July 17, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

Did President Trump Actually Take Putin’s Word On Election Meddling?

Did He Actually “Dis” Our Sacred Intel Community?

Friends,

I have been critical of Fox News host Brian Kilmeade in the past, most recently for his “neo-Reconstructionist” and Marxist-slanted historical blather/commentary on the Fox Sunday night program, “Legends & Lies,” in which his narrative was basically indistinguishable from that of, say, Marxist historian Eric Foner (or any of the currently fashionable Marxist historians out there who appear to rule the historical roost when it comes to the War Between the States).

This morning he once again caused a vein in my neck to literally pop out due to blatant falsification of facts and of history. Of course, this has been the standard operating procedure for most of the pundits on Fox News since President Trump (at his joint press conference with President Vladimir Putin Monday in Helsinki) seemingly refused to back up the American intelligence services—the FBI, CIA, NSA—when asked whether he believed Putin’s denials of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Well, when the president said that, when he apparently refused to come out full bore and firmly embrace the absolute veracity and honesty of our Intel agencies, you would have thought that the world had, literally, ended.  Immediately, all the Deep State politicos, not just the Dems, but the leaders of the GOP, Speaker Paul Ryan, Newt Gingrich, various Republican senators—Burr, Tillis, McCain, Graham, Flake, Sasse, et al--and almost all the fixtures and interviewees on Fox (save for Tucker Carlson), came out and demanded (the word that Mr. Newt used) that President Trump recant, that he “clarify” his “misstep” about the American intelligence sector.

And this morning the “Fox & Friends” brainless twits were at it again: and Kilmeade, as he often does, took the cake, not just demanding that the president, whom he and fellow airhead Ainsley Earhardt said they were defending, “correct” his mistake. And he reeled off some history which, as it turns out, is not just dubious, but outright false.  Again, anyone who happened to catch even a bit of his commentary for “Legends & Lies,” should have been prepared.

Just a few examples:

First, he defended the overthrow of the legitimately elected—but pro-Russian—president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, that occurred back in 2014, stating that it was due to a “popular uprising of the people.” What he failed to mention is that the “coup” against the legitimately, popularly, and fairly elected president of that country was facilitated, sponsored, and engineered by the Russophobic Obama state department. He conveniently failed to mention that before the coup Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, was captured on tape by the Estonia ministry of state already signaling that the US had selected the Ukrainian opposition leader, Arseniy Yatseniuk, to replace Yanukovych (“Yats is the guy….”; there is a BBC copy: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957) 

But not only that, we were arming the rebels in Maidan Square—and this only days after the pro- and anti-Yanukovych forces had formally agreed to stand down and Yanukovych had withdrawn government troops. Conveniently, once the government troops were removed, the American supported AND armed rioters literally took over the capital of Kiev and the government.  (See the reports by Robert Parry, Mike Whitney, and others on this history and background.)

Ukraine is roughly divided 50-50 between Ukrainian speaking peoples and Russian speaking folks. Yanukovych was elected because he appealed to both segments; yet he was too pro-Russian to suit the Obama state department, and thus he had to go, and that meant violent revolution, with American money and arms.

So, when we discuss “election meddling” or attempting to shape opinion in another country, and nearly the entirety of the American political class go literally insane when the president won’t come out and boldly defend our intelligence agencies, and those Fox pundits claim that we have over the years been so lily-white in how we treat other nations and their elections and politics, I have to shake my head in utter disbelief.

Does anyone care to recall---Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Somalia, and any number of other recent examples where our Intel services have actively participated in changing regimes? And, going back further, remember the assassinated President Diem in Vietnam, the coup in the Dominican Republic, earlier episodes in Nicaragua, Iran, and elsewhere?

Senator Rand Paul, almost alone in the midst of this hysteria, brought this up on the Neil Cavuto program on Fox yesterday, and rightly pointed to the fact that over the past few decades the US has been responsible for far more exercises in “regime change” meddling than the Russians. In actuality, both the US and the old USSR engaged in efforts to influence elections. And no doubt—as I have written about previously—the Russians, being a major power and, like all major powers in the world,  wanted one side to win, the side they felt would be more cooperative. But all the reports of the minuscule cyber involvement by Russians—and, if anything, that is what is was—pale in comparison to the immense involvement of China, Israel, and Saudi Arabia in our affairs, whose collective expenditures in “meddling” probably amount to billions.

Now we could argue that those changes we wished were from bad to good, that we are the “good guys,” but that is not my point. Rather, the Left and the Democratic Party, joined by the zealous Neocons and the Deep State swamp GOP have turned this into “the” major crisis du jour, neglecting totally the greater story. And no excuse of “invincible ignorance” will suffice: this is Russophobic monomania carried to an extreme, as I have detailed in previous columns.

Here on Youtube is the brief exchange between Rand Paul and Cavuto:  

https://www.youtube.com/embed/oCiOVeqTQgs

Rather, what we have is an American Intel community that, over the past three years, has demonstrated and proven itself to be not only violently anti-Trump, but also at best very slipshod, if not far worse in how it handles raw intelligence. What we have is an  Intel community that gave us not just the infamous Steele Dossier (which the FBI happily used to gain FISA court warrants to spy on the Trump campaign), not just the nefarious actions of Peter Stzrok, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, and various other FBI apparatchiks doing their damnedest to defeat or later impeach the president, not just John Brennan, former director (and polluter) of the CIA who has consistently acted to undermine the president and now calls him a “traitor” for his comments, but a consistently fetid Leftist culture that haunts and infects our Intel community….the Deep Swamp’s storm troopers.

