87 Louise Mensch: Comeygate and Russian Collusion One Operation

UPDATE: Cracka With Attitude is out

 

This is another chapter where the substance at least is in good shape-the editing job is around housecleaning issues…

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3ekk5/kane-gamble-cracka-back-online-after-a-two-year-internet-ban

I know adding her to this conversation is kicking the Hornet’s Nest. During the peak #Resistance years-2017-2018-Ms. Mensch was a very polarizing researcher.

She’s been accused of just making stuff up-this was particularly true when she wrote about ‘sealed indictments’ of Trump and his kids in 2017. To be clear my focus in this chapter is solely what she wrote about Comeygate in the immediate aftermath of Comey electing Trump.

I can’t attest to everything she’s ever written and confirm it’s all anything close to 100% true-though this is also true of all those MSM journalists who love to marginalize independents like a Mensch, a Seth Abramson, an Emptywheel, etc.

FN: Perhaps less EW as she does have some mainstream connections-and I know that both Wheeler and Seth will vigorously protest being in the same category as Mensch-in my opinion they spend too much time. But more on this below.

But who is going to attest to 100% of what Devlin Barrett  ever wrote? And no-the simple fact that he’s never been accused of being unprofessional is not dispositive of much. It just underscores he’s part of the savvy club-as long as you’re in the club you get A LOT more allowances.

Regarding some of Mensch’s more infamous predictions-again, I have no interest in defending them-or condemning them for that matter. The scope here is simply what she wrote about Comeygate-which has held up remarkably well. I would note that she’s not the only one who made dramatic predictions that didn’t come true. About a week before Bill Barr’s fake exoneration letter John Schindler posted a link to the Spectator’s Cockburn who wrote a piece that claimed Barr and Mueller both agreed to indict all three of Trump’s kids plus son in law Jared Kushner but disagreed on Trump-Mueller wanted to indict but Barr disagreed. 

FN: I can’t link directly to Schindler’s tweet-assuming he didn’t take it down as he later blocked me-after convincing me to pay for his second account behind a paywall-talk about a big mistake. He blocked me for disagreeing with him. If one thing is clear it’s that it’s ALWAYS a a con to pay someone for their tweets-at least for a second account-the same thing happened with Stedman though he at least later shutdown his paywall account admitting he wasn’t offering much value.

The reality is that if someone has a public account it’s doubtful they will tell you anything new behind a paywall-much less anything worth paying them a premium.

It’s hard not to see what Cockburn did there as anything less than disinformation-after all he writes for the Spectator. Was Schindler in on it? While he wrote a number of early scoops on Russian Collusion once Barr’s fake exoneration letter he seemed to lose all interest-after getting the hopes of #Resistance liberals up sky high.

But again, if someone does want to do a close reading of Mensch’s other work over the last four and a half years-rather than just dismiss her on Twitter without reading any of it-they’re welcome to it. I’m certainly not saying everything she’s written adds up-as I haven’t read it all closely enough for that at this point-again no question she did make some dramatic predictions in 2017-2018 that didn’t come true-but again she’s hardly alone in that.

But her Emailgate cum Comeygate work adds up and adds significantly to the picture the information this author has garnered-and documented elsewhere in this book regarding the Stone-Corsi-Peter Smith nexus.

So once again, my only focus here is her Comeygate work-what she calls the Carolina Conspiracy nothing else.

FN: While some predictions she made didn’t come close to coming true, OTOH the assumption that her early posts on Alpha Bank have been debunked has the inconvenience of not being true-despite all the GOP co-conspirator and Savvy commentary-Durahm’s failure to indict Clinton’s lawyer for discussing the story,etc- to the contrary the Alpha B  ank story still hasn’t been debunked. But the distinction between absence of evidence and evidence of absence remains too subtle for the Conventional Wisdom

Although again there is this weird conventional premise that if someone makes predictions and they don’t happen this proves they were lying-or maybe according to Trump’s GOP co-conspirators belong in prison.

After the Mueller Report Barr’s fake exoneration letter, there was this weird savvy narrative being pushed by Erik Wemple and Friends that Rachel Maddow needed to publicly apologize based on their-erroneous-belief that ‘Mueller proved NO COLLUSION’, and that, in any case, Trump clearly wasn’t charged. Ergo, Wemple and Friends reasoned, Maddow had been irresponsible in predicting Trump would be charged.

This was faulty logic on a few levels starting with the trivial fact that Maddow herself had never predicted Trump would be charged and even if she had so what? She actually had not but many #Resistance liberals had predicted Trump would be charged. Not me so much-I was always far from superconfident he’d be charged.  I also did think some folks talked too much about Trump being charged-setting themselves up for disappointment.

But making a prediction that doesn’t happen doesn’t prove you were lying maybe you were wrong or overly optmistic. Imagine if it did-what would all the Republicans and savvy pundits in 2016 predicting Hillary would be charged do now?

To be sure even here there’s a distinction between making a prediction in good faith but proving to be wrong or misinformed and purported journalists like Mensch-or Cockburn-who make a prediction based on phony or overhyped sources.

Wether or not Mensch or Cockburn did this is a fair question. Again this chapter focuses on her Comeygate work-which was not based primarily on real or imagined sources and which was not about predictions.

End FN

Just one point regarding the interminable squabble among Twitter folks over who’s a ‘real journalist’ and who’s a fake: it’s a losing game; nobody changes their mind once they’re dug in on Twitter so why bother? Meanwhile valuable time that could be used for productive work is lost.

What I’ve noticed is that all the-what I would call-#Resistance writer cum researcher types-Stedman, Abramson, Emptywheel to say nothing of Mensh tend to dismiss the work of the others. At the end of the day much of it seems to be the self defeating game of rivalry.

FN: And no doubt all of these folks I just named would reject being part of any “#Resistance”-I’m rare in taking this phrase as a compliment even if in the mouths of the Savvy it’s anything but.

End FN

In 2017 Abramson took the time to tweet about Mensch-‘warning’ folks that she’s basically a fabulist and grifter. It’s ironic really as many say this about himself. Even Emptywheel has made it known she has no use for Abramson.

What’s going on-is it that basically indie journalists are nevertheless trying to marginalize other indie journalists-to somehow ingratiate themselves with the Devlin Barretts, Maggie Habermans, and Dean Baquets of the world? Essentially they are trying to ingratiate themselves to the “savvy”MSMers by engaging in their respectability journalism-just as the MSMers marginalize them, they attempt to marginalize fellow indie journos-likely because they view them as rivals. It’s a very unfortunate attitude one apparently shared by all of them.

So for instance, EW is quick to declare that her and Seth ‘aren’t on the same side…’ Yet it seems to me that they are on the same side in this one important respect: they want the truth about what happened in that election. We’ve still far from having gotten anything like the full truth-hence the need for this book

Note that they all try to do it-everyone does it to Seth-even EW. Then he tries to do it to Mensch. If you want to navigate the substance of Seth and EmptyWheel’s-pointless-Twitter fight-pointless as what always happens in Twitter fights like this is everyone just talks past each other-I don’t agree with Ms. Wheeler that that not agreeing the Steele Dossier is garbage proves your a hack.

I do think she has an interesting theory that at least a lot of the SD could be Russian disinformation. Certainly the claim that Michael Cohen went to Prague to pay Russian hackers-as opposed to say Paul Manafort-may well be disinfo. But among the Russian Collusion researcher types-again my characterization not their’s-her deep skepticism of the SD is not the consensus view-Stedman clearly believes much of the Dossier is accurate-including that there may well have been a ‘pee tape.’

Recently though we got the coup de grace: it emerged that the FBI continued to speak to Steele during the Trump years-contrary to the story they’d put out that they ceased all contact with him after he spoke to David Corn-in his outrage over Comey’s Letter.

