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The death of Trumprussia

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A couple weeks ago, leftie rag The Nation basically told lefties to start getting over Trumprussia because the DNC, at least, just wasn’t hacked.

Former NSA experts say it wasn’t a hack at all, but a leak—an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system.

…[with the Russia narrative], we are urged to accept the word of institutions and senior officials with long records of deception. These officials profess “high confidence” in their “assessment” as to what happened in the spring and summer of last year…[but] an assessment is an opinion, nothing more, and to express high confidence is an upside-down way of admitting the absence of certain knowledge.

[On the other side,] Forensic investigators, intelligence analysts, system designers, program architects, and computer scientists of long experience and strongly credentialed are now producing evidence disproving the official version of key events last year…

The Nation quotes a report from Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS):

Hard science now demonstrates it was a leak—a download executed locally with a memory key or a similarly portable data-storage device. In short, it was an inside job…

Forensic investigations of documents made public two weeks prior to the July 5 leak by the person or entity known as Guccifer 2.0 show that they were fraudulent: Before Guccifer posted them they were adulterated by cutting and pasting them into a blank template that had Russian as its default language[, a setting that anyone can do]…

VIPS used the work of several investigators such as Disobedient Media, The Forensicator, Adam Carter (I mentioned them in my post explaining Guccifer 2.0 from five weeks ago), and others also. The Nation continues:

Under no circumstance can it be acceptable that the relevant authorities—the National Security Agency, the Justice Department (via the Federal Bureau of Investigation), and the Central Intelligence Agency—leave these new findings without reply.

[…]

The Intelligence Community Assessment [of Russian hacking], the supposedly definitive report featuring the “high confidence” dodge, was greeted as farcically flimsy when issued January 6. Ray McGovern calls it a disgrace to the intelligence profession. It is spotlessly free of evidence, front to back, pertaining to any events in which Russia is implicated. James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, admitted in May that “hand-picked” analysts from three agencies (not the 17 previously reported) drafted the ICA. There is a way to understand “hand-picked” that is less obvious than meets the eye: The report was sequestered from rigorous agency-wide reviews…

Behind the ICA lie other indefensible realities. The FBI has never examined the DNC’s computer servers—an omission that is beyond preposterous. It has instead relied on the reports produced by Crowdstrike, a firm that drips with conflicting interests well beyond the fact that it is in the DNC’s employ. Dmitri Alperovitch, its co-founder and chief technology officer, is on the record as vigorously anti-Russian…

I’ve been blogging on the above points, for months. It’s nice to see a left-wing publication grapple with them, at last.

Seymour Hersh on Seth Rich and Trumprussia

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Seymour Hersh, the famous left-leaning but hard-hitting investigative journalist, has apparently endorsed the theory that Seth Rich was the DNC leaker. Big League Politics has an audio recording. Assuming it’s real,

  • Hersh claims to know from an FBI report, that was made when D.C. police called in an FBI cyber unit to look at Rich’s laptop after his death.
  • Hersh is skeptical of the idea that Seth Rich was murdered for political reasons – although Rich did express concerns to friends that something might happen to him.
  • Hersh suggests that Rich’s brother put up obstacles to investigating any Rich-WikiLeaks connection.
  • Hersh suggests that the Trump-Russia conspiracy allegations were disinformation planted by Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan. And that NSA and CIA types (what we call Deep State) are against Trump because, in some unspecified way (I’d like to know more), Trump ends their hopes of getting lucrative private consulting contracts on leaving the government.

Needless to say, if these claims are real, they blow Trumprussia out of the water.

I found it worthwhile to read BLP’s whole article and listen to the recording. UPDATE: Transcript here.

While we’re at it: We know that the House Intelligence Committee started to look into the “unmasking” scandal (where the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign; zealously doing surveillance and over-zealously “unmasking” the names of Trump operatives who were swept up in it). A key aide to Susan Rice and Obama, Ben Rhodes, has emerged as a ‘person of interest’ in that investigation.

