1 Prologue: Didn’t Mueller Prove No Collusion?
January 13, 2024
UPDATE: So how does this chapter look now in light of getting the older manuscripts back?
It’s been a tough eight and a half years-since Trump’s walk down his Trump Tower escalator in June, 2015-‘they’re rapists, they’re drug dealers, and some, I assume are good people-
It’s been a surreal eight years and 10 months since the start of the faux moral panic over HRC’s emails in March, 2015. The first reporting about them was Dean Baquette’s NY Times-where else?
The NYTimes reporter who first broke this damnable faux scandal was Matt Apuzza and (). Fittingly enough as they were also who first-wrongly-announced Hillary was under criminal investigation in early July, 2015.
It’s been a tough close to nine years for us, for our country, for our democracy and to be quite certain it’s been tough for me, your personable if relentlessly vigilant author! You see I had been working on a huge manuscript on 2016 and all that which I’d started in November 2017. My intent for the book was extremely ambitious-I wanted to document all the crazy happenings of 2016-Russian Collusion, Rogue Agent Collusion, et al-then go through a huge historical excursion documenting the fact that 2016 was far from the first time the Republican party’s presidential candidate had colluded with a hostile foreign power (1968 and 1980) or even a hostile one (1980).
This was ambitious enough-inspired in no small part by Maddow’s classic show openings where she seamlessly links the news of the day with guess what day in history. However, I wanted to add yet another dimension to the book and this would prove to be fateful-and alas fatal-to the project: I’d wanted it to also be totally up to date. It was an intriguing idea for sure only fly in the ointment was the news never slowed down to take a breath during the Trump years. I’d actually had 400 pages written by February 2018. I had a friend who was my campaign manager at the time.
FN: Another story-thumbnail version is I ran for the NY 2 Congressional district in 2018. After Trump’s “win”-I will go to the grave denying the win was legitimate, see below for more-I tried to do two things I’d never done before: write a book and run for Congress.
In around February 2018 he made two suggestions one which I took and one which I did not. Unfortunately the one I did not was his suggestion I published what I had at that time-400 pages-and come out with a few sequels over the next two years. This turned out to be an excellent suggestion I have often regretted not taking since.
FN: The suggestion I did take unfortunately was allowing some dude who claimed to have deep connections into the Democratic party inner circle in Long Island NY that he didn’t to talk us out of shutting down the campaign so I could endorse Duwayne Gregory. Talk about 0 for 2.
For one thing I would amass so much material the next few years trying to keep up to date with Trump’s illegitimate regime that the manuscript became humongous-must have easily had 5000 total pages over four different manuscripts. But landing the plane on such a huge amount of work proved to be far lengthier than writing it all initially-in terms of editing, etc.
Then PB changed its model. For years they were free then they slapped on a monthly fee. The cost was not prohibitive-only like $10 to $12 per month. However, last month my debit card info was changed. So my monthly payment to Pressbooks didn’t go through. I’d tried repeatedly to update my info but every time I entered it PB would insist on using the old info. I’d had assumed it went through but had a lot going on in December and didn’t look at the site. Then last night I was ready for more editing and it turned out PB had simply deleted all of it. They had sent me a warning email December 31 but-well, I get a lot of emails..
So now it’s all gone-with all my links and sources. So here in January 2024 I’m forced to literally reinvent the wheel. And write the whole appalling if scarcely believable story of the 2016 election and its aftermath yet again.
In November, 2019 during the Dems first impeachment of Trump-I’d like you do us a favor though-
then Speaker Pelosi had declared all roads lead to Russia.
She was right, indeed, more right than even she seemed to know as she didn’t appear to take her own statement that seriously. Trump Impeachment 1.0 was Ukraine Extortion. Pelosi had mightily resisted impeachment in 2019-‘he’s self impeaching’ et al. As we now know thanks to Norm Eisen’s A Case for the American People: The United States v. Donald J. Trump: Eisen, Norman: 9780593238431: Amazon.com: Books, Jerrold Nadler and his Judiciary Dems had already written up 10 articles of impeachment in August, 2019. But Pelosi put up every conceivable conceptual roadblock. By September, however, it was becoming impossible for her to keep this demand at bay-the Dem base had been demanding it all year, the House Dem caucus was slowly joining the impeachment train. And at the end of the day what else did the Democrats have to do? Pelosi’s strategy was for the Dems to keep very still and talk about healthcare-but at the end of the day they could only talk about healthcare not pass it considering the GOP had the Senate-and the filibuster.
