The prevailing assumption regarding the Russian investigation is that it is a big nothing cooked up by bitter Democrats and promoted by the media to avoid facing up to the reality of the 2016 election. Once it became clear that the Podesta e-mails were causing trouble for Clinton, her people started chanting “Russian hacking” at every press conference, as if they had an exotic form of Tourette’s syndrome. It has all the hallmarks of a Clinton media fraud. They repeat something over and over, knowing the press will echo it.
The appointment of a special prosecutor has been viewed as an effort by the Trump administration to put the issue to bed. The press was never going to stop talking about and the Democrats were going to keep screaming about it. Name a special prosecutor and everyone has shut up about it. Mueller will spend a year and millions of dollars to discover there is nothing to the claims. That is the official version. What if it is something else entirely? What if the special prosecutor is just an excuse to handle some other matter?
The rule of thumb with political scandals is they fall into one of three buckets. There is the sex scandal, as with Bill Clinton. Then there are the money scandals, involving graft and public corruption. Hillary Clinton is the obvious example here. Then there is the personal scandal. This is the scandal where hurt feelings or a broken promise result in one member of the political class dishing dirt on another. Watergate was this type of scandal at its core. Mark Felt was angry at being passed over so he ratted out people to the press.
That is the odd thing about the Russia business. It has none of the markings of a political scandal. It works as a media event, as it ticks a lot of boxes for the press. They get to trade on salacious rumors for a while, without having to do any real reporting. Throw in some conspiracy theories and the Boris Badenov angle and it fills the news cycles for a few weeks. Otherwise, there is not enough to this Russian conspiracy to warrant a phone call from the FBI, much less a full blown investigation.
That is what makes the appointment of a special prosecutor so strange. The guy who convinced Trump to fire the FBI Director was Rod Rosenstein. He is pretty much a career Justice Department hand. Trump accepted his recommendation and fired Comey. Then Rosenstein ended up as the guy handling the phony Russia story after Sessions mysteriously recused himself. Trump then went on a rampage for a few weeks complaining about Sessions, even hinting that he may fire him over it.
Rosenstein then recommended a special prosecutor. The guy he recommended is a close friend of Comey and the former FBI Directory, Robert Mueller. In fact, Mueller preceded Comey in the job. Forgotten in all the excitement is the fact that Trump claimed the Obama people had bugged Trump Tower. The new was full of stories that the FBI may have a former Trump adviser on a wire. Of course, we now know that the Obama Administration was running a widespread domestic surveillance operation.
Then there are things that seem unrelated, but maybe not. Comey personally handled the Clinton e-mail probe. He is either a world class bungler or he had a reason to bungle it. Either way, he bungled it. He also appears to have perjured himself in his Congressional testimony. In one case, he later amended his testimony when it became obvious, he made false statements under oath. Maybe Comey was trying to hide something, but the more plausible answer is that he is just not good at this sort of work.
Regardless, there should be a whole bunch of attention on the FBI right now. At the minimum, they have been outlandishly incompetent over the last half of the Obama Administration. That should warrant a house cleaning. Alternatively, they may have been corrupted by the Obama Administration. It is clear that Samantha Power was abusing her authority with regards to domestic surveillance. It is reasonable to assume the FBI was compromised in some way during Comey’s tenure.
That may be what is really going on with the special prosecutor. The phony Russia scandal provided an excuse to bring in a political pro like Mueller to clean up the mess left by Comey and the Obama Administration. The FBI is not supposed to be spying on Americans without a warrant and they are really not supposed to be listening in on politicians. Someone signed off on bugging Trump Tower, during and after the presidential election. Who knows what other shenanigans have been going on?
The most likely answer for why a special prosecutor was appointed is that it was an easy way to get the whole thing out of the White House. Since the story is bogus and Mueller surely knows it is bogus, it will be a nice patronage program for a year or two and then the whole thing goes away. The second most likely answer is that Mueller’s job is to clean up the mess left by Comey and protect the reputation of the FBI, maybe even some other intelligence agencies. That way, no one gets hurt the problems are quietly fixed.
What this is not. is an investigation about Russia meddling in the election.
