Updated with quotes from Germany and Austria, slamming US sanctions against Russia in June 2017.
“Russian Interference” Ideation in April-May 2016
Trump Says U.S. Should Shoot Barrel-Rolling Russian Planes, May 2, 2016
Nothing shows Trump – Russia collusion better than Trump’s suggestion to shoot down Russian military planes (/sarcasm)!
Christopher Massie, BuzzFeed News (the emphasis is mine in all the quotes, except for the articles’ titles):
Trump Says U.S. Should Shoot Barrel-Rolling Russian Planes “At A Certain Point”.
“At a certain point, when that sucker comes by you, you gotta shoot,” Trump said of Russian planes barrel-rolling over U.S. Air Force planes.
Commenting on a Russian SU-27 that conducted a barrel roll over a U.S. aircraft on Friday, the second such maneuver a Russian plane has conducted in the past month, Trump told Indiana radio host Charly Butcher that Obama should first call Putin to object.
“And if that doesn’t work out, I don’t know, you know, at a certain point, when that sucker comes by you, you gotta shoot,” Trump said. “You gotta shoot. I mean, you gotta shoot. And it’s a shame. It’s a shame. It’s a total lack of respect for our country and it’s a total lack of respect for Obama. Which as you know, they don’t respect.”
The radio interview is here. The DNC knew and internally discussed this hawkish statement. The MSM knew about it. The anti-Trump media outlets could spin it as dangerous warmongering, but majority of them preferred to ignore it in favor of the crazy conspiracy theory linking Trump to Putin. This case suggests coordination between dozens of major MSM outlets with the Democratic party.
Coordinated pro-Russian Interference in the Baltic States
Coordinated, possibly government directed, trolling on the internet as an interference into internal affairs of Baltic States has been analyzed by NATO Center of Excellence, based in Latvia. INTERNET TROLLING AS A TOOL OF HYBRID WARFARE: THE CASE OF LATVIA was a seminal study published close to the end of 2015. This might have been the warning from one of Baltic States, alleged by John Brennan, although he could make it up.
The study analyzed pro-Russian trolling on the internet in Latvia in Russian and Latvian languages. It is a good read, but its findings are not directly applicable outside of Latvia (and, possibly, Lithuania and Estonia). Latvia’s population is less than two million, a quarter of which are ethnic Russians. Latvia was part of the Soviet Union and borders Russia. What worked in Latvia wouldn’t work even in Germany or Britain because of their size and demographic differences. Regarding the US, the study clearly said that the studied trolling DIDN’T WORK:
Surprisingly, the study of the influence of pro-Russian trolling on leading US media outlets demonstrated the opposite outcome to that expected. Most users of online media and forums, upon seeing a clearly pro-Russian comment, assumed it was either paid-for or written for ideological reasons.
Rhodes, Ben. The World as It Is.
The World as It Is. The Memoir of the Obama White House. Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. – Even the title is funny. What does he know about the world?
Recognizing that Russia now posed a bigger challenge, we added the mission of countering Russian disinformation to the GEC, and formally stood it up in April 2016. The budget was in the low tens of millions of dollars. (p. 383)
IN APRIL 2016, WE landed in London for a hastily arranged trip to help David Cameron fight off a Brexit referendum. … Obama polled at more than 70 percent in the United Kingdom. … It was unusual to coordinate so closely with a foreign government, but the Brits were different, and Brexit would be calamitous … (p. 383)
Did David Cameron reciprocate by helping to fight off Trump?
Another problem was that the Brexit campaign was tapping into the same sense of nationalism and nostalgia that the Trump campaign was promoting back home: the days of Churchill, the absence of immigrants and intrusive international institutions. (p. 384)
Sic! He and his boss don’t like Churchill. They prefer Angela Merkel and intrusive international (supranational is a more accurate word) institutions.
