Despite an exhaustive federal investigation that included telephonic surveillance, illegal intelligence community leaks, and incessant digging from the media, nothing resembling collusion between Donald Trump and Russia has been uncovered.
If there were a smoking gun, it would’ve been found by now.
Each time the Russia story dies down, the mainstream media and Democratic elected officials try to revive it. Now their efforts are getting truly desperate.
If Trump is compromised by Vladimir Putin, he has a funny way of showing it. First he bombed Russian-backed Assad in Syria after he gassed his own people, then his Secretary of State had some harsh words on Russia.
From a Radio-Free Europe/Radio Liberty report:
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says there is “almost no trust” at present between the United States and Russia, mentioning arms-control agreements and Ukraine as areas where Moscow “is not being particularly helpful today.”
Tillerson made the remarks to staff at the State Department in Washington on May 3 in a wide-ranging presentation about the department’s future under President Donald Trump and in the face of possibly severe cuts to its budget.
“We have a number of efforts under way to first stabilize the relationship [between the United States and Russia],” Tillerson said. “Acting Deputy Secretary [of State Thomas] Shannon is leading a working-group effort to see if we can address some of the things that are just irritating the relationship, that make it hard for us to talk to one another even in civil tones.”
These facts didn’t stop mainstream media from spinning conspiracy theories. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said:
“Wouldn’t it be nice if it was just completely, totally, absolutely impossible to suspect that Vladimir Putin orchestrated what happened in Syria this week — so that his friend in the White House could have a big night with missiles and all the praises he’s picked up over the past 24 hours?”
Moreover, the debunked dossier originally published by BuzzFeed, positing Trump had been compromised because of some bawdy sex party, was very likely the product of an orchestrated disinformation campaign.
From TheFedaralist.com:
Multiple U.S. senators are now demanding that FBI Director James Comey disclose whether Fusion GPS, the Democratic opposition research firm that produced the debunked dossier on President Trump’s alleged Russia ties, was itself a Russian agent working on behalf of Vladimir Putin’s regime. In a letter sent to Comey in March, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) dropped a bombshell and disclosed that a complaint against Fusion GPS had been filed with the Department of Justice alleging that the oppo firm “violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act by working on behalf of Russian principals to undermine U.S. sanctions against Russians.
The only fake news on this topic seems to be coming from the left.
Al Franken and other Senate Democrats used the recent James Comey testimony to spin flimsy connections and supposition as a pretext for prying into Trump’s tax returns.
Their last desperate hope is that the smoking gun lies somewhere in the tax returns. Franken’s persistence on the issue is particularly ironic because he was very likely the beneficiary of election fraud.
From an old U.S. News & World Report article:
It looks increasingly likely that at least one member of the United States Senate may owe his seat in the world’s greatest deliberative body not to his charisma or the persuasiveness of his message but to voter fraud.
As the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund reports, Minnesota Democrat Al Franken’s narrow, 312-vote victory in 2008 over incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman may have come as the result of people being allowed to vote who, under existing law, shouldn’t have been.
The certification of Franken as the victor came only after a series of recounts dragging out for almost half a year. It also sparked an investigation by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group that compared the list of those recorded as having voted in the election against what Fund calls “criminal rap sheets.” The group found, in what appears to clearly warrant further and official inquiry, that
… At least 341 convicted felons voted in Minneapolis’s Hennepin County, the state’s largest, and another 52 voted illegally in St. Paul’s Ramsey County, the state’s second largest. Dan McGrath, head of Minnesota Majority, says that only conclusive matches were included in the group’s totals. The number of felons voting in those two counties alone exceeds Mr. Franken’s victory margin.
Thus far no one is calling for the results to be overturned. Indeed Dan McGrath, who spearheaded the inquiry, told Fox News, “We aren’t trying to change the result of the last election. That legally can’t be done.” He added: “We are just trying to make sure the integrity of the next election isn’t compromised.”
It’s time for Democrats to move on from the Russia narrative. The more they bang the conspiracy theory drum with no concrete evidence, the more credibility they lose.