Political War! Washington Goes Full Retard on the Russia Hoax

• Stockman, David (Author)

In any event, turning the Trump Tower meeting into evidence of Russian meddling and collusion actually gives the old saw about turning a molehill into a mountain an altogether new meaning. That is to say, on any given evening Anderson Cooper will be interviewing a lathered-up ex-general or ex-spook admonishing that Natalia Veselnitskaya was actually a nefarious Russian "cut out" sent by Putin to infiltrate the Trump campaign. Really? We have no brief for Vlad Putin, but one thing we are quite sure of is that he is anything but stupid. So would he really send a secret agent to Trump Tower – who neither speaks nor writes a word of English and has been to America only once – in order to plot a surreptitious attempt to manipulate the American election? The fact is, the meeting happened because Veselnitskaya wanted to reach the Trump campaign in behalf of her anti-Magnitsky Act agenda, and to do so used the good offices of what appears to be the Russian Justin Bieber! Specifically, the offer came to Don Trump Jr. via a London-based PR flack named Rob Goldstone, a music publicist who knew the Trumps through the Miss Universe pageant that was held in Moscow in 2013. Goldstone didn’t know his head from a hole in the ground when it comes to international affairs or Russian politics, but he did represent the Russian pop singer Emin Agalarov, whose father was also a Trump- style real estate developer and had been involved in the 2013 pageant. Said the London PR flack in an email to Don Jr: "Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting….The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father….( this is) "part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump." And a very big so what! For one thing, the last "Crown prosecutor of Russia" was assassinated by the Bolsheviks in 1917, suggesting Goldstone’s grasp of the contemporary Russian government was well less than rudimentary. Secondly, there was neither a crime nor national security issue involved when a campaign seeks to dig-up dirt from foreign nationals. The crime is when they pay for it, and do not report the expenditure to the Federal Elections Commission. Of course, that’s exactly what Hillary Clinton’s campaign did with its multi-million funding of the Trump Dossier, generated by foreign national Christopher Steele and intermediated to the FBI and other IC agencies by Fusion GPS. And that gets us to the mind-boggling silliness of the whole Trump Tower affair. Self-evidently, the dirt on Hillary suggestion was a come-on so that Veselnitskaya (through her Russian translator) could make a pitch against the Magnitsky Act; and to point out that after 33,000 Russian babies had been adopted by Americans before its enactment, that avenue of adoption had been stopped cold when the Kremlin found it necessary to retaliate. Don’s Jr. emails to his secretary from the meeting long ago proved that he immediately recognized Natalia’s bait and switch operation, and that he wanted to be summoned to the phone so he could end what he saw was a complete waste of the campaign’s time. But here’s the joker in the woodpile. Its seem that Glenn Simpson, proprietor of Fusion GPs, had also been hired by Veselnitskaya Russian clients to make a case in Washington against the Magnitsky Act, and to also dig up dirt on the scoundrel behind it: Bill Browder. More fantastically yet, Natalia had meet with Simpson both before and after the Trump Tower meeting apparently to be coached by him on her anti-Magnitsky pitch to the Trump campaign. So if Veselnitskaya was part of a Russian collusion conspiracy, then so was the Glenn Simpson, the midwife of the Trump Dossier! It doesn’t get any crazier than that – meaning that the Donald could not be more correct about this entire farce: This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further. Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA! In truth, the only basis for Natalia Veselnitskaya’s alleged Putin ties was through Russia’s prosecutor general, Yuri Chaika. And exactly why was Chaika interested in making American contacts? Why, because he was pursuing one Bill Browder, fugitive from Russian justice and the driving force behind the abominable Magnitsky Act – an instrument of meddling in the domestic affairs of foreign countries like no other. As one report described it: Chaika’s foray into American politics began in earnest in April 2016. That is when his office gave Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher and three other US representatives a confidential letter detailing American investor Bill Browder’s "illegal scheme of buying up Gazprom shares without permission of the Government of Russia" between 1999 and 2006, one month after Rohrabacher returned from Moscow. As it happened, Veselnitskaya had apparently brought a memo to the Trump Tower meeting that contained many of the same talking points as one written by Chaika’s office two months earlier. There you have it. At the heart of the Russian collusion hoax and the wellspring of the current Russophobia is nothing more than a half-baked effort by Russians to tell their side of the Magnitsky story, and to expose the real villain in the piece – a monumentally greedy hedge fund operator who had stolen the Russian people blind and then conveniently gave up his American citizenship so that he would neither do time in a Russian jail or pay taxes in America. Spoiler Alert for next part: When both economic policy and politics have gone full retard in the Imperial City is there anything which could possibly go wrong – that might pollute the punch bowl on Wall Street? Stay tuned! David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He’s the author of three books, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America and TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back. He also is founder of David Stockman’s Contra Corner and David Stockman’s Bubble Finance Trader.