So, in September she could no longer hold out. Then along came Trump’s Ukraine Extortion. Pelosi argued this was a gamechanger. But was it really? Or had this been the game all along? One of the big problems with the entire history and mainstream narrative for Russian Collusion is that there is no attempt to look at the bigger picture or narrative. This is a problem more generally with much of mainstream news and narratives-the narrative is always a very short term premise and once the media moves on to a new narrative, a new “conventional wisdom”-for any Nietzschean cum Zarathustrian, a total contradiction in terms!-completely forgets the previous narrative. It’s as if it never existed at all. Like for instance, during the 2016 election all the media ever wanted to talk about was Hillary’s emails but once it was over and THAT WOMAN was safely defeated you never heard about them again.
FN: Interestingly there were like three stories on Emailgate-they seemed all emerged around the time Trump fired Comey; a NYT piece, Vanity Fair, then a really good piece by WhoWhatWhy
Generally speaking once the MSM is finished with a particular narrative you never hear of it again-it’s as if it never happened. And that’s how the media has treated the Trump years. Russian Collusion was one story. Ukraine Extortion another. Hunter Biden is a different story. January 6 is yet another story. Then there was the revelation that Trump committed grand espionage as he walked out the door.
In fact these are all different episodes in the same story. But this is not how the media has covered it-and Pelosi despite her all roads lead to Russia quip framed UE in a very narrow way and insisted on ignoring all Trump’s other potentially impeachable offenses-again as we saw above, Nadler and Friends had come up with 10.
Ukraine Extortion had many connections to Russian Collusion. It was noted that Trump started making his blackmail phone calls the day after Mueller’s Congressional testimony in August, 2019. What wasn’t noted is the clear connection to Putin and Russian Collusion. One conventional narrative in 2019-after the mainstream press bought into Bill Barr’s Mueller showed no collusion canard-was that yes Russia interfered to elect Trump-though again PACE Bill Barr’s fake exoneration letter-the punditocracy claimed Trump hadn’t colluded with this Russian interference-but Putin’s investment in electing Trump hadn’t really panned out. The benefits Russia had imagined electing Trump would confer hadn’t materialized. This was a common narrative of the establishment GOPers in Trump’s Administration. They pointed to the record sanctions being applied to Russia and… the military aid to Ukraine.
Of course, what Ukraine Extortion revealed is that Trump had withheld the aid to Ukraine. Indeed, this long held view of the GOP establishment members of Trump’s illegitimate regime seemed plausible to many pundits in 2018. However, today it looks quite different-or would, if anyone was keeping track of and looking at the big picture and how it relates to the various narratives of the Trump years. The notion today that Putin didn’t actually derive much benefit from electing Trump doesn’t pass the laugh test-if you actually attempt to connect the dots as no one in the mainstream media or the conventional savvy wisdom does.
Consider the current impasse on Ukraine funding in the US Congress. Ukraine aid is being held up by Trump’s GOP co-conspirators. Indeed, the etymology of the Republican party’s position on Russia over the last 12 years is quite astonishing.
Remember in 2012, it was Mitt Romney who had called Russia our “number one geopolitical foe.” At the time President Obama-during that debate with Romney-dismissed Romney’s claim with a glib “the 1980s called and it wants its foreign policy back.”
Interestingly while many have since rightly argued Romney was right
It’s time to admit it: Mitt Romney was right about Russia | CNN Politics
it’s not noticed that Romney himself has backed off from that-in 2019 he was the only Republican to vote for Trump’s impeachment but he also in a subsequent interview actually denied Russia actually is our top geopolitical foe, he then seemed to believe in point of fact that China now is. So when exactly did that change? When the Democrats started believing it was Russia?
Indeed, even after Russia invaded Ukraine he still continued to argue for China.
Romney: 10 years later, Russia remains ‘geopolitical foe’ – POLITICO
Most recently Romney has been heard saying both the Democrats and Republicans are equally wrong for the hold up of Ukraine funding: the GOP for holding the funding hostage by trying to weaponize it by demanding another draconian attack on immigration via asylum laws and the Democrats for not paying the ransom.
