russiagate rundown — january 9, 2018 — the one where they all go to jail
Look, I’m not an optimist, okay? For the most part, I don’t believe “what comes around goes around” or “people get what they deserve.” But the Fusion GPS transcript that Senator Feinstein released yesterday contained such a bombshell that I can’t help but think this will mean the end of the GOP as we know it. People will tell me I’m being too Pollyannish, and certainly, in this political climate even Jesus himself couldn’t predict the actions and reactions of a group this deeply corrupt, but I’m hopeful. There is oh so much to discuss so let’s get into it.
What Happened?
Late yesterday, Congressional battle-ax and taker of no shit, Dianne Feinstein released a transcript of the testimony of the CEO of a company called Fusion GPS. The CEO, Glenn Simpson, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee back in August, and Democrats on the committee have been calling for the ranking member, Chuck Grassley (R-IA), whose career is now effectively over, to release the testimony to the public since August. Grassley first said he would, then reneged on that promise. The term “Benedict Arnold” for treasonous behavior will heretofore be known as “pulling a Grassley.” The GOP has since actively been fighting the release of this testimony, while Simpson has been actively asking that his testimony be released, especially in light of the GOP’s recent smear campaign against his company to try and discredit the infamous Steele Dossier. Finally, frustrated by Grassley’s posturing and the GOP’s crapulence, Feinstein said “fuck it” and released the transcript on her website. Because she is 83 years old and has had a lifetime in politics, she weighed the options and decided that showing America what was in this testimony was the right thing to do. Plus, she has political gravitas for days and figured she could withstand any fallout.
I would like to pause here and remind everyone that it’s been a year of this bullshit, and 535 members of Congress have stood by and done nothing to stop this political shitshow until Senator Feinstein sacked the fuck up and dropped this report yesterday. This is the biggest and best thing Congress has done by far to protect its citizenry since Trump took office. The Democrats seem never to realize that no one is giving them extra credit for playing by the rules, while Americans have had to sit and watch the GOP members of Congress behave in unprecedentedly illegal and craven ways. For the next several years, the whole country is going to be focused on a LOT of “who knew what when” speculation, and while not all of Congress was complicit, many, many, many of the higher-ranking ones were. They will go to jail for this. I’ll tell you why.
The Players
While Mueller is busy investigating whether Trump, members of his administration, and/or the GOP committed Obstruction of Justice against the FBI’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign worked with the Kremlin during the election, the Senate Judiciary Committee has been investigating the election interference and who knew what when. This committee comprises both Republicans and Dems and is led by Grassley, who is a straight-up dickhead, and few will be sad to see him go, least of all the good people of Iowa.
In August, the Senate Judiciary heard testimony from Simpson about his involvement with the 2016 campaign. Fusion is a small firm specializing in opposition research and public documents searches, sort of a political private eye but less tailing people and more records searches through FOIA — uncovering documents that are part of public record to learn more about people, their business dealings, associates, real estate holdings, etc. Since Fusion is a small company, it often contracts work out to specialized experts in their fields. Christopher Steele was one such contractor. He used to work for the British version of the CIA and was their noted Russianist for many years, which is why Simpson hired him. Steele still has Russian contacts all over the world (Russian diaspora is vast since often people have fled Putin or his oligarchs). Not only that, but his subspecialty is disinformation (called “deza” in Russian). In this line of work, the #1 threat is the spread of disinformation — spies putting out misinformation to throw counterintelligence off the trail. There is, literally, almost no one more qualified in the world to sort truth from deza than Steele, which is also why Simpson hired him.
Specifically, Fusion was hired in September 2015 by an unnamed Republican to explore the possibility of a Trump presidential bid. Simpson’s initial research quickly (as in, within the first 48 hours of his research) turned up Trump’s ties to Russian mafia, which didn’t surprise him — it’s an open secret in DC that Trump has had ties to Russian mafia. Since Simpson knew Steele was the most qualified man for the job, he contracted Steele to “go to Russia and find out what Trump does there.” There was nothing nefarious at the time — just loose instructions to “find out what Trump does when he goes to Russia.” Simpson had worked with Steele enough before to know that Steele knew what was expected of him.
When Steele returned from Russia with his now-famous dossier, the two men were gobsmacked. They knew they’d find some shady business dealings, but based on Steele’s findings, it certainly looked as though Vladimir Putin was using Trump as an asset because he had blackmail info on him (“in both audio and video form from multiple locations”). And it looked as though Pooters was actively working to install Trump and, once installed, would blackmail Trump to get Russian sanctions overturned.
To be clear: Steele didn’t set out to “dig up dirt on Trump” or find a Russia connection. In summer 2015, no one was out to get Trump. Trump’s bloviating assertions that this was an attempted smear job are bogus. To quote independent journalist, Seth Abramson: “The Steele dossier is 100% Trump’s fault — dirt was found because there was dirt to find, and dirt was so urgently requested because Trump had never been vetted as a political candidate and was so opaque about his business deals that everyone knew he was hiding things.” At this point in time, the anonymous Republican(s) who hired him did so because they wanted to know what his chances were at being a viable candidate and Trump wasn’t being forthcoming with information about his business dealings. SIDEBAR: If you want a seriously in-depth analysis of the transcript, follow this thread for a page-by-page analysis of Simpson’s testimony.