Mueller’s job is to bleach the evidence of criminal acts committed by the Obama cartel. Session’s recusal opened the door for these thugs to set up shop in the DOJ, literally creating a justice department within the justice department. The progressive rhinos know this and are co conspirators.
It is going to be a complete replay of the Valerie Plame outing investigation. Everybody knew it was Richard Armitage that blabbed about Plame to Robert Novak. Though there was talk her husband Joe Wilson would run his mouth off about her work at DC Cocktail parties, but that is neither here or there. Of course the press didn’t push out to the masses information that a 12 year old could have found out on his school lunch break. Can’t ruin the narrative. But the whole goal of the investigation was to nail somebody in the Bush Administration. Cheney was… Read more »
What we really need is a right wing version of the Church commission. That we won’t see one is a good reason to view the current crop of Republicans as either cogs in the machine or completely cucked, or both.
I might be able to buy the idea that Mueller was hired to clean up the FBI if it weren’t for the fact that he’s exclusively hired hard-left partisans. If he’d hired a team of competent bloodhounds, then maybe. But as his team is currently composed, it’s a Democrat hit squad operating under color of law.
This still strikes me as a Playbook scandal, and it is very, very, similar to how the Valerie Plame sham investigation played out. First, there is the hyperventilated response to this or that item in the news. For Plame, it was Bob Novak revealing her identity, and that she was or is married to the yellow cake guy from the Iraq/WMD investigation. For Russia, there was the Podesta email leak. So, the Russia thing shares that “government/spycraft/intrigue” theme. The second reason it’s like Plame is that there is no underlying crime that anybody can identify. In the case of Plame,… Read more »
Hok;
I have to say that your reading of the tea leaves is more likely than mine. Specifically, the historical point of a special prosecutor investigation is to put heat *on* the Repub. side of the uni-party (Ken Starr the exception) so as to limit the Repub. ability to interfere with the Prog. cash flow.
Upon reconsideration, the historical point of a commission investigation is to take the heat *off* the uni-party, the 9/11 commission being the classic example.
The uni-party, official government party, bipartisan fusion party, desperately needed something after the November election to justify their continued existence/relevance, a means to justify to their media/liberal base why they lost in humiliating fashion to “the orange troll doll”, and a way to try and derail Trump’s agenda.
They’ve had some successes because of this strategy, but it’s a loser for them in the long term. I’ve been having fun over at “The Atlantic” reminding them that they’re all excited…about nothing.
the whole thing seems to be put together in a haphazard fashion, without a true central plan.
I think they are just trying to do whatever they can to create noise to derail Trump. Throwing everything against the wall to see if it will stick.
Sooner or later, something will “stick” (simply because with enough tries at it, something will happen), and then things get interesting, in a very bad way.
It appears that the Russians aren’t really interested in supporting any one candidate, but instead simply want to disrupt the entire process. If so, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Let me posit this: the Obamas hate the Clintons, but need them and are extremely wary of them. Obama made Hilary Secretary of State to keep her inside the tent pissing out. He then gave her no important work. Still she was a hot mess, culminating in Benghazi, which almost cost O the 2012 election. Trump comes along. O sees no chance he can win. He decides to take some shots at Hilary to let her know, when she’s president, that he’s still the King. He unleashes Comey who whacks H but gives her a pass. Trump wins. O and… Read more »
I have seen too many people try to associate Obama with intelligence and a Machiavellian political ability. Please stop. The guy couldn’t wipe his ass without a teleprompter. The gay mulatto was hired to be President because he was a light-skinned, “well spoken” blackish type person. Any changes that were initiated while he was Vacationer-in-Chief were initiated through him, not by him. The democratic political process is a joke. It is not meant to accomplish anything except to confuse the masses so they will feel reality is too complex for them to understand it. That’s why the voters must leave… Read more »
If I were to finger anyone, it would be the foreign policy and national security establishment. I don’t think Team Obama cared all that much about the election. They were focused on setting up Obama Inc for after he left office. It seems that the spooks were running wild, trying to help Hillary as she was willing to let them run wild, while Trump was hanging around with critics of the neocons. Just a hunch, but the berserk hatred from guys like Max Boot and Bill Kristol suggest these people see themselves in an end of times war, that allows… Read more »
Kristol said as much back during the election…if Trump were to win, the NeverTrumpers would move on to removing him from office.
