Puppet MastersS


Black Cat

How the Democrats pulled the greatest political con job ever on Americans

gabbard chart russia gate hoax
© @DNIGabbard/XCaption
It's finally unraveling, as new declassified documents offer startling revelations about the Hillary Clinton campaign's alleged plan in 2016 to tie Trump to Russia through FBI and media

This week, Washington was rocked by new releases in the declassification of material related to the origins of the Russian investigation. The material shows further evidence of a secret plan by the Clinton campaign to use the FBI and media to spread a false claim that Donald Trump was a Russian asset. With this material, the public is finally seeing how officials and reporters set into motion what may be the greatest hoax ever perpetrated in American politics.

There never was a Russian collusion conspiracy. This is the emerging story of the real Russian conspiracy to manufacture a false narrative that succeeded in devouring much of the first term of the Trump administration.

Bad Guys

Meet left-wing activist Brian Netter, the DOJ official who approved $2M payout to disgraced Russia hoaxers

brian netter doj strzok page payout russia hoax
© Justice.govBrian Netter served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Federal Programs Branch from April 26, 2021 to January 20, 2025.
The Department of Justice official who signed off on $2 million in taxpayer-funded payments to disgraced Russia collusion hoax participants left the Department of Justice to help lead the "legal resistance" to President Donald Trump and other duly-elected Republicans, new records reviewed exclusively by The Federalist reveal.

FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, sued the Department of Justice over the release of messages detailing their role in pushing the Clinton campaign's Russia collusion hoax. They said the release of the messages that were written using government resources violated their privacy. The Biden administration rewarded the duo with lucrative payouts. Strozk received $1.2 million in taxpayer funds while Page received an $800,000 settlement.

"[W]e have identified Brian Netter, Deputy Assistant Attorney General as the individual that approved the settlement agreements," a DOJ official told the Center to Advance Security in America, which had filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2024, when the payouts were publicly announced. Netter was the deputy assistant attorney general for the Federal Programs Branch during the term of President Joe Biden.

Comment: It's one big incestuous political family isn't it?


USA

The real Russiagate scandal blows away Watergate for crimes and treason by U.S. establishment

DJT and Obama
© Public Domain
So the hoax is finally officially acknowledged. "Russiagate" - the mainstream narrative, that is - is now described by American intelligence chiefs as a fabrication that was concocted to overturn the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.

Tulsi Gabbard, the current Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and CIA director John Ratcliffe have both accused former President Barack Obama of engaging in a "treasonous conspiracy" to subvert the constitutional process. It's not just Obama who is implicated in this high crime. Other former senior officials in his 2013-17 administration, including former DNI James Clapper, CIA director John Brennan, and head of the FBI James Comey, are also implicated. If justice is permitted, the political repercussions are truly earth-shattering.

The potential impact is not confined solely to the violation of U.S. laws and the democratic process - bad enough that is. The Russiagate scandal that began in 2016 has had a lasting, damaging effect on U.S. and European relations with Russia. The frightfully dangerous NATO proxy war incited in Ukraine, which threatens to escalate into a full-scale world war, was fueled in large part by the hostility generated from the false claims of Russian interference in the U.S. elections.

The allegations that Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw a subversion campaign against the 2016 U.S. election and colluded with Donald Trump to get him elected were always specious. The scandal was based on shoddy intel claims to purportedly explain how Trump defeated his Democrat rival, Hillary Clinton. Subsequently, the scandal was hyped into a seemingly credible narrative by U.S. intelligence chiefs at the direction of then-President Barack Obama as a way to delegitimize Trump's incoming first-term presidency.

Years before the recent intelligence disclosures, many independent journalists, including Aaron Maté, and former intelligence analysts like Ray MacGovern and William Binney, had cogently disproven the official Russiagate claims. Not only were these claims false, they were knowingly false. That is, lies and deliberate distortions. Russia did not hack emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee to discredit Clinton. Clinton's corruption was exposed by a DNC internal leak to Julian Assange's Wikileaks whistleblower site. That was partly why Assange was persecuted with years-long incarceration.

A large enough number of voters simply despised Clinton and her warmongering psychopathy, as well as her sell-out of working-class Americans for Wall Street largesse.

Attention

The Artificial Demon

"With apologies for bluntness, the mainstream press fucked around, now the mainstream press is finding out." — Matt Taibbi
X Post
© kunstler.com
By now, it must be kind of obvious that Mr. Putin of Russia was staged-up into a demon for the convenience of Hillary Clinton — resulting in a decade of deformed US foreign relations that has dragged us to the edge of a third world war. Nice work, Democratic Party!

I will proffer a harsh truth to you: the best outcome in Ukraine would be for Russia to win the war as expeditiously as possible, neutralize and disarm the place, change-out its illegitimate government, and let it revert to being the frontier backwater it was for eight decades previous, when it was not a problem for the other nations of the region.

