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November 8, 2016. A day that will live in infamy. 

You can panic now. These were the words Nate Cohn tweeted out at about 9:30 EST on election night, November 8, 2016. That night I was at the Javits Center where Clinton was supposed to give her victory speech. My brother who does a lot of audio and video work for many well known and famous people-from celebrities, to athletes, to bankers,  to politicians-had fortuitously been working on a project at the Javits Center in NYC at the time and got approval for me to be there that fateful day.

Fortuitously… My getting to be present at the Javits Center that evening had seemed so until they started to count the election returns. I was in the big news room at Javits and was suitably starstruck seeing all these cameras from CNN, MSNBC, and elsewhere. I was in the hub of the national media and soon I along with millions of other supporters would get to see Hillary Clinton elected as America’s first female President.

Then-the returns started coming in. And no matter where the votes were being counted-Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, NH, Minnesota-even states she was winning and would in fact win, she seemed to be doing worse than expected. 

Things seemed to be going pretty well in Florida then they suddenly did a 180 around 8;30 or so. Oh well, but she’ll definitely win Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Right?

Then came 9 PM. She was behind in these three swing states. The room had suddenly gotten very quiet. Everyone was in front of their laptops but  you could hear a pin drop. It was an oppressive and foreboding silence. I wished someone would say something. But we were all thinking the same thing-but not wanting to say it as if uttering it would make it real.

Maybe she can lose! Maybe she’s going to lose! I like the rest of liberal Twitter kept looking at the tweets of Nate Silver, Harry Enten, Dave Wasserman, Nate Cohn, Matt McDermott, and Will Jordan.

Then around 9:30-give or take-Nate Cohn said those fateful words: you can panic now. It was very unwelcome ‘permission.’ We were reading him, Silver, et. al for permission to still hold onto hope that while this was much closer than expected, she was going to win, no question about that. 

We were reading him for permission to still hope not permission to panic. But that broke the spell and panic we did. Andrew Cuomo”s face-who was in the building-kept showing up on a large screen monitor to assure us: Hillary will be here to speak to us soon. 

But by now with the realization of what was happening setting in-you can panic now-I did not want to hear from her that night-no way! I simply could not handle her conceding that night. I did not want to be in this building if she was conceding there that night.

Pete, I told my brother, I got to get out of here. 

There was an edge in my voice-I was literally fighting the urge to panic right there. I do not want to see her concede, I do not! 

He walked me out and I walked the 7 blocks through NYC from the Javits Center back to Penn Station for the train back home to Suffolk, Long Island.

Of course, because everything Hillary Clinton has ever done in 25 years of public life no matter how innocuous or unremarkable leads to a huge freakout not just by the GOP but from much of the media, Trump and the GOP in the next few days started attacking her for not speaking to her supporters that night. Please, save me your faux concern. As far as I was concerned her not speaking that night was an act of mercy-I know I didn’t want to hear it and neither did most of her supporters. I was disappointed that she conceded the next day, but reportedly Obama had pushed her to do it quickly-as usual his main concern being to not look partisan.

As usual, Hillary, Obama, and Bill Clinton did the right thing-conceded and wished the new ‘President’ the best of luck and that ‘his success was now our success’ while their enemies get away with breaking any norm of decent behavior they want with very little media criticism.

After Obama won in 2008 the GOP declared that they hope he failed-Rush Limbaugh said aloud what was clearly the attitude of much of the party and its base.

The Clintons and the Obamas always do the right thing. They represent the best tradition of fine public servants who always put the national interest first. But November 8, 2016-a day that will live in infamy, a day that John Brennan refers to as a cyber Pearl Harbor-saw that fine tradition repudiated.

In 2017 Rebecca Traister wrote a piece about Hillary where she assured us Hillary’s ok are you? 

I was very grateful for this information-relieved to hear Hillary is ok. But were we ok? That’s something I was far less sure of post November 8. It was true-Hillary was ok but then she always was. It was we who were the real losers. We had the chance for this wonderful,  compassionate,  intelligent, and brilliant woman to be our President but instead we got Kakiostocracy’s  dream walking-the most ignorant, bigoted, and unqualified man in the country. Apparently, the time when to become President you actually had to  be qualified and care about the country above anything else was a thing of the past. If the country had somehow passed Hillary by in 2016, so much worse for the country.

Her ‘defeat’-as Trump’s ‘win’ isn’t legitimate her defeat was a mere ‘defeat’-simply demonstrated how far as a country we have retrogressed-in today’s America we no longer can have nice things-or qualified public servants apparently. This hit me as a truly existential moment in American history.  There was no longer any way to deny it-our beloved country was deeply dysfunctional and on the wrong path. So at that moment I decided to do two things I had always said I would do one day but not in the present: run for office and write this book.

I ran for Congress in the NY2 District-Peter King’s district in the primary-but got out later based on what I now see as bad advice from some political insiders.

Footnote: meeting with Peter King at childcare summit at Suffolk University.

But this book is making it to the finish line-I started it on December 15, 2017-and had intended it to be out by February, March of 2018-at the sweet point in the primary. Instead by then I was out of the primary and had already written about 400 pages yet felt that I had just scratched the surface regarding 2016 and where we find ourselves today.

FN: Today is September 8, 2019 and am still landing the plane though in the late stages now-I’ve just finished reading my entire book chapter by chapter the first time…

I want to answer two questions here regarding this book: why did I write it and why do I think you will benefit from it-after all, I’m neither a reporter, not an intelligence agent, so what unique perspective can I offer?