This adds Rhodes to the growing list of top Obama government officials who may have improperly unmasked Americans in communications intercepted overseas by the NSA, Circa has confirmed…

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, Rice and former CIA Director John Brennan have all been named in the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation…

…the committee has “found evidence that current and former government officials had easy access to U.S. person information and that it is possible that they used this information to achieve partisan political purposes, including the selective, anonymous leaking of such information.”

Finally, they’re looking!

Evidence that some DNC material had to be leaked (not hacked)

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This is another one of those complicated intrigues. First, what is Guccifer 2.0?

Per Wiki, Guccifer 2.0 is “a person or persona stating they were the hacker(s) that hacked into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer network…The U.S. Intelligence Community concluded that some of the genuine leaks that Guccifer 2.0 has said were part of a series of cyberattacks on the DNC were committed by two Russian intelligence groups…The Russian government denies involvement…and Guccifer 2.0 denied links to Russia.”

What could be meant by “some of the genuine leaks”? Well, Guccifer 2.0 published some real material, but also some hoax material; for example, demonstrably fake material about Clinton Foundation corruption. Clinton Foundation corruption is real, but not because of what Guccifer 2.0 published. Exposing Guccifer’s fakes conveniently enabled Clinton supporters to go “Oh, the whole thing is a hoax.”

Guccifer 2.0 also claimed credit, probably falsely, for the main DNC emails published by WikiLeaks. At varying points, they have claimed to be a Romanian hacker, the original hacker(s) of the DNC emails who gave them to WikiLeaks, and the go-between who gave Seth Rich’s leaked DNC emails to WikiLeaks.

In short, at any time, Guccifer 2.0 may put out

  • real material – for credibility, perhaps, or when it supports their agenda; but perhaps with a false story of how they got it;
  • fake material – that is meant to be believed;
  • fake material – that is meant to be rejected, with the rejection indirectly supporting some other (false) narrative;
  • a false claim of credit to someone else’s leak or hack.

So everything they do, has to be analyzed to death.

With that, let’s get to this article from Disobedient Media, New Research Shows Guccifer 2.0 Files Were Copied Locally, Not Hacked. The article is packed with interesting links, which you can surf. I’ll quote a little from its main text.

New meta-analysis has emerged from a document published today by an independent researcher known as The Forensicator, which suggests that [some real DNC] files eventually published by the Guccifer 2.0 persona were likely initially downloaded by a person with physical access to a computer possibly connected to the internal DNC network. The individual most likely used a USB drive to copy the information. The groundbreaking new analysis irrevocably destroys the Russian hacking narrative, and calls the actions of Crowdstrike and the DNC into question.

As I’ve blogged before, the “Russia hacking” narrative has always been shaky. First, the idea that it was endorsed by “17 intelligence agencies” is a myth. Second, to this day, the DNC has denied the FBI access to the servers/networks that were allegedly hacked. The few U.S. intelligence analysts who did endorse the Russia narrative, did so based on a DNC-paid report from CrowdStrike that has been much-questioned.

To continue from DM’s article: [Read more…]

How to manufacture a scandal

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Another piece falls into place, of a mosaic in which Democrats set out in 2016 to create a false appearance of collusion between President Trump and Russia. It’s pretty devious.

First, you need to know about something called the Magnitsky Act.

  • Congress passed it in 2012, “intending to punish Russian officials responsible for the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison in 2009.” (Wiki; or BBC’s account here.)
  • It prevents 18 Russian officials from entering the U.S. and freezes their assets.
  • The Russian government (Putin regime) disputes how Magnitsky died and therefore, furiously disputes the act’s appropriateness.
  • Russia responded in 2012 with their own blacklist on 18 U.S. officials.
  • The list included Preet Bharara, former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Bharara went on to be fired earlier this year by Trump, then hired by Special Counsel Mueller to investigate Trump.
  • Russia also responded by banning U.S. adoptions of Russian children.
  • Natalia Veselnitskaya is a lawyer connected to the Russian government, who lobbies against the Magnitsky Act (e.g., to get it repealed).

The report is that on June 9, 2016, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump, Jr. met briefly with Veselnitskaya. Per The New York Times, Trump Jr. said: “We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children…there was no follow up. I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.”

