Conspiracy Realities

The other day I posted about the intelligence agencies' hypocrisy in warning about conspiracy theories that threaten the election. While the intelligence agencies continue to spout the same lies that election interference is just a right wing conspiracy theory, I discussed the actual conspiracy by former and then-current (as it turned out) intelligence officials claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian "disinformation." Since then, others articles have been published about other conspiracies to keep Trump from office or running again:

• "Jake Tapper Is Lying About CNN’s Key Role In The Russia Collusion Hoax"--The Federalist. Mollie Hemingway notes that, in an interview with J.D. Vance, "Tapper claimed, falsely, that all he and his colleagues did was report that the FBI was investigating the matter [the Russian collusion story]. He further claimed, falsely, that his viewers would not have been led to believe that Trump had conspired with Russia[.]" But, as she relates, Tapper knew the dossier to be fake, but he and CNN were willing parties to try and legitimize the Russian dossier. From the article:
  

    Hillary Clinton and DNC operatives had spent the better part of 2016 trying to push their Russia collusion disinformation operation out to anybody who would run with it. It was so weak that almost no one bit and those who did were exclusively partisan activists. They had, however, managed to get the FBI to run wild with it, even using it to help secure a wiretap to spy on an American.

    But the point was really to get the made-up dossier out into the public. Clinton and the DNC designed and developed the Russia collusion dossier through Fusion GPS. That group claimed that the author of the dossier was Christopher Steele, who they pitched to the press as some kind of former British super spy. He turned out to be something of a politically motivated joke who had outsourced the collection of information to a guy who seemed to brainstorm outlandish ideas for the dossier with his drinking buddies and who had previously been the subject of an inconclusive FBI counterintelligence investigation into whether he was a Russian spy. And the “most important contributor” to the Russia collusion hoax dossier was identified by the Wall Street Journal as a disgruntled Russian public relations executive with a reported drinking problem.

    Even years before that all slowly came out, no serious journalist would touch the dossier of made-up stories and unsubstantiated claims because they would almost certainly get sued. It was a real conundrum for Democrats. And there was a real problem inside intelligence agencies. They had just spent the previous year running an insane investigation into whether Trump was himself a Russian spy and had gone after key people associated with his campaign, including incoming National Security Advisor Mike Flynn.

    At an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 5, 2017, FBI Director James Comey discussed what to do about the Russia collusion operation with President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and National Security Advisor Susan Rice. Obama gave guidance about how to perpetuate the Russia collusion hoax investigations. They discussed whether and how to withhold national security information, likely including details of the investigation into Trump himself, from the incoming Trump national security team. Imagine if Mike Flynn learned that Comey’s people had been spying on Trump campaign affiliates and investigating him.

    An ostensibly similar briefing about Russian interference efforts was given to Trump on Jan. 6, after which Comey privately briefed Trump on the “pee tape” allegation contained in the Clinton-funded dossier. The extra briefing was because the intelligence couldn’t be included in an official intelligence report as it was that much of a joke and hadn’t been verified by any legitimate institution, even if the FBI had used it to secure a warrant on an American. Comey told Trump — and later memorialized in memos — that he was giving the briefing because CNN was “looking for a news hook” in order to publish a story about the dossier and he wanted to warn Trump about it.

    You will never guess the news hook CNN used to publish their story about the dossier. OK, you did guess and yes, it was that Comey had briefed Trump about the dossier!

    The leak of the briefing of Trump was used to legitimize a ridiculous dossier full of allegations the FBI knew to be false and that multiple news organizations had previously refused to report on for lack of substantiation, and it created a cloud of suspicion over Trump’s incoming administration by insinuating he was being blackmailed by Russia. BuzzFeed, using the CNN story as justification, published the full dossier hours later. It was all very convenient.

And it wasn't just a one time matter for Tapper or CNN: as the article discusses, the network repeatedly returned to the Russian dossier and Russian interference themes throughout Trump's term of office.

• "Whistleblower: James Comey had FBI ‘honey pot’ spies infiltrate Trump’s 2016 campaign"--Washington Examiner. The article begins:

    The House Judiciary Committee is examining a whistleblower report that the FBI targeted Donald Trump soon after he announced his presidential campaign in June 2015, an off-the-books operation ordered by FBI Director James B. Comey that predated the Crossfire Hurricane operation.

    An FBI agent involved in the probe revealed the off-the-books criminal investigation on Tuesday in a protected disclosure sent to the committee.

    The whistleblower disclosure said two female FBI undercover agents infiltrated Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign at high levels and were directed to act as “honeypots” while traveling with Mr. Trump and his campaign staff on the trail.

Although this article doesn't name names, The Last Refuge claims to know their identities.

• More: "Report: Whistleblower Claims There Was an Off-Book FBI Investigation Into Trump Ordered by Comey"--Hot Air.
  

• "Facebook execs suppressed Hunter Biden laptop scandal to curry favor with Biden-Harris admin: bombshell report"--New York Post. From the lede:

The FBI warned major US tech companies ahead of The Post’s first reports on Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020 that Russian agents were preparing a strikingly similar document dump — and once the scoop materialized, Facebook executives discussed calibrating censorship decisions to please what they assumed would be an incoming Biden-Harris administration, a congressional investigation found. 