Mr. Putin has put up with our country's psychotic nonsense with remarkable patience. The idea that he seeks to conquer western Europe was a preposterous confection of the neocon crazies in our State Department and Intel "community."

The long game for the neocon crazies has been to use NATO as the instrument to break up Russia and gain control of its resources. This was after Secretary of State James Baker told Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, in discussions over German reunification, that "not an inch of NATO's present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction." Starting in 1999 with the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, sixteen additional nations were induced to join NATO, encroaching on Russia's borders, with new military bases and missiles. It was a stupid game.

Bad Guys

Whistleblower on Russia collusion hoax threatened over reporting wrongdoing: ODNI

Tulsi Gabbard
© Chip Somodevilla / Gettyimages.ruThe Director of National Intelligence for the United States, Tulsi Gabbard
The whistleblower's firsthand account includes statements from their direct supervisor pressuring them to endorse the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment to receive a promotion

A senior intelligence official, who was a whistleblower in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, was threatened over reporting wrongdoing, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

On Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released new documents that give a firsthand account of what the office say is the whistleblower's "relentless efforts to expose the egregious manipulation and manufacturing of intelligence."

The documents include the whistleblower's work done in the months leading up to the November 2016 election, their concerns about using "discredited information as then-DNI Clapper and Central Intelligence Agency Director Brennan worked to craft the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) at President Obama's request," and how a direct supervisor attempted to pressure them to endorse the key findings of the ICA about the Russian government's alleged support for Donald Trump at the time, according to the office.

Magnify

Fact checking Brennan and Clapper

Brennan/Clapper
© UnknownFormer Director of National Intelligence James Clapper • Former CIA Director James Brennan
In the face of recent revelations concerning intelligence abuses that took place at the end of the Obama Administration, former CIA Director James Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper took to The New York Times to defend themselves and their legacies.

The title is one for the ages: "Brennan and Clapper: Let's Set the Record Straight on Russia and 2016."

There's a bit of audacity in that effort - those who twisted and manipulated the evidence to help manufacture the Trump/Russia hoax are now here to speak truth to power. And their piece deserves review.

First, their claim about the use of the Steele Dossier in the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (which we addressed here and here), in which Brennan and Clapper state:
"We have testified under oath, and the reviews of the assessment have confirmed, that the dossier was not used as a source or taken into account for any of its analysis or conclusions."
This is absolutely false. As DNI Gabbard's recent release showed, the ICA's conclusion that "We assess the [Russian] influence campaign aspired to help [Trump's] chances of victory" was supported by four bullet points of "evidence." One of those bullet points referred the reader to the Steele Dossier, stating:
"For additional reporting on Russian plans and intentions, please see Annex A: Additional Reporting from an FBI Source on Russian Influence Efforts."

Attention

The split over Epstein tells us something important about the MAGA movement

MAGA hat
© Unknown
Last Sunday, Donald Trump's Department of Justice announced that they had concluded that Jeffrey Epstein did not have a list of clients and that the convicted sex offender and formerly well-connected financier really did die by suicide. To back that up, the DOJ released video footage from the area outside Epstein's prison cell that they claimed was raw — although the clip's metadata indicated it was exported from video editing softwareand declared the entire case closed.

Of course, the existence of a single client list or the specific manner of Epstein's death have always been secondary to the real questions his case raised. First, Epstein's partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted on federal charges of trafficking young girls, but who was receiving them? And second, who, if anyone, was directing, aiding, or bankrolling Epstein's activities?

That, specifically, is what those who have been following this case closely for years were hoping to learn after Trump appointed Kash Patel and Dan Bongino to run the FBI. After all, both had spent years talking about the case and suggesting they had inside information indicating that the case goes much deeper than the government has officially acknowledged. But, after pointing to DOJ's conclusions on those two secondary details — backed up by extremely flimsy public evidence — both fell in line with Attorney General Pam Bondi and declared the entire matter settled. All with Trump's support.

What's made this episode notable is not how unconvincing the government's evidence is, and not that a politician and those he appointed completely flipped around on an issue and abandoned a campaign promise — that happens all the time. What made this particular announcement notable has been how the right is reacting to it.

USA

Tulsi Gabbard has cemented herself a place in history

Tulsi Gabbard
© Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty ImagesNational Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard
The US national security advisor finally finds herself in a position where the truths she speaks cannot be ignored.

In light of accusations that former US President Barack Obama had committed treason by attempting to rig the 2016 election and stage Russiagate, newly surfaced evidence shows Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election.

National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, armed with a freshly declassified 2020 report by the House Intelligence Committee, went on the offensive against Obama last week during a wild White House press briefing.

Her follow-up message on X cuts to the chase and shows an administration that is no longer taking Democratic trash talk of "Russian collusion" sitting down.

Comment: Gabbard did her job. History, via perception, is fickle.


Bullseye

Declassified document links Russiagate hoax to Soros

Authorized by Grassley
The billionaire's foundation was allegedly involved in the 2016 smear campaign and in instigating the FBI probe into the collusion claim.