“How are you feeling about Trump?” [British PM Chief of Staff Ed] Llewellyn asked, toward the end of dinner. “He’s probably the Republican that Hillary has the best chance to beat,” I said. “You’re not worried that he can win? Putin would like nothing more. Some of our people,” he said, referring to conservatives who support Brexit, “say that he’s tapped into something with this immigration issue. From Central America.” (p. 386)
[Happening in October 2016] I chaired meetings on our nascent effort to combat Russian disinformation in Europe. In an October meeting with Obama, the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, raised the issue of Russian meddling. They are, he said, doing the same thing in Italy as they are doing to you here. (p. 397)
In Germany, Merkel’s spokesperson told me about how fake news impacted their politics. He gave an example. At the height of Merkel’s political vulnerability over the refugee issue, there would be stories about crimes committed by Syrian refugees. A rape, for instance, caused a huge outcry in a community. For days, there were protests, political fallout. “And then?” I asked. “And then we investigate this story and learn that it never happened,” he said. “And we trace the story, and it started with a social media user with a German-sounding name, but something is not exactly right. The name is a little off. And the server, it is not German.” “It’s probably in eastern Ukraine or Moldova,” I said. “Yes, this is right,” he answered. “Russians.” I thought about all the made-up stories about Hillary—her ill health, her corruption, her crimes. It seemed impossible to know where they all began; which ones came from the American right wing and which ones came from Russians; how they spread; whether this flood of content was coincident or coordinated with the Trump campaign. (pp. 406-407).
Other
Angela Merkel, Obama’s ally, alleged “Russian interference” against her administration because of she stood up to Putin over Ukraine. She didn’t – her administration approved building a new gas pipeline, bypassing Ukraine. Hillary and Comey-Brennan-Clapper made similar allegations, and insinuated that Trump would be soft. When Trump was elected, she opposed the US sanctions on Russia:
Germany, Austria slam US sanctions against Russia
BERLIN, June 15, 2017 (AP) — Germany and Austria voiced sharp criticism Thursday of the latest U.S. sanctions against Moscow, saying they could affect European businesses involved in piping in Russian natural gas.
Angela Merkel might have criticized Putin, but didn’t let her criticism to get in the way of business.
In a joint statement, Austria’s Chancellor Christian Kern and Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said it was important for Europe and the United States to form a united front on the issue of Ukraine … [but] In their forceful appeal, the two officials urged the United States to back off from linking the situation in Ukraine to the question of who can sell gas to Europe.
It is almost funny – they propose a united front against Putin, but want to lay a pipeline through the front line, and to depend on Putin for gas.
GEC:
President Obama created the Global Engagement Center with an executive order in March of 2016. (From Wired)
Initially, it was intended to counter jihadist propaganda. The next month, they added to its mission “countering Russian disinformation.”
Spygate, June – November 2016
Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch before House Committee
From the Lynch Interview:
Mr. Jordan. I’m sorry about that. When did you first learn that there’d been an investigation opened into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia?
Ms. Lynch. So, Congressman, speaking generally — and, again, as I mentioned with the group before, my only concern is I don’t want to say that there was an investigation opened into the Trump campaign per se — but as we look at the constellation of things that have come to be known as the Russia investigation, things were brought to my attention in 2016, I believe it was the spring and throughout the summer, of various issues about Russia’s attempts to interfere in our electoral process.
Mr. Jordan. It’s fair to say the spring of 2016? Can you give the month?
Ms. Lynch. Not as I sit here now. But my recollection is that it would have been some time in the late spring of 2016 that information was brought to my attention, very generally.
Mr. Jordan. Who brought you the information?
Ms. Lynch. It would have been from the FBI.
Mr. Jordan. Who at the FBI?
Ms. Lynch. My recollection is that it would have been the Director and Deputy Director.
Mr. Jordan. Director Comey and Deputy Director McCabe?
Ms. Lynch. Those are the two gentlemen, yes. … With respect to Russia’s attempts to interfere in the election generally, through anyone, again, I don’t have a recollection of a specific number of times we discussed that. And over the course of the summer most of briefings on that issue were shifted to the National Security Council level.
Thus, the Democratic party used the National Security Council to sabotage Trump.
Again, I want to be clear that my understanding was that it was not an investigation of the Trump campaign. That was not the entity under investigation. My understanding of the investigation that was going on and the issues that were being looked at was Russian interference in the system. And certainly by the early summer of 2016 I was aware that we as a Department, including the FBI, were looking at that.
Byron York commented in Washington Examiner:
The principals committee includes some of the highest-ranking officials in the government, including the secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, and Homeland Security, the attorney general, the head of the CIA, the White House chief of staff, U.N. ambassador, and more. So the nation’s top political appointees, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies were watching Trump campaign figures in the spring and early summer of 2016.
FBI Analyst Moffa before House Committee
From the Interview:
And a subcomponent of that meeting every day would be to cover some of the operational events occurring within that investigation, that Trump/Russia investigation.
So you have — at the executive level, you have executives from both the counterintelligence and the cyber division meeting internally on a daily basis to talk about the full range of what’s happening on the Russia threat issue, and then a subset of that meeting would be some discussion related to that specific case. So it’s both executives and then some at the lower, you know, 15, 14 level. And we did that every day pretty religiously in the run-up to the election.