So while I love Ms. Wheeler and would agree she’s right 99% of the time-this is that 1%. Or at least so the FBI believes…

UPDATE: In saying 99% right perhaps I’m being a little generous, maybe 96%. She did mistakenly predict that Bill Barr would play the Mueller report straight.

Beyond this quibble though the mistake was not insignificant as it tells you something about her perspective-her tendency to (somewhat)trust the consensus, the conventional wisdom at least the  CW among legal insiders and those who report on them-she has clearly shown a tendency to dismiss and marginalize almost anyone who writes or discusses the same things as she does as being uninformed, of not doing all the hard research work she does-during the debates over Merrick Garland she even dismissed Adam Schiff-as a liar-and Andrew Weissman-as not understanding how a DOJ investigation works(!)

Find links Mike

Despite his role in the Mueller investigation?

End UPDATE

FN: Here is a new piece from Marcy on the SD where she argues any conversation about disinformation has to start with Oleg Deripaska’s role. 

Abramson himself has written eloquently about the MSM’s deleterious efforts to marginalize indies so you wish that he-and Marcy, Scott and Friends-would forswear such efforts. What should matter is getting the truth where you’re open to getting it even if someone else discovered it first.

FN:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/22/trump-russia-too-complex-to-report-we-must-turn-curatorial-journalism

Again it’s unfortunate that all the #Resistance writers-sorry my phrase but have to call them something and it’s a helpful shorthand-see each other as competitors to discredit rather than learn from each other and pool resources-as I attempt to do in this book.

What I mean is in a better world all these researchers would read each other and use each other as resources to get to the truth. To be clear all I’m talking about is not going out of your way to tell your followers ‘Don’t read X or don’t read Y’-if someone is a grifter cum hack-a la Claude Taylor-they will figure it out on their own. Trust the readers to get it right regarding other indie journos.

To be sure, Ms. Mensch has not helped herself with her own Twitter antics where she took to accusing anyone who disagrees with her or tweeted something she doesn’t like of being ‘a Russian agent.’ Understandably this tactic hurt her own reputation.

FN: By late 2018 there was a lot of wasteful sectarian battles between liberals who agree with a particular indie journo and those who don’t agree. There were folks doing some kind of deep investigation of others who agree with them 99% of the time because one hated Mensch or Abramson,  Caroline Knapp, or whoever, and the other disagreed.

What I’ve learned from my own tough experience is that it’s best where possible to avoid Twitter fights altogether-even if you get to claim you had the last word in a Twitter snarkfest nothing is gained other than lost time. Personally with the threat our democracy has been under-and continues to be under-anytime I’m not learning and improving my understanding of what happened is time lost-the worst sin today IMHO.

If someone criticizes something you tweeted there’s nothing wrong with simply ignoring them or if you think it is productive then offer up one well considered response. If their response to your response is basically snarky and nonresponsive that’s your cue to disengage-mute, block if you must-but don’t keep it going.

But in my experience once someone is dug in on Twitter they will just keep arguing no matter how pointless their argument. They’re caught up in having the last word rather than adding to their store of knowledge.

While I would encourage anyone who wants to learn something to read Mensch I would not encourage them to engage with her on Twitter-certainly don’t argue with her-or anyone else ideally. That she threw around accusations of someone being a Russian asset so casually was a disservice to herself-as she does have a lot of writing worth reading-and the larger movement for the truth of the 2016 election.

It’s like a real rape survivor later calling anyone she has words with on Twitter a rapist-it’s an unfair tactic but it’s also counterproductive to her cause. There really has been a lot of Russian penetration of our politics but calling everyone and anyone a Russian asset indiscriminately discredits the #Resistance. It just enables the MSMers to gloat ‘Look at these crazy ‘McCarthyite’ liberals who think everyone is a Russian agent. Russian Collusion never happened, of course…’

Indeed at one point Mensch even called me a Russian agent-in the course of my disagreement with Schindler she piped up that she somehow could prove I myself was in bed with Putin.

So again I wouldn’t engage with her on Twitter but I would encourage you to read her. There may well have been some off base stories but on Comeygate she got there early and looking back it becomes clear how much she got right.

She does also get one thing wrong-a very crucial point which looking back might have been behind her attempted to slander me on Twitter. But more on that below.

In writing about Comeygate at all she’s in very rarefied company-as noted elsewhere in this book, all the MSM wanted to discuss prior to 2016 were the damn emails and it was the only thing they didn’t want to talk about after. Until present there has been very little work on Comeygate-she’s in very small company-her along with Abramson, Schoneblog all wrote extensively about it in the immediate aftermath of Comey’s election of Trump and later Who.What.Why did some great work and there were a few big pieces in the few weeks before Comey was fired in late April-early May 2017.

And she’s one of the very few who’s figured out that Russian Collusion and Rogue Agent Collusion is one operation.

To be sure I believe Seth Abramson also at least touches on this idea but he speaks only generally. She alone-previous to this book of course- got to the question of how exactly Huma’s emails got on Weiner’s laptop in the first place.

FN: Abramson discusses the fact that Huma was baffled how the emails got on her laptop but doesn’t conjecture on the question of how they might have gotten there. 

“Abedin told people after the discovery that “she [was] unsure how her emails could have ended up” on the computer the FBI found them on, suggesting that if she’d ever been contacted by the FBI in early October she could have helped them dialogue through the situation (as the idea that she had deliberately withheld these emails from the FBI never made any sense, given the Bureau’s unwavering insistence that Abedin had always been cooperative with them, and the pointlessness of Abedin risking federal Obstruction of Justice charges and federal prison time to hide emails that were—as we now know—not just without any evidentiary value but in fact duplicates of emails she had already turned over to FBI investigators)”

And what she wrote way back in January, 2017 fits like a glove with the major theme of this book-the Stone-Corsi-Peter Smith Nexus. In Chapter A we looked at how both Stone and Corsi independently admitted/ boasted/confessed-compulsion to confess a la Theodir Reik…-that they worked with rogue anti Clinton agents in the NYPD and NY FBI to plant the emails on Weiner’s laptop.

“I have an overarching theory of Russia’s attack on America and the West. Here it is.”

There have not been a series of attacks on America and Europe by Vladimir Putin. There has been one single operation; it is the same operation.

This  has also been my theory from the earliest days after Comey elected Trump. This was always my presumption.  For a large part because unlike anyone else-including Mensch-I was aware since mid 2017 that Roger Stone also had a role in Rogue Agent Collusion. I mean even prior to seeing Stone’s Intercept interview and reading his book on the 2016 election, I-unlike the conventional wisdom or even most of the unconventional wisdom-suspected that there was a connection. What happened with the Comey Letter was just too fortuitous for me to believe it was a lucky accident. No-such ‘luck’ is made. No one gets THAT lucky. As Nance says-coincidences take a lot of planning.

And we’ve gotten a glimpse at how much planning there really was-indeed, with all the self praise Trump engages in for once you really have to be impressed-I mean somehow back in August, 2015 Donald Nostradamus Trump accurately predicted that Weiner would win the election for him.

Chapter B for link.

The point to remember is that the animating obsession of the GOP co-conspirators all along were the damn emails-Hillary’s emails-2016 was truly the But Her Emails election-all the MSM cared about were her emails-wether on her server or the DNC emails stolen by the Russians.

The GOP co-conspirators-in this book we speak of the Stone-Corsi-Peter Smith Nexus but that’s an abbreviation of course-there were many GOP co-conspirators-this GOP conspiracy-inside the FBI and without-was very-uh, vast. 

You think about Annalise Keating and how she got away with everything how she got away with murder and her genius was to make sure her fingerprints were never on anything-everyone else did her dirty work. If A is the mastermind and B is A’s hitman and kills C who goes to prison? B of course-in even trying to make the case against A you get accused of being ‘a conspiracy theorist.’