After all, there are a lot of books on Russia and Trump coming out right now.

In all due modesty, I will argue and I think you will see, a great deal. 

But to answer the latter I have to begin with the former. I decided to write this book as the events of the 2016 election were so alarming and outrageous that I felt that someone had to do it justice by putting pen to paper to draw out the true scope of it.

Ironically it was the first paragraph of this pretty fateful interview the Intercept did with Roger Stone in May, 2017 that describes as well as anything what prompted me to write this book and what I hope to achieve:

“THE HISTORY OF the 2016 election is up for grabs. Vying for posterity are two competing myths. One is the Russian conspiracy that elevated Donald Trump into the White House. The other is the “deep state” conspiracy that is laboring to bring him down. The first relies on secret evidence; the second on naked speculation and paranoid hand waving. Each myth has a few bits of fact dangling behind it; both are currently impossible to verify or refute.”

Exactly-it is up for grabs. That is what prompted my decision to write this book. It’s a first bid to write that history. Which is no small undertaking in today’s media environment, especially during the Trumpian era. It’s hard to have that bird’s eye view and write from a historical perspective when there are so many bombshells and scandals in today’s 24/7/365 news cycle.

In other words, my hopes for this book going in were incredibly ambitious. There are many other important books on Trump, his corrupt and disastrous Administration and the central question of his ‘Presidency’-possible collusion between his campaign and Russia-like Seth Abramson’s Proof of Collusion, Greg Sargent’s Uncivil War or David Corn and Michael Iskikoff’s Russian Roulette,  John Brennan’s  book and Scott Stedman’s coming book on Russia-that, alas, won’t be out till next April.

UPDATE: Craig Unger is certainly must read

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=craig+unger+house+of+putin+house+of+trump&crid=1KVT6UWT0V4I8&sprefix=craig+unger%2Caps%2C127&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_5_11

as it goes without saying is Seth Abramson’s sequel Proof of Conspiracy.

I’m waiting for Andy McCabe’s book-that alas, must wait till next May-about Trump’s obstruction. I even find books by Trump’s co-conspirators like Rob Goldstone-who offers up a very sanitized version of events around the June, 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting with the Russians-you suspect the construction of Agalarov’s attorney Scott Balber;-as well as traitorous Coffee Boy extraordinaire George Papadopoulos’s soon to be released alternative history-taught no doubt at Kellyann Conway’s school of alternative facts-very useful-insight into the kind of lies the Trump co-conspirators tell and even in a lie there is always a major element of truth.

FN: McCabe’s book came out yet he made revelations in interviews not in the book.

I should also argue that Michael Wolff’s book has in my view, an undeservedly lesser reputation though-as we see in Chapter A-it was thanks to Wolff’s work-specifically all the spilling he got Steve Bannon to do-that led to Bannon becoming a person of interest for the Mueller investigation-previously, Bannon wasn’t on Mueller’s radar.

Indeed Michael Wolff’s recent sequel is also brilliant. The dismissal of the MSM of Wolff points to a very important difference between the methods of MSMers-a la Jay Rosen’s Church of the Savvy and their alleged view from nowhere- vs. independent journalism. Wollf’s observation in an interview with-fittingly enough-Dean Baquet’s NY Times-is very thought provoking-the Savvy always have to negotiate with themselves regarding what they know.

FN: This book among other things is about just how much blood on its hands the MSM has for Trump’s fake ‘win’-and going on three years out, how much they still haven’t learned.

However, one important difference between this book and some of the literature referenced above is that this book-about what I call Watergate 2.0-isn’t only about Russia. It argues that there’s another Watergate 2.0 scandal that’s largely been ignored by the MSM until now-Comeygate, as well as the media’s disastrous Emailgate obsessed 2016 coverage-it seems clear that what the MSM did to Hilary on the emails, they are trying, but perhaps failing, to do to Elizabeth Warren in 2020 over the huge-and hugely fake-furor over her DNA test.

The Trump campaign didn’t only collude with Russia but-as Abramson documents in Proof of Conspiracy-the Saudis, UAE, et al-and they also colluded with rogue anti Clinton pro Trump FBI agents in Comeygate.

FN: Warren has managed to totally transcend that fake scandal-where the MSM acts more outraged about a bullied girl’s ‘off key’ response than the despicably racist attacks of the schoolyard bully-fake ‘President Trump’ himself.

 

This book is an attempt to take a historical snapshot at a particularly fraught, worrisome, and fluid time in American history. Just how ambitious-and difficult-the task I set for myself is underscored by the fact that I begun on December, 15, 2017 and in one week it will be a year and I’m still furiously trying to land the plane. 

Part of it was the hope to both chronicle 2016, look at the history-that shows neither Trump or Russia taught the GOP how to weaponize stolen Dem emails, collude with a hostile foreign power, or generally be willing to use any dirty trick to ‘win’ elections-as well as making the book as up to date as possible the day it is published.

FN: Indeed as was discussed at Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing-though not nearly enough-was his weaponization of stolen Democratic emails to help confirm a controversial W. Bush circuit court nominee– in 2003-Chapter A.

But that’s the task I set myself-to take a historical snapshot at a-very quickly-moving target.

In Abramson’s book he focuses tightly on the issue of Russian collusion and looks at the wealth of public information to conclude that we have enough to prove collusion happened-let alone what Mueller or some in Congress already know. He argues that the available information-using his own skills of legal analysis-is enough to prove collusion. 

