Zero Hedge — Was Hillary The Real Colluder?

You knew it was headed here, didn't you?

Not just Billary either. John Brennan is being outed as the master mind. Obama up to eyeballs?

Bill Browder's story is also weakening in spite of massive efforts to subvert any mention of it in the "news"

And curious minds are inquiring, where is Christopher Steele?

A friend o famine and no friend of Trump asked this morning whether I thought that Alex Jones was taken down in preparation for the mid-term election because of his reach.

Could the worm be turning? Are more people beginning to smell a soft coup in the works?

Zero Hedge
Was Hillary The Real Colluder?

Publius Tacitus — America's Persistent Russia Delusion by Publius Tacitus

How long can American citizens continue to display such an astonishing degree of ignorance when it comes to the topic of Russia and meddling in political affairs? The media is pounding away like a hyperactive child with a new drum--bang, bang, bang--insisting that Russia is every where in our political system and is controlling our destiny. This kind of bald faced lie goes beyond egregious. It is diabolical. It has only one purpose--provoke confrontation with a nuclear power. If that does not qualify as the true definition of insanity, then you are beyond the reach of reason.

The deviant fantasy that has enveloped the weak minds of most Americans with respect to Russia conjure the image of a gleeful Putin, keen on conquering the world, lusting for blood and running a global criminal syndicate. And there stands Ma and Pa Kettle, our mom and dad, our brother and sister. It is up to us, the humble, peaceful Americans, who must lead the charge in thwarting this malevolent tyrant. This is the bullshit that is drowning the media in the United States and most appear quite willing to imbibe this toxic sludge.

Let us start with some very simple facts:...

Sic Semper Tyrannis
America's Persistent Russia Delusion by Publius Tacitus
Publius Tacitus

A Political Junkie — The RussiaHoax Theme Got Started As a Dirty Trick by Hillary's 2016 Campaign

In fairness to the Democrats, they likely saw it as payback for the attackers on John Kerry's military recored and the Obama birther conspiracy theory that Trump backed at least obliquely. Then the GOP Never Trumper's jumped on board, too, followed by some US intel chiefs aligned with one of the above.

Those who know American history know that this is an American tradition. There's nothing new under the sun.

All's fair in love, war — and politics.

And it was not just to crush Trump in the campaign, but also Bernie as a Clinton rival.

Russia Insider

The RussiaHoax Theme Got Started As a Dirty Trick by Hillary's 2016 Campaign

A Political Junkie

See also at RI

Trump Derangement Syndrome

People Aren't Having Intelligent Conversations Anymore, They're Just Yelling at Each Other

Michael Krieger

Publius Tacitus — Taking a New Look at the Unverified Steele Dossier

Trumpgate busted and the plot outed. Long and detailed.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Taking a New Look at the Unverified Steele Dossier
Publius Tacitus

Obama to Clapper to Brennan

Is the worm turning?

Zero Hedge
Clapper: Obama Was Behind The Whole Thing

Tyler Durden

Sputnik International

Congress Wants to Grill Ex-CIA Chief Brennan Over Accusing Trump of 'Treason'

Zero Hedge — "Truth Was Irrelevant" WSJ Asks: Was Brennan's Action The Real "Treason"?

Brennan in the crosshairs?

I don't link to the WSJ since it is behind a paywall. ZH recounts the latest there.

Zero Hedge
"Truth Was Irrelevant" WSJ Asks: Was Brennan's Action The Real "Treason"?

Tyler Durden

Patrick Armstrong — Russian Federation Sitrep 19 July 2018

Lighthearted but serious Patrick Armstrong updates us with links and humor.