This is why to this day the savvy conventional MSM wisdom is that Oswald acted alone-even though Congress itself in the late 1970s dismissed the Lone Nut Theory of JFK’s assassination.

FN: The ‘savvy’ conventional ‘wisdom’ doesn’t ‘believe in conspiracy theories’-unless it’s one about Hillary Clinton.

What the saving grace for Emailgate OTOH -similarly to the assassination of JFK-was the very vastness of it-HRC was right from the beginning way back in 1998 it WAS vast, though it got even ‘vaster’ a lot more vaster by 2016. Indeed, we’re now to understand that the reason Michael Horowitz is refusing to release his report on the leaks of the rogue anti Clinton agents is-there are too many of them!

But the moment you start speaking of a vast conspiracy then-well, you must be a conspiracy nut.

So even though we speak of the Stone-Corsi-Peter Smith Nexus there were many more GOP co-conspirators in the Nexus. Michael Flynn was obviously another co-conspirator -as he was working with the late Peter Smith. So when we write Smith, Flynn is also implied. There were many others-Steve Bannon-remember when everyone thought he was out of the loop on all this?

FN: For much more on Bannon Chapter D.

Bannon’s buddy Erik Prince. Rudy Giuliani who’s in trouble yet again now. Rudy was speaking to senior FBI people-in the IG report Comey clearly knows who these folks are.

FN: Trouble is WE need to know but Horowitz won’t release the report-and the Democrats-not even Nadler- won’t ask for it. Chapter A.

Here’s what Loretta Lynch told the IG regarding her conversation with Comey in their conversation post his disastrous-not to say atrocious-Comey Letter.

Why can’t they Andy McCabe all these ‘senior people?’ If they can destroy his career and take his pension after all his years of service why not do the same to the 100 other agents leaking out anti Clinton stuff at the same time McCabe did his leak? Because the FBI is a very Republican place-Chapter C.

In any case I always thought Russian Collusion and Rogue FBI Agent Collusion converged-originally based mostly on intuition and common sense but then there were the Confessions of both Stone and Corsi-of course Peter Smith can tell no tales.

Ironically  he was a Vince Foster Truther in the 1990s yet Smith’s own death was much more suspicious than Vince Foster’s-interestingly, Corsi himself agrees Smith’s death was mysterious.

FN: I mean I’m no expert on suicides but is it common for a suicide to leave a note that says ‘no foul play whatsoever?’ I’m just asking…

UPDATE: CF Kendzior on the veritable, rich, and long tradition of very convenient suicides and deaths for people who KNOW TOO MUCH-going back to none other than Bill Casey who died the morning of his Iran-Contra testimony.

It’s also rather rich that Comey is stunned by the Hillary Derangement Syndrome of his FBI colleagues-he worked with Ken Starr to indict Hillary during the Whitewater witch hunt-as we see in Chapter Ken Starr there was bitter disappointment when they had to admit they couldn’t indict Hillary Clinton simply because they didn’t like her; indeed Comey would make it up to them a little when he indicted Martha Stewart despite her committing no crime. Then Comey spent years  as W’s deputy AG investigating the Marc Rich pardon. He was quite miffed with Eric Holder when Holder dropped it.

Look… The big picture is Comey by that time had spent 20 years hunting the Clintons so the idea that he was stunned by Clinton Derangement Syndrome is more than a little rich. At a minimum I guess you can most charitably say that Comey is stunningly lacking in self awareness.

End UPDATE.

Because the common goal of both the Russian hackers and the rogue FBI anti Hillary agents was: her damn emails-what Comey called The Golden Emails-Chapter E for much more.

While Stone’s book-and Intercept interview-was very eye opening, Corsi’s book was a true epiphany as he revealed that it was Peter Smith who they sent to the NYPD to weaponize Huma’s emails they’d acquired from the Judicial Watch lawsuit.

According to Corsi if it weren’t for Smith they would never have gotten the emails on the laptop. And that alone-the fact of Smith’s involvement confirms the convergence that as Mensch puts it it was one operation.

Mensch’s theory was that Russian hackers put Weiner’s emails on Weiner’s laptop.

“In 2012/13, a young Russian hacker called Yvegeny Nikulin, then 26, was using Snowden’s NSA techniques – stolen credentials – to hack LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring.

“Formspring, which shut down late 2013, was the app that Anthony Wiener used for his sexting.”

According to John Schindler, “a hacker”(Nikulin) was picked up in Prague, October 5th, on suspicion of interfering with the DNC and the Democrats in America’s election. He had been sought on an FBI red warrant.”

Yes she makes some claims here that many will find polarizing-like that Snowden was a Russian recruit. I will have a lot more to say about Snowden in another chapter but I have to say  I don’t find the Snowden defenders persuasive. They treat the idea that Snowden gave our secrets to Putin as ridiculous but what is truly ridiculous is the idea that Putin has let him stay-not just stay but work and flourish-in Russia all these years out of his-cough-deep commitment for human rights and the rights of journalists.

Tell it to Navalany, tell it to the Litviuks, tell it to Olga Misik.

At a minimum, Snowden is giving Putin a propaganda victory that he can use to justify what he’s doing to the many Navalanys and Olga Misiks in Russia. But save your breastbeating-Snowden is now a Russian citizen.

She also references my good buddy, John Schindler. I suggested above that he might have given out #Resistance folks like me paying him for the privilege of his meager tweets disinformation-like the Spectator’s Cockburn’s article  eight days before Barr’s fake exoneration letter that claimed Mueller and Bill Barr both agreed to indict the Trump kids-as well as kid in law Jared Kushner-and only disagreed about wether to indict Trump-Mueller was for it, Barr against.

It’s hard to imagine what ‘sources’ this could be based on. So you wonder if Schindller himself knowingly gave out such bad information-the better to demoralize #Resistance liberals when nothing of the kind occurred just over a week later. And he himself, after Barr’s fake exoneration letter, basically dropped the entire subject of Russian Collusion entirely.

So in saying this how could I trust something he said in 2017? But even if he were engaging in disinformation that’s how disinformation works-you send out a lot of accurate information then confuse and mislead by following up with disinformation. No doubt to anyone who accused him of nefarious conduct he’d reply by pointing out all the early reporting he did on Russian interference. But that could be because he knew it was coming out anyway and so glommed onto it as a trusted expert only to later lead folks to  disillusionment and demoralization.

In any case-however all this very well may be-what is a fact is that it’s completely plausible for someone to make assertions  over time some of which prove accurate and some which prove inaccurate-wether through error or deliberate attempt to mislead-it’s possible and probably typical for someone to give out some good information along with some and/or misinformation and disinformation.

In a sense it’s the human condition-none of us are either totally omniscient-nor 100% trustable in response to any question or issue you could ever ask us. It goes back to the old Russian fable: how is it possible for hot and cold to come from one mouth?

(OTOH Schindler’s piece is not every important to the story-though Mensch quotes him he doesn’t add anything so profound-it was a story told elsewhere as well. )

Back to Mensch:

It is my surmise that your hacker, Nikulin, sent a command buried in a virus earlier transmitted by Formspring to ‘wake up’ that old computer and either find, or place, emails from Huma Abedin on to it, and that you then contacted your moles inside the NYPD/  FBI NY and told them to “suddenly find” emails that, the expectation was, could not possibly be combed through in time before the election.”

The idea that Putin had ‘moles’ within the FBI will be dismissed by the Savvy-who ‘don’t believe in conspiracy theories’ particularly not ‘vast ones’ unless the subject of the vast conspiracy is Hillary Clinton-then anything is possible and everything is to be believed.

But again-Peter Smith… he’s the key. Corsi’s revelation of his central role in getting the emails on Weiner’s laptop confirms that Russian Collusion and Rogue FBI Agent Collusion was one operation. Because Smith had a central role in Russian Collusion. Remember his entire Raison d’être in 2016 was paying Russian hackers to steal HRC’s emails.