This kind of puts the lie the recent political Romney biography The Reckoning. Link…
One of the many questions Mueller investigated was whether the GOP 2016 platform on Russia was changed at the behest of Russia and, indeed, Jeff Sessions’ aide, Jeff Gordon, would testify to Mueller that Trump directed the change to the platform away from offering Ukraine “lethal” military assistance. Of course that still left room for Trump apologists-on both the Right and Left a la the Grayzone-to argue even if Trump directed it there’s no evidence it was to please Russia. But looking at Trump’s policies on issues important to Russia is instructive-see below.
FN: Max Blumenthal would, of course, completely dismiss the predication for Trump’s 2019 impeachment but not even correctly describe its rationale-Katie Halper brightly argued it was GOOD that Trump withheld the aid blithely ignoring the fact that doing so violated the law, while Blumenthal left out the fact that Trump withheld the aid to blackmail Zelensky into opening an unpredicted investigation into Hunter Biden-the son of Trump’s likely 2020 presidential opponent. Of course, Blumenthal lately joined the baseless Trump GOP co-conspirator conspiracy theories over Hunter Biden even arguing that Twitter committed some great wrong by not permitting dodgy links to what claimed to be documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop-while it’s been denied this was NOT the work of Russian disinformation this has hardly been proven.
Link EW’s tweet.
Max Blumenthal on His Arrest and the Bolivian Coup, Plus #Fartgate | Useful Idiots (youtube.com)
End FN
As for the military aid for Ukraine and the increase in Russian sanctions during the Trump years these were policies Trump opposed but couldn’t stop-the sanctions and aid passed with a Congressional supermajority. Yet by 2022, Kevin McCarthy was vowing that if his party won back Congress in the November election they would no longer offer Ukraine a “blank check”-the GOP reserves a blank check only for Israel…
Again this is a stunning turn in the GOP position on Russia. In light of this it doesn’t pass the laugh test to argue that Putin derived no benefit in Trump’s election. He gained two pretty earth shaking things.
1. An entire party that was very hostile to Russia in 2012 is now his best asset-the only way Ukraine can stave off Russia at this point is with more US aid and the Republican party is withholding it.
2. As for the idea that the Trump Administration didn’t really provide Putin the benefits he had hoped for might have seemed plausible in 2018, at least prior to late 2018 when he out of the blue moved US troops out of Syria, but here in January 2024 the situation looks quite different. Putin has realized his foreign policy hopes and dreams beyond his wildest imaginings via his assistance in electing Trump.
FN: Seth Abramson
Speaking of Syria, while Max Blumenthal-and his colleague at Grayzone, Aaron Mate, as well as Blumenthal’s buddy, the virulent misogynist Jimmy Dore, accused serial sexual harasser Russell Brand, the deranged and virulent delusionial homophobe Yankee Tankee, the want to be Marxist-Leninst-cum Stalnist-Maoist Groomer in Chief Caleb Maupin Maupin and other Bernie Bro cum tankies-channel Trump’s talking points here as always dismissing the fact of Russian Interference cum Collusion as “Russiagate” or “the Russia hoax”-over the last eight years, Blumenthal-Mate, et al, have largely channeled every Trump propaganda talking point. What is particularly ironic is that while Blumenthal claims “Russiagate” is a hoax, it turns out he himself may have had a role in it. We’ll explore this question in much more detail in later chapters-especially the Max Blumenthal useful idiot chapter-but for now we will just note that it has been reported that Blumenthal himself attended Putin’s dinner in late 2015-with Michael Flynn, Jill Stein et al.
FN: But then Russia has long sought a Brown-Red-Green alliance…
Red–green–brown alliance – Wikipedia
It’s further reported that Blumenthal spoke at this dinner with Putin meeting-indeed, that he was paid to speak. In any case it’s been notable that Blumenthal back in 2013 sounded pretty critical of Assad’s brutal crackdown on protesters but he soon after the Dinner at Putin meeting became a blatant Assad apologist. It would be fascinating to know what his speech was about and wether the subject of Syria came up.
Indeed, according to John Bolton, the main subject at Trump and Putin’s huddle up at Helesinki was Syria…Clearly this was a major policy agenda of Putin’s in assisting Trump’s election and his success has been beyond his wildest dreams.
Once again: all roads lead to Russia regarding US politics over the last eight and a half years. Pelosi was right but didn’t take her own assertion terribly seriously. Meanwhile the same mainstream media that elected Trump by its absurd weaponization of what the Washington Post itself called a “minor email scandal” in September 2016, has over time come to minimize and marginalize the central fact of Russian Collusion-and for that matter Rogue FBI Agent Collusion, which as this book will go on to demonstrate were related.