I don’t necessarily claim to prove collusion in this book I simply look at the huge mountain of public information  in great detail and offer up many leads and theories-with the hope that it inspires interest and passion in the reader and, most of all, inspires future research. The uncharitable might call it ‘speculation’-for the MSM it’s the most unkind thing you can say about someone, I would call it hypothesis-educated guesses, or if you insist, educated speculation. What MSM reporters don’t get is that much of scientific work-certainly criminal investigative work-is based on such ‘educated speculation.’ It requires what Beltway journalists shrink from-informed ‘hunches’, intuition, that is to say, going out on a limb. 

Regarding proof I certainly think this book makes a very compelling case in terms of probable cause. If you were to put together all the many different strands of Russiagate I touch on in this book I think you have more than enough to attempt to put it together to argue for proof of collusion. Just recently-as covered in Chapter A-Maria Butina pled to at the direction a high ranking Russian official and close friend of Putin infiltrating the NRA and the larger GOP as well as reaching out directly to Trump-she was the first one to ask him a question at the FreedomFest in August, 2015-she asked him about sanctions.

That in itself-if true-is collusion or certainly gets us well on the road to it. And again, Trump defenders or nervous media nellies will always concoct some more mundane, anodyne explanation for the latest bombshell but what about the other 100 bombshells? Put together these attempts at debunking don’t pass the laugh test.

So that’s why I decided to write this marathon of a book-because I felt something was deeply wrong in the country that I love-a full blown constitutional crisis and God awful media coverage along with a partisan anti Clinton FBI that made it possible-and I wanted to take a historical snapshot of it in real time. Indeed, if you want to understand the goal of this book, in many ways it’s what Rachel Maddow is so good at doing on a nightly basis-sifting through the huge mound of news and looking at it from the 30,000 foot view-or the bird’s eye view-in order to see the big picture. One tactic Rachel often uses on her show is to go back to some historical moment in American history to start her show forcing us as the viewers to figure out how it relates to today’s story. I always appreciate her clear love of history.

FN: Post Mueller’s Report in March, 2019 it’s no longer possible to deny that there was a great deal of collusion-and conspiracy even if Mueller didn’t believe the evidence was sufficient for indictment. But collusion itself has been proved many times over.

 

Ok so that’s why I decided to write this book. Why should the reader decide to read it? I guess the answer to the question of what this book offers is another question: what do you, the reader, hope to gain from reading it?

Speaking for myself, these days with the thirst for more and original news about Russia, what I seek in anything I read today, is new information. What I demand of any reporter or writer is tell me something I don’t already know. 

This is not necessarily easy, in all due modesty, as I think this book demonstrates, I know a fair amount about Russiagate-and also Comeygate, the uncovered half of Watergate 2.0-at least on the level of public information I will argue I’m as knowledgeable as any interested layperson at least. But more on that below.

If you -like me-desire new and original information this book has a fair amount of that. Much of what is new is in the Comeygate part of the book. This is because the media, to this day has done very little investigation into the outrageous fact that not only did the Russians interfere in the 2016 election with the expressed purpose of hurting Clinton and helping Trump, but many of the rogue anti Clinton agents at the FBI interfered for the same reason-to hurt Clinton to Trump’s benefit.

But this has been talked about much less. Indeed, there are a few excellent articles on Comeygate, but these I can-literally count on one hand-the NY Times and Vanity Fair both did major deep dives on it, for some reason both in early May, 2017-you wonder if this was timed to be soon prior to Trump’s firing of Comey on May 9, 2017? It sure is notable that that was the only period there was any work done on Emailgate post 2016. Then on May 11, ProPublica also did a piece

While the VanityFair, NYT, and ProPublica pieces were excellent-and contained some real bombshells-particularly the fact that Comey based the rationale for his July 5, 2016 press conference at least partly on a fake Russian document-see Chapter A-what’s notable is that they didn’t lead to any follow up investigative journalism. These Comeygate pieces were all one and done. Why is this? Clearly because it hits too close to home for the Beltway media-their complicity is too great. They know they weaponized the Emailgate story to ridiculous proportions-in her best selling book, Hillary relates how privately, some journalists have apologized to her for the absurdly excessive-not to say obsessive-focus on the damn emails. 

 

A major aspect of this book is Malcom Nance’s Law-coincidences take a lot of planning.

It is quite a coincidence that there were only three major investigative pieces on Comeygate and they all came out in early May just before or after Trump’s firing of Comey. So what planning was behind this quite interesting coincidence?

FN: The Occam’s Razor explanation is that it was Trump’s people who put out all that damning information on Comey at that moment-indeed, this was the pretext used by Rod Rosenstein to justify Comey’s firing-Trump of course, couldn’t stay on message for an entire day-this thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story… 

But, again, the reason Comeygate is the uncovered half of Watergate 2.0 is it hits too close too home-the horrible media coverage  is why Comey’s vague Rorschach test of a memo had any such an absurdly outsized impact on the election is because of how the media weaponized it during the campaign-and in the immediate aftermath on October, 28, 2016.

As for Russiagate,. while the media outrageously ignored it before the election, once that woman was safely defeated they took up the story and have done a lot of excellent investigative reporting regarding-though it never ceases to amaze me how, even when reporters do great work they so frequently still miss the implications of their own scoops.

