get saner about COVID? Nope. They’re looking to …Hillary Clinton for salvation in 2024
Deathstyles Of The Rich And Famous
U.S. prosecutors decided to end their criminal case against two Manhattan jail guards who admitted to falsifying records on the night the financier Jeffrey Epstein killed himself on their watch.
In a Thursday filing in Manhattan federal court, prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss claims against Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, after both complied with the six-month deferred prosecution agreements they agreed to in May.
“Here Comes The Limited Hangout”
Since Watergate, conventional Washington wisdom holds that the cover-up is worse than the crime. Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) tasked former intelligence operatives to break into Democratic National Committee headquarters to wiretap the opposition. To cover up his involvement in the Watergate break-in, Nixon lied about what he knew and when he knew it, resulting in his resignation from office.
Whether Hillary Clinton was aware of the crimes committed between 2016 and 2020 to further her political ambitions is a question that may never be answered. What has been proved beyond any shadow of doubt by the U.S. Justice Department over the past few months is that top operatives in her 2016 campaign used concocted falsehoods to leverage active law enforcement officials who in turn used U.S. government programs and resources to spy on the Trump campaign — a violation of American political norms whose only real parallel is Watergate. We also know that under the pretext of “investigating collusion,” at least 40 Obama officials, including then-Vice President Joe Biden, spied on the Trump team. There is circumstantial evidence that Barack Obama knew what was going on, but since, miraculously, no one has ever publicly asked him about Russiagate, not even once, he hasn’t had the opportunity to either lie or come clean.
But with Trump now safely out of office, it appears that the cover-up is now cracking wide open. […]
Now the media is scrambling to distance itself from the dossier, with the New York Times “explaining” that just because the prestige press poisoned the public sphere with Clinton-funded smears doesn’t mean that the larger Russiagate story they peddled is also fake. That is, the press has taken another page from the Watergate playbook. As that scandal started to unfold, Nixon’s White House aides discussed strategies to deal with the looming disaster. They talked about a standard spy service ploy called a “limited hangout.” When it’s no longer possible to sustain a phony cover story, dangle some partial truths in public and acknowledge some small, albeit honest, miscues in order to keep the most damning parts of the truth under wraps. Just as this strategy failed to protect Richard Nixon and his men, chances are it won’t help culpable reporters and news organizations avoid responsibility for their active role in the country’s biggest political crime of the past half-century. But it does show quite plainly what the American press has become.
Grab a coffee. It’s first rate.
Empress Of The Universe
Hillary Clinton tells Boris to implement mandatory vaccinations. BoJo better be careful how he replies. Wouldn’t want to risk a suicide.
When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal.
The special counsel tasked with chasing down the origins of the Russia collusion conspiracy perpetrated against candidate and President Donald Trump reportedly has issued more criminal indictments in federal court. […]
Techno Fog has been connecting dots between this additional reported indictment and the reporting from the New York Times alleging that “Tech Executive-1” is Rodney Joffe, who’s also a Perkins Coie client. Joffe tried to frame Trump with DNS data he allegedly lifted from the Defense Department.
Ready to get into the weeds a bit?
Good.
Reporter Chuck Ross of the Washington Free Beacon opined on Twitter that these new additional indictments, which are still under wraps, could explain why another Democrat attorney, Marc Elias, quit Perkins Coie right before Sussman’s indictment prompted his ouster from the same law firm.
Elias is the Clinton lawyer who hired Fusion GPS, which then hired former MI6 spy Christopher Steele, to create “evidence” of the Russia collusion scandal “dossier” and shop it to reporters and intelligence operatives.
Some believe the plan to smear Trump with the fake Russia scandal was hatched to distract from the Hillary Clinton email and server scandal, which was huge in the months leading to the election. Clinton deleted thousands of emails against the House Select Committee on Benghazi’s legal order to preserve them. Clinton destroyed the emails and used a service to “bleach bit” her computers and server.
And don’t forget the alleged DNC server “hack,” which also fueled the Russia collusion story line. Former Perkins Coie attorney Sussmann was also the attorney for the company CrowdStrike, which was brought in by Sussmann to check the DNC servers. The same day the company was hired to look at the DNC servers, CrowdStrike proclaimed the Russians were responsible. The FBI, which was never allowed to look at the computers at the DNC, took their word for it.
At Substack, Techno Fog provides some additional background on what surely looks like a conspiracy.
When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal
Never-Trumper Ed Morrissey, via Instapundit;
Over the weekend, I spoke with a senior Trump administration official with access to intelligence regarding the significance of the Sussmann indictment. He pointed to House Intelligence Committee transcripts declassified in a fight between the White House and Adam Schiff last year. Pay attention to those transcripts, the former official advised, because those made it clear that the FBI knew the Alfa Bank theory was nonsense — but used it to push forward nonetheless on the Russia-collusion theory. That was one reason Schiff tried to stop declassification of the transcripts, and those are the reason that Durham could get the grand jury indictment on Sussmann at all. Some of the agents that worked with Sussmann remain in the bureau, he also said, and that will go to McCarthy’s larger point about the “deep state” and the effort to push Trump out of office. There may also be a broader scope involving former officials in the Obama administration regarding politicization of intelligence, a few of whom have returned in the Biden administration — notably in the State Department. Stay tuned.
Clearly, more is happening than a mop-up for Durham.
More: Jonathan Turley thinks one person in the White House should be very, very worried.
Another good summary by Glenn Greenwald here.