This seems like a rare mis-read for you. The special prosecutor is Deep State 101 – get a bunch of unaccountable lawyers with a big budget to start threatening the president’s friends and associates. At a minimum, it paralyzes the administration as everybody lawyers up. And almost certainly the SP can manufacture a process crime by somebody of interest. The special prosecutor is a big failure for Trump, a windfall for his political enemies, and not any kind of 4D chess to clean up the FBI. Almost certainly it’s going to produce a second round of Russia Mania when the… Read more »
I wish Steve Sailer had never promoted the term Deep State. There is no Deep State.
and America has no class distinctions either! you may not be interested in the deep state, but the deep state is interested in you! what would it take for you to believe there is a “deep state”?
I love Sailer, but his fondness for reductionism and conspiracy does not serve him well. There is a semi-permanent foreign policy establishment in Washington. There is a semi-permanent political class in DC. That has been true for a long time. What’s not true is that it functions as a coherent whole, secretly running the country behind the scenes. That’s not true in the least. In reality, these people fight and snipe at one another over petty grievances like high school kids. The best they can do is look out for their friends, by getting them jobs, covering for their many… Read more »
Like people pursue like interests. When those folks are in positions of power they can have outsize influence on everybody else. It looks like the Illuminati (thanks Peter!) but is just self-interest. It’s why a basic set of rules are needed.
Where each faction of quarrelsome, petty, permanent employees of government react instinctively to preserve their worlds, you have a deep state. It does not require a leader. Others can from time to time direct it for their own purposes, as long as those purposes aren’t constructive. An enormous thing exists which should not exist. That is the state of things and we are in deep.
Never underestimate the lengths people will go to, to protect their own paychecks and pensions.
DC’s a poly-anarchy of competing individuals, branches and agencies vying for ascendancy. Excuse the Goodwin reference, but the Third Reich was the same way, encouraged by Hitler to keep his underlings at each other’s throats instead of going after him. Look at how Canaris, Goering, and Himmler were at odds with each other.
ZMan, I seldom disagree with you, but you are off the mark here. The shadow government hides in plain sight in places like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Federal Reserve, the Rand Corporation, the Bilderberg Group and the Davos Conference, and the like. To use one example as a proof of concept, examine the CFR and its membership list and then cross-reference that list to presidential administrations over the last half century or more. You will find that the CFR membership reads like a “who’s who” of Democrat and Republican power brokers and movers-and-shakers – from Henry Kissinger to… Read more »
To add to Georgiaboy61’s comment: Those CFR/Davos/Bilderberg people are NOT like you and me. There’s a huge occult/satanist element that should give any normal person the heebie-jeebies.
For example, this really happened:
https://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/opening-ceremony-worlds-largest-tunnel-bizarre-occult-ritual/
Pure evil.
I’m guessing that when the ZMan says “there is no deep state”, he means that there isn’t some secret mountain Illuminati lair where Ersnt Stavro Blofeld runs the *actual* government. What I’m realizing is that any organization that grows in size and complexity becomes fundamentally ungovernable and impossible to manage or oversee. Additional layers of oversight will be about as effective as the last Org Chart Re-alignment Committee at Acme Widgets, Inc. There is no organized Deep State. But there is an unfathomable mass of permanent bureaucrats, interested in money, power, or just riding their mediocre inertia until… Read more »
Exactly. Inside these bureaucracies is quite amazing. Imagine your high school had 30,000 students, all of who thought they were in the cool kid clique. They are entirely inward looking. The first concern to all involved is status. Since no actual work gets done, status is about sucking up to the people above. The people in the upper layers fall into two groups. There are the career civil servants who gamed their way as high as they can go and then there are the appointees. There’s some overlap, but a great deal of hostility too. That’s where all the leaks… Read more »
guys – to echo AWM in a different context: Please Stop. there is no deep state. i was in what could arguably have been the deepest of the deep for over 3 decades (close to 4 if you count contract time), arriving dc before reagan. never met or worked with, here or abroad, anyone who could conspire to do more than call a staff meeting to preen about diversity or the combined federal campaign. le carre had it pegged over 50 years ago: there were/are no moral philosophers measuring the word of god and karl marx. while they might not… Read more »
Think of it as something akin to “flocking” in birds. Very complex and seemingly deliberate behaviors that occur simply by instinct and commonality.
