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Another big day for coincidences-which take a lot of planning.
It’s been easier-more plausible for Occam’s Razor reasons-for a long time to believe there is collusion-technically the counterintelligence investigation is looking for coordination-than to believe there isn’t-of course the MSM has preferred the much more verbose theory that it’s just all a bunch of coincidences. I personally have believed it since Trump said those fateful words on July 27, 2016.
I mean to not to believe it, to actually argue the opposite, to dismiss it as highly unlikely takes some real gymnastics. You have to be a big believer in coincidence. Malcom Nance always talks about thinking like an intelligence agent and one major part of that is not being a big believer in coincidences.
In yesterday’s big announcement by Rod Rosenstein of 12 more Russian individuals indicted for their part in interfering in the 2016 election a truly shocking coincidence was revealed: the hacking of Clinton’s office begun the day Trump said ‘Russia, if you’re listening.’
“The broad outlines of Friday’s indictment by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, charging 12 Russians with conspiracy, identity theft, and money laundering in connection with hacking during the 2016 presidential election, are not surprising. The hacking of the Democratic National Committee has been public knowledge since July 2016, and even then, the authorities publicly stated that the perpetrators were Russian government officials. Other details, such as the apparent involvement of WikiLeaks and Trump adviser Roger Stone, were also known. Some of the details, however, are striking.”
“On July 27, 2016, at a Trump press conference in Florida, the candidate referred to 33,000 emails that an aide to Hillary Clinton had deleted from the former secretary of state’s personal email server. The DNC had recently announced the Russian intrusion, and Trump speculated that if Russia broke into the DNC, it would have accessed Clinton’s emails, too.”
“By the way, if they hacked, they probably have her 33,000 emails,” Trump said. “I hope they do. They probably have her 33,000 emails that she lost and deleted. Because you’d see some beauties there.”
“Trump had good reason to believe that Russia was listening. The previous month, his son, Donald Jr.; son-in-law, Jared Kushner; and campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, had a meeting at Trump Tower with Russians who they believed were offering damaging information about Clinton. (The meeting wasn’t revealed to the public until 2017, and both the Russians and the Trump campaign officials say no dirt was exchanged.) Prior to the meeting, Trump Jr. had received an email stating that the meeting was “ part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
Yes, and it turns out that the oppo dirt the Russians offered to Donald Jr, Manafort, and Kushner wasn’t junk-to the contrary the dirt would turn out to be DCLeaks.
UPDATE: I wrote this chapter initially on July 16, 2018 but we’ve since learned through Michael Cohen’s own testimony-both in court and before Congress-that Cohen-Felix Sater-Trump continued to pursue theTrump Tower Moscow project until June of 2016 and only stopped after the Washington Post report of the hacking of the DNC.
Yet another coincidence?
Back to the Atlantic:
“Mueller’s indictment offers new evidence that Russia was listening—and acting on Trump’s request. The indictment charges 12 officers of the GRU, Russia’s military-intelligence agency, with hacking intended to interfere with the election.”
As Paul Waldman says for a ‘witch hunt’ there sure are a lot of witches.
Yesterday’s blockbuster report also provided information on an American who communicated with Guccifer 2.0-that persion is clearly Roger Stone. Indeed, Stone himself is not trying to deny it. He admits ‘it’s probably me.’
That’s the old Nixonian dirty trickster’s MO-once the truth can’t possibly be denied-cop to it. But only then:
Roger Stone vs Roger Stone
Stone to CNN (@mj_lee) in AM: “My contact with the campaign in 2016 was Donald Trump. I was not in regular contact with campaign officials”
Stone to CNN (@ChrisCuomo) in PM: "I certainly acknowledge that I was in touch with Trump campaign officials" https://t.co/j4qN8RC6jL
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) July 14, 2018
UPDATE: We’ve since seen this that Stone spoke with top Trump campaign officials publicly confirmed with the public release of his emails with Jerome Corsi on the one hand and the Trump campaign on the other. There has also been reporting that Stone was in regular contact with Trump himself and then Cohen testified before Congress that he overheard Stone tell Trump on speakerphone about the DNC emails dump in advance.
Again the only way you can figure out what happened in Trump-Russia is not to be too big a believer in coincidences-like the Church of the Savvy. I wouldn’t necessarily say they don’t happen but when they’re too convenient your instinct should be for skepticism. As for the leak of the Wikileaks emails literally timed for the morning of the Dem convention back in 2016 I never for one moment believed that was just all a lucky coincidence for Trump and friends. And now the documents from Mueller released yesterday show conclusively that it was planned by Julian Assange himself.
