If your only news sources were the Bangor Daily News, the Maine Trust for Local News, or Maine Public, then you might be totally in the dark on a lot of major news.
But this week, the lengthy list of stories Maine’s august media are giving a good leaving alone includes some of the most significant revelations to emerge about the corruption of the American intelligence community since the Church Committee.
Specifically, new documents disclosed by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have totally blown to smithereens the fake “Russia hacking” narrative.
Previous disclosures showed that, following Trump’s 2016 election, former President Barack Obama ordered his toadies in the intelligence community to suppress real assessments on Russia’s supposed influence over the election.
Because President-elect Trump was, at the time, also receiving copies of the Presidential Daily Briefing, Obama spiked a briefing that said Russia’s influence on the election was negligible. Instead of allowing Trump to see the true assessment of the vaunted American intelligence community, Obama commanded his cronies to substitute in fake assessments that made it seem like Russian hacking had caused Hillary Clinton to lose.
The documents released by DNI Gabbard show incontrovertibly that the entire “Russia hacking” narrative was a totally fabricated lie, ordered by Obama, then constructed and leaked by intelligence officials who knew it was a lie. These officials include former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former DNI James Clapper. The disclosures also show that then-Rep-now-Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) was instrumental in violating the law to selectively leak information that would appear damaging to Trump.
For example, in a Dec. 22, 2016 email to Brennan, Comey, and NSA Chief Michael Rogers, Clapper unambiguously tells his Deep State comrades they all need to stick to the lie for it to work.
“It is essential that we (CIA/NSA/FBI/ODNI) be on the same page, and are all supportive of the report — in the highest tradition of ‘that’s OUR story, and we’re sticking to it,” Clapper said, referring to the fake intelligence assessment Obama had ordered them to concoct.
According to the records Gabbard released, Rogers was the only member of the Intel Community who expressed even mild resistance, though he would eventually come under the thumb.*
The goal of these intelligence operations against the President-elect and then the sitting U.S. President was nothing less than the subversion of a democratic election. Obama and his allies wanted to handicap the Trump presidency, which they succeeded in accomplishing. Trump would spend much of his first term in office fending off baseless allegations that he’d conspired with Russian President Vladimir Putin and a band of inexplicably talented Russian hackers to rig the election. Every denial he made and every attempt to find the truth was used as evidence to convict him of the same baseless conspiracy.
In the U.S. Senate, there was no greater water-carrier for the intelligence community’s totally false assessment than Maine Senator Angus King.
King, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI – pronounced ‘sissy’), weaponized the false Russia allegations time and time again in comments to CNN, Maine media, and the public.
In December 2016, King immediately began calling the non-existent Russian hacking “an arrow aimed at the heart of democracy.” On Dec. 9 — days after Obama had ordered the fake intelligence assessment — King issued a press release praising Obama and asserting that Russian interference (again, totally fake) was “nothing less than an arrow aimed at the heart of our democracy.” One month later, in a CNN segment, King confirmed the apparent validity of the totally fraudulent narrative, claiming “…now that I’ve seen all the data I understand this is a serious problem and we’re going to get to the bottom of it.” (King never has clarified what “data” he saw related to the concocted-from-thin-air soft-coup attempt.) By Nov. 2017, Maine’s junior senator had grown even more confident — for reasons that remain unclear — in the fake assessment from the Jim Clapper School of Lying.
By 2018, King was facing a re-election challenge, and the non-existent Russian hacking grew from an “arrow” and a “frontal assault” to being on par with the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In a Feb. 18, 2018 interview, King told CNN the fake hacking was “one of the most serious attacks on our country since September 11, 2001.” Bizarrely, King would later claim that it was disinformation to share video of him hysterically comparing the non-existent “Russian hacking” to 9/11, a comment he made not only on CNN, but also on the campaign trail.
On March 22, 2018, King offered up this totally baseless whopper in a meeting of the SSCI: “What we saw wasn’t messing around or penetrating, it was a sophisticated, thorough, comprehensive, maligned and malicious attack on our electoral system.” All the way until he won re-election in Nov. 2018, King would continue to dive headlong into the Russia collusion delusion. “The intelligence community has been clear: the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election, and their efforts will continue until we hold them accountable,” he said via X. “The President’s continuing refusal to address the Russian government’s interference in the 2016 election is nothing short of disturbing. He’s dividing our allies, and embracing Putin – that’s no way to defend America,” he said in a separate post.
The comments that really demonstrate just how thoroughly King abused his office to spread the Russia hoax come from his Nov. 27, 2017, remarks to a forum at Harvard University. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, King told the audience of elite leftists, has “no doubt whatsoever” about Moscow’s involvement; the cyberattacks were “a frontal assault on our democracy.” The headline that emerged in the Harvard Gazette perfectly captured how King leveraged his apparent position of authority and Senate Intel Committee access to propagate the propaganda: “‘We know’ Russia hacked election”.
Except they didn’t, and King didn’t. It was all a lie. A deliberate, coordinated lie to harm Trump and overturn a democratic election.
The only question now is whether King was a useful idiot for the Obama con cabal or a knowing conspirator, like Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). FBI records also released this week show that one of Schiff’s staffers reported to the FBI that Schiff was selectively leaking classified information to damage Trump and create the false appearance that the Russia collusion narrative was real. Here’s a sample of the FBI documents related to Schiff.
Personally, in the case of King, I lean in the direction of useful idiot. But perhaps I’m just bewitched by that winsome mustache. It has beguiled Mainers for 35 years into thinking King is some sincere, well-meaning and affable moderate, as opposed to a duplicitous lying snake.
Regardless of the answers to these questions, Mainers should watch closely for which of their trusted media sources hold King — and other organs of progressive politics in Maine — accountable for lying, repeatedly, about Russian hacking. These outlets eagerly regurgitated and boosted King’s evidence-free allegations. Do they have the integrity to correct the record now that we have actual evidence? If their total absence of coverage concerning these new disclosures is any indication, the answer is, sadly, no.
* Some in right-wing media have sought to make Rogers into an unsung hero in the Russiagate affair, citing a trip he took to Trump Tower without President Obama’s foreknowledge to visit President-elect Trump. Following the visit, Trump relocated his transition team headquarters from New York to Bedminster, N.J. However, given the scope and brazenness of the conspiracy, Rogers indisputably could have done more to expose this plot against a democratically elected U.S. president.