Russian Observer
Russian Federation Sitrep 19 July 2018

Patrick Armstrong

See also

Strategic Culture Foundation
The Establishment Strikes Back
Philip Giraldi, former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer, now Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest and founding member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

See also

Fort Russ

The Butina Case: A Tale Of Cults And Quadruple Agents In The Washington Swamp

Ronald Thomas West | former Special Forces Sergeant of Operations and Intelligence, and retired investigator (living in exile)

See also

The Unz Review
Russian MFA Declares War on Guardian Hack Carole Cadwalladr

Anatoly Karlin

See also

Paul Craig Roberts
Russiagate Is Constructed of Pure Bullshit, No Facts

See also

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist

Lying Bigot James Clapper Assures World The Russia Narrative He Built Is Legit

Caitlin Johnstone 

Panic mode

Sputnik and RT reporting on the farce that now taking place in America — which the US media is presenting selectively and in a biased way. Who is "sowing discord."

The Week
FBI Director Wray: Russia is continuing to sow discord in the U.S.
Catherine Garcia

DJT is closing in on the swamp and the critters are freaking.

AlterNet
'That Would Absolutely Be Grounds for Removal from Office': Democrat Says Trump's Latest Capitulation to Putin Could Lead to Impeachment

Cody Fenwick

Two from Tom Luongo

… as [Trump] learned..., nothing will appease these people than his removal from the office. The Resistance needs it to vindicate their descent into madness. The Deep State needs it to ensure the gravy train keeps flowing. 

There are too many cozy relationships at risk, too many think tank jobs on the block, and too many weapons contracts at stake and too many more taxpayer-funded junkets to attend for Trump and Putin to remake the post-WWII political order....

Strategic Culture Foundation
While His Opponents Cry Treason Trump Sues for Peace

Tom Luongo

See also

Given the best these people can do is hang Trump with the term ‘traitor’ so casually is prima facia evidence of 1) their desperation and 2) their insanity. Trump cannot be a traitor for going out and executing one of the main functions of the President, meeting with foreign leaders.

The insanity stoked by real traitors like James Comey, John Brennan, Bill Browder, and John McCain who did conspire with foreign governments (the U.K., Ukraine and yes, Russia) to bring down a sitting President has people still believing that they can overturn the election and award the Presidency to Hillary Clinton ex post facto.

As lawless as the United States has become, even that is a little beyond the pale… but only just a little....

Zero Hedge

Luongo: "US Politics Is Reaching A Breaking Point"

Tom Luongo

Jumping the shark

Sputnik International
Another Head-Scratcher: US PAC’s Billboard Implies GOP Is … Communist? (PHOTO)

Sputnik International

Who Is Marina Gross? US Translator Thrust into Spotlight With Subpoena Threat

Sputnik International

‘F**k Trump’: Image of POTUS Being Beheaded Sparks Backlash in Oregon (PHOTO)

Sputnik International

'Off With His Head'! WATCH Protesters in Oregon Execute Trump Pinata

Sputnik International

Albright Goes Off on Trump, Calls Him 'Gift That Keeps Giving to Putin'

Sputnik International
I’m the Reporter Mentioned in Mueller’s Indictment. Why Hasn’t He Spoken to Me?

Lee Stranahan, co-host of Fault Lines on Radio Sputnik

The Unz Review
US Arrests Russia’s Foremost 2nd Amendment Activist

Anatoli Karlin

Zero Hedge

Comey: Anyone Voting Republican This Fall Is Un-American

Tyler Durden

Zero Hedge
Democrats Call Russia Meddling "Act Of War", Urge Cyber Attack On Moscow Banks In Retaliation

Losing their marbles.

Caitlin Johnstone — Five Things That Would Make The CIA/CNN Russia Narrative More Believable

Rallying the world to cut off Russia from the world stage and cripple its economy has been been a goal of the US power establishment since the collapse of the Soviet Union, so there’s no reason to believe that even the people who are making the claims against Russia actually believe them. The goal is crippling Russia to handicap China, and ultimately to shore up global hegemony for the US-centralized empire by preventing the rise of any rival superpowers. The sociopathic alliance of plutocrats and intelligence/defense agencies who control that empire are willing to threaten nuclear confrontation in order to ensure their continued dominance. All of their actions against Russia since 2016 have had everything to do with establishing long-term planetary dominance and nothing whatsoever to do with election meddling.