FN: They can report 100 bombshells but shrink from any attempt to actually connect the dots between the 100 bombshells-each new bombshell is treated in a vacuum as a one off.

But clearly Comeygate and the damn emails hits a little close to home. For that reason Comeygate is a largely unplumed field-only a few have done any research there. This has enabled me to offer the reader quite a few scoops regarding Emailgate. If for you-like me-original information is your thing, you certainly want to check out the Comeygate part of the book.

In addition,  assuming you’re an ambitious, enterprising reporter who wants to get ahead, wants the big scoop then I’d argue that the Comeygate part of this book is perfect for you as it’s unplumed ground. Russiagate while an incredibly important story with labyrinthian moving parts, is pretty crowded. If you want less competition, think of all the unwritten stories about Comeygate that are out there. Just last week Comey was grilled by the GOP for six hours behind closed doors. It’s surreal but even after Comey and the FBI handed the election to Trump the GOP is still claiming that the bias was against him.

Comey did elude to the fact that he opened an investigation into leaks from the rogue anti Clinton pro Trump agents at the FBI late in the campaign to Giuliani and friends. Comey went on to say that he doesn’t know the current status of this investigation though it was ongoing when Trump fired him.

So there’s your lead-if you’re that enterprising, ambitious reporter we are talking about: go and find out the current status of that investigation. To be sure, this is also a lead for Jerrold Nadler who has said his Judiciary Committee intends to investigate the leaks of the anti Clinton rogue FBI agents. Quite fittingly, the NY FBI-aka Trumpland-has now been sued. 

Indeed, above I referred to Stone’s interview with The Intercept as ‘fateful’-the reason it was so fateful is because he offered up yet more prima facie evidence of his involvement in yet another Watergate 2.0 scandal-along with Russiagate. What he offered in that interview-but has gotten no attention in the MSM up till now was yet another Podesta’s time in the barrel moment but regarding Comeygate and just who the rogue agents who very may well have forced Comey’s hand on the memo were. Stone clearly intimates that he knows who these Hillary Clinton hating rogue agents at the FBI are.

Then in his book on the 2016 election he says more about just how Huma Abedin’s emails  magically showed up on Anthony Weiner’s laptop-and, he also thoughtfully implicates his Trump co-conspirator Jerome Corsi, in Comeygate as well as he’s already implicated him in Russiagate.

That is just one of many scoops in the FBI part of this book. I kind of don’t want to give away everything in the ‘how to read this book’ chapter but besides the scoop on Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi’ unknown role-I call it scoop as while it’s from public sources, apparently no one in the MSM has seen it, so it really is news to the public-there are a number of other scoops. Perhaps I’m the only one to have actually read Stone’s book?

UPDATE: A great deal has since come out on Stone, Corsi, and Trump’s collusion and coordination regarding the Russian email hacks and release operation.

But while I don’t want to give away everything in the how to section,  here are some of the real highlights regarding Comeygate in terms of where this book legitimately plows unchartered territory.

1. Like Chuck Johnson paying Sydney Leather-who catfished Anthony Weiner in 2013, ending his hopes for a comeback in his campaign to win NY Mayor-for information on him during 2016-as a way as weaponizing him against Hillary Clinton.

2. The wholly unknown story that Weiner’s underage female sexting partner sought him out with the explicit goal and purpose of enticing him to send her the sexts. Her and her father are conservative Republicans. This is a particularly uncomfortable story as it involves a minor but the fact is that in this case a minor and her father chose to conspire to entrap someone they knew had issues. It’s called entrapment and it’s the equivalent of offering someone you know has a bad drinking problem malt liquor so as to arrest him for public drunkenness.

3. If you’re looking for the rogue FBI agents  a good place to start with is James Kallstrom-technically he’s at the NYPD, in fact he was the NYPD sex crimes investigator who investigated Weiner. That sexual assault and sexual violence offend him is certainly underscored by his donating thousands of dollars to Donald Trump post Hollywood Access. 

UPDATE: It actually may not be Kallstrom I’m thinking of here.

4. I take a deep dive into True Pundit that was widely believed to have a link to disgruntled FBI agents-mostly they were ‘disgruntled’ about Hillary Clinton. While some have insisted that TP greatly exaggerates its access, Andy McCabe clearly believed they did have top sources-Comey differed with him only somewhat arguing the sources probably weren’t senior. As we saw above, Comey was concerned enough about leaks-wether or not TP was an important conduit-to open an investigation into leaks by the anti Clinton pro Trump agents-my characterization, but hey, if the shoe fits…

FN: So to put a fine point on it, the FBI Director and Deputy Director both believed TP did have FBI sources-the only difference being out senior.

5. I look at the astonishing fact that Comey used the fake Russian document as a pretext for his very careless press conference on July 5, 2016. As noted above, the NYTimes piece that revealed this astonishing fact did no followups and neither did anyone else in the media. This underscores to the extent that the MSM has simply avoided this story. Again, as suggested above, the real mystery is not that Comeygate has been almost universally ignored by the MSM but why the three pieces were done and why they were all done in early May-just a coincidence?

Or maybe the leaks came from Trump loyalists to justify firing Comey? The timing is certainly notable.

I further offer up a conjecture in (Chapter B) that perhaps the materials that Trump’s foreign policy adviser, Joseph Schmitz, brought to the FBI for them to examine to ascertain if it was in fact Hillary’s emails may have contained the fake Russian doc. I also conjecture-or I should say presume Abramson’s conjecture that Schmitz’s client to hack Clinton’s emails was none other than: Peter Smith.

