Donald Trump colluded with Russia.
Repeat that. Repeat it so often you accept it, because that is the absolute, undisputed truth. Trump and a large portion of his campaign staff—and future White House staff—accepted the assistance of a hostile foreign power in the form of a disinformation campaign and illegal hacking. All of it in an effort to win a U.S. presidential election in 2016.
And let me repeat: None of this is disputed.
There was no “Russia hoax.”
The current president of the United States, who was also impeached twice and convicted of 34 felony charges, accepted the help of Russia. Russia’s president has also admitted that it supplied this assistance and wanted Trump to be president. He did this publicly.
Trump narrowly avoided indictment for these acts because the U.S. Justice Department determined that his actions did not meet the standard for criminal collusion. To be indicted for criminal collusion, Trump would have to actively participate in the planning of the activity that occurred, not simply accepted, or even encouraged, that the actions take place.
In other words, had Trump called Vladimir Putin and suggested that they hack the Democratic National Committee’s email server, that would have been criminal collusion. But simply accepting the fruits of those illegal acts—and publicly asking for more—was not. (A distinction that should sit well with any two-bit, low-level criminal who served time for possession of stolen goods.)
Anyway, I bring all of this up now—nearly a decade later—because the Trump administration, in an effort to do anything possible to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and the fact that Trump’s name is all over that client list and various files, has floated the idea of arresting former President Barack Obama for treason because they claim he concocted a phony investigation of the Trump-Russia connections to orchestrate a coup.
Such a claim, made by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, is so patently stupid and irresponsible that only an administration willing to say or do anything to escape bad press—such as firing the person putting out the monthly jobs report when the jobs numbers are bad—would ever utter it quietly, much less broadcast it to the world. But Gabbard, desperate to get back into Trump’s good graces after several missteps, and facing the very scary possibility of having to get a real job, has done it.
And then the usual chorus line of goobers parroted it, no matter how dumb it was for them to do so. That included several Republicans who served on bipartisan committees that investigated Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, and all of them determined at the time that Russia had, in fact, interfered.
Gabbard’s contention, however, is that newly declassified intelligence shows that evidence existed making it clear that Russia played no active role in cyberattacks on U.S. election systems. But despite this, Obama and other Democrats pushed forward with intelligence agency investigations, and promoted claims of interference that were debunked by the declassified files.
Apparently, our director of intelligence can’t read. Which seems like a problem.
Because all available information, and all available statements made by Obama and others, were essentially exactly what Gabbard now claims is a smoking gun: Russia used various means to effect the 2016 election, and there was extensive contact between Russian agents and members of the Trump campaign, but Russia did not alter voting outcomes or conduct cyberattacks. And then, all of the people on all of the committees—Democrats and Republicans—agreed that this was the case.
These things happened. It was documented. We all knew it. No one disputed it even a little.
Hell, other countries’ foreign intelligence agencies were providing the U.S. with extensive information on meetings between particular Trump associates and Russian agents. Again, this is well documented.
Eight people tied to Trump were convicted because of either their actions in regards to Russia or their attempts to cover up their acts. At least 25 Russians were convicted for their roles.
Again, all of this happened. It was well reported and documented. We all knew about it.
And with that being the case, you’re probably wondering why I’m so thoroughly recapping it all now, a couple of weeks after Gabbard’s dog and pony show and after most of the national attention has waned. And the reason is this: On Saturday, Tommy Tuberville, a sitting U.S. Senator and the apparent next governor of Alabama, went on a TV show and proclaimed that a former president, a former First Lady and several other innocent people should “go to jail” over their role in this fabricated distraction from all things Epstein.
And while such a thing is apparently normal in today’s political world, where anyone can just say anything about anyone at anytime, I wanted to point out that this is, in fact, not normal. Not in any sort of historical context.
It is not normal for a U.S. Senator to call for the jailing of a former president, particularly when it is obvious to everyone that the former president did not do anything close to what is being alleged. It is not normal to have a former U.S. Representative, in Gabbard, who is now the Intelligence Director, stand before the media and make ridiculous claims about a former president. It is not normal to have sitting members of Congress who served on committees that spent months investigating an issue now willingly contradict everything they said back then in an effort to appease the sitting president.
I’m not one to proclaim that Democracy is under attack or that we’re on the verge of facism. I don’t know that I’ve ever warned—at least not seriously—that we’re moving towards a dictatorship. And I’m not really saying it now.
What I am saying, though, is that in other countries, when facism has taken hold and democracy has been strangled, you can find lots and lots of examples of people in positions of power—people who should know better—shirking the truth and spreading the lies in the interest of self-promotion, self-preservation and simple cowardice.