Those five things [analyzed above in the article] would need to happen before I’d be willing to jump aboard the “Russia! Russia!” train. Until then I’ll just keep pointing to the total lack of evidence and how very, very far the CIA/CNN Russia narrative is from credibility.

Questioning the narrative and find it wanting.

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
Five Things That Would Make The CIA/CNN Russia Narrative More Believable
Caitlin Johnstone

Also by the same author

I have said it before, and I will say it again, and I will keep saying it and saying it until it becomes mainstream conventional wisdom: it is the US intelligence community’s job to lie to you....

As we learned in the lead up to the Iraq invasion, whenever you see all mass media outlets converge upon a single narrative, it’s time to crank your skepticism levels up to eleven....

The social engineers are so adept that self-identified progressives can be made to cheer for the FBI, self-identified nationalists can be made to cheer for neoconservative regime change agendas against Iran, and self-identified liberals can literally be made to fear a movement away from the possibility of nuclear holocaust....

Since cold wars per definition depend on non-military maneuverings, a much greater emphasis is necessarily placed on psyops and mass media propaganda than in a conventional hot war. Remain skeptical of everything you hear about Russia at all times, because I will say it again: it is the US intelligence community’s job to lie to you....

Two Big “Russia! Russia!” Stories Released Days Before Trump-Putin Summit

See also

Backing up Caitlin Johnstone's claims based on skepticism and suspicion with authority. Must-read.

With Friday’s indictments of Russian intelligence officers, Ray McGovern and Bill Binney have written an open letter to President Trump making clear that the “evidence” behind the indictments is as fraudulent as the intelligence alleging WMD in Iraq. It is being published exclusively here ahead of the Trump-Putin summit on Monday.

Consortium News
Memo to the President Ahead of Monday’s Summit
Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst for 27 years, former chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and briefer for the President’s Daily Brief one-on-one from 1981-1985, and William Binney, retired 36 year NSA veteran, formerly technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and reporting, and developer of many of the collection systems still used by NSA

See also

Mueller could not have picked a more auspicious date if he weren’t an ignoramus on the history of autocracy and democracy, European and American. For it is one day later, on July 14, when every year France celebrates the start of the French Revolution. The reason for the celebration is the end of abuse of power by kings and pretenders to state authority, and their replacement by the democratic rule of law. That revolution, like the annual celebration, isn’t quite over.

What Mueller did this year was to issue what was called, before July 14, 1789, a lettre de cachet – a letter with the royal signet or seal. In the French practice, this was a combination of indictment, conviction, and order for arrest, confiscation of property, and punishment of an individual, who had no right in law to know the charge against him; prove the evidence; appeal the sentence.

The Mueller indictment of twelve officers of the Russian military intelligence agency, GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff) is a fresh US-Government style lettre de cachet. It names the men accused, their crimes, and the punishment. The penalties include “upon conviction [the twelve] shall forfeit to the United States any property, real or personal, which constitutes or is derived from proceeds obtained directly or indirectly as a result of such violation, and any personal property that was used or intended to be used to commit or to facilitate the commission of such offense.”

Mueller has neither the power nor the intention of trying the accused, or the particulars of his lettre, in an American court of law. This is why on July 13 he intended to violate the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution, first introduced in Philadelphia on June 8, 1789, just a month before the lettre de cachet lost its power in Paris. The Fifth Amendment says noone shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”...

Dances with Bears
Robert Mueller Replaces Us Constitution With Royal Lettre De Cachet – Counter-Intelligence Operation As Due Process
John Helmer

See also

The timing of the announcement was clearly intended to embarrass Trump as he was meeting the Queen and to undermine his upcoming meeting with Putin on July 16. The indictments may also have been meant to embarrass Russia two days before the World Cup final to be held in Moscow....

“In this indictment there is detail after detail whose only source could be intelligence, yet you don’t use intelligence in documents like this because if these defendants decide to challenge this in court, it opens the U.S. to having to expose sources and methods,” [former CIA officer Larry] Johnson said.

If the U.S. invoked the states secret privilege so that classified evidence could not be revealed in court a conviction before a civilian jury would be jeopardized.