“Your agents within the FBI Field Office then did a number of additional things.”

“Firstly, they illegally spoke to any friendly press and the Trump campaign about putative ongoing criminal investigations into the Clinton Foundation and the matter of her email server.”

“They told Fox News’s Brett Baier that Hillary Clinton “Would soon be indicted” and this was reported on TV, and then retracted after the damage was done.”

FN: Emptywheel argues the Brett Baier leak was the most damaging to HRC.

Find EW link.

End FN

“They told your agents of influence, Rudy Giuliani and X Kallstrom, that ‘a group of active FBI agents’ had demanded Comey release his letter. Both of them stated as much, Mr. Giuliani specifying ‘active’ FBI agents.”

FN: Once again, Horowitz is holding back the names of these active agents. All of them can and should be Andy McCabed.

End FN

“They used your agent General Flynn – I scorn to use ‘of influence’ in this case, Flynn knew what he was doing – to say on live television that active FBI agents were talking to him about an going ‘criminal investigation’

Again Flynn was working closely with Smith to get the Russian hackers to steal her emails.

And they told the New York Times that the FBI ’Saw No Clear Ties to Russia’ in the matter of the Russian bank servers. And the New York Times printed it, even though they, the Times, knew it was false.”

FN: For more on yet another Dean Baquet fiasco see Chapter E.

End FN

So Mensch and I agree-our stories match and complement each other regarding the fact that the rogue FBI agents planted the emails on Weiner’s laptop-she argues Russia has moles within the agency itself which would be consistent with the fact that Smith had the central role in bringing NY FBI the emails. Remember, Smith’s raison d’etre was to pay Russian hackers, ideally with an intel background to hack HRC’s emails.

FN: Though if her and I disagree anywhere it’s her assumption that what happened was solely the fault of Russian influence. While the idea that Russian hackers were involved in planting the emails on the laptop makes sense in light of the fact of Smith’s central role, what she doesn’t appreciate is that quite apart from Russian influence, the FBI is a very Republican place and this was the basis of the Clinton Derangement Syndrome at the agency-not that Putin had to talk them into hating Hillary Clinton; rather they had a common enemy.

And to be clear I’m not claiming that the NYFBI literally had Russian agents within the agency’s own building so to speak what is plausible was that they were willing to accept information and assistance from anyone who would help them takedown THAT WOMAN even former intel agents of the KGB

It’s not that Russian agents got inside the NYFBI and directed it to steal the election from Hillary-rather it was in fact the Republican agents who have always run the agency that explain its extreme Clinton Derangement Syndrome. So “collusion” in 2016 amounted to that: the Clinton hating Republican party-both inside and outside the FBI-colluded with Putin’s Russia which now had its own brand of CDS

End UPDATE:

This disagreement will prove large-and explain her bizarre attack on me the day I had it out with Schindler and his minions.

We also agree with the story of how Weiner’s sexting was utilized by the GOP co-conspirators in the first place.

I wrote about Weinergate -and just how they caught him sexting in Chapter F. Mensch refers to it as The Carolina Conspiracy

“On December 8, 2016, according to reports, former FBI Director James Comey confirmed in testimony to the House Intelligence Committee two major planks of my reporting in both ‘Dear Mr. Putin, Let’s Play Chess‘ and this story: namely, that the Trump campaign’s Rudy Giuliani had advance, insider and politicized knowledge of the New York FBI Field Office’s “investigations” of Anthony Weiner. In November, 2016, I alleged as much in a FOIA request I made to the FBI. In December, 2016, I filed a civil lawsuit to this effect. In January, 2017, I published this site’s first article, in which I posited the then-controversial theory that James Comey (America’s “white knight” in a global chess game with Russia) was still investigating Donald Trump’s campaign, and that he already knew that Trump and Russia were involved in the discovery of Wiener’s laptop.

Mr. Comey said:

“Mid October, maybe a little bit later, Mr. Giuliani was making statements that appeared to be based on his knowledge of workings inside the FBI New York … that gave me a general concern that we may have a leak problem … and so I asked that it be investigated.”

Of course, we’ve still gotten no answers about the leak investigation-Horowitz has tabled it and the Dems have forgotten about it-though Giuliani has a whole host of new problems at present.

Overall it’s striking how much of her initial -The Carolina Conspiracy-theory has held up. She did later offer a few notable corrections.

FN: Though, again, we obviously sharply disagree on Comey-far from being a white knight he is the Bill. E. Buckner of Americjan politics.

“Corrections to my original theory, which was that Weiner was only talking to hackers pretending to be a teenage girl, were published when he admitted to sexting with at least one real minor. They can be found below the main story text. My article was corrected to reflect the fact that, as well as sexting with a bunch of male hackers, Weiner also sexted with at least one real underage victim.”

I wrote about this underage victim in Chapter G. Mensch is very apologetic as she’d initially conjectured there was no girl at all.

“It is very important to correct things that are wrong. I have two major corrections to make to my theory, articulated in this story, following Anthony Weiner’s guilty plea to one count of transferring obscene material to a minor and also of “attempting” to do so. 

“The first is that Weiner did indeed, by his own account and that of prosecutors, transfer sexual material to a minor. The plea deal document said this happened ‘in 2016’. Therefore, all the following must be true, and I was wrong about them: Weiner did sext with a minor; the case was not invented, there was a real crime, with a real girl.”

“That is a fact. This article was a theory, written as such. And that theory has been proven partly wrong by the facts, which I must acknowledge with prominence. There was a real crime and a very serious one.”

“No 15 year old girl should ever have to undergo abusive contact by a predator like Weiner. Nor is she in any way whatsoever responsible for any actions by other adults. She is a pure victim.”

A few points. If you’re a How to Get Away With Murder fan you understand very well that confessions are hardly dispostive of guilt. Or if you understand the gestapo tactics of Ken Starr-along with Kavanuagh and Comey-used in the 1990s. It’s not hard to grasp: a prosecutor insists that you confess to a crime that you know you didn’t commit or they’d get you put in prison for life or even face the death penalty.

To get a confession very often coercion is applied so that someone confessed isn’t itself proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

In the case of Monica Lewinsky she was coerced into cooperating with Ken Starr-who, again, Comey worked for at the time-by Starr who locked her in a hotel room for 24 hours while threatening to throw her and her mother in prison for 27 years-although there was not even a crime.

To the contrary-Starr basically entrapped the alleged “perjury” by not allowing Lewinsky to call her lawyer. This is not even close to a comprehensive list of Ken Starr’s abuses in his zeal to take down the Clintons.

UPDATE: Starr has recently deceased to which I can only say may he NOT rest in peace-unless that’s not what he wants…

FN: By the same token if a confession isn’t dispositive of guilt a denial is hardly dispositive of innocence-as fake former ‘President Trump’, Roger Stone  and James Comey-500 year flood-prove everyday.

I mentioned How to Get Away With Murder where in one episode Annalise made her own client confess to two murders she didn’t commit-one of which was done essentially at the direction of Annlise herself.

FN: She kidnapped Catherine, drugged her then falsely claimed Catherine killed Sinclair-the prosecutor who was pursuing Annalise for her role in the murder of her own-cheating-husband.

In retrospect, Weiner was ill served by his attorney who didn’t begin to push back harder against the charges until it was too late.  Annalise could have gotten him off-how? More below.

As for the idea that Weiner was a predator who preyed on a pure victim in this 15 year old girl the truth is much more complicated. Weiner wasn’t really preying on anyone. As we saw in Chapter F-her and her father sought Weiner out to entrap him into sexting with her. So as hard as it is to say in a sense she was the predator-she sought him out and admitted in an interview that she wanted to see if she could goad him into sexting. That’s hardly a ‘pure victim.’ If she’s a victim of anyone it’s her greedy Republican father who tarted out his own daughter to be the next Monica Lewinsky and kept the $35,000 she got for helping to entrap Weiner for himself.