Never attribute to malice, that which can be explained by stupidity … or emergent behavior.
Re: “Never attribute to malice, that which can be explained by stupidity … or emergent behavior.”
Would you settle for all three?
As Joe Sobran called them, the hive.
“…There is no Deep State…”
I was incredulous when I read this but…I get it if you’re saying there’s more than one deep State. I don’t believe there’s one big group that runs everything. There’s several of them sometimes working together, when they’re screwing the average guy, and sometimes at cross purposes.
Operation Mockingbird preceded Steve Sailer by quite a bit.
“I wish Steve Sailer had never promoted the term Deep State. There is no Deep State.” Then what do you propose that we call the movers-and-shakers – the oligarchs behind the curtain – who actually run this country? And it isn’t just the oligarchs; it is those members of the permanent (unelected) government whose interests align with those of their bosses. As respected strategic analysts such as John Robb and William Lind have noted, failed states (such as Mexico) are characterized by a façade of functional democratic institutions – courts, elections, political coalitions and parties, and the rest of it… Read more »
In place of “Deep State”, you can certainly read “permanent government” or whatever term you prefer.
The point is, these people know the USG game. They know the tricks that keep the “merely elected” government in line. And they know that Trump is an outsider who does not know.
Nobody had to twirl their mustache and give orders – everybody from senior bureaucrats to the TLAs to the press to congresscritters understood that a SP was a “fire and forget” weapon aimed at Trump. They all played their parts so that one was created.
That darned Eisenhower must have been jerking our chain when he warned “Beware the military industrial complex”.
“…why Bush Jr didn’t pardon Libby in similar circumstances.” Because Bush was trying to walk a fine line between the faux outrage from the media and regressives when they suspected he might pardon Libby and his base of Conservatives who knew that Libby was nothing more than a fall guy and did not deserve jail for saying the same thing the Clinton’s always got away with “I can’t recall”. Rove probably called it for GW to play it down the middle and commute the sentence, thus taking away the left’s full meltdown over a pardon and throwing a small bone… Read more »
The Libby thing was HW splitting the baby. Sure Scooter deserved a pardon, and not giving him one was pretty disloyal. But he did commute the sentence, and I imagine Conservative Inc. managed to find a way to get a quarter million to him to cover the fine.
Bah, W, not HW.
there is no deep state, but: dnc did conspire with cnn to help clinton win debates clinton campaign did conspire/coordinate with msm journolist did exist wall street did conspire with obama to create prog slush fund epa did conspire with leftist eco groups google’s eric schmidt did (and does) advise dems chelsea clinton did get a sweetheart gig at nbc hillary has not been indicted obama has not been investigated for spying on political opponents davos does happen every year entire msm will use same phrase as all outlets have same article come out at same time jimmy kid-with-bad-heart is… Read more »
Government’s first imperative is to assure it’s own survival. This preempts every other consideration. Mueller’s investigation is the equivalent of an immune system attacking an invading virus. We won’t know what (or who) the virus is until Mueller goes on the attack. My guess is that Trump has been given an ultimatum; either join the swamp or face elimination. As a side note, no government agency (no matter how corrupted) will ever admit wrongdoing.
Re: ” My guess is that Trump has been given an ultimatum; either join the swamp or face elimination.” “An ultimatum”? By whom? “Face elimination” Again, by whom? I don’t disagree with you; I am merely asking who would deliver those messages and how. Who originated them? Doesn’t it come down to one man in these instances, or at least a small group of men? Self-organization and emergent behavior can explain much about how extremely complex super-organisms like the government work, but if someone is going to be “eliminated,” doesn’t that imply that the decision came down to one man,… Read more »
I doubt that this was communicated via a single messenger using a singular communication. Rather, it was more likely implied by numerous sources and actions of the DC body-politic. More like an amorphous pressure than an overt threat. As an example, LIttle Rocket Man is feeling a lot of heat right now. I doubt he is bothered by Trump’s jibes, but the economic sanctions (particularly by China) are not something you can easily ignore.