Guess what? The name Fusion GPS pops up again.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for President Trump’s legal team, told Circa:

We have learned from both our own investigation and public reports that the participants in the meeting misrepresented who they were and who they worked for. Specifically, we have learned that the person who sought the meeting is associated with Fusion GPS, a firm which according to public reports, was retained by Democratic operatives to develop opposition research on the President and which commissioned the phony Steele dossier.

I’m not taking a position on the Magnitsky Act, here. (It may be a reasonable response to Putin regime corruption or murder.) The point is the intrigue.

  • Democrats pay Fusion GPS to dirty-up Trump. Among other things, they create that fake Trump dossier, alleging a variety of non-existent Trump-Russia connections.
  • As part of it (and this is the new bit), a Fusion GPS operative gets Kushner and Trump Jr. to take a brief meeting – probably “for the children” or something – with someone who turns out to be Veselnitskaya.
  • I’m guessing that Fusion GPS adds the meeting to the Steele dossier, making it seem Trump could be involved with Veselnitskaya/Putin to undermine the Magnitsky Act. I’m guessing that the meeting also alienates Preet Bharara, when he hears of it.
  • Then the dossier is used as a basis for getting the NSA and FBI to investigate or surveil candidate Trump.
  • Which is then a basis for Susan Rice “unmasking”, leaks to create constant suspicion in the media, etc.

I admit that, if Fusion GPS weren’t involved, I’d be less sanguine; the Veselnitskaya meeting could seem suspicious. But, on current information, Fusion GPS is involved. That screams “election dirty tricks”; the more so as it fits into a known pattern of Democrat misdirection on Russia.

So much for the Veselnitskaya meeting. The larger questions remain:

Death of the “17 intelligence agencies” canard

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It’s worth noting officially. NYT Finally Retracts Russia-gate Canard.

The New York Times has finally admitted that one of the favorite Russia-gate canards – that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concurred on the assessment of Russian hacking of Democratic emails – is false.

On Thursday, the Times appended a correction to a June 25 article that had repeated the false claim, which has been used by Democrats and the mainstream media for months to brush aside any doubts about the foundation of the Russia-gate scandal and portray President Trump as delusional for doubting…

…on Thursday, the Times…noted in a correction that the relevant intelligence “assessment was made by four intelligence agencies…The assessment was not approved by all 17…

The Times’ grudging correction was vindication for some Russia-gate skeptics who had questioned the claim of a full-scale intelligence assessment, which would usually take the form of a National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE), a product that seeks out the views of the entire Intelligence Community and includes dissents.

The reality of a more narrowly based Russia-gate assessment was admitted in May by President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan in sworn congressional testimony.

Clapper testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on May 8 that the Russia-hacking claim came from a “special intelligence community assessment” (or ICA) produced by selected analysts…

Clapper further acknowledged that the analysts…were “hand-picked” from [3 agencies,] the CIA, FBI and NSA. [ed: and DNI would count as four]

Emphasis added. Translation: It was politicized “intelligence”. Deep State wanted a pre-determined answer that would help them to dominate President Trump; as opposed to the real answer.

As to what those “hand-picked” analysts worked from: It’s worth remembering that, whereas Watergate began with a real burglary and police reports, Trumprussia began with the DNC actually blocking FBI investigators from the alleged crime scene and forcing everyone to operate off of a shoddy report from CrowdStrike. James “Leaker” Comey didn’t quite admit that in his testimony, but he came close:

COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN RICHARD BURR: Did you ever have access to the actual hardware that was hacked? Or did you have to rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected?

COMEY: In the case of the DNC, and, I believe, the DCCC [i.e. the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee], but I’m sure the DNC, we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party…

Via ZH; the article goes on to explain in detail why CrowdStrike’s report was bogus.

Per Breitbart, the Associated Press joined the NYT in withdrawing the fake “17 intelligence agencies” claim.

Is Trumprussia boomeranging?