Late in the game, Weiner’s lawyer begun to hit back and argue that he was entrapped but by then the cows were in the mountains. Annalise could have gotten Weiner off but his lawyer instead largely believed the prosecution that Weiner was a terrible predator who had preyed on a pure victim-rather than he was a weak man with a sex addiction who was entrapped-like offering needles to a drug addict.

FN: For more on Weiner’s lawyer see Chapter E.

Be all this as it may, Mensch’s initial theory holds up pretty well. Even if there were a real underage girl involved-as a co-conspirator-much of the actual messages were from dodgy hackers. So she has every right to insist that her underlying theory holds up:

“As far as the rest of the story goes, it is vital to emphasize, and I do, that if men pretended that they were an abuse victim, that is on them and them alone. Such actions, showing intent, would add to Weiner’s guilt and not diminish it. If grown men faked any thing, as coming from an underage victim of crime, that, again, is on them, and not in any way whatsoever on the victim of the crime.”

“I also want to be clear, however, that I am not correcting, or altering, my overall theory in this article on Giuliani, Weiner, Trump and Russia. I believe based on all the evidence that Mr. Weiner also sexted and emailed with grown men who were not the real girl he factually abused, but whom he thought were that same girl.”

It does hold up and in no way is undermined. However-I do have to disagree with her claim that the fact that Weiner’s guilty is not diminished but rather added to as he was actually speaking to adult male hackers not a 15 year old girl. Of course it does. Talking dirty to a 28 year old hacker isn’t a crime whereas speaking such to a 15 year old is. Yes you can argue he thought he was speaking to her-but in this thought he was entrapped and coerced-ironically the 15 year old herself was a co-conspirator.

FN: As I argue in Chapter B if she’s a victim of anyone it’s predominantly of her greedy Republican father who gave her the aspiration of being the next Monica Lewinsky.

Indeed, what this points to is the fact that the notion that there was no actual underage victim at all was never plausible. If there was no victim to identify they wouldn’t have had the pretext to arrest Weiner. What Mensch is is missing here is the understanding that they created their own nominal victim as the pretext. But this underscores all the more how problematical it is to call this young woman a victim-much less the ‘perfect victim’ Mensch refers to.

She was mostly Weiner’s nominal sexting partner. She sought him out and had some early conversations-again she publicly stated her intention in reaching out to him was to see if she could get him to sext-but much of the really pervy chats were with the adult male hackers.

FN: All of which further diminishes and calls into question Weiner’s guilt-there are laws against entrapment-you don’t just go out and find a drug addict then offer him cocaine.

But again she is quite right to argue that her underlying theory is in no way undermined-again to the contrary it’s improved as it was never plausible that there was no “victim”.-there had to be or they couldn’t have arrested Weiner.

Mensch’s story potentially adds color and detail to the theory put forward in this book. The book’s theory of course is that the Stone-Corsi-Peter Smith Nexus acquired Huma’s emails and somehow got them placed on Weiner’s laptop-this theory is based on the confessions of both Stone and Corsi. According to Corsi they would not have been successful in this without the late Peter Smith’s connections to the NYPD and NYFBI.

Mensch’s own version which she calls the Carolina Conspiracy totally complements the theory of this book-the Stone-Corsi-Peter Smith Nexus.

Mensch argues-as we laid out above-that Russian hackers placed the emails on the laptop.

According to John Schindler, “a hacker”(Nikulin) was picked up in Prague, October 5th, on suspicion of interfering with the DNC and the Democrats in America’s election. He had been sought on an FBI red warrant.

FN: Interesting that the location he was picked up in was Prague in light of the later controversy regarding the assertion of the Steele Dossier that Michael Cohen went to Prague to pay Russian Hackers. Emptywheel has been very skeptical about the SD and for some time I’ve felt her theory that it was full of Russian disinfo was plausible. However it’s very interesting to learn that the FBI continued to speak to Steele during the Illegitimate Trump years-and that there’s actually a SD2-Chapter H.

My guess: the basic outline of the original Dossier was right-that’s been confirmed in subsequent investigations-but some of the details may have been off-perhaps deliberately so. Michael Cohen has never wavered in his categorical denials he went to Prague-even after ‘coming into the Light’ and joining the good guys.

It’s possible then that the Prague meeting occurred but Cohen’s name was inserted to mislead and harm the Dossier’s credibility. Perhaps it was Manafort who paid the hackers? And of course, Peter Smith’s project was precisely the paying of Russian hackers as we’re currently discussing in this chapter.

End FN.

Back to Mensch:

“Mr. Putin, it is my surmise that some of the Russian moles inside US counter-intelligence work within the FBI’s criminal division, and particularly, within the New York field office.”

“It is my surmise that your hacker, Nikulin, sent a command buried in a virus earlier transmitted by Formspring to ‘wake up’ that old computer and either find, or place, emails from Huma Abedin on to it, and that you then contacted your moles inside the NYPD/  FBI NY and told them to “suddenly find” emails that, the expectation was, could not possibly be combed through in time before the election.”

FN: To be clear the idea that Nikulin is the hacker who placed Huma’s emails on Weiner’s laptop is Mensch’s conjecture not Schindler’s. He simply reported something-Nikulin was arrested in Prague that’s verifiable independently. So beyond my justification above for trusting Schindler here despite my hypothesis he may have deliberately given #Resistance liberals false hopes just to later dash them Schindler’s part in Mensch’s story is really not that large as the story of Nikulin’s arrest is documented elsewhere.

End FN

So this potentially fits very well with this book’s theory-based on Stone and especially Corsi’s own words-that Peter Smith had the emails placed on Weiner’s laptop. And when you remember that Smith paid Russian hackers to get HRC’s emails-Empywheel conjectures he may have paid the hackers who hacked Podesta’s emails-then Mensch certainly could be right: perhaps Nikulin was one of the Russian hackers Smith was paying.

FN: Nikulin was sentenced to 88 months-over 7 years-in a US prison last year. 

As for the sexts with Weiner, her conjecture that much it was actually coming from adult male hackers is highly plausible.

FN: Though, again, contrary to her revision post discovering there was a real underage girl sexting with Weiner where she claimed it in no way diminished Weiner’s guilt in point of fact-of course it does. It suggests that her involvement was mostly nominal after the initial introductions.

“I can exclusively report that there is ample evidence that suggests that Weiner was sexting not only with a 15 year old girl,   but, later and separately with hackers, working for Russia, including the North Carolina hacking group ‘Crackas With Attitude’, who hacked the head of the CIA, and a great many FBI agents, police officers, and other law enforcement officials.”

FN: Peter Smith may well have been paying them too…

“Who Are Crackas With Attitude and How Do They Connect Weiner and Russia?”

The hacker group’s name, sources say, is a pun. The letters USA in Cyrillic look like the American letters “CWA”. Be that as it may, CWA involved an underage English hacker who was arrested, and subsequent to his arrest, two of his co-conspirators in North Carolina were also arrested. Their attack on the United States was exceptionally serious. It involved obtaining emails from the then Director of the CIA and doxing hundreds of United States law enforcement and intelligence personnel.

FN: It turns out they are serious hackers who even hacked the CIA Director among doxing many law enforcement and intelligence officials.

“The 15 year old girl is also apparently from North Carolina, according to reports, and her father is an attorney”.

However, I can exclusively report that there is extensive evidence online that some “sexts” were not written by that 15 year old girl, but by members of the hacking gang.”

“All of Anthony Weiner’s sleazy sexting prior to this had been done with girls and women over the age of sexual consent. The youngest among them was 17 years old. In order for a case to be created, there needed to be an underage victim – and now, contrary to my earlier theory, we know there was one. It seems evident that just such an operation was planned by Russia; to use a victim in a criminal case, to allow Weiner’s computers to be seized and for Nikulin to thereafter plant his emails via Formspring.”

