The Real Collusion Story: How Hillary, the DNC, Brennan, Clapper and Obama Conspired to Frame Trump for a Crime That Never Even Happened

This is a long piece. 14,000 words.

You should read it. Bookmark it if you don't have time to read it. It'll make for some good weekend reading.

By the way, this is from National Review. A lot of commenters keep saying that NR, as a whole, is part of the NeverTrump conspiracy-theory mass delusion. That's only partly true. Some there are obviously of that stripe, but others aren't.

This is the real story, the one that Washington Consensus doesn't know.

Or do they actually know it, but just won't tell it, as they long ago knew there was no Trump/Russia collusion?

Who's to say.

But read it. I promise, it's worth it.

Here's just part of it:

Consider, again, the coy Brennan. When questioners push him to explain what in the Steele dossier he finds compelling, he habitually takes shelter behind secret sources -- evidence hidden behind a classified screen, where only he, the chief intelligence professional, was permitted to see it. "I was aware of intelligence . . . about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether . . . those individuals were cooperating with the Russians . . . and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred."

John Brennan sees things that we cannot see. If he indeed has access to secrets that transform stories from Marvel Comics into the stuff of everyday reality, then he has done a very poor job of explaining what they are. Moreover, no disinterested intelligence professional has supported him.

Another part of the article talks about Brennan's long campaign to try to create a climate-change like "consensus" about RUSSIA-Trump Collusion Conspiracy theory, but even Clapper and Comey balked at his over-the-top claims.

Brennan's somber and self-righteous appeal to hidden secrets is the oldest con in the book. Just replace his top-secret computer monitor with a crystal ball or dried chicken bones, and his scam is the same one that Gypsy fortunetellers ran on superstitious peasants in early-modern Europe, or that soothsayers were operating in Homer’s Greece.

With respect to the framing of Trump, however, the second-sight scam required elaborate orchestration, the work of many hands. The key was the double-tracking of the dossier. Hillary Clinton's enablers channeled it simultaneously into the press and into the government. They then recruited people inside government to verify to the outsiders that it was a serious document, a guide to the intelligence that reporters were not allowed to see. Without this double-tracking and official or quasi-official authentication, journalists would never have believed that they were catching a glimpse of what Brennan and the FBI saw in their crystal balls -- pardon me, their top-secret monitors. And without leaks about investigations, journalists would have had no dossier-related news to report. Official statements that the dossier "was being looked into" transformed it into a legitimate topic for reputable news outlets.

This con failed in its primary goal of preventing the election of Trump, but it was nevertheless a partial success. It instilled in a significant portion of the American public the conviction that Trump indeed conspired with Putin. This conviction is especially prevalent among the lofty-minded -- a class of people that includes Republicans as well as Democrats.

The bipartisan character of the delusion was the greatest factor that legitimated the appointment of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel leading the investigation into Trump’s alleged relations with Russia. The lofty-minded have greeted every indictment that Mueller has handed down as confirmation of their collusion delusion. In reality, those indictments only prove that a phalanx of crack investigators armed with nearly unlimited resources, a grand jury, and an expansive mandate can draw blood almost at will. If a similar phalanx were to target Hillary Clinton and the shenanigans surrounding the Clinton Foundation, how much blood would flow? In other words, Mueller’s indictments are just the latest form of the non-verification verification.

Regardless of Mueller’s intentions, his probe serves as precisely the kind of "insurance policy" that Strzok seems to have been discussing with his lover, Lisa Page, in August 2016. Trump cannot shut down the Mueller probe and excise the rot in the DOJ and the FBI without appearing to obstruct justice. In practical terms, then, the Mueller probe is the cover-up.

Of course, the lofty-minded refuse to see it this way. The political damage that Mueller’s team is inflicting on Trump helps explain why a surprising number of people mount passionate and sincere defenses of the dossier and the super spy who compiled it. The logic of partisan politics will always lead a significant percentage of people to insist, with varying degrees of true belief, that a sow's ear really is a silk purse. But partisanship is not by any means the only factor at work here. Even people with well-deserved reputations for intellectual seriousness passionately defend the integrity of Christopher Steele, a man whom the New York Times insists on calling, despite all contrary evidence, "a whistleblower."

For a complete understanding of the dossier’s tenacious hold on lofty minds, one must supplement conventional political analysis with psychology. What we are witnessing is nothing less than a textbook case of denial and projection -- the most perfect case imaginable.

Like I said: good weekend reading.

posted by Ace at 07:00 PM

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