Indeed, the lazy, hazy narrative that has materialized post Bill Barr’s fake exoneration memo in late March, 2019 has been ‘Mueller proved no collusion’-who can forget Ken Dilanian’s inanely gleeful tweet post the fake exoneration memo that night: No Collusion No Obstruction a Total Exoneration of the President!’
While the media since admitted the dishonesty of Barr’s memo, it never questioned Barr’s basic narrative: ‘Mueller proved no collusion.’ Ok, the “conventional wisdom” continued maybe Trump did obstruct justice in firing Comey and the many other examples cited in the Mueller Report. But if there was NO COLLUSION does that really matter?
Mainstream pundits that night seemed fairly euphoric: Be glad Democrats our President didn’t collude.
True the trivial fact was that’s not what the Mueller report said-but what do facts matter in the face of a media narrative? It sure hadn’t mattered in 2016 when thanks to the Dean Baquet cum Chris Cillizza’s moral panic over Hillary’s emails, 60% of Americans wrongly thought HRC should have been indicted after Comey’s “extremely careless” July 5, 2016 speech where he smeared her politically even as he admitted he had no case against her.
FN: Everything about that press conference was highly irregular and in violation of DOJ rules and protocols though this was true of the entire Emailgate boondoggle as we will show in Part The FBI is a Very Republican Place
Basically the, ahem, “liberal media” responded to the Mueller Report much like it did 30 years ago regarding Iran-Contra: by 1989-1990 the media was “bored” by the scandal and dismissed those who continued to do research and investigation into it as “conspiracy theorists”-the mainstream media’s equivalent to calling someone a pedophile-the obsession of the Far Right, as well as Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
FN: Masha Gessen
End FN
But then Kasey Hunt had given the game away that night prior to Barr’s press conference when she declared on MSNBC that night that ‘people are tired of Mueller.’
This recalled Chuck Todd back in 2014. As we will see in Chapter Chuck Todd, Todd said the quite part out loud when he observed ‘I don’t know if the public has Hillary fatigue, but the media certainly does.’
Chuck Todd: “I wish we didn’t focus on the individual personalities of journalists” | Salon.com
The great Washington Post reporter Margaret Sullivan had warned the media prior to the Mueller report not fall into its usual horse race rabbit holes.
Media shouldn’t look for quick headline from Mueller report – The Washington Post
But the reality was the media had already decided before even hearing from Barr as Kasey Hunt had let the cat out of the bag. People are tired of Mueller.
When people in Mueller’s office pushed back against Barr’s false narrative in April, 2019 , Katy Kay snarkily dismissed them tweeting ‘Problem for Democrats is this just looks like them relitigating’
FN: Can’t find tweet
She simply ignored the trivial fact that it wasn’t the Democrats but Mueller’s office pushing back. But then, for the MSM facts are trivial when they conflict with their current dominant narrative.
The media narrative then was the Russia story was over-at least for Democrats. Post Mueller the story of Russian Collusion became “Russiagate” a parallel narrative picked up not just by Trump and his GOP co-conspirators but by the Far Left Bernie Bro, Bernie or Buster, Yankee Tankie Left a la Max Blumenthal’s fatally misguided Left-Right alliance.
Here the only scandal was that Trump-Russia had ever been investigated at all. A counter narrative was that it was all the nefarious lie of Hillary Clinton and her campaign. Erik Wemple wrote 10 separate articles on the Steele Dossier. The Columbia Journalism Review did a huge attack piece on all those who researched and reported on Russia Collusion.
Blumenthal posted a video called “Stop Lying Rachel”-referring Maddow naturally. He confronted her in a speech she gave but never was able to show what the lie was. But this was a common post Mueller Bill Barr narrative: the fact that Mueller didn’t charge Trump for collusion proved there was none and that anyone who claimed there was had lied.
In the video, Blumenthal mentioned the Dossier. This has been a common tactic of Blumenthal’s Left-Right alliance of Trump cum Putin apologists: the dossier, the dossier, the dossier. Blumenthal’s premise regarding Maddow is what-that to the extent she discussed it in some of her shows this is ‘lying?’ This is a very strong assertion: it requires not only that the everything in the Steele dossier was a lie but that Maddow knew everything in it was a lie. Like when Trump continued to insist he won the 2020 election. Unfortunately, of course, Blumenthal does everything to minimize the 1/6 Insurrection. Blumenthal is surely not going to interrupt a Trump speech to call HIM a liar.
