Adam Schiff Smashed John Durham On Trump-Russia
"They don't want to call collusion....Maybe they would prefer we just call it good old-fashioned GOP cheating with the enemy".
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by Bob Cesca
WASHINGTON, DC – This week, John Durham testified to the House Judiciary Committee and it went only slightly better than Donald Trump’s disastrous Fox News interview with Bret Baier.
Durham is the U.S. attorney assigned by Bill Barr to scrutinize the origins of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the 2016 Russian operation to help Trump win. That’s the public description of Durham’s job, of course.
What he was actually assigned to do was to help Barr clean up Trump’s mess – like that guy who follows the elephants in a parade with a giant pooper-scooper – to help reinforce the narrative that the Russian attack was exactly what Trump said it was. A hoax.
Even though Durham’s investigation didn’t find any prosecutable conspiracy, the effect on public perception was significant. According to the admittedly janky Rasmussen poll, 63 percent of Americans think the FBI’s investigation was a political “hit job.” The same poll found that 59 percent believe the agents involved should be prosecuted. Even if we take off ten points from the 63 percent to compensate for Rasmussen’s obvious biases, it still indicates that Barr and Durham successfully blunted any suspicions about the 2016 election.
It didn’t help that the Barr letter, released a full month before the Mueller report in which the former attorney general cherrypicked Mueller’s conclusions, c*ck blocked the impact of Mueller’s findings before they left the gate.
All told, it seems that the successful attack by Russia against American democracy is being slowly flushed down the memory hole.
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Thank goodness, then, for Rep. Adam Schiff who completely embarrassed Durham during the House Judiciary hearings. Among other things, Schiff hammered Durham with the facts, showing direct collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence. Specifically, Schiff described how Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, was in direct contact with a Russian intelligence operative named Konstantin Kilimnik and turned over internal polling data to the Kyiv-based spy – and in the middle of the Russian attack, no less.
Schiff went on to highlight how the Russian military intelligence agency, the GRU, hacked the DNC and released the emails through “cut outs” – Guccifer 2.0 and DCleaks. The California Democrat asked a befuddled Durham whether he was aware that Trump routinely exploited the leaked emails on the campaign trail more than a hundred times. Durham stammered something about the media.
Additionally, Schiff asked Durham if he was up to speed on Donald Trump Jr.’s infamous meeting with Russian operatives, including Natalia Veselnitskaya, at Trump Tower, with the express intention of handing off dirt about Hillary Clinton, which is a crime. Schiff noted that it didn’t matter whether Junior accepted the damaging information the Russians presented – he was in essence colluding with Russians.
“They don't want to call collusion Maybe there's a better name for it. Maybe they would prefer we just call it good old-fashioned GOP cheating with the enemy” - Adam Schiff
All of this is true. It actually happened.
I think we all know the rest. A Russian troll farm called the Internet Research Agency engaged in an unprecedented disinformation campaign upon the fertile ground of un-policed social media platforms to smear Hillary and elevate Trump. Mueller, by the way, criminally charged the Russians responsible for this attack.
In all, Mueller charged “34 people and three companies, including top advisers to President Trump, Russian spies and hackers with ties to the Kremlin.”
Durham got one, and it was a low level FBI lawyer who lied to investigators about one line in an email.
Meanwhile, the then-Republican led Senate Intelligence Committee independently confirmed all or most of the Mueller Report’s findings.
The report found President Vladimir Putin personally directed the Russian efforts to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Clinton. [...]
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence alleged Manafort collaborated with Russians, including oligarch Oleg Deripaska and “Russian intelligence officer” Konstantin Kilimnik, before, during, and after the election.
The panel found Manafort’s role and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence, saying his “high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services... represented a grave counterintelligence threat.”
“Collaborated,” by the way, is a synonym for “colluded.”
It’s so important for the future of democracy that we don’t stop repeating what happened during that terrible election. Now that Elon Musk, a friend to Putin and Trump’s allies in Saudi Arabia, is in charge of Twitter, one of several platforms responsible for Russian disinformation in 2016, it’s becoming increasingly likely that Russia will try again in 2024.
They’re already starting. Russian trolls are buying up Twitter Blue subscriptions to acquire greater visibility for pro-Trump lies. (One of Twitter Blue’s primary features is increased engagement and reach.) Plus, Elon has admitted that he doesn’t even believe disinformation exists.
The best we can do now is to spread the word that political information on social media should be met with scrutiny – not automatic retweets and shares. The Russian disinformation threat is real and re-emerging, and we need to be prepared for it no matter how often Republicans and certain members of the news media try to downplay or reject a clear and incontrovertibly hostile foreign attack on both our national sovereignty and democratic elections.
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Who is the polling company asking the freaks that wait 48 hour too go into a hate rally. I nor anyone I know has been polled. I sorry I do not believe that they asking anyone other than the cult about how Biden is during, we have that many Americans that are that clueless unbelievable