According to the “breaking story” of September 21st, by Alana Goodman in the Daily Mail, this girl had begun to sext with Weiner in January 2016. Her original story is odd and convoluted in a number of respects.”

FN: Literally the day after Weiner was on Chris Hayes-in his attempted comeback with a movie-the next day Goodman was claiming that she knew for a fact that Weiner was still sexting-Chapter I for more.

(Or was that Sydney Leathers?)

End FN

In any case as Mensch explains there are many dubious items in Alana Goodman’s initial scoop.

“Firstly, the story is dated September 21st, but publishing dates on videos contained within the story appear to indicate that they were uploaded some six days earlier.”

Secondly, the story contains a report that Weiner “provided emails that he says proved he was the subject of a hoax” but the journalist does not tell us why Mr. Weiner said these emails proved this.

Of course, there is the one sentence: “You got catfished by a dude.”

But, I believe the 15 year old girl’s letter, as quoted, was not written by her.

It is full of plagiarized quotes from novels. A second letter, ostensibly written by her to James Comey, appears to contain an odd phrase used by Julia Hahn, a former Breitbart writer whom Steve Bannon brought into the White House, and Michelle Bachman.

The author of that letter not only claims to be a “dude” ‘catfishing’, that is to say, a hacker pretending to be a woman or girl in order to entrap, but “her” email contains the following passages:

1. “My posture was consciously congruent to the back of my chair” – from the opening of Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

2. “We’re the middle children of history….” To the words “But we won’t.” – From Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

3. “Guilt is guilt. It doesn’t go away…” to the words “paralyzing you.” – From Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction, both by J.D. Salinger

4. “I was losing my soul….” To “…you still have a soul to lose.” – From Tales of Ordinary Madness, “A Dollar and Twenty Cents” by Charles Bukowski.

In the letter “she” signs off “Girl that lost her faith in America”. “Lost her faith in America” turns up both in a quote from Michelle Bachmann and a Breitbart article by Julia Hahn.

The above is the classic signature of a cat-fishing attempt. But there is plenty more online to connect this North Carolina teen with the Crackas With Attitude hack.

“Just as Nikulin planted a virus using Weiner’s little known sexting app Formspring, in this case, Weiner had been using the little-known app Confide. Online, arch references were made  in advance about the publication of Goodman’s article as to what was going on, using the word “Confide”. Other accounts with ostensibly no knowledge of the case stated plainly that Weiner was actually sexting with a 28 year old hacker.

One of the North Carolina Crackas With Attitude is Justin Livermafn, who is around 28. His co-conspirator is one Andrew Otto Boggs. The two were arrested and pled guilty in January. As recently as two weeks ago, the FBI had confiscated their laptops and thumb drives.”

FN: Clearly Goodman also had sources inside NYPD . 

She also spoke to both the minor sexting partner-likely brought to Goodman by the greedy GOPer dad-and Weiner himself-again this was on Sept 21, 2016 so 5 weeks prior to the Comey Letter.

FN: And also six days before John Robertson allegedly came across Huma’s emails “totally by accident” while investigating Weiner’s alleged pedophilia-with this minor sexting partner. Also about eight-nine days before Devin Nunes learned of Huma’s emails on Weiner’s laptop.

Comparatively, Comey and McCabe allegedly learned of them around October 5-but in a way that supposedly made no impression on them-according to them.

End FN

There was also a quote from Governor Andrew Cuomo:

‘I’ve only read the reports and let me say this: If the reports are true, it’s possibly criminal and it is sick,’ he told reporters. ​​’And frankly I’ve heard enough about Anthony Weiner and I think that goes for all New Yorkers.’

Little ironic as he now has his own problems. Just underscores how different the parties are-GOPers always protect their own regardless of facts, Democrats throw their own overboard before they even have the facts.

FN: Cuomo would end up meeting the exact same fate. Now we hear he may be charged. Apparently the Democrats don’t think prosecuting him after he left Office would be ‘too divisive.’

UPDATE: I had felt maybe a little bad for him-with emphasis on little-at first as it had happened so quickly which makes you wonder what was really going on there. But now that he actually took Trump’s side in the Mar-a-Lago search-it’s check please.

For more on Goodman:

 

She wrote this tweet on September 25, 2020; today is September 26, 2022-so just over two years later and we’re still waiting for this independent verification.

End FN

Back to Mensch:

“Hackers need not be Russian to work on behalf of Russia. In this case, CWA’s UK and US branches had close links to Sputnik, the Russian state owned propaganda channel. A ‘journalist’ called Cassandra Fairbanks, @CassandraRules, on Twitter, who was and probably is ‘active in the hacker community’, posted photographs of herself with Liverman and said she was raising money for his defense. And why not? Weren’t CWA just some young punks that got in over their heads?”

“The answer to that is no. The CWA hack managed to get into the emails of the director of the CIA. Executives at Sputnik pressured non-Russian staff to obtain these CIA emails and threatened them if they refused. However, it is almost certain that Sputnik already had the emails; as soon as American staff refused to release them, Wikileaks was handed them and put them out on the internet. The young boy, 15, in the UK, who had been tricked into doing a hack by and for adults, was conveniently too young to punish properly. But his fully adult co-conspirators were not. CWA’s North Carolina contingent used the same hack to dox FBI and law enforcement, mercilessly harassing American intelligence and police personnel, writing phone scripts that would ring officers on the hour through the hour through the night. Sputnik adopted Bernie Sanders and pro-Palestine colors when it wanted to defend the hackers.”

FN:

The following paragraph may belong elsewhere perhaps below.

Certainly if Smith worked with hackers to find Clinton’s emails-and it’s clear that he did; he himself spent $50,000 grand of his own money and raised $100,000 grand from other sources to do just this; Erik Prince himself also paid a portion-CWA is exactly the kind of folks you would expect him to have worked with. Remember what Chuck Johnson told Politico he put the word out for Smith among alt Right hacker types. CWA fits the profile

Hacker Leaks Info of 30,000 FBI and DHS Employees

So somehow this hacker was able to get the emails of 30,000 FBI and DHS employees, but Michael Horowitz couldn’t tell us about 100 anti Clinton FBI agents leaking and threatening to give information to Julian Assange in October, 2016?

Sorry but the only word that comes to mind is: coverup. This is all about protecting the FBI aka Trumpland.

If you want to understand why I have so little patience with and so much disdain for the Savvy Beltway Punditocracy-a la Dean Baquet cum Erik Wemple; nothing is more savvy than Wemple’s singular obsession with discrediting the Steele Dossier, with no concern that by validating the GOP obsession with the Dossier he’s actually validating their Big Lie that ‘Mueller found  there was no collusion’- unless it’s CNN firing Chris Cuomo for the sin of who his brother is.-read these next few paragraphs.

FN: Sorry what happened to Cuomo was all about optics-once his brother was on the hotseat you knew they’d find something to justify canning him. As usual the bad guys win. Meanwhile no one seems concerned with the ‘optics’ of Tish James now running for the Office she just booted Cuomo out of. Apparently you can prosecute your political opponents so long as your opponent is a Democrat.

Remember all the savvy handwringing soon after his defeat that what  no matter what Trump has done to our democracy and the rule of law, prosecuting him is unthinkable-as it would so upset the Deplorables it’s better for the sake of civic peace to just let him go? Remember how much criticism both Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren got for calling for Trump’s prosecution during their campaigns? We do not prosecute our political opponent. Turns out there’s an exception-if our political opponent is a Democrat.

UPDATE: Some of this no doubt should be edited/deleted.

As pathetic as such disinformation is-in an overall informative article-that Savvy pundits repeat and trumpet to the hinderpost and back again-it really is no joke-if only it were a laughing matter. Disinformation literally kills-how many needless Covid deaths have we seen? But vaccine phobia didn’t start with Covid-a few years prior to the first Covid cases, the WHO dropped the US from the list of countries who had licked the measles.