Per Mueller’s report Wikileaks and the Russians coordinated the timing for leaking the emails; this validates a theory of Hillary Clinton-and many observers-that the Russians wouldn’t have known how to navigate the intricacies of American politics so skillfully on their own-this was, of course, exquisitely skillful-the emails were leaked at the absolutely optimal moment.
“The conversations between the Russians and Wikileaks allegedly took place on or around July 6, 2016 — a few weeks before the Democratic National Convention was held in Philadelphia from July 25 through to July 28.”
“Around July 6, Wikileaks corresponded with the Russian intelligence officers, saying, “if you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after.”
“ok … i see,” the Russians responded.
“Then, Wikileaks explained their motives for wanting information that would reveal the tension between the Sanders and Hillary camps.”
“we think trump has only a 25% chance of winning against hillary … so conflict between bernie and hillary is interesting,” Wikileaks responded.
There you go. I mean this is clear collusion right here-lock, stock, and barrel. Clearly Assange wanted Trump to win and realized that while his chances weren’t great maximizing the Bernie-Hillary wars was a very good way of improving his chances.
So the big takeaway-is don’t believe in coincidences too convenient. In that vein it was very interesting to hear recently that the Trump Russia White House considered giving Assange an immunity deal-supposedly in exchange for not leaking the huge CIA trove of documents but you know what Trump really cared about was Assange’s claim that he could ‘prove it wasn’t the Russians.’
As yesterday’s Mueller docs showed, Assange could ‘prove’ no such thing. But, if you are skeptical of coincidences too convenient you don’t see what Assange did for the Trump campaign and what Trump now in office offered Assange as all just a big convenient coinky dink.
Speaking of not believing in coincidences too convenient it’s tough to believe that the timing for Mueller and Rod Rosenstein just two days before Trump’s big summit with Putin wasn’t planned-it also helps that it was a day after the GOP’s shameful Strzok show trial where they are now investigating not Russian interference and possible collusion but the investigators.
Even after Mueller’s bombshell revelations Trump continued to bleat on about ‘I really think we might be able to get along with Russia. I think Putin and I really might get along and that’s a very good thing.’
Why wouldn’t you? He rigged the election for you and he’s effectively running US foreign policy to the point that you’re actually threatening NATO.
UPDATE: Since writing this there was a Guardian piece alleging that Manafort actually met Assange three times between 2013 and 2016, the last being in March of 2016 shortly before joining the Trump campaign.
Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and visited around the time he joined Trump’s campaign, the Guardian has been told.
Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016 – during the period when he was made a key figure in Trump’s push for the White House.
In dog bites man news Manafort totally denied it.
In a statement, Manafort denied meeting Assange. He said: “I have never met Julian Assange or anyone connected to him. I have never been contacted by anyone connected to WikiLeaks, either directly or indirectly. I have never reached out to Assange or WikiLeaks on any matter.”
It is unclear why Manafort would have wanted to see Assange and what was discussed. But the last apparent meeting is likely to come under scrutiny and could interest Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia
This is one of those curious stories that the MSM decides is yucky-for no particularly cogent reason. The (no so) Smart Set have boycotted the story in droves. The fact that no MSM source has corroborated it has been treated as evidence it’s false-because in the Trump investigations absence of evidence is treated as evidence of absence-the opposite of how Clinton scandals are treated. In Emailgate it was presumed she would be indicted or very possible would be before any evidence was put forward-none ever was in fact.
While mere allegations are enough to impeach a Clinton, mounds of evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing can be found and it’s ‘yeah but it’d be divisive to impeach him.’
Speaking of the MSM double standard recently they completely buried the story of a Trump campaign aide accusing ‘the President’ of forcibly kissing her during the campaign. After one day of stories they’ve never spoken of it again. If this were Bill Clinton they’d be demanding Hillary’s impeachment by nightfall-as anything that Bill does is her fault.
But the Manafort-Assange story was treated as yucky at the outset.
Why? One reason is that it could be the smoking gun that collusion conspiracy did happen and the MSM has long since decided that even if Trump is Al Capone he’s certainly not Jules Rosenberg. He may be guilty of small bore corruption and tax evasion-maybe bank fraud-but ‘collusion’ is too farfetched.
What’s curious is while the Church of the Savvy rejected the idea of Manafort-Assange meetings as self evidently absurd the NYTimes itself also had a scoop connecting Manafort to Assange but this one in 2017.