The Bombshells
So these two men — men who the GOP is now claiming are slimy and unethical — went to the FBI with this information and presented it to their contacts there. BOMBSHELL #1: Imagine their surprise (and I would imagine, relief) when they were told that the FBI was already aware of of all of this because they had a mole working inside of Trump’s campaign!! This is important because what the GOP is currently selling is that Mueller’s entire case rests on the Steele Dossier, which they are trying to discredit. If they can sell the dossier as crap then, their logic goes, the FBI’s case against Trump falls apart. But what the FBI is saying is “We didn’t get our info from the dossier, we have someone on the inside feeding us information.” That’s right, Donny, THE CALLS ARE COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE.
BOMBSHELL #2: For four months, the highest-ranking GOP members of Congress knew that the FBI intel came from a mole inside Trump’s White House and was therefore credible and SAID NOTHING. Every time Trump spoke or tweeted about the investigation being a hoax or that the US intelligence community was ineffective and corrupt and had nothing on him, they sat by silently, knowing the truth and not sharing it with the American people. That is straight-up treason and all are complicit. Like I’ve been saying for months — the GOP is fully complicit in this nonsense, and we haven’t started talking about people like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell distributing dirty Russia money to fund various GOP campaigns in 2016, thereby laundering Russian mob money in the process. No, these are just the folks who have actively been working to cover up for Trump and have actively been working to discredit our intelligence communities at a time we need them more than ever.
What you need to know about Simpson is that legal experts who spent the evening poring over the transcript Feinstein released agree that he comes across as both an extremely credible witness and an ethical person. The same applies to Steele — members of the global intelligence community have come forward in droves this past year to defend him and his careful, meticulous work ethic. You might have noticed both Steele and Fusion have been in the news a lot lately. That’s because the GOP is now engaged in an orchestrated smear campaign against both Steele and Fusion in a last-ditch attempt to discredit the notion that Trump’s campaign team conspired with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election. Think of it as the GOP’s version of deza.
What It All Means
Who knows at this point? What we do know is that (1) The Steele Dossier has been validated as “highly credible” by multiple intel sources (from both inside and outside the US) as “lining up with existing intel on Trump”; (2) the FBI has had someone from inside the Trump campaign since at least July 2016(!); (3) Trump had been receiving intel updates from the Kremlin throughout the campaign (which includes the now-famous June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting where sanctions were discussed); and (4) high-ranking members within the GOP have not only worked to hide this testimony but to discredit it, when they knew it was accurate — to protect Trump and themselves. Like Watergate, it’s all gonna come down to: what did they know and when did they know it?
What we do know is that Mueller has an A-plus legal mind and that if we know this info, just imagine the incriminating information Mueller and his team have right now. If it looks bad from the outside, one can only imagine how truly bad it is inside. I would venture to guess Don Jr. and J-Kush and possibly Sater are next up on Mueller’s indictment party invites, so hopefully we’ll be seeing some juicy perp walks in the very near future.
There is so much more to the testimony. If you wanna fall down that rabbit hole, I recommend following Seth Abramason on Twitter. This is also a shorter, but equally informative thread on Simpson’s testimony and what it means. Mostly, the reaction from political pundits, legal experts, and journos is that the GOP’s complicity in this will be the undoing of the party, the last nail in the coffin. Many, many people are going to jail because of this. Yes, it will take eleventy-million years to work its way through the courts and, given that we seem to elect only very old men, likely many of them will die before they see jail time, but this news is fucking enormous. It’s a cover up of obscene proportions. This summary is but the tip of the iceburg.
Meanwhile, Trump is still blathering about “witch hunts” on Twitter, calling for Republicans to “take control” of the investigation. More authoritarian bullshit from a man who does not understand, nor does he care, about the Constitution or the process of law. Entitled, angry white man screaming into space about how he’s being treated so unfairly is the norm with him. And now we have proof that the complicit GOP has been enabling this madman.
Lastly, what Senator Feinstein did took courage. Grassley is an asshole bully who is now ginning up all kinds of moral outrage for Feinstein releasing a document to the public that the public had every right to know about. It’s time to start reading with a critical eye — know when you hear Congressional GOPers blasting Simpson, Steele, the dossier, or Feinstein that they are actively engaging in covering up their roles in conspiring with a hostile foreign government. That’s called treason, folks.
And if you have a minute, do drop Dianne a line and thank her. This is exactly the kind of thing we elect politicians to do — protect us and the United States. When questioned last night by reporters about why she decided to release it, she gave a little smile, shrugged, and said “Because I felt like it.”
That’s MY Senator, folks.
