Joecanada13, The Inspector General’s ‘Witch Hunt’ Report: A Quick and Dirty Analysis
JUST so i know you have been given it.
"IG Destroys GOP Claims Of FBI Spying On Trump"
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Note an interesting feature of this passage. The investigation was not an investigation of the Trump campaign. It was four investigations of individuals—Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn—associated with the campaign but about whom there was specific reason for concern. In other words, investigators were not spying on the Trump campaign. They had concerns about specific people and their relationship with Russia, just as the FBI has always said.
This, of course, raises the question of whether the FBI had adequate predication for these investigations. What does Horowitz say on this point?
--- We ... concluded that the FBI had sufficient predication to open full counterintelligence investigations of Papadopoulos, Page, Flynn, and Manafort in August 2016. The investigation of Papadopoulos was predicated upon his alleged statements in May 2016 to an employee of [an allied foreign government]. According to the opening [electronic communication], Papadopoulos was “identical to the individual who made statements indicating that he is knowledgeable that the Russians made a suggestion to the Trump team that they could assist the Trump campaign with an anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to the Clinton campaign.” The three other cases were predicated on information developed by the Crossfire Hurricane team through law enforcement database and open source searches, conducted to determine which individuals associated with the Trump campaign may have been in a position to have received the alleged offer of assistance from Russia. ---
This brings me to the next key point: The investigation did, in fact, begin when the Australian government communicated to the U.S. information about Papadopoulos’s conversation with the former foreign minister, Alexander Downer, in London:
So, on a scale of 1 to The Shining, how’re you handling your quarantine? I’m holding up reasonably well at the moment, but let’s just say I’m glad there are no axes in the house. All blog and no beer makes Cap a dull boy indeed. Anyhoo, let’s do the news, yeah?
Small astroturfed mobs of feral nitwits, egged on by the wealthiest yammering heads in the right-wing jagoffosphere, continued their over-publicized tantrum-throwing, whining about haircuts and free refills, because the only remaining conservative values are selfishness and self-pity. To Shart House economic advisor Stephen Moore, this flock of easily-manipulated rubes is basically a whole army of Rosa Parks, because he understands civil rights about as well as he does economics.
Somehow, defying the very laws of time and space, Tea Party 2.0 is even dumber than the original, having taken the plunge into full-on death cultism. “Fire Fauci” chants popped up at one protest because, as everyone knows, bad news magically disappears when you shoot the messenger. My only regret is that my commitment to social distancing will keep me from laughing my way through these assclowns’ funerals in person.
Y’know, if we make it through this shitshow, come summer 2022, movie theatres will be overflowing with action-thrillers portraying America’s governors-turned-smugglers, developing and executing intricate schemes to evade the Turdmaggot Administration’s seizure operations to deliver lifesaving PPE to their state’s hospitals. Can’t you see it now? Sylvester Stallone is…LARRY HOGAN.
President Sphinctermouth, in one of his more unhinged moments at the Daily Propaganda Spew, sneeringly referred to the FBI investigators who built the cases against his buddies, Pernicious Paul Manafort and Wretched Roger Stone, as “human scum,” owing to his sincere religious belief that felonies committed by rich white dudes shouldn’t count.
Now, the GOP has abandoned any number of long-held “principles” for their new Turd Emperor, but watching their evolution from “tough on crime” to “tough on law enforcement” has been…somethin’. At the RNC, they’re gonna adopt a platform that’s just a paperback copy of The Turner Diaries with a Post-it note reading “All this, plus lower taxes on the wealthy.”
Another feature of the DPS is, of course, the sad, lazy, gaslighting. “Hey, we don’t have enough testing,” cry the nation’s governors. “Yes you do,” bellows President Crotchrot, attempting the shittiest Jedi mind trick ever. Helping the American people during a time of crisis, he insists, is the states’ responsibility, not his, begging the question JUST WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU IMAGINE YOUR FUCKING JOB IS, YOU BLOATED CRETIN?
