We have been subjected to a year and a half, almost two years, of constant hysteria about Russia and whether they helped Trump win the 2016 election. There has been no evidence of any collusion and the Mueller “special counsel” investigation seems to be winding down.
Rush Limbaugh has some interesting ideas about what is going on.
So the only possible way they can get rid of Trump here is via politics, and that’s to drive his approval numbers down so that Republicans in Congress have no reason to support him. If Republicans in Congress — the House and Senate — could be forced to abandon their support for Trump, as happened to Nixon, then he would have to go. I don’t know if Trump would play ball even in that scenario like Nixon did. I think Trump would dare them to impeach him and try to remove him. I don’t think Trump’s gonna play ball the way the establishment thinks.
Democrat voters are highly motivated to vote in the November election, at least in part, to impeach Trump. Why ?
There seems to be no letup in the frenzy to demonize Trump.
In 21st-century America, it is difficult to conjure the possibility of the federal government taking an eraser to the map and scrubbing away an entire ethnic group. I had arrived in Columbus at the suggestion of a Cleveland-based lawyer named David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Leopold has kept in touch with an old client who attends the Mauritanian mosque. When he mentioned the community’s plight to me, he called it “ethnic cleansing”—which initially sounded like wild hyperbole.
“Mosque.” Hmmm.
The Russia conspiracy theory, which is what it is, might have roots in another situation. First, the entire Fusion GPS thing began as a means of avoiding consequences for Hillary’s careless treatment of security rules.
They were trafficking on that server with her. Everybody in this hierarchy, the Democrat National Committee, the Obama Department of Justice which ran this whole show, the Obama Department of Justice which let the Russians do whatever they did, made no effort to stop it, everybody here knew that Hillary Clinton was guilty, everybody knew that she had committed crimes, above and beyond.
The Clinton Foundation, the soliciting of donations from around the world. That was the essence of selling policy, selling her office in advance of her winning. Everybody there knew it! What they had to do was exonerate her. They had to take steps to make sure she would never be prosecuted. They had to take steps to ensure she would never be charged. It simply wouldn’t do. They could not permit the Democrat Party’s presidential nominee to even appear to be under a legal cloud.
And then she lost that fixed election. Now what ?
There is a history with the Clintons and China.
The “Chinagate” fundraising scandal plagued the 1996 Bill Clinton-Al Gore campaign and Hillary was very much involved. Chinagate aka Commercegate is the most serious scandal in U.S. history. It involves the transfer of America’s most sensitive technology, including but not limited to nuclear missile and satellite technology, possibly in exchange for millions of dollars in contributions to the 1996 Clinton-Gore re-election effort and the Democratic National Committee.
Did it end there ?
Diane Feinstein, who has been either chair or ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had a “driver” who was a Chinese spy.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office was infiltrated by a Chinese spy who worked as her driver and attended official functions on her behalf for 20 years, according to new reports from Politico and The San Francisco Chronicle.
Feinstein reportedly had no idea that her office was being infiltrated by a man who was feeding information to an individual linked to China’s Ministry of State Security. She was “mortified” when the FBI showed up at her Washington DC office five years ago to warn her about the mole.
Since President Nixon went to China in 1972, Russ has followed the development of China, its people and leaders.
He recently retired after 26 years as a senior staff of the United States Senate. 5 years with Senator Alan Cranston and 21 years with Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. He was the Office Director of the Senator Feinstein’s San Francisco office and State liaison for Asian and Asian American affairs. Russ has provided many seminars for visiting Chinese officials.
Russ first went to China in 1975, then in 1979 and several more times in the 80’s and early 90’s on US-China trade related activities. Since 1997, he has visited China every year for a month at a time.
That was the spy.
In her capacity as a ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Feinstein unilaterally released testimony from Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson to the public earlier this year, violating committee precedent. When she released these records, she failed to disclose that one of her former staffers, Daniel Jones, had hired Fusion GPS and ex-British spy Christopher Steele to dig up dirt on Donald Trump after the 2016 election.
Jones, who runs a private investigative outfit called Penn Quarter Group, told the FBI last year that he was being bankrolled by 7 to 10 wealthy donors who are primarily from New York and California to look into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian officials to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton. These donors gave him $50 million he used to hire Fusion GPS, which contracted with Steele to compile the now-infamous dossier riddled with salacious and unverified claims.
While the Russia thing has preoccupied Washington, what has China been doing ?
The speed and scale of China’s island-building spree have alarmed other countries with interests in the region. China announced in June that the creation of islands — moving sediment from the seafloor to a reef — would soon be completed. Since then, China has focused its efforts on construction. So far it has constructed port facilities, military buildings and an airstrip on the islands, with recent imagery showing evidence of two more airstrips under construction. The installations bolster China’s foothold in the Spratly Islands, a disputed scattering of reefs and islands in the South China Sea more than 500 miles from the Chinese mainland.
