Friday, November 04, 2016

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.

9 comments:

b said...

I've been telling people for years not to underestimate the ~KGB. But it can hardly be that Trump isn't getting backed by any "home" factions in the US - in big business, the security and intelligence community, the military-industrial complex and on Wall Street and not just the Alt-Right and factions who are in the Russians' pocket.

In Britain it is fascinating how the Daily Telegraph seem to have switched to backing Trump, albeit not explicitly. The newspaper has business links with Putin, yes, but the tie is surely nothing like as as strong as its long-term relationship with the Foreign Office, MI6, and the Zionists. It's probably not even as strong as its relationship with the US embassy.

See also retired general David Richards's statement that a coalition with Russia is needed and that Trump might make the world a safer place. Richards was chief of the defence staff between 2010 and 2013. Contrast with general Richard Shirreff's prediction of war with Russian next year.

The West and Russia are intertwined. They interpenetrate. There's only one capitalism. We are in an early stage of WW3, in this epoch in which war is fought over the entire territory of the opponent; at the same time, powerful factions on each "side" share interests with each other.

It's obvious that the US is being destabilised. So is Britain and much of the rest of Europe. Who would you put in the White House to continue and deepen the instability? At the moment I think it could be either Clinton or Trump. A Trump victory would give moronic armed fascist arseholes some of the levers of state power even at a low level, and behind a "political" banner too. It would be celebration time in the FBI and probably also the CIA. A Clinton win would depress morale even lower than it is already in the police and military. With Clinton in office, the Trump "movement" would be in a stronger position than the Tea Party was, but how strong would that be? Would it hold together? Would Trump himself give a shit? I tend to think that those who will decide, or who already have decided, will install Trump.

b said...

The Eichenwald story - if there is one - could be Trump's alleged institutionalisation in a mental hospital in 1990.

Joseph Cannon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Joseph Cannon said...

I didn't know that about the Telegraph. We could probably learn a lot if we had a way to pull on that thread.

If I thought that Clinton was going to increase the chances of war, I would not support her. The Bill Clinton presidency was an oasis of relative peace nestled between two warlike administrations. I expect the same from Hillary, especially if Biden is her Secretary of State.

There is little or no constituency for war in the Democratic Party. If Hillary wins, there is a good chance that the voice of Max Blumenthal may be able to reach her ears. The "Max factor" is one reason why I decided to back Hillary from the start.

Trump, by contrast, loves to fight. He has said so. He got sent to military school because he got into too many fights as a young man. He may say favorable things about Putin NOW, but remember -- he also used to be a big fan of Bill and Hillary.

The fact that his chief military adviser is Joseph E. Schmitz should terrify us all. I've been following the bizarre Schmitz clan for decades; they are to the right of Steve Bannon. You think TRUMP is crazy? Donald Trump is the epitome of sanity compared to the Schmitzes. The Schmitzes make Curtis LeMay seem like St. Therese of Lisieux.

Trump means war. I laid it out here:

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2016/03/trump-ultra-neocon.html

Stephen Morgan said...

The Telegraph is owned by a couple of weirdos who live in the Channel Islands, where they have been involved in numerous scandals. Twins, they are. Built their own castle.

The Clintons have been primed for scandals. Investigate them and people think "oh' it's anouther Clinton scandal". Do the same to Trump and it looks like you're rigging an election.

b said...

I've now read Kurt Eichenwald's piece.

So Russia has built up an enormous espionage and propaganda presence in the US. Fighting such activities by foreign governments is the FBI's job: domestic security and counterintelligence. What's keeping the FBI from doing something about it? Have they been penetrated? Or what? Eichenwald doesn't even mention them.

Gus said...

Of course you realize this will only galvanize Trump's support. His followers are already convinced that the entire establishment is out to get Trump, and a story in Newsweek, of all places, will only reinforce that belief. I suspect it could have that effect on people who are on the fence (though there can't be many of them, at this point).

The MSM IS corrupt, and does work for the powers that be. Of course, that is true of Fox and many "alternative" news outlets, who are largely funded by huge foundations created by elites who are real "establishment". I really don't see how either major party choice in this election will lead us away from war. Both have made clear they will make war, only the targets differ.

Of course, none of this means I support Trump. I wouldn't vote for Trump if he were the only candidate running, so no worries there. I just think we are looking at dangerous times no matter which of these establishment representatives gets in.

Make no mistake though, this story isn't going to sway anyone who hasn't already been swayed.

Anonymous said...

Just want to make one comment to Gus's points. Fox is not funded by foundations. Fox is funded by advertising dollars to the tune of 2 billion a year PROFIT because the advertisers believe that it is that widely watched.

On the other hand there are foundations and think tanks that only exist because they can get free air time by contributing to the content of Fox News. Their experts become paid contributors or it is in their fundraising pitches.

With Mr. Ailes gone even the Murdock brothers know the donuts still got to get made.

The whiplash was terrifying when the network attitude switched from (paraphrased) "let's not attack the patriotic people who wake up every morning trying to make America better" back to the investigative mode when Obama was elected.

A unique Trump supporting network would have many eyeballs and buy lots of Gold Bond Powder.

Bob Harrison said...

The US leaks a warningL http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-hackers-ready-hit-back-if-russia-disrupts-election-n677936