The story here is that Manafort attempted to persuade Ecuador to hand Assange over the US-ie, Donald Trump.
Mr. Manafort made the trip mainly to see if he could broker a deal under which China would invest in Ecuador’s power system, possibly yielding a fat commission for Mr. Manafort.
But the talks turned to a diplomatic sticking point between the United States and Ecuador: the fate of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
In at least two meetings with Mr. Manafort, Mr. Moreno and his aides discussed their desire to rid themselves of Mr. Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012, in exchange for concessions like debt relief from the United States, according to three people familiar with the talks, the details of which have not been previously reported.
They said Mr. Manafort suggested he could help negotiate a deal for the handover of Mr. Assange to the United States, which has long investigated Mr. Assange for the disclosure of secret documents and which later filed charges against him that have not yet been made public.
Within a couple of days of Mr. Manafort’s final meeting in Quito, Robert S. Mueller III was appointed as the special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election and related matters, and it quickly became clear that Mr. Manafort was a primary target. His talks with Ecuador ended without any deals.
As usual, the Times bends over backwards to assure is this proves nothing bad about ‘President Trump.’
Chris Cillizza thought Clinton should have been rejected by the voters over optics alone-sure there’s nothing to Emailgate but it just looks bad but optics don’t hurt ‘President Trump’-to accuse him of anything you need absolute evidence. Or he’ll send out mean tweets ’emboldening his supporters’ and the world will allegedly end.
Unlike the Clintons he’s actually innocent until proven-beyond any possible doubt-forget reasonable, it must be beyond unreasonable doubt.
There is no evidence that Mr. Manafort was working with — or even briefing — President Trump or other administration officials on his discussions with the Ecuadoreans about Mr. Assange. Nor is there any evidence that his brief involvement in the talks was motivated by concerns about the role that Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks played in facilitating the Russian effort to help Mr. Trump in the 2016 presidential election, or the investigation into possible coordination between Mr. Assange and Mr. Trump’s associates, which has become a focus for Mr. Mueller.
There may have been ‘no evidence’ but the most simple logic told you he was there on Trump’s behalf. How else could he swing that deal for Assanget-if he wasn’t representing Trump? Why would the Ecuadorean government waste time speaking to him if they didn’t believe he could get Trump on board?
And we now know that Manafort continued to advise Trump after he entered the Russia House about how to push back against the accusation of Russian Collusion-of all things. Considering that Manafort had to leave the campaign because of his ties to the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska it’s more than a little ironic that Trump imagined Manafort was the guy to ally those fears.
So it’s pretty plausible that Manafort was there on Trump’s behalf. There was also the news that Russia’s favorite-now former-Congressman, Dana Rohrbacher-sought a pardon for Assange in exchange for Assange somehow providing ‘evidence it wasn’t Russia.’
Roger Stone also sought a pardon for Assange.
Stone and Manafort have been friends and business partners for 40 years now-38 in 2017.
But the SmartSet has decided any connection between Assange and Manafort is self evidently absurd so the Times has basically relegated its own reporting on this to the Ash Heap of History or something.
And they ignore the connection between Stone and Assange-even though, As Abramson argues-the Occam”s Razor theory for which Trump senior aide emailed Stone on July 23, 2016 to find out what else Assange had would logically be Manafort. But the MSM has decided the notion of any connection between Manafort and Assange is self evidently absurd.
Speaking of Manafort guess who he said these words of?
"There is no Russian influence in this campaign. The perception that he is the candidate of Russia against the interests of the West is bad reporting.”
Paul Manafort, 2007 https://t.co/oA6yjbYQOV— Expand the Court (@ProChoiceMike) March 21, 2019
LOL-the hint is he said them in 2007. While they sound exactly like the GOP co-conspirators CIRCA 2019 regarding Fuhrer Trump Manafort was actually referring to Yanukovych, the Russian leaning Ukrainian dictator.
FN: Here’s another question: Who did Manafort speak those words to? None other than Luke Harding during an interview in the Ukraine back in 2007
UPDATE 2.0: Regarding the idea that the Russian hackers hacked Clinton’s office the night Trump said Russia if you’re listening potentially makes Trump himself guilty of Conspiracy to Commit Computer Crimes a la Peter Smith.
As we saw in Chapter A it’s possible the late Smith paid the Russian hackers-that was his stated intent in the emails he sent Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon.
There is some evidence to suggest that he did in fact pay them. If so, were the hackers who hacked Clinton’s office on July 27, 2016 working for Smith?