Bombs away...PLEASE!

In a previous post, we discussed anti-Trump Republican writer Rick Wilson, who promised a couple of major November Surprises this weekend -- a weekend which, he predicted, would be "bonkers." As you might expect, his twitter followers have hounded him for further details.

The following appeared some hours ago:

(Why the guest appearance from Meghan McCain? I like her. Shoot me.)

Notice that he neither confirmed nor denied the idea that the Eichenwald story was related to what Wilson calls "The Bombs of November." Rachel Maddow discussed that story on her show tonight: It's about the Trump/Putin relationship, and how Putin temporarily turned off the juice after Donald Trump's bizarre snit-fit with the Khan family caused many to suspect that Trump might have to vacate the ticket.

At this writing, Newsweek has this story up -- not by Eichenwald, but important.

UPDATE: Here's the Eichenwald story. Let's all make sure that this piece gets treated as the bombshell that it is.

Trump and his campaign have also spread propaganda created as part of the Kremlin's effort, relying on bogus information generated through traditional Russian disinformation techniques. In one instance, a manipulated document was put out onto the internet anonymously by propagandists working with Russia; within hours, Trump was reciting that false information at a campaign rally.

Imagine the howls of protest if Hillary had been guilty of same.

Here is how Moscow operates its campaigns: Hackers pilfer information from a variety of organizations both inside and outside Western governments; that is distributed to individuals who feed it into what a source told a European intelligence expert was a “pipeline.” This so-called pipeline can involve multiple steps before hacked information is disclosed through the media or online. For example, that source reported that documents in the United States intended to disrupt the American election are distributed through WikiLeaks. However, there are so many layers of individuals between the hackers and that organization there is a strong possibility that WikiLeaks does not know with certainty the ultimate source of these records; throughout 2016, the site has been posting emails from various Democratic Party organizations that were originally obtained through Russian hacking.

The Russian penetration in the United States is far more extensive than previously revealed publicly, although most of it has been targeted either at government departments or non-government organizations connected to the Democratic Party. Russian hackers penetrated the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State Department.

Both Trump and Clinton were monitored by Russian intelligence during their visits to Moscow over the years, according to American and European intelligence sources, in hopes of gathering kompromat—compromising material about a politician or public figure.

The Kremlin also has both video and audio recordings of Trump in a kompromat file. Newsweek could not confirm if there is anything compromising in those recordings.

For what it's worth, internet rumor holds that the Russians have sex tapes involving underaged women. I don't know if that is true, but it seems clear that the Russians have something on Trump.

By October, “buyer’s remorse” had set in at the Kremlin, according to a report obtained by Western counterintelligence. Russia came to see Trump as too unpredictable and feared that, should he win, the Kremlin would not be able to rely on him or even anticipate his actions.

That explains a lot.

Even as Trump was disputing the role played by the Kremlin in the hacking, his campaign was scouring sites publicly identified by American intelligence as sources for Russian propaganda. Ten days before the third debate, Newsweek published an article disclosing that a document altered by Russian propagandists and put out on the internet—ultimately published by Sputnik—had been cited by Trump at a rally as fact.

And so, for perhaps the first time since World War II, countries in Western Europe fear that the American election, should Trump win, could trigger events that imperil their national security and do potentially irreparable harm to the alliances that have kept the continent safe for decades.

Sorry for quoting the piece at such length; there is much more here.

Eichenwald isn't the only writer telling us that the Russians have been concocting fake documents. 

The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are examining faked documents aimed at discrediting the Hillary Clinton campaign as part of a broader investigation into what U.S. officials believe has been an attempt by Russia to disrupt the presidential election, people with knowledge of the matter said.

U.S. Senator Tom Carper, a Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, has referred one of the documents to the FBI for investigation on the grounds that his name and stationery were forged to appear authentic, some of the sources who had knowledge of that discussion said.

In the letter identified as fake, Carper is quoted as writing to Clinton, “We will not let you lose this election,” a person who saw the document told Reuters.

Forgive a bit of personal horn-tooting, but I've been predicting something like this for months.

