Narrated by Eunice Wong
Text originally published May 21, 2023
Run for Your Lives! - by Mr. Fish
There is no report, investigation or new revelation, including the recent release of Special Counsel John Durham’s “Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns” that will implode the myth that Russia was responsible for the election of Donald Trump. Myths are impervious to facts. They fulfill an emotional yearning. They are a short circuit from reality into a world of childish simplicity. Hard and painful questions are avoided. Thought-terminating cliches are spat out to blissfully embrace a willed ignorance.
The cynical con the Democratic Party and the FBI carried out to falsely portray Donald Trump as a puppet of the Kremlin worked, and continues to work, because it is what those who detest Trump want to believe.
If Russia is blamed for Trump’s election, we avoid the unpleasant reality of our failed democratic institutions and decaying empire. We avoid facing the inevitable rise of a Christianized fascism borne out of widespread impoverishment, rage, despair and abandonment. We avoid acknowledging the complicity of the Democratic Party in the orchestration of the largest social inequality in our nation’s history, the evisceration of our basic civil liberties, endless wars and an electoral system bankrolled by the billionaire class, which is legalized bribery. The myth allows us to believe that Democratic politicians, like the establishment Republicans who have joined them, are the guarantors of a democracy they destroyed.
Our reality is bleak and frightening, especially given the abject refusal by the ruling oligarchs to deal seriously with the climate emergency. We face a precarious future. The monumental task of restoring democracy outside the confines of a broken electoral system and corporate-indentured institutions is daunting and not guaranteed. We stand on the cusp of tyranny. Blaming Vladimir Putin for the rise of an American demagogue — demagogues are always vomited up from dysfunctional political systems — magically makes the existential dilemma disappear.
The liberal media during the Trump-Russia saga, including The New York Times and the Washington Post, which shared a 2018 Pulitzer Prize for reporting on alleged Russian influence during the 2016 election, provided thousands of stories and reports that falsely painted the Trump administration as a tool of Russia. Their readers, like the viewers of CNN and MSNBC, were fed a comforting myth. When you feed a public consoling myths — the most absurd being that America is a good and virtuous nation — there is no accountability. Myths make us feel good. Myths demonize those blamed for our self-created debacles. Myths celebrate us as a people and a nation. But it is like handing heroin to junkies.
Shatter the myths, even if the facts are incontrovertible, and you become a pariah. I found this out when I and a handful of others, including Robert Scheer, Phil Donahue and Michael Moore, denounced calls to invade Iraq. It made no difference that I had been the Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, was an Arabic speaker and had spent seven years reporting in the region, including in Iraq. I was censored, driven from The New York Times and attacked by George W. Bush’s useful idiots in the media, and the Democratic Party, as an apologist for Saddam Hussein.
The same ugly reception greeted those of us who questioned the “evidence” used to argue that Trump was a tool of Russia. We were branded stooges of Moscow and Trump apologists. We were again locked out of the debate. Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept, Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone and Aaron Mate at The Nation, found themselves under intense pressure for questioning the Trump-Russia narrative. All now work as independent journalists. You can see my interview with Taibbi here. Jeff Gerth is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who worked at The New York Times from 1976 until 2005. He spent two years investigating the Trump-Russia story for a four-part series published in the Columbia Journalism Review. He too became an object of vitriol. David Corn at Mother Jones, one of the most prolific shills for the Trump-Russia conspiracy, wrote a column after Gerth’s exhaustive 24,000-word series called “Trump-Russia Denialists Still Can’t Handle the Truth.” Gerth called Corn’s attack “a form of McCarthyism.” You can see my interview with Gerth here.
All the investigations into Trump’s ties with Russia are unequivocal. There was no collusion. The Steele dossier, financed at first by Republican opponents of Trump and later by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and compiled by former MI6 British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, was a fake. The charges in the dossier — which included reports of Trump receiving a “golden shower” from prostituted women in a Moscow hotel room and claims that Trump and the Kremlin had ties going back five years — were discredited by the FBI. Sources, including the one that claimed Trump had long-held ties to the Kremlin, turned out to be fabricated. Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller concluded that his investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Mueller did not indict or accuse anyone of criminally conspiring with Russia.
