Reminder: The Russia Collusion Hoax Was hostaed By Hillary Clinton and Her Aides Just Hours After Her Loss, and Fed to a Supportive Media to Explain Away Her Failure -- and Theirs

Larry O'Connor with a reminder that this was an info op from the start.

The Russian Collusion mythology is the most dominant story in the news media and has been for the past eighteen months... dating back to November 7, 2016. And when one examines the contemporaneous reporting by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes in their excellent book Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign.

Allen and Parnes had incredible access to the entire Clinton campaign infrastructure because their book was really meant to be a historical account of the triumphant campaign for the first female president in American history.

As we know, it didn't work out that way. And the authors' account of the immediate aftermath tells us much about how the media were spoon-fed the collusion narrative: (emphasis added)

"She's not being particularly self -reflective," said one longtime ally who was on calls with her shortly after the election. Instead, Hillary kept pointing her finger at Comey and Russia. "She wants to make sure all these narratives get spun the right way," this person said.

...

Of course, the plan would only work if the media took the bait. They had that angle knitted up. All they had to do was focus their anger and ire at their friends in the press and accuse them of being at fault for Trump's victory.

They also decided to hammer the media for focusing so intently on the investigation into her e-mail, which had created a cloud over her candidacy. "The press botched the e-mail story for eighteen months"” said one person who was in the room. "Comey obviously screwed us, but the press created the story."

"It was all your fault," they'd say to their pals in the press. And now, they had to make good.

More at the link, including audio of Larry O'Connor discussing this on his radio show.

And this is interesting -- John Sexton writes up Bob Woodward's appearance on Fox, where he claimed that "the CIA" fought strenuously to get the Hot Garbage Dossier included in the official intelligence community assessment on Russian interference.

And Rand Paul says he heard that it was specifically John Brennan fighting to have this unverified pack of Russian disinformation entered into the records of US intelligence.

Almost as if he wanted to get this piece of shit oppo dump purchased by his gal Hillary Clinton included in some kind of official record, so it could be leaked, as a, how you say, insurance policy.

From the Washington Examiner:

"What I found out recently, which was really quite surprising, the dossier, which really is got a lot of garbage in it and Mueller found that to be the case, early in building the intelligence community assessment on Russian interference in an early draft, they actually put the dossier on page two in kind of a breakout box," Woodward said in a panel moderated by host Chris Wallace.

"I think it was the CIA pushing this," he added. "Real intelligence experts looked at this and said no, this is not intelligence, this is garbage and they took it out. But in this process the idea that they would include something like that in one of the great stellar intelligence assessments as Mueller also found out is highly questionable. Needs to be investigated."

Now, we already know that someone in the IC -- Clapper, Brennan, Comey, someone on that level -- had arranged for the fake "briefing" of Trump about some but not all aspects of the dossier specifically so that the briefing could immediately be leaked to CNN. CNN had already told Comey they couldn't publish about the dossier without some kind of "news hook" to give this unverified oppo file some pretext to be reported on, and wouldn't you know it?, Clapper, Brennan, and Comey quickly responded to give CNN just that news hook.

But now, per Woodward and Rand Paul, we seem to know who the most interested party was here: John Brennan. John Brennan, one could speculate, already had tried to get the dossier mentioned in an official US intelligence briefing.

One could further speculate that he tried to get the dossier included in the intelligence assessment precisely because including it in an official report would give it the "news hook" it needed to be reported by CNN after he leaked details of the assessment to it.

One could speculate further still and guess that someone in the CIA caught Brennan trying to sneak Hillary Clinton disinformation into the official US intelligence assessment -- for partisan political reasons, and illegal ones, I'd venture -- and forced the dossier out of the assessment.

So Brennan went to Plan B: convincing Clapper and Comey on the need to get the dossier into the official record via a different route, namely, pretending to brief Trump about it while actually only holding the briefing so that the briefing could be leaked to CNN.

One could speculate about such things.

But, as Woodward says: Needs investigation.

And subpoenas. And sworn testimony, and pain-of-perjury.

posted by Ace of Spades at 02:45 PM

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