To be sure what exactly was true or untrue in the dossier remains an open question-it seems as Emptywheel has argued there may well have been some deliberate misinformation in it-a la disinformation. Nevertheless while certain strands and details in it are open to question, the topline narrative has actually been proven accurate-Russia did interfere, and the Trump campaign collude as this book will look at in more detail.
At the end of her tremendous and very important book, They Knew, Sarah Kendzior discusses the importance of the truth. Indeed, as Orwell observed many years ago-in the face of the lies of the US and European Tankies of the day who denied Stalin’s great totalitarian crimes-those who control the present control the future, those who control the past control the present. In 2011, the late reporter, Robert Parry wrote a book America’s Stolen Narrative detailing among other things two previous times the GOP has colluded with a hostile foreign power to “win” American Presidential elections.
The job of taking it back remains to be done. This book is an attempt to contribute to this vital fight. Only then can we get our country, our democracy back. Only then can we achieve an American future worth fighting for.
Ryan Cooper was one Bernie supporter who didn’t fall for the NO COLLUSION canard. Five and a half years later his take remains pretty on point:
Why the left needs to wise up to the growing Trump-Russia scandal | The Week
“As a concrete matter, whatever the reason for Trump’s deference to Putin, it is definitely bad for the left. Having an American president (even a feckless, incompetent one like Trump) act as cat’s paw for a merciless, reactionary plutocrat is unquestionably terrible. And whoever wins the 2020 Democratic primary — say Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders — is highly likely to face a serious campaign of dirty tricks from Russian intelligence. Email hacking will be attempted, any compromising past history dug up, and third-party candidates boosted up — all in an attempt to throw the election to Trump. It probably won’t move that many people, but Trump only won by less than 100,000 votes spread across three states. It’s a threat that needs to be reckoned with.”
“Russiagate does not fit neatly into leftist ideological frameworks, which is surely part of why there has been so much skepticism. It’s a much better fit for conservatives and cruise missile liberals who want to punish Putin on nationalist grounds. But that is not a necessary conclusion — on the contrary, the most important culprits are all Republicans, who eagerly welcomed foreign assistance. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell successfully stopped President Obama from attacking the electoral espionage by threatening to make it a partisan issue (though to be fair, that was also a massive failure on Obama’s part).”
It surely doesn’t-historically over the last 100+ years the simple, not to say simplistic narrative of the Far Left aka the “anti imperialist Left”-has been anything Russia does is good anything that America is bad as Norman Fincklestein basically admitted after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Norman Finkelstein : Russia has the historical right to invade Ukraine (youtube.com)
Yes-he goes far further than Noam Chomsky cum John Mearsheimer who merely claim Russia had ‘no choice but invade’ because, you know, American bad and Nato made them do it. He argues Russia was RIGHT to do so. His appalling indifference to the suffering of Ukrainians is truly breathtaking-see Chapter Finklestein
END FN
The rest of the GOP congressional leadership knew as well, and were “happy to enjoy the benefits of Russian interference and said so openly among themselves,” as David Klion writes. Even now the GOP is swatting down attempts from congressional Democrats to secure American electoral machinery from outside interference. In a domestic American context, the main story of Russiagate is that the Republican Party is so corrupt that they will sacrifice democracy to get tax cuts for the rich and reactionary union-busting judges.
So one does not have to support starting nuclear war to be concerned about Russiagate. Indeed, given the rotten state of American democracy, attempting to go really hard at Putin might be a game not worth the candle. Instead the main objective ought to be securing American institutions — purging them of the corruption that allows someone like Putin to waltz in and get what he wants. The American government should be responsible to the American people.”
I don’t entirely agree with Cooper-I think it’s a mistake to minimize Russia’s role as its ongoing-Malcolm Nance has some excellent books that document Putin’s long term agenda of making common cause with the Western Far Right.
But he’s right about the centrality of the Republican party-Trump’s Republican party-in Russian Collusion. As we will see in this book-particularly in Chaper The Leeden Manifesto-Russian Collusion is a story not only about Trump but the entire Republican party. Indeed, the big picture view of 2016 is not simply Trump-Russia collusion but collusion between Russia and the Republican party. As we will see 2016 was hardly the first time the GOP has colluded with a hostile foreign power.
Again, this book is about contributing to fight to recover our stolen narrative. Until then we will never be able to “move on.”