Durham’s 306-page report, sent to Congress by Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier this week, is even more excoriating. It concludes that the FBI engaged in a witch hunt — code named Crossfire Hurricane — orchestrated by Hillary Clinton’s campaign that was aided and abetted by senior FBI officials who loathed Trump.
The Clinton campaign provided bogus information to the FBI about ties between Trump and Russia, including a charge made by Michael Sussmann and Marc Elias, the General Counsel to the Clinton campaign, that there was a secret channel between the Trump Organization and the Russian Alfa Bank. Salacious allegations such as this one would be passed by the Clinton campaign to the FBI and then leaked to the press which would report on the FBI investigations, giving the fabrications credibility.
For example, the Clinton campaign posted a tweet through Clinton’s Twitter account on Oct. 31, 2016 that read: “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based Bank.”
The tweet, Durham’s report notes, “included a statement from Clinton campaign advisor Jake Sullivan that made reference to the media coverage of the article and stated, in relevant part, that the allegations in the articles ‘could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow[,]’ that ‘[t]his secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump's ties to Russia[,]’ and that ‘[w]e can only assume that federal authorities will now explore this direct connection between Trump and Russia as part of their existing probe into Russia's meddling in our elections.’”
The FBI later determined there were no ties between the Trump organization and Alfa Bank.
“Whether or not the Clinton Plan intelligence was based on reliable or unreliable information, or was ultimately true or false, it should have prompted FBI personnel to immediately undertake an analysis of the information and to act with far greater care and caution when receiving, analyzing, and relying upon materials of partisan origins, such as the Steele Reports and the Alfa Bank allegations,” the report reads.
The FBI has a long and sordid record of illegal spying, infiltrating organizations, blackmailing, persecuting, entrapping and even assassinating U.S. dissidents, such as Fred Hampton and perhaps Malcolm X, but it should still worry us when it operates as Thought Police on behalf of a ruling political party.
The Durham report concluded that there was not sufficient verified and reliable evidence to justify opening a full investigation. Those leading the investigation — FBI Director James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, agent Peter Strzok and lawyer Lisa Page — were united, however, by a deep animus towards Trump. The report reads:
Strzok and Deputy Director McCabe's Special Assistant had pronounced hostile feelings toward Trump. As explained later in this report, in text messages before and after the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the two had referred to him as “loathsome,” “an idiot,” someone who should lose to Clinton “100,000,000- O,” and a person who Strzok wrote “[w]e'll stop” from becoming President. Indeed, the day before the Australian information [concerning comments reportedly made in a tavern by George Papadopoulos, an unpaid foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign] was received at FBI Headquarters, Page sent a text message to Strzok stating, “Have we opened on him yet? [angryfaced emoji]” and referenced an article titled Trump & Putin. Yes, It's Really a Thing.
The FBI, the report reads, authorized an investigation “upon receipt of unevaluated intelligence” and “without having spoken to the persons who provided the information.” The FBI did no “significant review of its own intelligence databases,” did not collect and examine “any relevant intelligence from other U.S. intelligence entities” and did not interview “witnesses to understand the raw information it had received.” None of the “standard analytical tools employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence” were used.
If the FBI had followed its established procedures it “would have learned that their own experienced Russia analysts had no information about Trump being involved with Russian leadership officials, nor were others in sensitive positions in the CIA, the NSA and the Department of State aware of such evidence.” The FBI had “no information in its holdings indicating that, at any time during the campaign, anyone in the Trump campaign had been in contact with any Russian intelligence officials.”
The investigation was launched solely based on the “unvetted and unverified Steele reports.” The Steele dossier was used to support probable cause in the FBI’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) applications to monitor Carter Page, a foreign policy advisor to Trump, along with falsified evidence presented to the FISA court by attorney Kevin Clinesmith. On the day after Trump's election as president, Clinesmith “stated to fellow FBI personnel, among other things, ‘viva le resistance,’ an obvious reference to those individuals opposed to Trump.”