Feinstein has a role on the Trump Russia hoax.
A newly declassified congressional report shows that a former staffer to Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, had ties to Fusion GPS and British ex-spy Christopher Steele, both subjects of Feinstein’s committee’s investigation. Feinstein never disclosed these connections publicly.
The former staffer, Daniel Jones, previously served as Feinstein’s senior intelligence staffer. Jones currently leads a “research and investigatory advisory” that hired Fusion GPS and Steele after the 2016 election to push the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, as The Federalist’s Sean Davis reports:
According to the report, Jones, who runs an investigative outfit called the Penn Quarter Group (PQG), told the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in March of 2017 that he had retained the services of Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to “continue exposing Russian interference” in the 2016 election. Steele is the former British spy who authored the infamous unverified dossier of allegations against President Donald Trump.
Why would Feinstein do any favors for China?
She has a long history with China.
For the last 40 years, no politician in America has arguably maintained a deeper, more longstanding and friendlier relationship with China, at the highest levels of its ruling Communist Party, than Feinstein. It dates back to the opening of U.S.-Chinese diplomatic relations in 1979.
Shortly thereafter, Feinstein, then mayor of San Francisco, established a “sister city” relationship with Shanghai, one of the earliest and most robust such relationships in U.S.-China history. Soon after, Feinstein led a mayoral delegation to China joined by her husband, investor Richard Blum, a trip they took together many times over the ensuing years as the relationship between both Feinsteins and China grew.
During the 1980s, as mayor of San Francisco, Feinstein developed a close friendship with Shanghai Mayor Jiang Zemin. This substantially enhanced Feinstein’s foreign policy profile, and created an important linkage to the U.S. government for China’s Communist Party (CCP).
Her husband has a long history of profitable dealing with China.
In 1986, Feinstein and Jiang designated several corporate entities for fostering commercial relations, one named Shanghai Pacific Partners. Feinstein’s husband served as a director. His financial position was relatively small, less than $500,000 on one project, the only such position in China the Feinstein family held when Feinstein entered the Senate in 1992.
‘They said that Feinstein’s consistent support for China’s interests cannot help but benefit her husband’s efforts to earn profits there.’
That project, however, which Blum’s firm participated in alongside PRC state-run Shanghai Investment Trust Corp., was one of the first joint ventures between San Francisco and Chinese investors, reportedly “cited by Chinese officials as a testament to the friendly business ties between Shanghai and San Francisco that Feinstein had initiated.” Subsequently Blum’s investments in the Middle Kingdom mushroomed.
In May 1993, Feinstein expressed her strong support on the Senate floor for continued trading with China. Contemporaneously, her husband was seeking to raise up to $150 million from investors, including himself, for a variety of Chinese enterprises.
Is China encouraging the Russia Trump hoax for its own reasons ?
Trump may be figuring this out.
President Trump is about to sign the new National Defense Authorization Act, which will prohibit funding to Chinese-run Confucius Institutes on American campuses.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz added the key amendment to “The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019,” which also restricts funding to universities that host Confucius Institutes and requires them to provide a public record of any agreements or contracts they have with the program, which has deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
“The Confucius Institutes are the velvet glove around the iron fist of their campaigns on our campuses.”
Earlier this week, the White House confirmed that Trump plans to sign the bill during a visit to Fort Drum, New York, according to Fox-28.
In March, the Central Intelligence Agency issued a classified report labeling the institutes as a threat, according to an unclassified page of the document obtained by The Washington Free Beacon.
Good.
Both Russia and China have been hacking US government and business systems for years. Presumably we have their systems penetrated as well. Of course, as has been true for 60+ years, we have stuff worth stealing, and they don’t.
Anyone who is at all interested in the truth knows the DNC was spearphished by Russian hackers, and their files were also stolen and leaked via an insider.
The Russia-collusion hoax was made up when the NSA cut off the access to their systems that corrupt FBI/CIA officials had given to outside contractors (Fusion GPS and/or Crowdstrike). They then resorted to the FISA process to spy on the Trump campaign.
And, yes, the Clintons and their minions are very, very dirty.
Don’t forget the DOD personnel database that was put in the charge of a Chinese administrator by Obama’s first female Hispanic personnel records administrator.
Millions of personnel records, including mine.
Damn! The only thing you have missed is the Skripal connection. Kudos. ;)
Yeah they are freaking out to an increasing extent. The full court press on Trump’s collusion is looking dumber and dumber and even those who were following along are drifting away. The ‘boy who cried wolf’ effect, if you will. ;)
This is causing some panic in the ranks.