6. It’s a pretty incredible irony that while Trump and his GOP co-conspirators are still accusing the FBI of anti Trump bias when the FBI rigged the election for him. While Trey Gowdy and friends rail about the texts of Peter Strozk and Lisa Page no one is looking at the texts of the many FBI agents during the 2016 campaign who considered Clinton the anti Christ over at Trumpland. (Chapter D).

7. Chapter E documents the crucial yet hitherto uncovered fact that the FBI is in fact a very Republican place. While Trump talks about 18 angry Democrats it’s not at all clear that there are as many as 18 Democrats working at the FBI.

8. Chapter F argues that the Dems need to look into the question of wether the IG investigation into Comeygate was in fact compromised-there’s reason believe so.

9. Chapter G looks at the incontrovertible point that had Mueller been Director Hillary Clinton would be President today.

UPDATE: At least assuming Mueller would have been as by the book and conservative in investigating her as he was with Trump-an assumption perhaps open to doubt-Mueller like Comey, like Andy McCabe, like most top agents at the FBI is a life long Republican after all. It’s certainly arguable that unlike Trump, Hillary would have been compelled to sit for a live in person interview-as her husband was in 1999-Brett Kavanaugh’s perjury trap-as well as Clinton herself did in Emailgate.

We can feel fairly confident in this conjecture as a large reason why Mueller didn’t push for Trump’s interview were the threats of his legal team-John Dowd et al-compounded with the bigger picture that fear that Trump would shutdown the investigation was an ever present worry for Team Mueller.

And that’s just the Comeygate part of the book and is not exhaustive.

Beyond that we also have the history behind Watergate 2.0-that PACE part X, the Party of Lincoln has become the Party of Treason.

This goes to a central thrust of this book-the GOP needed neither Donald Trump or the Russians to learn how to cheat-if they learned it from anyone it goes back to Tricky Dick himself-it’s very fitting that Roger Stone is here for the second Watergate as while young he had no small role in the first one as documented in (Chapter G).

The central thesis of this book is analyzed in Chapter H-that the modern-that is to say post New Deal-GOP is intellectually and morally bankrupt-they have known since the 1930s that most Americans support the New Deal but rather than adjusting their views they-as William F. Buckley put it-have chosen to stand athwart history and yell stop. 

As recovering conservative Republican David Frum puts it-given the choice between democracy and conservatism they have chosen conservatism. Again, the GOP didn’t need either Trump or the Russians to learn how to rig elections-if they learned it from anyone it’s Tricky Dick the true father of modern conservative Republicanism.

Indeed, this is what makes Roger Stone so central to the story-his mentor was-is-Nixon-which is why he has that huge tattoo of Nixon on his back. He is what ties NixonWorld to TrumpWorld. For this reason Stone has his own separate part of the book.

Of course, speaking of Nixon, I look at Nixon colluding with South Vietnam to rig the 1968 election (Chapter A). 

But in perhaps the most controversial aspect of the book in (Chapter B) I also discuss the fact that there remains probable cause at the very least that Reagan colluded with Iran to rig the 1980 elections-by delaying the release of the hostages. What’s amazing-and leads me to strongly suspect it’s true-is how closely it fits the pattern of GOP collusion to win a Presidential election-circa 1968 and 2016.

Regarding probable cause it’s important to appreciate that there were no less than three Congressional investigations into this very question of an October Surprise. Again, this is very controversial as the alleged liberal media-notably the New Republic-long since relegated it to a cold, dark, unmarked grave. But it was predicated enough to get three Congressional investigations-yet it was ultimately smothered with a pillow. Indeed as we note in (Chapter C) Alan Dershowitz is correct that Bush Sr. pardoned Casper Weinberger and others-a total of six Iran-Contra related pardons and paid zero penalty. Of course, Dershowitz uses this as a precedent to argue ‘President Trump’ can do the same-but logically, there is another interpretation: that Bush should not have gotten away with it that it was indeed, one of the greatest abuses of Presidential power in American history. It should be a cautionary tale.

Indeed, in this sense we’e way ahead regarding Trump-Russia-while it is widely now admitted what Nixon did it took almost 50 years to get here-at the time it was dismissed as another ‘tinfoil hat conspiracy’ as Reagan-Iran still is widely seen today.

But as we will see if the GOP, the  MSM as well as most elected Democrats chose to dismiss it as being a theory for those partial to tinfoil hats it is notable that:

1. A jury came to a conclusion that implicitly suggested there was such a conspiracy or at the minimum, there was indeed a meeting between the Reagan campaign and the Iranians in Paris in October, 1980-that included Bush Sr. himself.

2. Iran Contra may have been part of a much bigger and more long term conspiracy between Iran and the Reagan campaign-and subsequently both the Reagan transition and Administration that centered around arm swaps. Indeed, according to Ari Ben-Menashe who was an employee of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate from 1977 to 1987 and an arms dealer, it was he who initially leaked at the direction of his superiors in Israeli intelligence about Iran-Contra-it was political revenge from Israel’s Right wing party, Likud in 1986.

Pg. 8

But again, while some I’m sure will quibble with Reagan-Iran-by all means lets do some new research on it; though these days who has the time?!-the overall pattern of GOP election rigging and overriding the popular vote is unavoidable. Indeed, in a brand new recent scoop it turns out that Bush Sr. did in fact rig his own election-his campaign smear merchant, Lee Atwater, set Gary Hart up as we see in (chapter D)

It turns out Hart didn’t even know Donna Rice.

