Polling Shows More People Paying Attention to Russiagate – That’s Good News and Bad News
Interestingly, yesterday I posited some random thoughts about accountability on Teh Twitter, noting that a few dozen random accounts know more about Russiagate individually than any person who has ever sat in a room with President Donald Trump. [FWIW – The author of this story I’m highlighting agreed.]
Miranda Devine notes in a New York Post article (Murdoch publication), polling shows more people are following the declassification of Russiagate documents than ever before [READ HERE]. That’s both a good thing from the perspective of an enlarged awakening but also holds a serious downside if people are focused on the delivery of accountability.
The series of documents declassified by the DNI (Gabbard), CIA (Ratcliffe) and FBI (via Grassley) has not changed the arc of the story; but they have provided strong evidence to support what was already obvious.
Essentially: the Clinton Campaign and the U.S. Intelligence Community, particularly the FBI, conspired together to exonerate Clinton from her email scandal, and frame Donald Trump as a Russian asset to assist her election win in 2016.
Everyone who has walked the deep weeds of Russiagate/Spygate has essentially known this framework for seven or more years. The DNI, CIA and FBI evidence is providing receipts for the operation as it unfolded. The latest evidence has proven the conspiracy researchers accurate, and the corporate media participants who participated in the ruse are not happy.
Miranda Devine breaks down the data on who is following the story and what the releases have done to squash the defenses of those who tried to label the Clinton/FBI operation as conspiracy theory. All of this is a very positive outcome and a greater percentage of the public are now aware.
However, there’s a downside as a result of those who are new to these discoveries. Even more people are thirsting for accountability for the conduct, and those who are very familiar with the story are renewing expectations of criminal activity against the perpetrators of the fraud.
Those who carried out the operation did not leave a trail of signed documents outlining their misconduct. There is no one single element of the very complicated story that provides a ‘gotcha’ moment. Instead, there is an assembly of mounting evidence that showcases how the fraud was perpetrated. Each document release adding more layers of corruption to the pile of fraud as it was manufactured.
The Clinton campaign knew what they were creating. The Obama White House knew what was happening. The CIA could see what the Clintons and her FBI/DOJ allies were assembling, and the FBI was a willful participant. All of this is not refuted, despite the Gordion knot of plausible deniability they wrapped it in.
The problem for the Trump White House is not that Clinton and the IC collaborated to frame Donald Trump in 2016. The problem for the Trump White House in 2025, which now becomes a problem for the Dept of Justice, is that a large portion of the American public expect some form of legal accountability for it.
Absent of criminal liability, people with increased knowledge get angry at the lack of accountability. Simultaneous with this increased knowledge, people are susceptible to the influence of outrage voices amplifying the criminal accountability demand. It’s a precarious position for the White House and Dept of Justice.
If the Trump administration does not ‘punish’ the perpetrators, they run the risk of losing electoral support. However, when you look carefully at how the fraud was perpetrated, the criminal aspect is a very challenging hurdle.
The overarching defense of the perpetrators pertains to the baseline of the fraud itself, which is, essentially, that candidate, then President-elect and eventually President Trump was compromised by Russia.
The Obama White House, FBI, CIA and aggregate IC claim they were investigating whether Donald Trump and members of his administration were taking action to the benefit of a foreign adversary, Russia. Outwardly, President Obama famously warned his officials to make sure all things within their investigation were done “by the book.”
When the CIA or FBI failed to brief Trump-allied Republicans (ie. Devin Nunes), their justification is they were investigating something “sensitive” to the national security of the nation, and therefore unprecedented measures were taken.
Sure, you can argue the officials at the top of the CIA, FBI, DNI and DOJ knew Trump-Russia was nonsense, but how do you prove it… I mean, really prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Even with the mounting declassified releases, you end up in the Horowitz/Durham conundrum, saying “they should have known.” Unfortunately, that’s not criminal.
The CIA or FBI leadership lied to congress, misled congress or were “less than fulsome’ with congressional oversight. Again, they fall back on the unprecedented approach and sensitive national security threat – that’s the shield. Yes, we did not answer the question(s) accurately -even honestly- to the U.S. govt., because we were investigating the U.S. govt.
In these matters of potential national security compromise, the CIA can easily lie to congress and then claim the lie was necessary to protect the government against the threat, and the investigation thereof. The ‘we had to lie’ scenario.
All of the players within the fraud end up carrying some form of plausible deniability, so long as the originating context for the investigation remains valid, even if it is tenuously valid. Something akin to ‘we saw Russian intel intercepts outlining a potential plan by Clinton, but there was also the potential of the Trump-Russia collusion being real’, so we had to look into it…. and we did it, “by the book” where there was no “book” to guide us.
Those legal defenses, while frustrating to accept – and almost entirely based on lies, are valid and purposeful when outlined in legal proceedings. Unfortunately, that legal defense seems to cover all of the 2015/2016 and even early 2017 participants.
Keep in mind, Inspector General Michael Horowitz conducted three investigations with only one criminal referral, Kevin Clinesmith. [(1) IG investigation of Clinton emails. (2) IG investigation of FBI conduct in Clinton investigation, and (3) IG investigation of FISA abuse (Carter Page)]. Additionally, Special Counsel John Durham investigated the origin of Trump-Russia and was never able to penetrate any of the top names for criminal accountability.
All four of these extensive investigations end up as defensive legal shields against any indictment, and the media is already using them to full value. Factually, all those previous investigations create significant “reasonable doubt.”
Intwined inside this legal Gordion knot is the problem for the current Dept of Justice.
Making matters worse still, in a little-known court filing, which has not had enough scrutiny, the President Trump DOJ told the FISA Court in July 2018 that predication for the investigation of Carter Page was valid [SEE HERE].
If the Donald Trump Dept of Justice was saying the warrant against Carter Page was legally valid in 2018, a full two years after the FBI began investigating the Trump-Russia collusion, then how can the Donald Trump 2025 Dept of Justice claim the investigation of Donald Trump was invalid.
We essentially watched any hopes for Russiagate legal liability melt as a result of that July 12, 2018, letter. Which, stands on soapbox, is exactly why I was shouting about it when the letter was finally revealed FIVE YEARS AGO.
The Trump DOJ wrote the letter to the FISA Court after Inspector General Michael Horwowitz released his highly critical investigative findings into the Carter Page FISA application. The Trump DOJ told the FISA Court that despite the information from Horowitz the application was properly predicated. THIS IS IN 2018!
Keep in mind this letter to the court was written by AAG John Demers in July 2018. Jeff Sessions was Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein was Deputy AG; Christopher Wray was FBI Director, David Bowditch is Deputy, and Dana Boente was FBI chief-legal-counsel.
[SOURCE]
As you can see, there are a myriad of defenses for the Russiagate conspirators to draw from, including defenses directly from the Trump administration. Which brings me to the final two points.
For President Trump the most dangerous part of this entire storyline is pushing an expectation that criminal indictments could be possible. Instead, the possibility of criminal accountability is almost non-existent. Expectations need to be managed. Because if people get their hopes up and then nothing happens the collapse in morale could be politically devastating.
I am open to hearing counter opinions established in solid framework; however, based on current evidence, from my perspective the only people who potentially show any signs of legal accountability are the ones who come along AFTER Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann begin their 2017 coverup operation.
The court of public opinion is the venue for the rest.
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