Why does anyone think it was the Chinese who hacked the OPM database? Because the WaPo said the hack originated in China? I’ve always thought that particular personal information might be more valuable to other people than the Chinese. Any value to the Chinese would come with a relatively short shelf life.
The most infuriating thing to me about the OPM hack was the brazen lying from the government about the scope of the theft. When the news first broke, the official story was that it was a pretty small, targeted hack, but many non-government experts said that from piecing together the story, it was clear that the hackers had gotten everything. It was denied vociferously. Then over the course of six months or so, the government gradually would increase their estimate of how much was taken, until finally the answer was, yes, the hackers had gotten everything.
The image we are supposed to have of the superpowers of the various parts of the IC is grossly at odds with reality. “The NSA/CIA/FBI says…” shouldn’t really be taken to signify anything anymore.
Why does anyone think it was the Chinese who hacked the OPM database?
Could it be that Obama put his “First Hispanic Female OPM administrator” in place and she promptly hired a Chinese national as administrator ?
I did not realize until today that That China now owns Forbes magazine and may be influencing what is printed.
Forbes magazine, which has championed free markets since its founding in 1917, is headed by former two-time Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes.
“It is plausible that this pro-China bias at Forbes translated into a greater willingness to commit investigative resources to what might be perceived as enemies of China, for example members of the Trump administration,” Corr said.
The report, by Forbes staffer Dan Alexander, was published Aug. 7 on Forbes.com and was based on interviews “over several months . . . with 21 people who know Ross,” although not one was identified.
It alleged the commerce secretary “wrongly siphoned or outright stole a few million here and a few million there” and the accusations “sparked lawsuits, reimbursements and an SEC fine” and totaled more than $120 million.
“If even half of the accusations are legitimate, the current United States secretary of commerce could rank among the biggest grifters in American history,” the report alleged.
Ross, of course, has been tough in his negotiations with China. The accusations of “grifting” include accusations of taking packets of artificial sweetener from restaurants. No names, though.
Did you catch this shocking story about the CIA’s failures in China in 2010-2011, which led to the execution of all their assets-
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia-communications-system-helped-blow-cover-chinese-agents-intelligence/
The initial explanation was the double agent Jerry Chun Shing Lee, but it now appears he only played a bit part. It was mostly because of little to no effort by the CIA to hide their communications. I believe the legal term for something this bad is res ipsa loquitur- the mere fact of this debacle is evidence of criminal negligence at the highest levels. However, I won’t hold my breath waiting for anyone to be held accountable.
the mere fact of this debacle is evidence of criminal negligence at the highest levels.
Don’t attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. Did you read about the British kid who hacked into Brennan’s computer files ?
He has been sentenced to prison.
No punishment for Brennan except losing his clearance that allowed the kid to steal secrets.
More on the failure of the CIA under Brennan.
China rolled up the entire CIA agent network in 2010.
It was considered one of the CIA’s worst failures in decades: Over a two-year period starting in late 2010, Chinese authorities systematically dismantled the agency’s network of agents across the country, executing dozens of suspected U.S. spies. But since then, a question has loomed over the entire debacle.
How were the Chinese able to roll up the network?
Now, nearly eight years later, it appears that the agency botched the communication system it used to interact with its sources, according to five current and former intelligence officials.
NO wonder a 13 years old could hack into Brennan’s computer.
“according to five current and former intelligence officials.”
Why should I believe gossip? I have no idea who’s trying accomplish what with this story.
Not that it’s unbelievable, of course. Recall that the DoD was live streaming unencrypted video from UAVs in the field for several years after it was publicly revealed that they were doing so. Stupid comms mistakes are quite likely, but this story could easily be a cover for some other story, which could be a cover for something else, etc. For example, I could easily believe that we have broken some Chinese codes, or placed a spy in their system, who has told us something critical, and someone is now leaking this bogus story to make it look like we don’t have any such access to truth. The point is that there is no way for us to tell what’s actually going on.
I could easily believe that we have broken some Chinese codes, or placed a spy in their system, who has told us something critical,
I wish I had your confidence in the CIA.
Mike K: ??? I don’t. What I said was we don’t know anything, and have no reason to believe anything.
This is the beauty of res ipsa loquitur. We will most likely never know the details, but that doesn’t matter. At the minimum, we know something bad has happened, and whoever was in charge of the environment in which this negligence occurred is to be held responsible. It functions as a heuristic. That is, it’s a rule of thumb that doesn’t attempt to define or explain the environment, but to adequately simplify it so we can act effectively.
Brian, that was not accusatory. I just have no faith in the CIA and am losing what faith I had in the NSA.
Have you ever read, “The Cuckoo’s Egg?”
It’s a classic. Out of date now but the new edition has some postscripts.