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As Rush, Hannity, etc. have been pointing out lately, eight months of baseless Trump-Russia collusion allegations seem finally to be blowing up in the faces of the Democrats, Controlled Media and Deep State.

In a recent poll, 73% of Americans said the investigations are causing Congress to lose focus, 64% said they’re hurting the country, 56% said it’s time to move on, and 52% said they don’t believe Trump did any collusion.

And the story itself is taking a few turns. First, I’d like to give the background on something called the Trump Dossier.

  • It’s a salacious report on candidate Trump that was put together (in 2015 or 16?) by a former British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele.
  • His work was sloppy, containing (among other things) provably-false tales of Trump associates meeting Russians in Europe, and probably-false tales of Trump doing bizarre sexual practices. (OK, tame practices by gay standards.)
  • Steele was paid to produce the dossier by a company called Fusion GPS.
  • Many suspect that Fusion GPS was paid ultimately by Democrats and/or #NeverTrumpers, and was hired precisely to do a hit piece (something shoddy and salacious).
  • The dossier was passed to the FBI and other U.S. agencies. Although they knew it was false in its most serious claims (or should have known), they appear to have used it as a basis for investigations on Trump and as a roadmap for questioning witnesses.
  • Also, some suspect that the Obama administration may have used the dossier to obtain their secret FISA warrants and/or NSA surveillance on Trump, during and after the 2016 campaign.
  • We need to know on that last point because, *if true*, it would be explosive: one would have to “connect the dots” of Hillary or DNC paying a foreigner for a bogus report on Trump, Obama using the report as a bogus reason to spy on candidate Trump, Susan Rice “unmasking” the data and distributing it within the Obama government, and then leakers possibly leaking Trump campaign secrets to media, DNC and/or Hillary. Quite a trick.

It’s backfiring on the Democrats because at long last, the Senate Judiciary committee is investigating Fusion GPS and who was behind the bogus dossier.

Next, I’d like to discuss The Washington Post’s blockbuster article last Friday on Russian election hacking, a game-changer.

WaPo is known for “burying the lede”: putting a title/frame on a story that tries to mask the important revelations within it. This article is titled “Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault”. Thus, WaPo’s frame is: Russian election hacking is real and isn’t Obama a lonely hero for having tried to punish Russia?

But the article’s details tell a different story.

  • Everyone agrees, still, that Russia didn’t change a single vote. In that respect, the 2016 election was perfectly fair and un-hacked.
  • The CIA did report to Obama in 2016 that Russia was trying to do cyber-crime on various U.S. targets, including both the DNC and RNC.
  • For five months, Obama dithered and considered various responses and, in the end, he did…nothing. Until after the election (when he expelled some Russian diplomats, tightened some sanctions, and fanned the flames of protest and questioning Trump’s legitimacy).

“It is the hardest thing about my entire time in government to defend,” said a former senior Obama administration official involved in White House deliberations on Russia [in the months before the election]. “I feel like we sort of choked.”

I want to make clear that I still do not take this “Russia hacking” narrative at face value. My reasons:

  • Still no evidence. The WaPo article doesn’t actually provide any.
  • After Wikileaks Vault 7 (including revelations that the CIA itself routinely hacks things and leaves Russian fingerprints), there is no reason to take the CIA’s word on anything – without evidence.
  • Also, Russia could have tried to hack into stuff – but with little or no effect.
  • In regard to the “DNC emails”, at least, it is still very plausible the leaker was Seth Rich, a DNC insider. Because Wikileaks dropped many hints about it. (At this point, yes I trust their hints more than the CIA’s.)
  • And it still doesn’t matter who leaked the “DNC emails” because they were 100% true and relevant information that American voters deserved. If it was Russia, they did not attack our nation or our democracy; only our 2 major-party Establishments. (Big difference.)
  • It is still exceedingly odd that the DNC denied FBI investigators access to their computers after the leaks. Instead, the DNC spoon-fed the FBI a report on supposed Russian hacking from another shoddy, DNC-paid company, CrowdStrike.