In Chapter E I argue that due to the GOP’s long history of election rigging and chicanery as well as it’s colluding with hostile foreign powers 3 times in under 50 years to ‘win’ a Presidential election they ought to be in the penalty box with voters for the next 20 years. If anything I’m probably being too lenient though it should depend on the extent to which the GOP is finally able to-or more likely unable to-take some actual responsibility.

Their instinct is to do what Paul Ryan told them in June, 2016-keep it in the family. (Chapter F)

Part W deals with the GOP’s outrageous and unpatriotic obstruction with Trump post rigging the 2016 election.

As for Russiagate there is a pretty deep dive into it I think it’s fair to say. Unlike Comeygate, this has been a very widely reported story. For this reason much of it is simply me writing about and analyzing stories that have been fairly extensively reported. If nothing else though-even if you”re aware of most of it-putting it all together in one place might serve as a very helpful reference book if nothing else. I think it’s fair to say that this book offers the most ambitious attempt to put all the various, disparate pieces together as you will find anywhere.

And while much of it has been widely reported, I do offer in depth analysis; facts are one thing but putting them together is another-that’s what this book tries to do. And I do have one theory of my own as discussed above that Comey’s fake Russian document may have come from the material Joseph Schmitz brought the FBI. The thing to understand about theories is that even those that don’t prove correct can give you a lot of mileage in getting to the truth. Wether Comey’s fake Russian doc came from Schmitz’s material or not, we can learn a lot more by investigating both Schmitz’s material and Comey’s fake doc wether we ultimately discover the two are related or not.

There’s also a great deal of media criticism in this book-the absurd way that the media made 2016 about Clinton’s emails-now that it turns out that many Trump senior aides-including his daughter Ivanka-uses private email the media yawns proving they never cared about Clinton’s emails they just hated Clinton.

FN: In retrospect I should add that even where I write about previous reporting on Russia much of it has been treated in a cursory one and done fashion that fails to put it together. Indeed, this is not just regarding Russian Collusion but many stories that are terrible for Trump-like his extensive history of being credibly accused of sexual harassment and assault has largely been marginalized by the ‘smartset’-as well, alas, the House Democrats.

Even recent stories-like the accusation that he kissed his own campaign staffer in 2016 or the allegation that he raped a reporter in 2012-have been given at most one news cycle-the accusation of his staffer never made it onto cable news while the rape allegation was dropped after a couple of days. But again, where are the Democrats? Kirsten Gillibrand’s ill fated campaign never got off the ground and one clear reason why was the way she demanded Franken walk the plank-no he could not have an investigate he simply had to resign!

She then did an interview demanding that Bill Clinton somehow resign 20 years retroactively.

Gillibrand attempted to defend her call during the campaign-wether this hurt her it certainly didn’t help her. But where were her calls for Trump to resign? She should have done biweekly pressers discussing his history of being accused of sexual harassment, assault, and rape, with updates to the latest bombshell-she could have demanded the MSM and her fellow Democrats take the accusations of Trump’s former staffer Alva Johnson and Jean Carrol seriously.

UPDATE: Just 5 days ago we learned that Ms. Johnson has dropped her case against Trump. No doubt many will declare with Trump’s legal team that this is total vindication of the ‘President.’ 

Actually:

A former Trump campaign staffer who accused Donald Trump of forcibly kissing her without her consent in 2016 has dropped her lawsuit against the President, saying it’s difficult to pursue “justice against a person with unlimited resources.”

“I have made the difficult decision not to pursue my claims at this time,” Alva Johnson, who worked for the campaign in Alabama, said in a statement provided to CNN Thursday by her attorney.

“I am facing a judge who openly questions whether the kiss is worthy of a federal lawsuit and has determined that Mr. Trump’s history of such behavior is not relevant, and I’ve endured on-going threats to my safety,” Johnson said. “I’ve decided for the sake of my family that I will not continue with the case at this time.”

Clearly this woman needs a champion but everyone from the MSM pundits, to the Democratic leadership, to even a supposed advocate like Gillibrand have failed her. So Trump yet again gets to gloat.

Trump’s attorney, Charles Harder, said in a statement Thursday that Johnson, by “giving up the case, represents total victory for President Trump, and fully vindicates him of Johnson’s false accusations.”

Once again, the lie prevails over the truth.

In other Trump sexual misconduct news, Stormy Daniels has volunteered to testify publicly before the House and-at least publicly-the Dems’ silence has been deafening.

End of FN

In Chapter H I look at the very interesting analysis by journalism professor, Jay Rosen, regarding the MSM’s pretensions of occupying ‘the view from nowhere.’ In this vein, clearly I write this book about as far from nowhere as possible-as an unabashed advocate-a fervently partisan, Hillary Clinton loving Democrat; love doesn’t seem strong enough somehow…

Nevertheless, this book, I think you can see is about as rigorously sourced and fact based as you hope tofind. I know I make a great deal of controversial assertions and always make sure that I show the reader what I’m basing a particular controversial assertion on.

In Part W I look at Hillary Clinton. Obama is still right despite the way it was stolen from her: she was the most qualified candidate for President ever. That she was the first female candidate of a major party and she ‘lost’ to the most unqualified candidate for President, is, of course, all too fitting.