I said that fake documents would play a role in the Wikileaks dump. I wasn't the only one to make that prediction, of course: That's why the Trumpers wanted to engineer a find by the FBI, as opposed to using Assange to convey a frame-up.

I've discussed the fake Clinton Foundation documents which the Russians foisted on us by way of Guccifer 2.0 -- a falsehood so obvious that even the Breitbarters soon stopped pretending to take it seriously.

More controversially, I have posited that Comey's team did indeed find some rather obvious fakes among Clinton's emails, which Comey kept from the public view because he figured out their true origin. I have also posited that fakes exist on Weiner's laptop -- which, unfortunately, is being examined by a separate FBI team loyal to Giuliani, who probably hopes to be Trump's AG. (Yes, this paragraph lays out a conspiracy theory. Before you scoff, let's see how it plays out.)

I'll say it again: If you get hold of someone's email password and you want to do serious harm, you don't just steal his mail. Doxxing doesn't go far enough. You must slip in a few fakes -- incriminating stuff.

We need DRAMA, Obama! President Obama can end this election once and for all if he takes a single bold step. I do not expect him to do so: "No Drama Obama" has had a phobic reaction toward boldness since 2008.

The step I propose is simple: He should announce that the FBI is investigating Donald Trump's ties to Russia, with an eye toward a possible prosecution for treason. 

Why should Hillary Clinton be the only one to go into this election with an FBI investigation hanging over her head? She didn't do anything wrong; her "scandals" were ginned up by her enemies. By contrast, Team Donald's filthy ties to Russia are now obvious to everyone.

Most voters don't know the details of the email pseudoscandal or of the Clinton Foundation nonscandal. All they know is that many people on teevee have said repeatedly that Hillary Clinton did something awful --something deserving of a stretch in prison. Average people presume: "There must be something there." They made the same presumption in the days of Whitewater.

When Huma's emails (none of which were sent to or by Hillary Clinton) appeared on Anthony Weiner's computer, the media spun the story in such a way as to justify the shouts of "Lock her up!" That's been the Trump plan all along -- to smear Hillary as a criminal, even though she committed no crime.

Obama -- unlike Comey, unlike anyone else in the FBI -- is not bound by the Hatch Act. If Obama truly wants Hillary to win, here's what he should say:

1. He should state that the FBI has opened an investigation into Donald Trump's possible treasonous deal with Russia. He should further give at least a hint of what the CIA and NSA know about what the Trumpians have been getting up to.

(Do you really think that Assange can communicate with Roger Stone's go-between without being overheard? Do you really think that Trump's computer link to Russia is utterly secure? Don't you understand that Putin and his allies are a primary target of the lads and lasses working in a certain building in Fort Meade?)

Finally, Obama should give some hint as to the possible criminal penalties faced by Trump and/or his underlings.

2. Obama should say a few words about the email pseudoscandal. He needs to counter the lies.

Contrary to what we've all heard from Donald Trump and his surrogates, Hillary did NOT delete 30,000 emails. Her lawyers did (though not at Hillary's request) because the Benghazi investigative committee asked only for work-related communications, not personal messages; at the time, the committee didn't want the personal stuff.

The FBI recovered much of that deleted material, and found that it was indeed quite innocuous. That's the all-important part which Team Trump never tells you.

It is not in the nature of No Drama Obama to insert himself into his successor's election battle. But this is no ordinary election: We are under attack from a foreign adversary. Testing times call for courageous measures.

Besides, the only people who will criticize the President are those who already hate him. So take a chance, Mr. Obama. Deliver a blow. Fortuna audaces iuvat.

(I still don't know what Rick Wilson's second "bomb of November" might be. Any guesses?)

Added note: Something just occurred to me. If there's a GOP "civil war" between the Paul Ryan faction and the Steve Bannon faction, can we not call it a battle between John Galt and John Alt?

Added added note: I've seen further polls indicating that New Hampshire has slipped over to Trump -- bigly. Though the state has only four votes, it is an integral part of the Clinton Firewall. She must not lose Colorado or Virginia.

The best way to help is to spread the Eichenwald story. Make sure that everyone understands that this is infinitely more important than the email non-scandal.