But let’s say it’s all true. Most observers agree that the major countries all try to hack each other (or spy), and to influence each other’s elections. And that Russia and the U.S. have been doing it to each other for 70 years or more. Why should 2016 be an exception? In that case,

  1. It is all the more strange and inappropriate that the DNC didn’t let the FBI in to look at their servers and network, after the alleged “DNC email” hack.
  2. It is strange and inappropriate that Obama didn’t defend the U.S. constitution (as his oath requires) by telling the American public. Obama was no stranger to stirring up trouble with Russia (see: Ukraine coup, 2014). Why wouldn’t he, here? Some guesses:
    • He’s just ineffectual?
    • The Russian interference was routine (see above); much less of a deal than WaPo is now making of it?
    • Obama didn’t want to draw attention to Hillary’s corrupt Russia dealings?
    • He didn’t want to draw attention to Democrats having serious problems with security; like, you know, Hillary’s e-mail scandal?
    • He didn’t want to draw attention to Hillary’s hypocritical interference in Russian elections?
    • He thought Hillary would win, and didn’t want any Russia messes tainting her presidency in the public’s mind? (This is WaPo’s theory. But then, when Trump won, Obama was suddenly OK with tainting the next President?)
    • Or: Deep down, Obama didn’t want Hillary to win? (This is Rush’s theory.)
  3. It is still strange and inappropriate that leading Democrats want to blame Republicans – and the American people – in all this. For example, from Rep. Adam Schiff:

    He said many groups inadvertently abetted Russia’s campaign, including Republicans who refused to confront Moscow and media organizations that eagerly mined the troves of hacked emails.

    In other words, damn the American people for opening their eyes and reading those 100% genuine DNC emails!

In short: If WaPo’s story is true, then instead of Trump-Russia collusion, we should be looking at Obama-Russia collusion and Obama-Hillary collusion. This is the game-changer.

Trumprussia was always “mostly bullsh*t”, as we learned Tuesday. The real story would be if the Russian government interfered in U.S. elections – and President Obama let them. Then made a big deal of it later – just to undermine President Trump. Now *that’s* attacking American democracy.

In every plausible version of this mess,

  1. Someone in the government spread around the fake Trump dossier (when they should have ignored/discredited it).
  2. The DNC hid an alleged crime scene from FBI investigators.
  3. Susan Rice wrongly “unmasked” data on domestic political opponents.
  4. Obama failed to do a thing about Russian interference; until it was time for him, and various Deep State leakers, to undermine a lawful new President whom they just didn’t like.

Democrats’ Psychotic Desire for War with Russia

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I never thought I’d live in a world where Democrats – having been “peace loving” shills for the old Soviet Union, for so many decades – are eager for bellicose confrontation with Russia. But, here we are.

When Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D – HI), an Iraq war veteran, cautioned her fellow Democrats to slow down and remember the Iraq-WMD situation (such as the Left remembers it), Howard Dean called her a “disgrace” who “should not be in Congress”. So much for the Democrats’ brrrrave fight against misogyny.

Or, as Tucker Carlson put it last night:

Democrats are now the reflexive party of war — all wars, except those with an obvious benefit to us here in the United States. If there is a humanitarian quagmire on the other side of the globe, they are all for committing troops. And you better be for it, too, or they will denounce you.

One of Tucker’s guests was a Democrat strategist, Alfred Mottur. Video, some here and some here. After Mottur claims to be “heartened” by the rising tensions and that Russia “undoubtedly” or “aggressively” “interfered with our elections”, this exchange:

[Carlson] In what sense does this confrontation with Russia now ongoing make our country safer or more prosperous?

[Mottur] With respect to our elections, it makes us safer in our democratic processes to make sure that their integrity is preserved.

Got it? We must destroy American democracy in a potentially-nuclear conflict with Russia, in order to save it.

But note that when China, Saudi Arabia, or our own Deep State “interfere with our elections”, we don’t need to be confrontational with them. Or even talk about them. Oh no, don’t talk about their interference! Only Russia.

Some Democrats’ desire for war with Russia is as bad as some Republicans’ desire for war in Syria (that would likely lead to war with Russia).