Sure I know her haters will tell me I have to ‘get over it.’ My answer is simple: why should I? As it’s clear she didn’t lose legitimately why should I or her many other supporters just forget this pesky fact? While the media never gets tired of the potshots-even ‘electing’ Donald Trump wasn’t enough for them, they’re still full of Clinton Derangement Syndrome just like the GOP is still accusing the FBI of being biased in Clinton’s favor after stealing the election from her.

But it’s even worse than that: If many of us are even now, more than ever, #StillWithHer, it remains a fact that her haters aren’t over her either. Certainly not Maureen Dowd who travelled all the way to Canada just to make fun of the Clintons’ tour and to insist that nobody cares even though it’s clear Ms. Dowd still cares a lot. 

Trump never stops discussing her and Corey Lewandowski in a particularly pregnant Freudian slip in early 2018 declared that ‘the important thing is to focus on the lies and evasions of the Clinton Administration.

It’s been noted how unlike previous Presidential election losers, Hillary is not even allowed to show her face in public without getting attacked-either she should go in a hole and die because no one cares! though those demanding this sure care, or they are demanding she ‘take responsibility’ for the election they did so much to help and facilitate the Russians and FBI stealing from her; meanwhile the new trick seems to be that she has to first agree that Bill should resign 20 years later unilaterally for the affair with Monica Lewinsky before she’s allowed to discuss anything else. These same media pundits who are so concerned about the rights of sexual misconduct victims and survivors that they bought the GOP talking points that all Christine Ford and Brett Kavanaugh amounted to was a ‘he said she said’ that no one will ever know the truth about, none of who demand that the current ‘President’ who has been credibly accused of sexual harassment and assault by at least 20 women resign.

FN: For comparison, after Monica Lewinsky many editorial pages demanded Clinton resign as Eric Boehlert points out.

What makes her different than Al Gore, John Kerry, or Michael Dukakis where the media to this day won’t stop throwing spitballs? I wish I could think of what it is but it might be something about-the lack of-the letter Y…

But even if so, the converse is also true. As Mr. Weeks said on Twitter never has a ‘losing’ Presidential candidate had such a following post ‘loss’ as Hillary does and will do.

No I’m not saying she’s going to run again-though no one is telling Biden not to run again or Bernie though she came much closer than they did. Though it is a fact that she has by far a bigger base than any of the current roster you’re hearing about. But that there does in fact remain a very large Hillary Clinton base is one of the best kept secrets-as just like during the election the MSM continues to deny our existence in their  attempt to erase us as noted in Chapter C 

There remains a huge amount of us who are #StillWithHer and #AlwaysWithHer and that’s something I’d caution the current crop of applicants for 2020-remember that she still has a bigger base than anyone else in the Democratic party and if you doubt that you haven’t spent much time on liberal Twitter and Facebook-there are a bunch of undercover FB pages for arch Hillary Clinton loyalists, many, true, which are secret.

Here’s yet one more reason to be #StillWithHer. 

 

So while of the Russia chapters has been reported on but even in such cases what this book does is bring it all together, it attempts to put all the many disparate pieces together. It’s also a fact that while I’m analyzing many stories on Russia that were pretty widely reported previously, by putting it together in one place if nothing else it can serve as a pretty helpful reference book. But it does a lot more than that in providing painstaking analysis.

So this book looks both backwards, then back to the present and then forwards. While the Trump Deplorables and GOP co-conspirators demand we ‘get over it’-unlike themselves with Whitewater in the 1990s or even now with Uranium One and the emails-if you can believe it Lindsay Graham is still investigating Clintons’ emails which is not only absurd but also banana republic-as she’s now a private citizen; and for Congress to use it’s investigative powers on a private citizen is on the level of banana republics-sometimes you have to go backwards first to go forwards.

If you don’t learn from history you’re condemned to repeat it as a great conservative once said.

And this is something I think the Democrats must appreciate too. Many of us were very grateful for the tough words of Judge Emmet Sullivan regarding Michael Flynn’s treacherous, and treasonous actions, (Chapter A). 

At this point I think Democrats get it and will do the right thing in the next two years. Adam Schiff in particular truly seems to appreciate the awesome privilege and responsibility we have entrusted him and his fellow House Democrats with in the next two years. They are our last line of defense against Trump’s racism, his xenophobia, his authoritarianism, his abuse of power, and his illegitimacy. 

But I still worry. In a recent article Eric Swalwell-who’s one of the best out there-was quoted as worrying about how impeachment would upset the third of the country that supports Trump and a third would feel as if a democratic result was overturned. That gets me because in 1998-1999 Bill Clinton regularly had support in the high 60s-and the week the GOP Senate tried and failed to convict him, Clinton actually had an approval rating of 81%. Note back then Gallup was largely the only game in town. But this at no point gave the GOP-or the GOP voters-any pause. They never worried that over 4/5 of the country saw this as overturning an election.

FN: In retrospect I see my words that I think the Dems would do the right thing as adventures in hoping for the best. The fly in that ointment is hope is not a strategy. Swalwell-like Gillibrand-like Kamala Harris who is still very much alive in the 2020 campaign-did utilize his strongest assets and his campaign like Gillibrand’s failed to gain any traction.

Belatedly he’s now a strong impeachment advocate-just last night he was on Chris Hayes pointing out that the only way to increase public support for impeachment is to do the hearings-Pelosi often makes it sound like because the support isn’t where she wants it to be they shouldn’t do the public hearings.

