Russian Meddling – A Kremlin pastime.
With the indictment of the 12 Russian nationals for “meddling” in our elections there are a couple of obvious observations to be made.
- Russia did their meddling when Obama was President, Mueller (for a time) headed the FBI, and Strzok and Lisa Page were in the employment of the FBI.
- The Russians have meddled in our elections since the early 1900s
- We’ve meddled in the world’s elections in a major way under Obama
- The Ukraine Elections
- Hillary campaigned against Putin
- Obama sent his own people to Israel to interfere with their elections and campaign against Netanyahu
- Why release the indictment just prior to Trump’s meeting with Putin?
And these are just a few of the obvious questions to be asked.
I’ve read the latest indictment and there is nothing to even imply that there was any coordination or collusion with the Trump campaign in the 2016 election. The 12 Russian nationals were charged with setting up fake social media accounts (like many Americans do, are doing and have done), and with transferring money from sham Russian corporations to fund these activities and to generate fake news stories.
The indictments for Manafort centered on bank and wire fraud, money laundering and tax evasion primarily from 2006 – 2015 and then from 2015 – 2017 in regards to money laundering.
Michael Flynn was indicted for and subsequently plead guilty to providing false statements to the FBI. And like Manafort’s case, it had nothing to do with collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign.
Those are the facts as we know them. Then there is the Putin / Trump press conference where many believe that Trump blew it. Rather than standing up for America, Trump said this:
“And I think we’re all to blame.” and then Trump said the following in response to a AP reporter’s question asking:
Reporter: “My first question for you sir is, who do you believe? My second question is would you now, with the whole world watching, tell President Putin, would you denounce what happened in 2016 and would you warn him to never do it again? “
TRUMP: “My people came to me, Dan Coates, came to me and some others they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia.
I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be. But I really do want to see the server but I have, I have confidence in both parties.
I really believe that this will probably go on for a while but I don’t think it can go on without finding out what happened to the server. What happened to the servers of the Pakistani gentleman that worked on the DNC?
Where are those servers? They’re missing. Where are they? What happened to Hillary Clinton’s emails? 33,000 emails gone, just gone. I think in Russia they wouldn’t be gone so easily.
I think it’s a disgrace that we can’t get Hillary Clinton’s thirty three thousand e-mails.
I have great confidence in my intelligence people but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today and what he did is an incredible offer.
He offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators, with respect to the 12 people. I think that’s an incredible offer. Ok? Thank you.“
Trump said it: “I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
On returning to Washington, news reports stated that Trump was surprised at the negative responses from both sides of the isle after the Putin talks. Brennan called him a traitor, and proclaimed Tump guilty of high crimes and treason. Newt Gingrich stated Trump made the biggest mistake of his political career by not backing our intelligence agencies.
After reading the transcript, Trump made a correction and said that he meant to say “I don’t see why it wouldn’t be” instead of what he actually said. President Trump simply said he “misspoke”. I doubt that will stop any of the controversy. But it is a start.
I am sure that Trump believes that an admission of Russian involvement would taint the “superior” campaign he ran. He did say: “we won that race. And it’s a shame that there can even be a little bit of a cloud over it.“
So that is the crux of it. An admission by Trump that the Russians meddled in the election would mean to him that he really did not win the office legitimately and on his own (even though we know he did.) He just can’t admit it. I can say no Russian meddling made me vote Trump. Eight years fo Obama and Hillary were enough of a reason to cast my vote for him.
And he does blame the leaders of the FBI and other US intelligence for the collusion probe. Collusion is not even a crime but we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars chasing a boogeyman. And Trump has good reason to be pissed about the way the FBI has set him up while ignoring and covering up the crimes of Hillary and Obama. The cover up of the DOJ and the FBI’s involvement in the Hillary e-mail fiasco and their refusal thus far to investigate the Uranium sale to Russia by Hillary when she was Secretary of State, and the money her and Bill received just prior to the sale (Bill received a $500,000 speaking fee in 2010 from Russian interests) are at the core of why Trump feels beset upon by the FBI and the DOJ.
Then Putin leveled this bombshell and the main stream media has pretty much ignored it. But this is big and deserves to be investigated.
Putin “For instance, we can bring up Mr. Browder in this particular case. Business associates of Mr. Browder have earned over one and a half billion dollars in Russia. They never paid any taxes, neither in Russia nor in the United States and yet the money escaped the country, they were transferred to the United States.
They sent a huge amount of money – 400 million – as a contribution to the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Well, that’s their personal case, it might have been legal, the contribution itself, but the way the money was earned was illegal.
So we have a solid reason to believe that some intelligence officers accompanied and guided these transactions. So we have an interest of questioning them. That could be a first step and we can also extend it. Options abound.”
So there you have it. IF the FBI and CIA want to play indict the Russian, Putin wants to do the same with our intelligence officers. Although it would be fun to see Hillary pay for her crimes and treason, I doubt we’ll take Putin up on his tit-for-tat game of Russian roulette.