Such a trial is extremely unlikely however. That makes the indictment essentially a political and not a legal document because it is almost inconceivable that the U.S. government will have to present any evidence in court to back up its charges. This is simply because of the extreme unlikelihood that arrests of Russians living in Russia will ever be made....

In both the IRA case and Friday’s indictments, the extremely remote possibility of convictions were not what Mueller was apparently after, but rather the public perception of Russia’s guilt resulting from fevered media coverage of what are after all only accusations, presented as though it is established fact. Once that impression is settled into the public consciousness, Mueller’s mission would appear to be accomplished....

It is not only allies of Trump, as the Times thinks, who believe the timing of the indictments, indeed the entire Russia-gate scandal, is intended to prevent Trump from pursuing detente with nuclear-armed Russia. Trump said of the indictments that, “I think that really hurts our country and it really hurts our relationship with Russia. I think that we would have a chance to have a very good relationship with Russia and a very good chance — a very good relationship with President Putin.”

There certainly appear to be powerful forces in the U.S. that want to stop that....

Consortium News

Clinging to Collusion: Why Evidence Will Probably Never Be Produced in the Indictments of ‘Russian Agents’

Joe Lauria | editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Sunday Times of London, and other newspapers

See also

NOTE: There will likely be various amendments made to this article over the next 24 hours.

Disobedient Media
Mueller’s Latest Indictment Contradicts Evidence In The Public Domain

Adam Carter

See also

This is the sort of political climate that the Trump administration has been forced to deal with for almost two years – a non-stop full court rush from the Democrats.

And now, when there is a chance for the smallest breakthrough in US-Russia relations, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, rolls out charges against 12 Russian military officials, thereby severely polluting the atmosphere for the Putin-Trump summit.

Clearly, something has got to give one way or the other. The fate of relations between the world’s two premier nuclear powers can no longer be held hostage to poor-sport Democrats who simply do not know how to lose an election with grace.

Strategic Culture Foundation
US Deep State Hits Putin-Trump Summit with Preemptive Strike as Russiagate Fizzles Out

Robert Bridge

The story is "developing." In the absence of evidence, it looks like disinformation and pysops.

CJ Hopkins — Confession of a Putin-Nazi Denialist

Sticking the dagger in and twisting it.

Counterpunch
Confession of a Putin-Nazi Denialist
CJ Hopkins, author and playwright

Jack Matlock — Musings … “Russiagate” Hysteria

Hits the major points. "Insanity."

JackMatlock.com
Musings … “Russiagate” Hysteria

Jack Matlock | U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991

See also

Unsurprisingly, the picture of Russia in the West, in the media and elsewhere, has become very dark; a revanchist state and kleptocratic autocracy, a regime sustained by a combination of propaganda and fear, a direct military threat to its neighbours, intent on subverting and undermining the West. This picture has taken particular hold in Washington DC where well established hostility to America’s old Cold War opponent has been given a sharp new partisan twist by allegations of covert Russian collusion with the Trump Presidential campaign.

The aim of this paper is to pick out which parts of this picture are right and which wrong, and to look at where the relationship is now going. This first Part introduces the issues and deals with Putin; the second Part, which will appear on 31 May, with Foreign Policy and the Economy; and the third and final Part, on 28 June, with relations with China and prognoses for the future....

More realistic than most Anglo-American analysis, but still accepts some of the assumptions that more balanced analysts like Stephen Cohen and Paul Robinson question or reject.

LobeLog
Russia and the West: On the Brink

Tony Brenton | British ambassador to Russia from 2004 to 2008

TTG — Another response to Publius Tacitus concerning those meddlesome Russians

Some points in John Brennan's favor.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Another response to Publius Tacitus concerning those meddlesome Russians

TTG

Publius Tacitus — Pieces of the Coup Puzzle Fall Into Place

Most people, including many of you, have the memory of an Alzheimer's patient when it comes to putting events into their proper historical context. So let me help....

