Law HPSCI Releases Report on Russian Investigation

Press Release | Source Document

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released its report today on its investigation into the Trump-Russia "scandal" and other aspects of the 2016 election. The summary at the beginning is the key to the whole thing, really. It spells out the findings in the report without having to go through all 253 pages of it, so just skim over those if you're looking for the gist without having to settle in for a few hours.

There's some awfully interesting information in here, so I'll just stick some of the more-relevant parts in a bullet list to give everyone a run-down:

• "The dossier compiled by Christopher Steele formed an essential part of an application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to obtain electronic surveillance on Carter Page."
• FBI Agents found no deception in Flynn's interview.
• Manafort's indictment charges have nothing to do with Russian collusion.
• None of the Trump campaign's prior dealings pre-election formed any basis for the Russian collusion narrative.
• No evidence of collusion with Russia was discovered taking place within the Trump Campaign.
  
• Prior to the Trump campaign, Fusion GPS conducted research benefiting Russian interests.
• Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS on behalf of Clinton and the DNC.
• Leaks concerning Russian efforts to help elect Trump increased dramatically right after the 2016 election.
• lol brennan's mad. I can't imagine why he'd be ma--Oh he's in here, too.
• If the media reports on this at all, they'll probably use this one paragraph about some nameless, Russian real estate owner who thinks that if Trump gets a tower in Moscow he'll "own the GOP", even though later in the report he's forced to admit that he has no ties to the Russian government.

 

[Wesley Willis]

The mainstream media gave Trump $2 billion in free coverage because they couldn't keep it in their pants. But apparently 90 Russians living in a hostel shitposting on Facebook had a greater reach.

 

[It's HK-47]

Old Russian proverb: A fish rots from the head down.

The DNC has two options once this is all said and done. The first option is restructuring themselves completely. That means getting rid of the Feinsteins, the Pelosis, and anyone close enough to Hillary Clinton to have smelled her shitting her pants. Problem is, that covers just about everyone running the DNC. Getting rid of them would mean getting rid of any central organization that party has. That brings me to the second option, which is ignoring everything and pretending anything bad coming out of the DNC is just fake news cooked up by the Russians and their uneducated Republican troglodytes.

The DNC's instinct will be to go with option 2. The problem is, they're not dealing with a minor scandal. Their best chance at long term survival is to go with option 1, lay low, and wait for the anti establishment faction (Trump and his followers) to fuck up so they can present themselves as a viable option against what will by then be perceived as the ingrained establishment. But since the DNC has so much to lose, my guess is that they'll try and split the middle by getting rid of people like Pelosi and Feinstein and pretending like they've reformed.

The Democratic party no longer deserves to stand. All the way down to its core, something is deeply flawed with the Democratic party and anyone within a hundred feet of it. It's not even the major scandals like the 2016 election or the Hillary/DNC money laundering, or due to the fact that because of the Imran Awan scandal, there's a serious, undeniable chance that the Pakistani government or lawless operatives in Pakistan have compromising, blackmail-worthy information on every single member of the DNC, since all of them were giving unfettered access to their entire network over to Awan.

All they care about is power and money, everything else is inconsequential. Just look at how much attention they gave to Ed Buck. He's not even close to being a household name. Hell, I'll bet half the people reading this post have no idea who he even is, because even for that brief window of time where the story was being reported, he wasn't Ed Buck, he was "a democratic donor." He's been a prolific one, too, donating at least $120,000 that we know of, but I've seen estimates go up above half a million.

Strange that he never got dragged through the mud at all, isn't it? A young, black man can die in his home, surrounded by drug paraphernalia, overdosing on methamphetamine and leaving behind a journal detailing that Buck is the one who got him started on the drugs in the first place, and that he'd "rather just let Ed Buck [kill him], for now." and the death was ruled an accident, Buck didn't even get charged with possession, and he didn't even get his name raked over the coals. Huh.

Funny how so many members of the DNC are perfectly happy to completely ruin the reputation of anyone who so much as uses the wrong pronoun or thinks it's not acceptable to afford illegal immigrants with more rights and protections than national citizens. They'll ruin your lives for so much as looking at them sideways, but when it comes to their own team, when it comes to people like Ed Buck, they're more than happy to take his money and stand there for picture after picture showing nothing but smiles. Ed Buck, the upstanding, generous, Democratic donor.

I guess that's more palatable than, "Ed Buck, the sadomasochistic meth-addict who gets young, male prostitutes addicted to drugs."

Spoiler

 

[usernames can change now!]

Y'know, I've never seen this actually mentioned, but xkcd called this entire paid shill thing back in 2012.

 

[Absolutego]

Old Russian proverb: A fish rots from the head down.

The DNC has two options once this is all said and done. The first option is restructuring themselves completely. That means getting rid of the Feinsteins, the Pelosis, and anyone close enough to Hillary Clinton to have smelled her shitting her pants. Problem is, that covers just about everyone running the DNC. Getting rid of them would mean getting rid of any central organization that party has. That brings me to the second option, which is ignoring everything and pretending anything bad coming out of the DNC is just fake news cooked up by the Russians and their uneducated Republican troglodytes.

The DNC's instinct will be to go with option 2. The problem is, they're not dealing with a minor scandal. Their best chance at long term survival is to go with option 1, lay low, and wait for the anti establishment faction (Trump and his followers) to fuck up so they can present themselves as a viable option against what will by then be perceived as the ingrained establishment. But since the DNC has so much to lose, my guess is that they'll try and split the middle by getting rid of people like Pelosi and Feinstein and pretending like they've reformed.

I don't think they'll make even a token attempt to get rid of old guard fossils like Pelosi and Feinstein, they're going to drive the "Fuck Drumpf" train until even the cloistered urban centers that comprise their base begin to turn on them. The DNC is run by people utterly convinced that demographic replacement is their ticket to eventually ruling a one party state, and that strategy means that they don't have to change the platform so long as they can convince everyone the opposition is worse.

Just like when they first had this notion in the wake of 2000, it's going to take 8 years of Republican government (and, beyond that, probably a hugely unpopular action by said Republicans during their administration) for Dems to be humbled enough to listen to their base and at least fix their messaging, even if they ultimately pull a 2008 Obama again and dump most of that messaging in favor of continuing to govern like it's the 1990's and they're Bill Clinton.