Also:

    The FBI has possessed Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop since December 2019 and knew that files cited by The Post in its coverage came from a Delaware computer repairman and not the Kremlin — but, after preemptively discrediting the world exclusive to Big Tech, the FBI kept silent publicly as 51 ex-intelligence officials suggested and then-candidate Joe Biden outright alleged that the files came from Russia.

    The Post’s reporting showed that Biden, while vice president, interacted with international business associates of his son Hunter and brother James — including in countries where he helped steer US policy, such as China and Ukraine.

    The reports were widely, if belatedly, corroborated by other news outlets and the files were even used by federal prosecutors in court — but only after Biden defeated Trump in November 2020 by narrow swing-state margins, which some Republicans say was in part due to the cloud of suspicion over the laptop.

• "Uh, Oh, Again: Homeland Security Role in Bizarre Election Day 'Tabletop Exercise' Denied"-- Racket News. An excerpt:

    The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, has been the subject of multiple Racket stories in recent years. A year ago, we followed up a House Weaponization of Government Committee report with Twitter Files documents detailing the Homeland Security agency’s help forming the Election Integrity Partnership at Stanford, which mass-flagged social media content in the last presidential election.

    Now, a week before another presidential vote, the agency again stepped in it, in a seeming effort to quell conspiracy theories that are almost certain to achieve the opposite.

    CISA went unintentionally viral in recent weeks when its participation in a “large scale” cybersecurity exercise on Election Day in Atlanta was announced by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA). When Kentucky Senator Rand Paul sent DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas a WTF letter, CISA said the event was canceled. Now, despite both DHS and CISA being listed as “pivotal organizations” at the event, with the Election Day exercise scheduled to be led by a CISA official named Klint Walker, the organizers, i.e. the people who wrote the brochure below, are reportedly telling reporters DHS/CISA had “no involvement” with the event.

•  Finally, Mike at Chicago Boyz explains the implications of all this government interference and what he expects following the election in an article entitled "The Coming Storm". As he sees it, the United States is on the precipice of a disaster and he lists three reasons why. 

    First, is a voting system that seems designed to allow fraud and create mistrust. 

 

    Second, the recent coordinated flurry of stories comparing Trump to Hitler (and his followers as Nazis). This, he believes, is to provide a moral imperative for stopping Trump from taking office.

    Third is the declining support of the U.S. Constitution among Democrats. Democrats have long viewed the Constitution more as guidelines than laws, but Mike notes that almost half (49%) of rank and file Democrats believe the Constitution should be rewritten. 

     So where is this going? He explains:

 

    There’s been a lot of head scratching on the Right concerning what the Democrats are trying to accomplish with their “Hitler Talk.” In reality the Right is missing the point of the exercise: it isn’t to convince the undecided but rather to set the framework for the post-Election Day battle. While Republicans and the Right in general see an election as being composed of discrete phases of before and after, the Democrats and the Left see it as an integrated whole and their communications strategy now reflects that view.

    That’s not to say there aren’t immediate benefits for the Democrats with their “Hitler Talk.” It could strengthen their base and prevent defections. But the primary target is the post-election.

    Given the existing conditions of the undecided nature of the post-election environment, a narrowing of the stakes for victory and scope onto a select number of actions, and the apocalyptic rhetoric of the Democrats, you will have the potential for a catastrophe. If you can claim that you are trying to stop Hitler, then you have permission to let your freak flag fly, and there will be plenty of opportunities to do it.

    The third reason acts as the removal of a boundary for action. If the electoral system provides the terrain, the Hitler talk provides the motive. Then, the third reason — the decline of belief among Democrats in the Constitution — increases the scope of possible action by the Democrats.

    When I state this situation to friends, their primary objection to it is that it is too fantastic; what course of action would the Democrats actually take that would amount to more of a Jamie Raskin-led hissy fit? I find this objection to be a weak reed, and state that the experience of the past 40 years — from the sudden collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, to the various color revolutions — has shown that my friends’ sentiments lack a certain degree of imagination given underlying realities.

    In 2020 there was an exercise called the Transition Integrity Project which was conducted to game out various post-election scenarios. It involved a veritable who’s who of the Washington establishment such as David Frum, John Podesta, and Donna Brazile. While most of the attention focused on the scenarios which gamed out a Trump defeat, there was one scenario (Game 3) where Trump achieved a clear win but lost the popular vote.

    As he explains Game 3, the presidential candidate (Biden) first retracted his concession and convinced three state governors to hold recounts, resulting in a different slate of electors being sent to Washington. The next step was to get California, Oregon, and Washington states to threaten to secede from the Union unless Republicans agreed to structural reforms including creating additional states (that would be solidly Democrat controlled) giving Democrats complete control of the Senate, and eliminated the Electoral Collage to allow the president to be selected by popular vote. 

       You will note that all of these reforms would effectively terminate what little federalism remains in our federal government, and concentrate power in the big blue enclaves and remove what little power remains to the smaller, more rural states.