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Pieces of the Coup Puzzle Fall Into Place

Publius Tacitus

Soon the investigative crosshairs will settle on Brennan. He’d better have the right answers.

The Unz Review
Is John Brennan the Mastermind Behind Russiagate?

Mike Whitney

Related

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly blocked Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., from briefing President Donald Trump about a meeting he had in London in August with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Rohrabacher told The Intercept.

Rohrabacher claimed Assange had shown him and his traveling companion, Charles Johnson, definitive proof that Russia was not the source of the Democratic Party communications that WikiLeaks published during the 2016 campaign. Assange was willing to share that information with American officials, Rohrabacher said, but he was never able to present the offer to the president....

The Intercept

Congressman Says He Tried to Brief Trump on WikiLeaks and Russia After Meeting With Julian Assange, But John Kelly Blocked Him

Ryan Grim

Aaron J. Mate — What We’ve Learned in Year 1 of Russiagate

More on the nothing-burger.

Cui bono? Russiagate has been a convenient distraction that has allowed both parties to curry favor with donors representing the military-idustrial complex as a primary driver of the American economy.

Makes one wonder whether the Clinton-Obama Democrats are cynical and stupid, or craven dissemblers using Russiagate as a cover to avoid dealing with traditional Democratic issues and to marginalize progressives who want to focus on them.

The Nation

Aaron J. Mate: What We’ve Learned in Year 1 of Russiagate
Aaron Maté, host/producer for The Real News

See also

“Gaslighting” can be an effective tactic to instill confusion and anxiety in people, causing them to doubt their own logical abilities, but it can be countered by remaining confident in our judgments, argues Caitlin Johnstone.

Consortium News
How Establishment Propaganda Gaslights Us Into Submission

Caitlin Johnstone

Related

21st Century Wire
Gaslighting: State Mind Control and Abusive Narcissism
Vanessa Beeley

Reuters — Russian offering info on Trump bilked U.S. spies out of money: NY Times

Another twisted in a twisted tale.

Reuters
Russian offering info on Trump bilked U.S. spies out of money: NY Times

Staff

Also

The Intercept
U.S. Secretly Negotiated With Russians to Buy Stolen NSA Documents — and the Russians Offered Trump-Related Material, Too
James Risen

Harper — Is This Fisc Document Part Of The Nunes File?

Is this a shoe dropping, or maybe a hammer?

The Alt Right is going ape over this, while the Democrats are taking steps to head it off at the pass by discrediting it before it is released.

I haven't posted on it previously, since it has been speculative and the reporting most biased by the side doing the "reporting."

Harper provides a piece that is of interest. I suspect we will be hearing a lot more about this as the drama unfolds.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Harper: Is This FISC Document Part Of The Nunes File?

Publius Tacitus — Evidence of FBI Conspiracy Grows

The shoe is dropping?

Russiagate, Trumpgate, now FBIgate.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Evidence of FBI Conspiracy Grows

Publius Tacitus

Ramanan — New York On Glenn Greenwald

Short overview of New York Magazine's take on Greenwald on Trumpgate and Russiagate. 

The whole article at New York is worth a read.

Example.

Greenwald is no longer invited on MSNBC, and he’s portrayed in the Twitter fever swamp as a leading villain of the self-styled Resistance. “I used to be really good friends with Rachel Maddow,” he says. “And I’ve seen her devolution from this really interesting, really smart, independent thinker into this utterly scripted, intellectually dishonest, partisan hack.” His view of the liberal online media is equally charitable. “Think about one interesting, creative, like, intellectually novel thing that [Vox’s] Matt Yglesias or Ezra Klein have said in like ten years,” he says. “In general, they’re just churning out Democratic Party agitprop every single day of the most superficial type.” (Reached for comment, none of these people would respond to Greenwald.)

Couldn't agree more. But perviously to this, Maddow's silence when Cenk left MSNBC because he refused to parrot the party line was an early tell. 

Regarding Klein and Yglesias, once one is in the bubble, it's only a matter of time. Same for Maddow, et al. 

The Case for Concerted Action
New York On Glenn Greenwald
V. Ramanan