Large companies, including hotel and restaurant chains, have been sucking up stimulus loans intended for small businesses, because in Donald Trump’s Amerikkka, the law of Survival of the Corruptest reigns! Shit, even the Roman God of Medicare Fraud, aka Florida Senator Rick Scott is like, “C’mon you guys, we gotta ease our boots off the serfs’ necks a little bit, we still need ‘em to like, mow our lawns and buy stuff, y’know.”
I briefly toyed with the idea of rebranding my humble beer jar as the Make Cap an Oil Baron Fund, as oil prices plunged past zero and well into negative territory, just the latest extremely normal thing going down in these extremely normal times. Dunno ‘bout y’all, but I for one am really looking forward to bailing out yet another industry that will spend the rest of my lifetime overcharging me as much as it can possibly get away with.
Shiny New Designated Liar, er, “Press Secretary” Kayleigh McEnany threw an amusing little shitfit over a journalist showing insufficient deference to President Fungal Growth Inside a Clown’s Shoe, because there’s no better time and place to demand respect than from atop a mountain of corpses built by your own laziness and neglect. Gonna pass on bending that knee, Kayleigh, but I can see you’re gonna fit in just fine.
We learned that Mike Bloomberg blew more than a billion dollars on his hilariously inept presidential campaign. Mike. Bro. I just wanna let you know, I get what this thing was all about for you, and anytime you need someone to strap on some dominatrix gear topped off with an Elizabeth Warren mask and spank the crap out of you, I am available for the comparatively economical rate of $25 million per hour.
Brian Kemp, clearly jealous of states with larger outbreaks, (Mass Grave Envy is totally a thing, in Republican circles at least) decided to throw COVID-19 a big ol’ Welcome to Georgia party, reopening parts of the state’s economy on the gamble that the infectious disease experts are idiots, while the mulleted creeps waving confederate flags have had it right all along. Hey, it wasn’t so long ago when Kemp demonstrated his utter disdain for his constituents’ voting rights, so it shouldn’t really surprise anyone to learn he doesn’t value their lives.
Panicking as even the most thoroughly washed brains in Cult45 begin to wake up to the reality of tens of thousands of preventable deaths and an economy in tatters, Tangerine Idi Amin took to the pneumatic tweeting machine to reassure his faltering base that while he may be dangerously incompetent, he’s still hellaciously racist.
“I’m…I’m gonna ban ALL immigration” he stammered, betting his reelection on the hope that there’ll be enough angry white people in the Rust Belt for whom “unwillingness to share the coming post-apocalyptic wasteland with brown-skinned folks” is a motivating issue.
Hey, remember hydroxychloroquine? The miracle get-out-of-a-pandemic-free drug Strawberry Shartcake and his craven enablers at Fux Nooz promised would deliver us all from COVID-19 based on Dotard’s First Law of We Really Really Want it To?
Well, it turns out it doesn’t do shit, and in fact, in a recent study, the patients who got the stuff died at a higher rate than those who didn’t. Wow. A rare miss from the very stable genius pulling stuff out of his ass. Gosh, Trump University may just have to revoke his immunology doctorate now.
The Senate Intelligence Committee issued a report confirming that yuh huh, Russia sure did interfere in the 2016 election, a casual reminder that the blithering slug who’s gotten so many Americans killed was, oh yeah, installed by a hostile foreign power for the express purpose of fucking our shit up.
Y’know, Vlad Putin may be a murderous, dissent-crushing, autocrat, but you’ve got to hand it to him, he’s one helluva bargain hunter. Maybe I’ll ask him to go antiquing some day when we can all leave our homes again.
And now Redactor General Billy Barr is threatening to sue individual states if he deems their stay-at-home orders to have gone “too far.” Well, we’re all trapped inside an Ayn Rand NyQuil dream now, motherfuckers, with the federal government trying to force the citizenry into the wood chipper even if they had the good sense to elect Democrats locally instead of the so-pro-corporate-as-to-be-anti-human alternative.
Hey, this seems like a good spot to mention Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, who tells us “there are more important things than living” and he’ll get back to you about what those things are, just as soon as he checks in with his donors.
Anyhow, I’m gonna make the most of my time before they institute a draft to force us all to serve in the Amazon warehouses, where I’ll likely die packaging up boxed wine to ship to Judge Jeanine. Stay safe out there, and I’ll see y’all soon.
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