Russia collusion investigation is that in that bigger meeting about the bigger Russia topic, we are also discussing the narrower Russia collusion investigation, so just to be clear. That’s happening. Both of those topics are being covered in that meeting.
Moffa was an FBI analyst, reporting to McCabe in both Hillary exoneration (the operation Mid-Year Exam) and Trump sabotage (the operation Crossfire Hurricane). Here, he spills the beans – it was not an investigation of Russia or the imaginary Russian interference, but a Trump/Russia investigation. There is no indication that the FBI has ever investigated Russia alone. The “bigger Russia topic” was just another layer around the Russia collusion investigation.
Etc.
House Intelligence Committee, Report on Russian Active Measures, March 2018
The Report on Russian Active Measures is generally wrong, but contains interesting facts
Finding #6: European governments and media outlets are conducting a variety of activities to combat Russian influence campaigns.
These activities assume Russian influence campaigns, whether they exist or not. There are signs that these European governments’ activities combat not elusive “Russian influence,” but freedom defenders / Trump supporters both in Europe and the US.
The Committee found that the Trump campaign was not notified that members of the campaign were potential counterintelligence concerns. This lack of notification meant that the campaign was unable to address the problems with each campaign member and was ignorant about the potential national security concerns. AG Lynch recalled that, during her first meeting with Director Comey and McCabe about Page, “one of the possibilities the three of us discussed was whether or not to provide what is called a defensive briefing to the campaign, wherein there would be a meeting with a senior person with the Trump campaign to alert them to the fact that… there may be efforts to compromise someone with their campaign.” Such a defensive briefing would not have been unusual. According to Lynch, “[i]t is not an uncommon thing to do … in intelligence matters.” However, the FBI did not provide any such warning about Page, although it was again discussed by the administration’s most senior policymakers after Director Comey briefed the National Security Council Principals about the Page information in “late spring” 2016.
The Trump campaign did not receive a general counterintelligence briefing until August 2016, and even then, it was never specifically notified about Papadopoulos, Page, Manafort, or General Flynn’s Russia ties. Further, the counterintelligence briefing provided to Trump and his top advisors did not identify any individuals by name, but rather focused on the general threat posed by adversaries, including Russia and China.
Of course, the FBI didn’t provide Trump with defensive briefings or specific information! That would have defeated the purpose of their machinations. Spygate was an attempt to overthrow the Constitutional order, not an investigation.
James Comey and Mike Rogers before the House Intelligence Committee
Quoted from Sic Semper Tyrannis, More Evidence of the Russian Meddling Lie:
HURD: Have you been able to — when did the DNC provide access for — to the FBI for your technical folks to review what happened?
COMEY: Well we never got direct access to the machines themselves. The DNC in the spring of 2016 hired a firm that ultimately shared with us their forensics from their review of the system.
HURD: Director Rogers, did the NSA ever get access to the DNC hardware?
ROGERS: The NSA didn’t ask for access. That’s not in our job…
HURD: Good copy. So, director FBI notified the DNC early, before any information was put on Wikileaks and when — you have still been — never been given access to any of the technical or the physical machines that were — that were hacked by the Russians.
COMEY: That’s correct although we got the forensics from the pros that they hired which — again, best practice is always to get access to the machines themselves, but this — my folks tell me was an appropriate substitute.
HURD: The — at what point did the company and the DNC use — share that forensic information to you?
COMEY: I don’t remember for sure. I think June. I could be wrong about that …
Thus, the FBI blindly accepted conclusions and alleged evidence from the crooked DNC contractor CrowdStrike, and other intelligence agencies relied on the FBI for key forensic evidence.
A-hole James Clapper
From The Observer:
During an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd on May 28, Clapper said, “If you put that in context with everything else we knew the Russians were doing to interfere with the election,” he said. “And just the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique. So, we were concerned.”
It’s unclear what Clapper meant or what evidence he has to suggest that Russians are “almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor.” His comments are xenophobic towards an entire ethnicity and are far beyond criticism of Putin and the Russian government.
Andrei Martyanov was less charitable toward Clapper:
James Clapper accusing Russians as an ethnos having a genetic predisposition to “co-opting” and “penetration,” a rather stark statement which would have made even Josef Goebbels happy with this description of a Russian untermensch. (Martyanov, Andrei. Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning, p. 96)
Fusion GPS & New Knowledge
From Daily Caller, January 2019:
- A non-profit group linked to Fusion GPS has ties to a cybersecurity firm recently implicated in a self-described “false flag” operation in the Alabama Senate race.