The lie that Sussman allegedly told the FBI occurred in the context of his mid-2016 attempt to spread a completely fictitious story: that there was a “secret server” discovered by unnamed internet experts that allowed the Trump organization to communicate with Russia-based Alfa Bank. In the context of the 2016 election, in which the Clinton campaign had elevated Trump’s alleged ties to the Kremlin to center stage, this secret communication channel was peddled by Sussman — both to the FBI and to Clinton-friendly journalists — as smoking-gun proof of nefarious activities between Trump and the Russians. Less than two months prior to the 2016 election, Sussman secured a meeting at the FBI’s headquarters with the Bureau’s top lawyer, James Baker, and provided him data which he claimed proved this communication channel.
It was in the course of trying to lure the FBI into investigating this scam conspiracy theory when Sussman allegedly lied to Baker, by concealing the fact — outright denying — that he was peddling the story in his role as lawyer for the Hillary Clinton campaign as well as a lawyer for a “tech executive” hoping to be appointed as the top cybersecurity official in the soon-to-be-inaugurated Clinton administration. Sussman’s claims that he was just acting as a concerned private citizen were negated by numerous documents obtained by Durham’s investigation, including billing records where he charged the Clinton campaign for his work in trying to disseminate this story, including his meeting with Baker at FBI’s headquarters.
Related: The FBI’s Incurable Rot
When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal
Jonathan Turley, for The Hill;
The 26-page indictment of former cybersecurity attorney and Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann by special counsel John Durham is as detailed as it is damning on the alleged effort to push a false Russia collusion claim before the 2016 presidential campaign. One line, however, seems to reverberate for those of us who have followed this scandal for years now: “You do realize that we will have to expose every trick we have in our bag.”
That warning from an unnamed “university researcher” captures the most fascinating aspect of the indictment in describing a type of Nixonian dirty tricks operation run by — or at least billed to — the Clinton campaign. With Nixon, his personal attorney and the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) paid for operatives to engage in disruptive and ultimately criminal conduct targeting his opponents. With Clinton, the indictment and prior disclosures suggest that Clinton campaign lawyers at the law firm of Perkins Coie helped organize an effort to spread Russia collusion stories and trigger an investigation.
Durham accuses Sussmann of lying to the general counsel of the FBI in September 2016 when Sussmann delivered documents and data to the FBI supposedly supporting a claim that Russia’s Alpha Bank was used as a direct conduit between former President Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin. According to Durham, Sussman told the FBI general counsel that he was not delivering the information on behalf of any client. The indictment not only details multiple billings to the Clinton campaign as the data was collected and the documents created; it claims Sussman billed the campaign for the actual meeting with the FBI. At the time, Perkins Coie attorney Marc Elias was general counsel for the Clinton campaign. Both men have since left the firm.
The big trick in 2016 was the general effort to create a Russia collusion scandal with the help of Justice Department insiders and an eager, enabling media.
It was only last October, for instance, that we learned that then-President Obama was briefed by his CIA director, John Brennan, on an intelligence report that Clinton planned to tie then-candidate Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” That was on July 28, 2016 — three days before the Russia investigation was initiated.
On a local note, I’ve heard nothing about this indictment on Rawlco news-talk radio, despite their moment-by-moment coverage of the Russian collusion hoax at the time. But maybe they haven’t heard.
Help them out by emailing the story to their alleged news department here. Click early, click often.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
From An Undisclosed Location
James O’Keefe to release recordings between the Clinton state dep’t and Assange… developing
Smart guy. Wouldn’t want to be the random victim of a robberyless robbery in the middle of the night.
When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal
U.S. Attorney John Durham is investigating the handling of the FBI’s investigation of possible bribery and pay-to-play at the Clinton Foundation as part of his broader inquiry of the Trump-Russia investigators, according to a new report.
The New York Times reported Thursday that Durham “has sought documents and interviews about how federal law enforcement officials handled an investigation … into allegations of political corruption” at the Clinton Foundation, founded by former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Durham was picked by Attorney General William Barr in 2019 to investigate the origins and conduct of the Trump-Russia investigation, and the outlet said that “Durham’s team members have suggested to others that they are comparing the two investigations.” The article claimed that “it was not clear whether Mr. Durham’s investigators were similarly looking for violations in the Clinton Foundation investigation.”
Remember this?…. https://t.co/lstduDPHFS
— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) September 24, 2020
And now, new Flynn documents. See the next post.
Come Back, Pizzagate!
All is forgiven: Epstein Files Unsealed.
I suppose this is the end of #metoo.
Comey was director then…
You know he knew this.
— Drama Shep (@SadPuppy15) July 31, 2020
Come Back, Pizzagate!
Always ahead of the curve.
Ghislaine Maxwell didn't kill herself.
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) July 2, 2020
“Clinton” is also trending, oddly enough.
Bloomberg Didn’t Kill Himself
THE CLINTON DIRT NAP MANEUVER: Mike Bloomberg ‘wants Hillary Clinton as his running mate’, sources close to his campaign tell Drudge
Scott Adams would call this “selling past the close” – Notice how the story, by itself, positions Bloomberg as presumptive nominee. Discussion of Bloomberg’s VP selection inherently implants a narrative that Bloomberg will be the nominee. Thus, this is the real motive for the story, and not the details within the story itself.
Bill’s Wife
Tulsi Gabbard — staying one step ahead of the Clintons.
Bill’s Wife
“Doctor, did I hear you correctly?”
“Yes, nurse. We’ll need an ass implant pack.”