But this HackerNews article again shows why it’s a truism that by the time the truth puts the first leg of its pants on, the lie is half way around the world-in the high tech, cyber, Internet world of today the lie is now much faster than that when you have large publications like HN guilelessly repeating disinformation.

Remember “Crackas With Attitude“?

A notorious pro-Palestinian hacking group behind a series of embarrassing hacks against United States intelligence officials and leaked the personal details of 20,000 FBI agents, 9,000 Department of Homeland Security officers, and some number of DoJ staffers in 2015.

Believe or not, the leader of this hacking group was just 15-years-old when he used “social engineering” to impersonate CIA director and unauthorisedly access highly sensitive information from his Leicestershire home, revealed during a court hearing on Tuesday.

Kane Gamble, now 18-year-old, the British teenager hacker targeted then CIA director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, FBI deputy director Mark Giuliano, as well as other senior FBI figures.

UPDATE:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2012/aug/06/louise-mensch-resignation-curse-cameron

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pax87v/kane-gamble-crackas-with-attitude-cwa-sentence-prison

UPDATE: Cracka With Attitude is out

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3ekk5/kane-gamble-cracka-back-online-after-a-two-year-internet-ban

“Meanwhile, Ms. Fairbanks was promoting every anti-American hacker, defined by the IC as Russian state hackers, known to mankind. She “loved” Guccifer 2. She fangirled over Wikileaks and the Russian asset Julian Assange. Fairbanks also pushed out co-ordinated Russian propaganda from Infowars and others during the election, including pizzagate and other Russian-organized propaganda spread by Mike Flynn and other Russian agents of influence. But with CWA she held personal meetings, photographing herself with Liverman and helping fund his defense in court.”

FN: There are also pictures of Ms. Fairbanks with: Roger Stone.

Meanwhile Alana Goodman and Cassandra Fairbanks are also besties.

“There seems to be a strong friendship between the Daily Mail’s journalist Alana Goodman, who wrote the 15 year old girl story on which the criminal case was based, and Ms. Fairbanks of Sputnik. They photographed themselves on multiple occasions together in social settings, such as sabering bottles of champagne at Trump Tower. They defended each other on Twitter. Ms. Goodman appears in many tweeted photographs by Miss Fairbanks. At one debate, Miss Goodman stars in a photograph of herself wearing a ‘Make America Great’ cap pulled down over her head. Sputnik’s Miss Fairbanks points everybody to Goodman’s story on Weiner of the 21st. Goodman is also apparently close to the Trump campaign’s Moishe Lee.”

“Sputnik’s Cassandra Fairbanks was also invited to the Inaugural Freedom Ball, which is quite an honor for a mouthpiece of the Russian state, and tweeted her pictures close to Trump and the First Lady. She followed this ostensibly unlikely triumph by spending New Year’s eve, too, with Miss Goodman (shortly after her photograph with Justin Liverman of CWA).”

So Mensch’s theory of what she calls The Carolina Conspiracy and I call Emailgate cum Comeygate complement each other very well.

I do, of course, clearly however have a pretty significant difference  with her part two and looking back this is what led her to snark me on Twitter during my fight with Schindler-and quite absurdly accuse me of being a Russian agent.

My argument with Schindler came from my sharp criticisms of the FBI. You know me-if you’ve been following me along to this point you know as far as Trumpland GOPland the FBI is concerned I’m the opposite of a fan.

FN: Putting the matter mildly as it’s the subject of this entire book.

But my specific argument-which got me on the wrong side of Schindler and his Dittoheads was that the FBI is a very Republican place-after all, I pointed out, in 111 years-at the time back in 2020 it was 111 now it’s 112-the FBI has never had a single Democratic FBI Director.

Schindler’s reaction was scornful-though he mostly let his minions throw snark at me rather than himself like in any good cult-many of the folks who wasted money on his paywalled feed-like me-also took it upon themselves to be his bodyguards trolling anyone who dares to disagree with him.

But Schindler’s main response to my point was to dismiss it-the fact that there’s never been a Democratic Director as irrelevant-after all many of the Directors were chosen by Democratic Presidents.

FN: True so far as it goes as President Joe has unfortunately kept Chris Christie’s Bridegate lawyer as his Director despite the fact that Wray withheld the intelligence on the Russia investigation-that they had been receiving prior to Comey’s firing.

I did appreciate Senator Whitehouse’s tough questioning of Wray recently-he pointed out that Wray failed to satisfy requests made by Democratic members of Congress from as far back as 2017. Wray’s response was not encouraging-the most he’d offer was a vague vow to ‘see what I can do.’

The response of the Democrats wasn’t encouraging either to this blatant insubordination-turns out Wray isn’t so different from Comey after all-the IG called Comey insubordinate.

End FN

This rationalization to be sure doesn’t pass the laugh test-it’s the equivalent of saying it’s fine that all our Presidents  have been White as millions of Black voters voted for them or that they’ve all been men because millions of women voted for the male candidates.

And this was where Mensch threw in her two cents pronouncing me a Russian agent.

FN: She claimed to reach this erroneous conclusion by looking at my IP address-as if I even have a clue what my IP address is.

As we discussed above this has-alas-been a common tactic of her’s which is unfortunate as to throw around this sort of accusation so indiscriminately injures both her own credibility as well as those of us in the #Resistance who have fought very hard to get the truth out of what Russia did in collusion with the Trump campaign in 2016-as well as since; there was even more such collusion in 2020 as Trump had a lot more resources as the illegitimate ‘President.’

But looking back what riled her with me was my sharp criticism of the FBI and Comey. And this points to the one major area of disagreement between Mensch and myself. Despite how damning the FBI’s conduct was-Comey’s Letter literally elected the candidate the FBI knew was suspected of colluding with Russia-and that at a minimum, Russia was interfering to help Trump.

Yet somehow, Mensch is able to heroically absolve Comey of any personal responsibility for the actions he took that elected Trump-someone Comey knew first hand was suspected of colluding with Russia. Not only is he innocent of any wrongdoing, he’s a hero-Comey according to her is the White Hat.

FN: In reality, of course, Comey is no hero, he is the Bill E. Buckner of American politics.

“There are three parts to this theory, like a good play, and narratively, the next section ought to be about your spy ring in the University of Cambridge, your hacking of Facebook and Twitter and your propaganda wars across Europe, but as I have learned from you one must play to the audience, and I think American readers are mostly terrified that Director Comey will throw America under the bus and cover up your coup.

I don’t agree. Here is my take.

Before the BBC and the Guardian confirmed my HeatStreet exclusive on the FISA warrant issued in October, I was a lone voice in the wilderness on its existence.(And may history record that our conservative-leaning website had that scoop). When the writer Jason Leopold of Vice asked if Trump had been under investigation in September he got a GLOMAR response: ‘We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any such records’.

UPDATE: Regarding the Alpha Server story typical recent savvy MSM piece gloating that it’s a fitting bookend to the end of the Russia probe. 

In reality whatever the truth of the Alpha server story what is really fitting is Bump’s snarky dismissal of ‘the Russian probe’-while Barr later ran into criticism for his fake exoneration letter, the pundits never adjusted their erroneous narrative that Mueller said No Collusion. 

One of the themes of the past few years has been that the complexity of the Internet, something intentionally left opaque to the user, generates a lot of activity that can be posited as nefarious.”

Very true-Bump and his savvy friends destroyed Clinton’s Presidential campaign over just such a canard-the Emailgate canard.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-contested-afterlife-of-the-trump-alfa-bank-story

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/us/politics/trump-alfa-bank-indictment.html

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/alfa-bank-trump-organization-link-remains-mystery-after-durham-indictment-2021-10

“GLOMAR responses are named for a submarine and can only be given if a matter of national security is at stake. Mr. Leopold announced he would sue, for why should a concluded investigation be a matter of national security? I told him, with little credibility then and tons now, that the GLOMAR response made sense because there is an ongoing investigation into Mr. Trump and his associates on a matter of national security.