George Soros' Open Society Foundation was involved in the Hillary Clinton campaign's 2016 efforts to falsely accuse Donald Trump of having ties to Russia, according to a newly declassified US document.

The 29-page annex to John Durham's 2023 Special Counsel report was released by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday shortly after it was declassified.

The annex cites several "likely authentic" emails allegedly sent by Leonard Benardo, senior vice president of Soros' Open Society Foundations, throughout July 2016, which reveal details of the Clinton campaign's plan to falsely accuse Trump of Russia links and tie him to the alleged Democratic National Committee (DNC) hack.

Bad Guys

Ex-CIA counterintelligence chief Susan Miller's Russia hoax denials have the smell of desperation

susan miller cia russiagate
© CNNSusan Miller, the former CIA analyst who worked on the controversial Intelligence Community Assessment that helped launch Russiagate.
Miller piped up last week to reject Gabbard's framing. The lady doth protest too much.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard appear to have rattled some cages with their recent revelations about the genesis of the Russia collusion hoax.

Former DNI James Clapper indicated that he would "lawyer up." Ex-CIA Director John Brennan went on MSNBC to once again play the victim, claiming this was just the president's effort to "try to get back at those individuals who have criticized him openly and publicly in the past." Former Secretary of State John Kerry, among those present at the 2016 meeting where Obama reportedly got the ball rolling on the hoax, remains in virtual hiding, having locked his tweets on X ahead of President Donald Trump's inauguration in January.

Among the deep-staters now barking and on the defensive is Susan Miller, an ex-spy who was with the CIA for 39 years. As can be expected with spies, she does not appear to be exactly as advertised.

Comment: More on the extremely suss Susan Miller from Jonathan Turley:
After an earlier intelligence assessment rejecting the narrative was effectively quashed, Brennan reportedly hand-picked the team to do a second rushed 2016 U.S. intelligence community assessment in the final days. We are now learning more about the person Brennan selected to head that team. Just the News and other outlets are revealing not just the extreme political bias of Susan Miller, but her remarkably poor handle on some key facts. The one unassailable fact that comes out of her postings is her declaration that "[I] am not a Trump fan."

A review of Miller's social media postings reveals intense hostility toward Donald Trump and his supporters, including calling the President a "dictator" and MAGA supporters "Nazis." What is particularly notable is that she still maintains that the widely ridiculed Steele Dossier, secretly funded by the Clinton campaign, "might be true." Despite the findings of the Special Counsel and various investigations, she has insisted that Trump may indeed be a "Russian asset" or a "Kremlin asset"

Miller recently retired but says that she continues to train CIA officers.

Brennan chose wisely if he wanted to ensure that a reliable political ally would draft the assessment. However, she has said that there were others in the CIA who wanted an actual finding that Trump's election was illegitimate. That was the narrative pushed by Hillary Clinton and many Democrats after the 2016 loss. She suggested that that may still be true, a form of election denial that is still accepted on the left as they criticize Trump for his questioning of the 2020 defeat.

Miller appears to be one of the last diehards claiming that the Steele dossier could have also repeatedly still proved correct in its allegations.

Some interviews are striking in their conflicting elements, like insisting "all of us went in with a completely open mind" but that "they [the Russians] definitely wanted him [Trump]."

Miller also seemed to view the CIA's role as part of a resistance, or at least counterforce to Trump: "I headed up the report team. ... I wanted people who would speak truth to power."

On social media, Miller comes across as unhinged at times in responding to stories with screeds like "This is awful! Further proof that Trump is a dictator." She also wrote, "Good grief. As if we needed proof that MAGA types are nazis..."

She responded to a foreign poster by saying, "Yes....the Hitler analogy is not lost on a bunch of us.....sadly...."

In one of the most bizarre series of statements, Miller accuses Trump, Barr, and Durham of putting "me on trial" because she was interviewed in the various investigations.

She insisted in an interview with Times Radio in July that Trump got Barr and Durham "to open a trial on us...I spent 8 hours on trial; other team members also had trials. Not unexpectedly, nothing criminal was found."

Just the News notes that Miller said again in June that "Trump put me on trial....criminal complaint after inauguration." There is no indication of what that criminal complaint entailed, where it was filed, or what happened to it.

Miller appears to be struggling to make the case against Brennan and herself in carrying out this intelligence assessment. It is telling that, within the entire CIA establishment, Brennan would select Miller for this controversial report.

What is even more chilling is that top intelligence officials would continue to cling to debunked sources like Steele. It is the kind of intransigence common among those living in echo chambers created by news and social media sites. CIA analysts are supposedly trained to avoid such confirmation bias.

All of this makes for a great pitch to join figures like Clapper or McCabe with MSNBC or CNN contracts. It is less compelling in defending the work product of the CIA on this report.
Unfortunately the current Trump administration is still infested with a toxic legacy of neocon heirs and proteges.