Given the Mueller effort to “get” the president and the  concerted efforts, based on made-up, bogus, and falsified data by the Intel agencies to undermine both the president and the results of the 2016 election, you tell me: is it any wonder that President Trump would have flinched just a bit, hesitated to fully endorse the latest FBI “list” as handed down as Gospel (which, by the way, is not actually new, but which oh-so-conveniently just happened to appear three days before the Helsinki summit)?

Not only that, there is substantial reason to at the very least question that analysis and “judgment” of our Intel community.

Now, remember Seth Rich? I’ve written about him in these columns on several occasions. He was that Bernie Sanders supporter who worked at the Democratic National Committee and who had access to those “hacked” records that the FBI’s Rosenstein, the Fox pundits, and the Mainstream Media, all now say that Putin’s agents hacked. Here is what I wrote, my first effort to examine this case, last May 16, 2017:

“Seth Rich, a staffer of the Democratic National Committee, was gunned down mysteriously near his home at around 4:20 a.m. on July 10, 2016, in the Bloomingdale neighborhood Washington, D.C. The official story line is that it was a botched case of robbery. Yet, nothing was taken from Rich. And, more, according to police, he died from two shots to the back. Rich's girlfriend told NBC Washington, "His hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything.” Although a police investigation was initiated, investigators were told to stand down by the highest authorities in the Washington Police Department.

Now, why is this important? It is significant because of two facts: (1) Rich had access to thousands of DNC emails, and, it is now revealed, (2) he was in contact with Wikileaks and its boss Julian Assange, and was responsible for leaking over 44,000 thousand emails to Wikileaks.

Let me repeat that: he was responsible for leaking over 44,000 thousand emails to Wikileaks.

Now, the full details are not known. But, remember that the narrative of the Deep State establishment has been that it was the Russians who “hacked” the DNC files and gave them to Wikileaks, all in an effort to hurt the Clinton campaign. Recall that this has been the “MSM/Democrat talking point” since Donald Trump’s quite unsuspected election on November 8. The entire "Russia" narrative of the MSM and Democrats has been built on that assertion. Also, recall the revelation (from the heavily documented, first hand book, Shattered) that the “Russians did it!” explanation for the Clinton loss and its current use to bring down the president was actually formulated by high level operatives in the Clinton campaign almost immediately after Hillary’s defeat.

So, this Seth Rich story is very disturbing. Hopefully, intrepid reporters will continue to investigate and details will continue to become available. Thus far the Washington Police have not been helpful, nor have the Democratic National Committee or members of the former Clinton campaign. One must wonder why?

As I read the following article from Foxnews.com (dated May 16), immediately visions of Don Corleone arose in my mind…was this a targeted “kill” of an informant who had betrayed his employers? Was someone, anyone, in the Clinton organization or the DNC actually capable of that?”

I don’t know the answer…and we may never know the answer. But the controversial history of the Clintons, as far back as the bizarre death of Vince Foster and the Mafia-like handling of the various women who came forth to accuse Bill Clinton of improprieties, is not reassuring.”

And, ironically, just four days before President Trump’s comment and his seeming demurrer regarding American intelligence agency reliability, a witness has appeared stating that it was government agents who were responsible for Rich’s death. Here is a portion of that report (about which, I will wager, you have heard not one word on Fox or any other establishment conservative source):

A witness claimed Tuesday that he heard a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) witness and an Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) agent discussing how they killed Seth Rich, the leaker of internal DNC emails to WikiLeaks, in the summer of 2016 right before the Democratic National Convention. Lobbyist Jack Burkman, who said that he was recently shot while investigating the case, presented the witness at the Holiday Inn in Rosslyn. The witness is masked and had his voice disguised when audio of his statement played at the press conference set up by Burkman.

Similar theories have pointed to two MS-13 members who were allegedly hired by the federal government to kill Rich in the wee morning hours near his D.C. apartment. But this witness makes it clear that DEA and ATF boasted about their role in the assassination…. Rich has long been identified by insiders as the source of Wikileaks’ release of internal DNC emails, which dropped days after his murder in Washington D.C., right before the Democratic National Convention….Seth Rich reportedly provided Wikileaks the exact same number of DNC emails that Wikileaks ended up publishing in its historic July 2016 release. Fox 5 DC’s original report naming Rich as the Wikileaks source reported that Rich handed over “more than 44,000 emails” to Wikileaks. Now, on its index page for the DNC emails, Wikileaks includes a note at the top stating that the group published exactly 44,053 emails. Journalist Seymour Hersh admitted on audiotape, based on his sources, that Rich was Wikileaks’ source and that John Brennan and James Clapper cooked up the Russia-Gate conspiracy against President Trump. [Seth Hawley, “Witness: ATF And DEA Agents Killed Seth Rich,” July 10, 2918: https://bigleaguepolitics.com/witness-atf-and-dea-agents-killed-seth-rich/]

I don’t know if this report is completely valid; I cannot speculate in depth on the veracity of this report; but, nevertheless, here we have substantial and actual charges against American government agencies involved in a hitherto successful attempt to shut up a potential informant. Perhaps twenty years ago I would have dismissed this as idle “conspiracy chatter.” But, given the revealed praxis of our domestic and international Intel community, given the fact that the election of Donald Trump has literally torn off the mask of invincibility and truth our government officialdom once enjoyed, and given the fact that the president’s actions have demonstrated—or should have demonstrated—for all to see the ideological stench and manifold Deep State skullduggery in which they have engaged---given this, what President Trump said yesterday not only makes sense, it is grounded in ample evidence and reality.

The Fox pundits, the Neocons, and GOP Deep Staters, in their hysterical appeals that the president recant, only confirm their role in the effort to “turn” the president and reshape his agenda…and their discomfort when he actually goes against their narrative on Russia.

Let’s hope that the president stands strong in his declaration…and watch the Left go bonkers and the Neocons grow frantic.