Polls have shown that a plurality-and near majority-of Americans already want Trump impeached now. Today. 

FN: To be sure that was arguably an outlier poll.

And yet the Dems worry. Don’t get me wrong-if the Democrats are-as I think they are-simply saying wait for Mueller’s report while they do some of their own investigations in the mean time, then I agree 100%.

UPDATE: However as I explain in Chapter A I’ve come to think the Democrats may be leaning too heavily on Mueller and losing sight that they have their own oversight role beyond simply ‘waiting for Robert Mueller.’

UPDATE 2.0: That thought became incontrovertible post the Mueller Report’s release.

So long as impeachment isn’t off the table. One thing I appreciate about what Schiff has been saying lately is he’s talking about looking at things that he’s not sure Mueller has looked at. I love that as it shows he’s not victim to the absurd assumption that Mueller has covered everything. He clearly recognizes his own role and that of his Committee.

The GOP wrongly used Mueller as the excuse not to do their own investigations, all the while doing what they could to obstruct him and refusing to let him see their own transcripts.; but Watergate had a Congressional Watergate Select Committee along with Leon Jaworski’s Independent Counsel.

FN: Though until now the Dems have had only 1 public hearing with a fact witness-Michael Cohen-themselves.

Some reason to think-maybe-their getting serious now.

 

But impeachment must not be off the table. Some say just vote Trump out. But in saying that you’ve already wrongly presumed his legitimacy that is very much open to question.

Trump must be removed from Office but we also have to exorcise him.

And this is my caution to the Dems who let Reagan-Bush off the hook in 1993 and Bush-Cheney off in 2009: the American people demand accountability. In 1974 Gerald Ford used the extremely self serving-and transparently partisan-argument that he was pardoning Nixon to allow the American people to ‘move on’, ‘look forward not backward’ and ‘to heal.’

But the majority of Americans wanted Nixon to go to prison-as he would have been had he not been President. Ford would lose his own election in 1976 and it’s pretty clear his pardon of Nixon was the proximate cause.

As noted in (Chapter B) Bill Clinton and the Congressional Dems also chose to shutdown the Irangate investigations into Reagan-Bush-thereby forever whitewashing them of any crimes-under the premise of Clinton’s  theme song no doubt: don’t stop thinking about tomorrow. 

The GOP thanked him for his magnanimity by opening up an investigation into Whitewater- that happened in the 1970s-ie, prior to the allegations regarding Reagan-Bush and Irangate. Far from ‘moving forwards not backwards’ the GOP even on a chronological basis took us further backwards-as the GOP is doing today by talking about not 2016 but prior to 2013 when Clinton used the email server, much less Uranium One back in 2003.

In 2009 Obama and the Democrats did much the same thing-they chose not to have any hearings much less prosecutions of any Bush-Cheney criminals-or Wall Street criminals. Obama was repaid by the GOP much as they repaid Bill Clinton-with repeated and constant kicks in the teeth. Nor did Obama’s extreme charitableness do anything to impress voters as he was shellacked  just like Bill was in 1994.

While in the minds of Obama/Clinton this one sided show of Grace was meant to help the country ‘heal and move forward’ the opposite actually occurred. Giving Nixon a pass in 1974 only made Americans more cynical-and ironically enough helped the GOP as the more cynical people are about government the more the GOP benefits politically.

Similarly what Clinton did in 1993 seriously hurt himself politically-if nothing else had legitimate investigations into Reagan-Bush-Iran been going on it would at least have taken some of the oxygen from the illegitimate investigations the GOP ran; of course, Janet Reno-at the direction of Clinton-chose to empower  Ken Starr’s  Independent Counsel. The original predicate for the Whitewater investigation was: you guessed it, Vince Foster.

Footnote: As usual Hillary was right-her instinct had been to resist the calls to appoint Ken Starr but Bill was snookered into it.

The liberal media who had long since decided that Irangate-or even just Iran-Contra- was a loopy ‘conspiracy theory’ sunk its teeth into Whitewater with great gusto.

After Obama let the Bush era criminals off the hook, it led to great anger and cynicism on the part of much of the young liberals who had supported him in 2008. They would ultimately turn against him and were a major part of the drive for the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign. The feeling was that the establishment Democrats had their chance and as usual they had punted.

But let’s be clear-this is a time to talk about more than mere political expediency. But even from that lens, pointedly refusing to impeach Trump unless his own GOP co-conspirators support impeaching him I believe will be a political disaster. But if you care about the health of our country, of our Republic then this time lets get it right: let’s hold all responsible fully accountable. Anything less is bad politics and bad morality.

In summation: think of This Book as a Huge 400 Foot Tall Oak-almost as tall as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? LOL. There are so many facts, theories, speculations, and leads in it. Again, my highest hope-for this very tall tree of a book-is that it will inspire passion, interest, and most of all future study and research. Some may choose to focus just on a single branch. Others on pieces of bark, yet others even analyzing a single leaf.

What puts all the different stands and tracks together is a fervent passion that the truth of what happened in 2016-and that the GOP’s historical perfidy, it’s Machiavellianism,and just plain treason come to light. Indeed, think of this book as putting the entire post New Deal Republican party on trial.

UPDATE: I implore Speaker Pelosi-History is on the phone won’t you take it’s call?

If the Dems want to see what real oversight looks like check out the way parliament has checked Boris Johnson’s anti democratic coup.

Or if any GOPers actually wonder what party over country might look like:

 

 

 

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