There’s no reason to soft-pedal it: If you believed the Russia collusion narrative and everything it entails, you were duped.
In a revelation that comes as no surprise to anyone who was paying attention, it turns out that there was no evidence -- none -- that former President Donald Trump "colluded" with Russia. Ever.
It is not merely that the investigation presided over (nominally, anyway) by former FBI Director Robert Mueller produced no evidence of collusion, although it didn’t. It’s much more serious than that.
Special counsel John Durham revealed in his report last week that there was no evidence to begin the investigation in the first place. The accusations were completely fabricated and paid for by Hillary Clinton's campaign, funneled through Democrat law firm Perkins Coie (in violation of campaign finance laws, by the way, for which the campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid modest fines).
Durham’s report, as damning as it is, still tippy toes around the conclusions. The report states that the FBI and the Department of Justice ``failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law" and that "senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities."
Translation: The information the FBI received about Trump was utterly false, the FBI and the DOJ knew it was false, and yet not only launched an investigation but leaked the matter to the press to help create a public narrative smearing Trump as a Russian agent and casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential election.
His smug congressional testimony to the contrary, that was the "insurance policy" former FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok was referring to in emails to his co-worker (and mistress) Lisa Page, when she worried that Trump was going to become president.
The FBI have been Clinton's lap dogs for a while. Strzok, conveniently, led the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state under former President Barack Obama. It was he who changed the FBI’s description of Clinton’s conduct from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless” to help her avoid legal liability. And the same FBI that was willing to use fabricated “evidence” to justify baseless investigations of Donald Trump dropped four criminal investigations of Hillary Clinton, despite ample evidence of foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation that potentially violated campaign finance laws.
The institutions that the American people count on to preserve the integrity of our system failed us. We may have come to expect shameful conduct from political parties, but we didn’t expect a politicized FBI that would deliberately launch a rogue investigation to destroy a president. Nor did we expect a Justice Department that would further facilitate illegality. Our news media refused to do the kind of investigative journalism that would have exposed the specious allegations and those responsible for them. Instead, they amplified and spread propaganda to make the American public believe lies, knowing that by the time the truth came out (if ever), it would be too late; millions of people would simply believe what they had been told was true, no matter what the facts ultimately proved.
And it worked. Many of you believed it, just like you believed that COVID-19 spontaneously emerged in a marketplace, that the U.S. government wasn't funding gain-of-function research in foreign laboratories, that the shots had no side effects, that lockdowns were necessary, that masks stopped the spread, that easily available drugs weren't effective in treating the virus.
Some of you still believe all these lies.
You believe(d) them despite the efforts of those who put their jobs, reputations, professional and personal relationships at risk by asking hard questions and pointing out unpopular facts.
You believe(d) all the propaganda either because you trusted established institutions like our media, our law enforcement and our government, or because you hate Trump and wanted the things you were told to be true. Or both.
But you were deceived. Manipulated. Used as a de facto army of propagandists against your neighbors, your friends, your countrymen -- all to cover up the lies of the powerful people exploiting your trust.
You should be angry about that.
You should be angry that the government spent $32 million of taxpayer money for an "investigation" that was never going to find evidence of collusion, because there was no evidence of collusion.
You should be angry that innocent people like former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn were threatened with prosecution for "lying" about things they insisted didn't happen that never, in fact, happened; that they were used as props in political theater to foster the illusion of collusion.
You should be angry that the FBI, the CIA and other federal agencies were embedded in social media companies, silencing those exposing government lies, and trying to smear them as "Russian agents.”
You should be furious that so much abuse of power was done to interfere with a presidential election and then to undermine and cripple, if not destroy, the administration of a duly elected president.
Some of you, if you’re being completely honest, will admit that you don't care if laws were broken to get to Trump because you hate him. Ah, but there is that little thing called “precedent.” This is how standards of conduct are eroded -- they either apply to everyone, or they apply to no one. What can be done to someone you despise will be done to someone you support.
And to you.
You can detest Trump. You can think of him as an obnoxious egotist, a greedy businessman or a lousy husband. But he is not a Russian tool. And he isn't a “threat to our democracy."
The people you trusted are.
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