“The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign,” the report concludes.
The report documents a systematic abuse of power by senior members of the FBI to advance Hillary Clinton’s campaign. FBI officials were aware that there was no reason, other than an institutional hatred of Trump, to open the investigation. The FBI “discounted or willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia,” the report reads. FBI officials “disregarded significant exculpatory information” and used “investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents” to prolong the investigation, feed the media frenzy and obtain search warrants.
The courtiers in the liberal media, who cater to an anti-Trump demographic and who spent years giving credibility to rumors, gossip and lies about Trump and Russia, predictably minimized or dismissed the report’s findings.
“After Years of Political Hype, the Durham Inquiry Failed to Deliver,” a May 17 New York Times headline reads.
The myth of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election provides a convenient escape hatch from the political, social, cultural and economic rot that plagues the U.S. The liberal class, by clinging to this conspiracy theory, is as disconnected from reality as the QAnon theorists and election deniers that support Trump. The retreat by huge segments of the population into non-reality-based belief systems leaves a polarized nation unable to communicate. Neither side speaks a language rooted in verifiable fact. This bifurcation, one I witnessed in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, fuels the distrust and hatred between antagonistic demographics. It accelerates political disintegration and dysfunction. It is used to justify, as was true with the FBI investigation of Trump, gross abuses of power. If those you oppose are evil — and rhetorically we are close to embracing such apocalyptic rhetoric — anything is permitted to thwart the enemy from achieving power. This is the lesson of the Durham report. It is an ominous warning.
I never believed it and I'm a Bernie Sanders gal. Clinton was the absolute worst candidate the DNC could have picked simply because the GOP and fundamentalist churches in the hinterlands have been hating on her for decades giving them years of swiftboatable ammunition. Had the DNC chosen anyone else, even Joe SixPack the RNC would have had to go back to the woodshed and would not have had time for an effective campaign. Of course she didn't help matters during the debate with her arrogant attitude and nattering on about Putin who was on no one's radar and left people scratching their head. I am as disgusted with Trump era grifting as anyone else and have no respect for him but Clinton should have at least behaved respectfully and she continually sneered at him. Uh, oh, I knew then she was going to lose.
Yep. Clinton was the worst choice. No doubt. When she became Sec of State I was hopeful she would be satisfied with the prestige of it and go away at the end of that tenure. Then she ran for President and I was disappointed when she was nominated. I worked at the polls on election night so I did not know what was happening with the election. I walked in the door to hear Trump had won WI. Talk about sad. Remembering how the young people wanted Bernie but Clinton had been ordained. What a farce it was. When it will all be said and done, I think it will be concluded, both Clintons hurt this country.
I agree totally: Mr. Bill by lying under oath when he could have just admitted he was doing what everyone knew he was doing (and what most pols do) and for not vetoing the killing of Glass-Steagall Act which opened the door to Wall Street taking control of consumer banking and led to the so-called "mortgage" crisis and Corporate Land Grab, the biggest cause of the homeless crisis we now face. There was Hillary clapping away as Mr. Bill signed the death warrant. Hillary refusing to step aside for a better candidate. I was pretty disgusted by her selling arms to terrorist countries as Sec. of State even though they all do it but was truly disgusted when after the US had Khadafi assassinated see said "we came, we saw, he died" cackle, cackle. Still I voted for her because of Trump.
Bad choice in my opinion. I voted for the green party and hope the dems and reps choose better candidates.
and she took some voters for granted.
... while taking Serious Cash
from Goldmann Sachs types
for 'speaking fees.' no conflict!
I'm sorry -- not. This sounds like an apologia for Trump. This "report" ignores fully the monstrous acts of the man. As to James Comey, he did Trump a favor by throwing Clinton under the bus -- so to speak.
I detest Trump but I am loyal to facts, not team or tribe.