Another possibility is that this is a rerun of the 9/11 commission. That a glory hound like Kissinger wouldn’t take the chair was my clue that some fix or other was in. Sure enough, the Clinton DOJ official most responsible for the law enforcement lapses, namely Jamie Gorelek (sp?) was put on the commission instead of being in the dock. Evidently, the Clintonoids suggested to the Bushies that it sure would be a shame if all the evidence of their buddies, the Saudis’, complicity were to come out, or something similar. So it was evidently decided to let the sleeping… Read more »
These false flag Op’s are getting old. It will be a great day those behind them are shining from a rope. We as true Americans ass a rule do not do these things to each other, the timing, the nature, the frequency of these events from Ruby Ridge, to Waco, Oklahoma City, Fast & Furious, Benghazi, Aurora, Newtown etc, they evince a pattern. Nothing could be more unnatural for us as a culture & people.
https://mtntopforge.wordpress.com/2017/10/02/how-convenient-another-white-lone-wolf-mass-murderer-with-an-assault-weapon-matt-bracken-was-right-again/
Nah, given who Mueller is hiring, the fix is in to find things that damage Trump, no way is this designed to do anything but strengthen the deep state and big government pols.
I was surprised they went all in on Russia, because it’s like blaming fido for eating your homework, and sticking to the story. Tho i doubt Hillary, Pelosi or Waters even know what hacking is, they are computer illiterate people who get their internet printed out, remember Huma forwarding Wiener emails to print out? Hilarious! And that’s the funny part, Hillary may very well believe that the Russians put a spell on her!
Interesting theory. I have a difficult time reconciling this with the fact that Mueller has expanded the investigation to include Trump’s tax returns.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-irs-and-mueller-took-a-big-step-forward-in-the-russia-probe-2017-9
I hope you are right, but I fear you are wrong.
There are no Mafias, either.
Go ahead, show me their books!
See, no money in these ficticious groups.
No money in any governments, either, not with their scrupulous accounting and restricted budgets.
Who would even be interested?
We should always give them the benefit of the doubt, since they have so little say in our lives.
Politicians are well-meaning but misguided, and demonstrators organize themselves for no real reason at all!
Good explanation of Comey actions before the election: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/147045002381/the-fbi-credibility-and-government
Hard to imagine they can get a jury to convict on anything that Mueller and crew will fabricate. When every Russia story evaporates within days as a result of timing and technical issues – e.g., the voting machines could not be hacked, Facebook doesn’t work like CBS and the timing of the ads was not useful to the outcome, everyone else in politics is up to an even higher level of kompromat, etc – how can a trial turn into anything other than the sort of complex procedure that juries generally do not understand and tend to sleep through? In… Read more »
Somebody got to the Zman.
[…] Russian hacking stuff and the the special prosecutor were a smokescreen to conceal something else. Months ago, I made the point that the most likely thing being concealed was corruption within the the FBI. It […]
[…] was not hard to figure out. I posted about this here and here. The chants of “Russian hacking” from the Clinton camp were always ridiculous. […]
[…] Trump to appoint a special prosecutor to chase ghosts and phantoms that could not possibly exist. My hunch was that maybe some FBI insiders were simply using the fake scandal as a pretext to circle the […]
A friend who has contacts within the New York finance and real estate communities tells me that they believe that Trump will resign before Feb of next year due to information that both he and Jared are deeply compromised by large financial relations with Russia due to their inability to obtain funds from normal channels. Before, this is made public, he will be given the chance to resign. Don’t know how accurate but my friend does have such contacts.
And the never-Trumpers have not jumped all over this yet? Not saying you are wrong, but I have never seen such a flood of “might be”, “could be”, and “will be” out of the mouths of supposedly sane people in my life. Combine a bunch of unhinged people with an Internet and a JournoList that propagate anything that fits the narrative, and, well, there you go.
hey everybody! There’s a sale on tinfoil at Walmart!!!
But this time the tinfoil purchasers live in ivory towers instead of trailer parks.