- The Democracy Integrity Project, which works with Fusion GPS and dossier author Christopher Steele, partnered before the 2018 midterms with New Knowledge, an Austin-based firm that has been tied to an operation that created fake Russian bots in Alabama’s December 2017 special election.
- New Knowledge recently produced a report for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and TDIP’s founder was in contact with two Democrats from the committee.
A nonprofit group linked to Fusion GPS and partially funded by George Soros worked in recent months with a technology company implicated in a scheme to use fake Russian bots during Alabama’s special Senate election.
The groups, the Democracy Integrity Project (TDIP) and New Knowledge, partnered before the 2018 midterms to track alleged Russian disinformation networks, a website the organizations collaboratively run shows.
Both organizations have links to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), which is investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election, as well as possible Trump campaign collusion.
SSCI provided New Knowledge with data from various social media companies as part of an investigation into Russian disinformation networks, according to a report New Knowledge released Dec. 17.
The reports by New Knowledge and Oxford Internet Institute were the equivalents of “Steele reports,” applied to the social media.
Poroshenko on Putin and European “pro-Russian parties”
In February 2016, at Munich Security Conference Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko said:
“Europe is associated with certain values for Ukrainians. Today, there is a threat of alternative values that cause isolationism, intolerance, disrespect for human rights, religious fanaticism and homophobia. This alternative Europe has its own leader called Mr. Putin. This alternative Europe has its own barefoot soldiers called pro-Russian parties that fight against Europe …
This speech has been removed from the Ukrainian government website.
The Guardian Screenshot, March 2016
The Guardian is a hard left and extreme anti-American. This article’s title and subtitle speak for themselves:
Europe’s new cold war turns digital as Vladimir Putin expands media offensive
Russia is deploying social media trolls in an attempt to effect political change, and Britain is not immune
The article is also an excellent example of the ideation behind Russian interference scare of March-April 2016.
And further afield, in Britain? “Nigel Farage appears on RT quite a lot. Not as much as George Galloway, of course – a classic useful idiot.”
The headlines in the screenshot declare Angela Merkel Europe’s undisputed leader and scapegoat Russia for unrest in Germany.
There was basis for investigating the Trump campaign
Even if contact between General Flynn and Svetlana Lokhova, the entrapments of Carter Page and George Papadoupulos, and the work of Paul Manafort with Konstantin Kilimnick (a State Department intelligence asset outed by Mueller) are misinterpreted in the worst possible way, they don’t raise collusion suspicions. And they certainly don’t form a basis for NSA/FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign. We live in the 21st century – contacts with people in other countries is not something rare or unusual, Russia is not our enemy, and the allegations of Russian interference were not publicly made until summer. Russia was our ally in the fight against terror, and CIA Director John Brennan visited FSB head Gennadiy Bortnikov in Moscow in March 2016. (added on June 9, 2019)
Also
From an article by Luke Harding, a contractor for Steele’s firm Orbis and a reporter for the Guardian:
That [2016] summer, GCHQ’s then head, Robert Hannigan, flew to the US to personally brief CIA chief John Brennan. The matter was deemed so important that it was handled at “director level”, face-to-face between the two agency chiefs. James Clapper, director of national intelligence, later confirmed the “sensitive” stream of intelligence from Europe. After a slow start, Brennan used the GCHQ information and other tip-offs to launch a major inter-agency investigation. Meanwhile, the FBI was receiving disturbing warnings from Steele. (added on June 9, 2019)
Robert Hannigan abruptly resigned on January 23, 2017 – three days after Trump’s inauguration.
in WaPo, May 5, 2016, Anne Applebaum and Edward Lucas advertise a launch of a counter-disinformation initiative in the EU, directed against alleged, and probably imaginary, Russian propaganda in Germany:
Anne Applebaum, a Post columnist, and Edward Lucas, a senior editor at the Economist, are this week launching a counter-disinformation initiative at the Center for European Policy Analysis, where they are, respectively, senior vice president and senior adjunct fellow.
… the Russian use of social media as well as a huge range of online vehicles — “news” websites, information portals, trolls — are beginning to have an impact. Chancellor Angela Merkel tasked Germany’s spy agency with investigating the Russian use of propaganda in Germany … (added on June 10, 2019)
Originally published on June 5, 2019.