I really wanted Trump to succeed. But he lost me when he claimed to have the largest inaugural gathering ever. It only took him one day to lose someone who wanted to stop the status quo. Of course he went on to commit over 20,000 lies and even tried to take over the government, with Biden's help he may succeed. Trump borrowed over 7.8 trillion dollars, he had no health care plan, and about a half a million deaths could have been prevented if he would have insisted on people wearing n 95 masks over their noses. He probably sold our top secrets to the Saudis and the Russians and the Chinese or whoever else could afford them. The Reagan, Bushies, and Trump tax breaks plus the Iraq war which was not supported by the progressive Democrats, only by the Reagan Republican Democrats all cost America over 40 trillion dollars. Now the GOP wants the poor people to pay for the billionaires tax breaks, who moved their plants overseas and imported about 100 million immigrants legal and illegal. They did invest in America, they bought up real estate and drove the prices sky high and now we have hundreds of thousands of homeless. Fascist socialism is better than fascist capitalism. Both are unsustainable and will destroy a nation. Unlimited greed always causes a lot of human suffering. The Republican Christians don't act anything like Jesus. The only reason Trump and about 300 puppet Masters are not in prison right now is because of Garland being a Republican and Biden also. So now we could default on the national debt costing $15 trillion dollars or more. What a great way to balance a budget McCarthy.
I never have liked Trump and and voting for him was not my option. But in the gym that I used to visit, a lot of his fans proclaimed that he will make America rich since he was such a successful business man and knew how to do it. I didn't argue with those muscled men but I thought that a man that had declared bankruptcy so many times might make all of us bankrupt too, and with his tax reform he almost did it.
What's not to like? kidding of course :) Yup, Empires always crumble sooner or later by over reaching and neglecting their people. We are a country at war with ourselves with at least one mass shooting a day.
Chris, have you read The Muller Report in its entirety? I have. I detected a hesitance to state outright that the findings support actual collusion with Russia in addition to strategies to withhold funding from Ukraine until they agree to “Investigate”. The outcome of that report was clearly avoiding “vindication” from all misdeeds and accusations. Trump should have been indicted or at the very least he should have been publicly rebuked. The hesitance to conclude with a bold confirmation of criminal intent contrasted with the facts of The Muller Report.
The FBI are political police. Their mission is to protect the capitalist state and status quo. Counterintelligence is a dirty game. If activists had not stolen documents that revealed the counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) against the Black liberation movement and other left forces, we would have never known about it and charges of FBI illegality directed at our movement would have been met with charges that the allegations were indicative of discredited “conspiracy theories.”
The targeting of Omali Yeshitela and the organization and movement that he leads was a deliberate political act meant to accomplish two objectives: discredit and silence one of the sharpest and most consistent critic of U.S. imperial policies on the U.S. left and internationally, and to send a message to all of the forces on the left and right that opposition to the neoliberal state will not be without consequences."
https://mronline.org/2023/05/18/durham-report-reveals-the-real-threat-to-democracy-the-fbi-weaponized-by-democrat-party-affiliated-elites/
So utterly ironic that the world's most interventionist empire should fabricate interventions against themselves for the sake of partisan politicians . Amazing how corruptions are like compound interest, the cost is deadly.
"The findings of the Durham report should be the final nail in the coffin of Russiagate, but it won’t be. The New York Times is typical of much of the coverage of the Durham report. Look at the framing from the headline of their story: “In Final Report, Trump-Era Special Counsel Denounces Russia Investigation.”
They then proceed to dismiss the report.
Mr. Durham’s 306-page report revealed little substantial new information about the inquiry, known as Crossfire Hurricane, and it failed to produce the kinds of blockbuster revelations impugning the bureau of politically motivated misconduct that former President Donald J. Trump and his allies suggested Mr. Durham would uncover.
The Times that pretends to be a champion of democracy is not troubled by the FBI’s “confirmation bias” and a “lack of analytical rigor” that led it to penetrate the campaign of someone running for president. Here we have a state agency injecting itself into a campaign driven by what can only be seen as a partisan bias."
https://mronline.org/2023/05/18/durham-report-reveals-the-real-threat-to-democracy-the-fbi-weaponized-by-democrat-party-affiliated-elites/
i AGREE WITH MOST OF WHAT IS SAID. cLMATE CHANGE IS A CYCLE OF WHICH YOU AND i NOR ANY GOVERNMENT CAN CHANGE ON OITA. sO i EXPECT ALOT OF "FACTS " TO COME.