The sad irony is that, as I posted a few days ago, Russia didn’t interfere with anything.

  1. Whoever hacked the DNC and Podesta e-mails did us all a favor. (Given that it resulted in 100% true and relevant information coming to the voters.)
  2. Plus, it probably wasn’t Russia. (See the links in that post.)

It seems that today’s Democrats are such psychotic babies that they would rather take us into confrontation with Russia than admit that they lost the 2016 election fairly, after they ran an awful candidate.

And IMO, it appears also as though Deep State’s “intelligence” leaks – all those NothingBurgers meant to make people think that Russia attacked our election, Russia colluded with President Trump who is Putin’s agent, etc. – could have been intentional War propaganda.

NB: I just corrected the spelling of Mottur’s name and improved the video links & transcript.

The Tyranny of Fake News

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I was advised to google “Syria hoax footage” and see what comes up. A lot comes up. For one thing, here’s video from November 2016 of Syrian “White Helmets” (a pro-rebel group; thus pro-Islamist) carefully STAGING a scene of man whose legs were supposedly crushed in a government attack.

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They all scream on cue, at about 0:22. Afterward, the man – that is, the actor – looks cheerful and takes a photo with his fellow actors. Click here and scroll down to see.

CNN lately has been hitting the “Won’t somebody PLEEEZ think of the children??!” button extra hard, with its clips of Bana, an adorable, wide-eyed Syrian 7-year old who pleads for the freedom to play and go to school.

Here, CNN throws Bana into the face of a rather sensible Congressperson, starting around 1:50.

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It turns out, of course, that each of Bana’s performances and Tweets are scripted and staged by her politically-motivated mother.

Note to CNN: A seven-year old isn’t a U.S. foreign policy expert. Her opinion, even if unscripted, would still be Fake News in the sense that it simply isn’t news. And oh yeah, if we did invade Syria (or bomb it further), it would become even harder for Bana to play or go to school. Tell her that.

The U.S. Intelligence and foreign policy bureaucrats (Deep State) wanted Hillary because, for some reason or other, they want a war in Syria at the least; if not a full-on war with Russia. Along with a few billionaires – like Carlos Slim (New York Times) and Jeff Bezos (Washington Post) and Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild (Economist magazine) and some others (Time-Warner / CNN) – the Deep State controls the proverbial Controlled Media, which spews War propaganda on command.

That’s reality. That is the world we live in: A tyranny in which relatively non-accountable, secretive bureaucrats manipulate the media – and have the media, in turn, manipulate us with FAKE NEWS.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that the recent Syria chemical attack was a hoax or a false flag. But it means that we’re right to wonder. We’re right to ask our leaders for caution. We’re right to question “the narrative.”

Guess what else? We just got a little more information on how it could have been the murdered DNC-insider Seth Rich, and not the Russians, who hacked/leaked the DNC emails in the 2016 election.

“The consensus of 17 intelligence agencies is that the Russians did it!!1!” was always a shaky story. For one thing, the DNC didn’t even allow the FBI in to look at the alleged crime scene for a couple of weeks after it happened.

Its investigation hampered, the FBI then relied mostly on a report of Russian hacking from CrowdStrike, a Democrat-funded company. And CrowdStrike’s report/story has been more or less debunked. The other 16 agencies then relied on the FBI. I say, phooey. This isn’t the first time the proverbial “17 intelligence agencies!” have gotten it wrong – or even tried to deceive us.

UPDATE: On further reflection, the GatewayPundit link above (after “Guess what else?”) is a NothingBurger. As such, I apologize for having brought up that link.

Nonetheless, Julian Assange of Wikileaks has strongly denied Russian involvement in the DNC leaks (try here) and implied that Seth Rich was his source (try here). That continues to be my hypothesis.

UPDATE: On the other side of the spectrum, Cernovich goes on a limb, claims that McMaster has been lying to Trump in an effort to get 150,000 boots on the ground in Syria. If true: it’s a bad moment for America. And if false: it’s a bad moment for Cernovich – who has been shaky on some things, and astoundingly right on some other things.