The Steele dossier and Donald Trump's betrayal of America

[Nevilledog]

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Mark Follman
@markfollman
Trump and his supporters are now exploiting the Steele dossier to bury one of the worst betrayals in all of US history. Essential reading from @DavidCornDC, who was the first journalist to break the story of the memos

The Steele dossier and Donald Trump's betrayal of America
How Russiagate denialists have tried to use the discredited memos to cover up the truth
motherjones.com
8:21 AM · Nov 19, 2021

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/11/the-steele-dossier-and-donald-trumps-betrayal-of-america/

Vladimir Putin must be delighted. With the recent indictment of Igor Danchenko, the primary source for former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele’s 2016 dossier that alleged ties between Donald Trump and Moscow, the Trump-Russia denialists have had a field day. They have blasted the media for its reporting on Steele’s memos and claimed that this further undermining of his reports demonstrates the Russia scandal was a hoax.

That last point is disinformation.

Certainly, the credibility of Steele’s memos has been, once more, severely impugned. (I’ve been assailed for having been the first journalist to reveal their existence—more on that shortly). But the controversy over these documents is distinct from from the dark and troubling core of the Trump-Russia affair. In fact, it’s a distraction and a deflection. The Steele dossier—and how it was covered by media outlets—is but a sideshow to the main event: how the Kremlin clandestinely attacked the 2016 election to help Trump become president and how Trump and his crew aided and abetted that assault on American democracy.

Let’s start at the beginning. During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s relationship with Putin and Russia was a key question. He often spoke positively—even effusively—about the repressive Russian leader. And in June 2016, the news broke that Russian hackers had penetrated the computers of the Democratic National Committee. Weeks later—at the start of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia—WikiLeaks dumped documents that had been swiped by the Russian cyber-thieves.

Clearly, this was a move by Moscow to harm Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Other dumps designed to undermine Democrats followed in subsequent weeks. Despite the consensus among cybersecurity specialists that the Kremlin was behind these attacks on America’s election, Trump and his top aides stridently denied any Moscow involvement—even as Trump himself publicly encouraged Russian hackers to target Clinton. (Russian hackers hours later tried to break into the servers used by Clinton’s personal office.) Roger Stone, a Trump confidante who claimed to have a backchannel to WikiLeaks, insisted that the paper-thin cover story put out by the Russians—a Romanian hacker was the culprit—was accurate.

*snip*

[Kid Berwyn]

1. Barr and Durham using DoJ to protect Dimdonnie Drumpf.

Last edited Fri Nov 19, 2021, 05:48 PM - Edit history (1)