So the polar ice caps melting and the glaciers melting it's just a natural cycle. The Atlantic conveyor belt slowing down and methane being released by warmer ocean waters in the Atlantic and Pacific is just temporary. Cue the Twilight zone music.
So Your solution is to go into the dark ages!
I think the point is that that's not going to be our choice to make.
Why? Is it too late, or our bribed politicians don't represent us and care less for the environment? Sometimes I feel doomed.
This effort & work by Chris Hedges, for which I am grateful ☺, impels me to think (again) of the many lessons to learn through deeply (patiently) reading 400 pages, Hardcover, First published October 18, 2022 ── ''Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past'' ── edited by Kevin M. Kruse & Julian E. Zelizer.
Chris's work here, along with that of Kruse & Zelizer, raises an adjacent question I have. → What do you believe we should advise ourselves & others about Border fantasies & undocumented immigration?
Border fantasies & undocumented immigration are also contestants in Great 18th-21st century Myth America Pageant since about 1790, both saying that border is a place of danger, dysfunction & illegality.
Border is more so a place of creativity, community, cooperation & connection. ── That is true of the last 230 years. ↓
Spaniards & Mexicans of 1800's wanted a defined U.S. border to defend against Indigenous Nations. ─ Free & enslaved Black migrants sought refuge south of U.S. border where slavery was abolished in 1837.
War of 1812 was in part a dispute between the English-French-Indigenous-U.S. nations about their respective Border fantasies & undocumented immigration Angers in the post-Napoleonic Wars realpolitik.
Texas Revolution & US-Mexican Wars happened in a fluid Borderland of Human, Cultural, Familial & Economic Exchanges.
Catholic-German-Irish-Italian-Jewish-Chinese-Japanese-SouthernNorthAmerican & Caribbean migrants all took turns facing brutal (mythical) U.S. Border fantasies about undocumented immigration in our Gr8 Myth America Pageant.
We’ve been at it the last 230 years. ── You’d think by now we might’ve learned at least a bit of how to welcome others into United States occupied turf & surf.
MICIMATT is ─► the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academic-Think-Tank Complex that is truly bereft of all Human Value … MICIMATT Myths do us no good, either.
International security would best be served by committing a World War level of effort to address the too-real Climate & Migration Crises rather than preparing for every conceivable military threat.
Did you know that it only takes 6 calls in 1 day coming in to get ''that issue'' you care about discussed in the daily staff meeting of a Congressperson or Senator?
It can feel daunting to advocate to officials with whom we often disagree on policy & procedural positions … we’ve seen that we can change minds & policy, especially when we coordinate our efforts.
Well, I say Your calls & e-mails Really Are Being Heard by our legislative representatives! Here are Committees ─ links ─ House.gov → https://www.house.gov/committees
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U.S. House Committee Assignments - by Alphabetical Order of Representatives → https://clerk.house.gov/committee_info/oal.pdf
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U.S. Senate: links to all 24 Committees → https://www.senate.gov/committees/index.htm
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Senator phone numbers. → https://contactsenators.com/senator-phone-numbers
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Representative phone numbers. → https://www.house.gov/representatives
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... but I rant ... Please forgive me ☺ Thank You, Chris & Eunice, for your Effort & for your Work. ☺
We have our very own Praetorian guard – the Roman soldiers whose role it was to protect the Roman emperor which then morphed into an organization that selected the emperor. Our Praetorian guard is called the FBI.
I’ve been reading Chris Hedges with great interest since the 1990s, and once again, his true investigative journalism shows. The only thing I’d add to this article has to do with allegations of direct Russian election interference via hacking into the DNC and invading social media. On that subject, I conducted a great deal of research following the Mueller Report’s release, and I was fortunate to have it posted at the link below.
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-pernicious-legacy-of-the-mueller-investigation/