Democrats, including Democrats in Obama’s government who ought to know better, have asked if James Comey had ‘a double standard’ over the investigations into Clinton and Trump. Yes; he did, and he does. He may talk about a criminal investigation. He may not talk about a current, ongoing investigation into espionage, bribery, money laundering and so forth that affects US national security.

Over the summer and early autumn Democrats wrongly stated that the FBI / Comey had said they were not looking into Roger Stone and had declined to investigate Roger Stone, who announced his links to Wikileaks. This came from a Senate hearing and Mr. Comey’s testimony to Democrat Rep. Nadler. Rep. Nadler asked if Stone’s boasts constituted special circumstances, Comey said “I don’t think so.”  It must have been frustrating for Comey. He was GLOMAR-ing Congress right to their face and they did not understand what was going on.

Subsequently, the heads of NSA, CIA and FBI “Glomar”ed, in no particular order, two Congressional open Russian hack hearings, one closed briefing to the House of Representatives, and in the case of the CIA’s Director Brennan, Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.

Furthermore, although Comey is a natural Republican he appeared to have played it straight. In the summer he cleared Clinton of a criminal standard of negligence. In the fall, he had been sandbagged by Russian moles inside the FBI Field Office in New York. But I do not believe Mr. Comey surrendered wrongly to ‘pressure’. He knew the moles had effective kompromat – the emails your hacker Nikulin planted or woke – and that were he not to revise his testimony in the light of new evidence, his far more important natsec investigation into the traitor, Donald Trump, would be discredited. He then worked around the clock to clear Mrs. Clinton.

All evidence shows that James Comey is pursuing your assault on America, Mr. Putin, with the fearlessness I expect from a counter-intelligence patriot. In June, he named Donald Trump to a FISA court as an agent of Russian influence. In July, he did the same. Both times, the court turned him down. In April, Mr. Comey received audio of Russian money financing Trump – that’s the same time that Paul Manafort joined the campaign to run it. He formed a joint CIA/FBI /Treasury task force to look at the money.”

So if I understand, Mensch is arguing that Comey did everything right and was even heroic-even his Comey Letter 11 days before the election in response to the pressure of the anti Clinton rogue NY FBI agents wasn’t wrong-because if he hadn’t done so “his far more important natsec investigation into the traitor, Donald Trump, would be discredited. He then worked around the clock to clear Mrs. Clinton.”

So basically Comey had to elect Trump so as to not undermine the national security investigation into Trump. This is simply upside down logic as the Center for American Progress argued:

“The FBI took a light footprint in investigating Trump, opting for a slower, more methodical approach to the investigation—one that made little sense given the significant threat to national security and the time-limited nature of the election. The greatest threat from a counterintelligence perspective was that Trump would win and bring himself, along with other figures compromised by Russia, into the federal government. Concerns that a more aggressive investigation might alert investigative targets and make it more difficult to prosecute them if Trump lost pale in comparison to the possibility of a presidential administration compromised by a hostile foreign power.”

Indeed, as CAP argues, Horowitz’s investigation is top heavy on responding to Trump’s phony allegations rather than the forest of the investigation.

UPDATE: CAP should also be linked to the Horowitz chapters

The Horowitz report is a confounding document. It does not assess the Russia investigation, the results of which speak for themselves: 37 indictments, including convictions of Trump’s national security adviser, campaign chairman, deputy campaign chairman, personal lawyer, and close political adviser.9 Instead, Horowitz primarily assesses Trump’s outlandish conspiracy theories, relitigating long-answered questions of how and why the Russia investigation began.”

This phenomenon held during Trump’s entire illegitimate regime-Horowitz was hyper responsive to the obsessions of Trump and the GOP co-conspirators while dragging his feet on anything that would displease them-as Emptywheel pointed out at one point, the investigation of the Russia investigation was already-at that point-69% longer than the Russia investigation itself.

Like one obsession of Trump and his GOP co-conspirators was the phrase Lisa Page used in her texts with Peter Strozk-‘an insurance policy’ but when you understand the context it made imminent sense-the terrible pity was they didn’t actually do the insurance policy.

FBI officials Page and Strzok discussed this concern over text message in August 2016. When they cited an “insurance policy,”17 they were discussing whether the agency should act with greater urgency to lay the groundwork for continued investigation in the event that Trump won and was, in fact, beholden to Russia. In her first public television interview, Page explained, “The ‘insurance policy’ was an analogy. It’s like an insurance policy when you are 40. You don’t expect to die when you are 40. But you still have an insurance policy.”18 In other words, the point of ramping up the investigation was not to weaponize it against Trump but to lay a foundation for mitigating the threat to national security if he won the presidency.

However, the FBI ultimately chose not to intensify the investigation. Then-Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe told the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) that the FBI wanted “to keep our inquiry as quiet as we could.”19 McCabe gave the team contradictory instructions: “Get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible, but with a light footprint.” The FBI ended up erring strongly on the side of caution.”

This is the other piece. As noted above the idea that Comey elected Trump to protect the national security investigation into him because he poised a great national security threat makes no sense on the face of it. But OTOH as CAP notes, unlike with Emailgate, the FBI botched it’s investigation into Russia by a super overabundance of caution.

Yet examining Horowitz’s report alongside that of special counsel Mueller, as well as past DOJ inspector general reports, paints a damning picture of the FBI’s counterintelligence efforts in 2016. The reports reveal how the FBI botched its opportunity to uncover coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in real time. Even with American democracy under attack, the FBI kept such a close hold on its investigation, code-named Crossfire Hurricane,10 that the agency hindered its own investigative efforts. Meanwhile, the same FBI counterintelligence division was aggressively and publicly investigating allegations about Trump’s opponent, former Secretary of State Clinton, that ultimately resulted in no criminal charges.

“Reassessing the FBI’s actions in 2016, it is clear that the bureau’s hypersensitivity to Washington politics—specifically bad-faith attacks from congressional Republicans—resulted in a greater focus on appearing impartial than defending American democracy.”

Contrary to Mensch’s suggestion the FBI kept a very light footprint on the Russia investigation prior to the election-so no Comey did not do the Comey Letter to keep the pedal on the metal. Indeed, the idea that Comey felt he couldn’t say anything about the Russian investigation because it’s against the rules wether because it was counterintel or because of the-cough-Hatch Act that he was so willing to violate in the case of Clinton-doesn’t even pass the laugh test.

If two things about how Comey conducted himself during 2016 are true it’s

A. He’s an unreliable narrator as we document in Chapter A especially but really throughout this entire book

B. He just makes it up as he goes along. He could care less about what DOJ rules say-he thinks his own ad hoc Kantian moral feelings are more important than following the rules.

And once again, most fundamentally it makes no sense that because Trump was a big national security threat Comey had to elect him to protect the investigation-which as we saw above, was quite anemic in any case.

Overall it seems that she understands the problem at the FBI in 2016 differently than I do. She sees it as the product of Russian penetration of the FBI whereas I see it as the fact that the FBI is a very Republican place-Chapter A.

FN: Regarding the Russians, yes, they’ve interfered but the biggest scandal is that the Republican party has been willing to collude with them-as Malcolm Nance documents, the partnership of Putin’s Russia with Right wing western parties begun on 9/11-Putin represented it as a partnership against Islamic terrorism.

End FN

It always has been and till that changes it’s hard to have much faith in the agency to to truly value national security over the partisan preferences of the GOP dominated institution.

FN: President Joe, alas, missed a major opportunity in firing Chris Christie’s Bridgegate lawyer.

UPDATE:

https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-news-doj-investigating-ties

 

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