streiff: Today's Indictments Were a Nothingburger, and If You Disagree, Your Name Must Be Adam Schiff

Good digest of what's in the indictments and, criticially, what's not in them, like any allegation of the non-crime of collusion.

The project began in 2013 as a way of attempting to cause confusion in the U.S. presidential campaign. Mission accomplished. This indictment is a nothingburger. It tells us damned little we didn’t know from press accounts and there are no arrests on the horizon. Two of the three entities were already sanctioned so indicting them does nothing. There is absolutely nothing in here that even hints that the Russians involved in this had any help from anyone in the U.S. Maybe that indictment is coming but there is not a hint of it here.

This interference is exactly what Comey described around September 2016 when he said the object of the Russians was to create division. There is no evidence presented here that there was any greater goal than creating turmoil.

The interference seems aimed at bolstering what all of us thought were the LEAST LIKELY candidates in the primary: Trump, Sanders, Stein. The Russians attacked Cruz and Rubio and other GOP candidates as well as Clinton. After the election they helped organize anti-Trump rallies.

More importantly, there is no evidence here that there was any coherent strategy–or that they really knew what they were doing–beyond garden variety trolling.

I mentioned Adam Schiff in the headline because someone leaked to Bloomberg that progressives and NeverTrumpers (but I repeat myself) shouldn't give up hope yet because Mueller might still be looking into the non-crime of "collusion," and John Sexton snarks that that anonymous source is probably just Adam Schiff with a big stupid fake mustache and a little boy-sized t-shirt that says TOTALLY NOT ADAM SCHIFF.

Sean Davis has a hypothetical question:

Open thread. Happy weekend!

posted by Ace at 08:01 PM

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