#Twitterfiles Part 14 – “Russiagate scandal was built on the craven dishonesty of politicians and reporters”
“Twitter warned politicians and media the not only lacked evidence, but had evidence the accounts weren’t Russian – and were roundly ignored.”
The Twitterfiles have confirmed much of what we knew but had trouble proving because the evidence was hidden from plain sight. We only saw the end product of bias, but the Twitterfiles have revealed internal documents from Twitter. The document released in numerous tranches provide the proof that the mainstream corporate liberal media is deeply corrupt, and colluded with Big Tech and the federal government to manipulate elections and everything relating to Donald Trump.
Part 14 of the Twitterfiles was released today in a Twitter thread by Matt Taibi. It concerns former Representative Devon Nunes, and claims that Nunes’ 2017-2018 attempt to expose federal surveillance of the Trump campaign was aided and abetted by Russian bots on Twitter. Much of the fight was over a memorandum Nunes prepared using classified material spelling out the details. There was an effort to get the Nunes memo released to the public.
I had a vague recollection of the controvery, so I dug back into the Legal Insurrection archives and found these posts:
- Chairman Nunes Says Trump’s General Use of “Wiretapping” Was Correct (March 22, 2017)
- House Intel Chair Nunes: “I would be concerned if I was the President” (March 24, 2017)
- House Intel Chairman Nunes Met With His Secret Source on White House Grounds (March 27, 2017)
- Dems want Devin Nunes removed, but can’t unhear unmasking allegations (April 2, 2017)
- Devin Nunes steps away from Russia probe (April 6, 2017)
- *UPDATE* House Intel Committee Votes to Release Nunes’ Memo (January 29, 2018)
- Nunes Memo Alleges FBI Used Dossier to Get FISA Warrant on Trump Campaign Member (February 2, 2018)
The media was brutal in pushing the narrative that support on Twitter for releasing the memo using the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo was a Russian bot operation.
In Part 14 of the Twitterfiles, Taibbi reveals that the claim that Russian bots were boosting the movement to #ReleaseTheMemo was false, it was known by Twitter to be false, Twitter told media and Democrat politicians there was no evidence to support it, but the smear campaign against Nunes and Trump based on supposed Russian bots continued.
1.THREAD: Twitter Files #14
THE RUSSIAGATE LIES
One: The Fake Tale of Russian Bots and the #ReleaseTheMemo Hashtag— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023
Here are a small number of Taibbi’s tweets including screenshots and other evidence, but of course, read the entire thread.
3.Twitter officials were aghast, finding no evidence of Russian influence:
“We are feeding congressional trolls.”
“Not any…significant activity connected to Russia.”
“Putting the cart before the horse assuming this is propaganda/bots.” pic.twitter.com/r8O21QacME— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023
5.On January 18th, 2018, Republican Devin Nunes submitted a classified memo to the House Intel Committee detailing abuses by the FBI in obtaining FISA surveillance authority against Trump-connected figures, including the crucial role played by the infamous “Steele Dossier”: pic.twitter.com/uhl7TXYsBC
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023
7.Nonetheless, national media in January and early February of 2018 denounced the Nunes report in oddly identical language, calling it a “joke”: pic.twitter.com/IkTXRGrfaH
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023
14.“I encourage you to be skeptical of Hamilton 68’s take on this, which as far as I can tell is the only source for these stories,” said Global Policy Communications Chief (and future WH and NSC spokesperson) Emily Horne.
She added: “It’s a comms play for ASD.” pic.twitter.com/PZRZC51K7f
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023
24.Execs eventually grew frustrated over what they saw as a circular process – presented with claims of Russian activity, even when denied, led to more claims.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023
This tweet summed up Taibbi’s findings:
38.This #ReleaseTheMemo episode is just one of many in the #TwitterFiles. The Russiagate scandal was built on the craven dishonesty of politicians and reporters, who for years ignored the absence of data to fictional scare headlines.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023
Russiagate, invented by the Clinton campaign, was a massive fraudulent interference not only in our elections, but in our political process, and the media, federal government, and Democrat politicians were perpetrators.
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Comments
It was first and always entertainment, which is what the news business needs to pay the bills. The dems just serve as suppliers of the entertainment in soap opera form. It’s a business arrangement.
It’s cowardice and dishonesty in the same sense that professional wrestling is cowardice and dishonesty. The consumers furthermore more or less accept that and are entertained nonetheless. The business model works.
Freedom of professional wrestling is not written into the First Amendment.
Well, it ought to be.
California Rep. Devon Nunes. Say, where were all the other Brave Republican Politicians? Yeah. They left him to twist in the wind. That’s why we see protest signs denouncing Nunes and not Ted Cruz. Remember that? Cruz still licking his bruised ego over Trump trashing him during the primaries.
So old Sound and Fury Ted went along with it. Tacit approval is a cowards approval.
Republicans joined in on the dossier sham. A Clinton sham. Most of them very angry and resentful about an outsider – and loudmouth New Yorker – winning the presidency. Republicans were looking forward to eight years of Clinton bashing (and not really meaning it.)
Republicans controlled the house, senate and the executive. And did nothing.
All of it part of the background to the fascist collusion between state and federal politicians, social media, federal agencies and sundry corrupt agents of the state.
Lisa Marie Presley just died of a heart attack
Very sad indeed. Many of us skeptics believe that this may have been caused by the covid vaccine because we have Suspicious Minds.
I see what you did there, but it is suspect amd I must of read 6 stories of children and teens dying this week of heart attacks, strokes
It’s definitely freaking me out because I have so many family members that took that shot.
And how sad it it’s for these young people, most probably forced so they could participate in athletics
But a 6 y/o?
All this junk I’m fighting… I’ve wondered.
I think it’s a pretty good bet that medical iterventions using new mechanisms will have *additional* effects. Anti-biotics also whack the gut biome, for example. That doesn’t make them a bad intervention, or bad over all.
I think general systemic robustness and resilience is under-considered because it’s hard to measure, without specific, granular intervetiions to fix it.
Yet, it’s out there. “Failure to thrive” is a thing with elderly, who’s bodies seem to just stop trying — it’s like the system got tired as a whole.
As a rule of thumb, count medical interventions as whacks to a system that may not work as well if knocked out of state.
Lawdy Miss Clawdy, she was not a healthy person with a long history of addiction. It’s OK to acknowledge that people still die like they always have.
She was a hot Mess, no
Doubt about that, she looked like a Meth head at the Golden Globes
You Never get over losing your child, especially by suicide.
What a cursed family,
Given so Much and much taken.
Paul Newman and his wife were smart,
Moved to the other side of the Country and brought their kids up on a farm.
If I remember right, Newman lost his son to a drug overdose.
So many people unhappy turning to drugs,
What at least 100,000 deaths a year and
Getting worse with fentanyl, but apparently that’s the plan…
It’s awful, When a few people have come here to tell how drug overdoses have affected their families, it is impossible for me to imagine their grief.
Border wide open to this stuff and more.
No one in charge cares. That is hard for me to imagine, too.
They’re not a cursed family. They made bad choices.
That doesn’t fit the “it’s the jab, THE JAAAABBB!!!” narrative of TLD, CFP, etc.
Yes. “the jab!” iS causing issues, but not every death under 80 is due to the Covid (alleged) vaccine.
Others of us believe that, maybe, she was seriously ill with something completely unrelated.
Yeah, I wouldn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that her death was related to the vax. It’s important that we don’t overstate the case that the vax seems to be causing bad outcomes in healthy younger populations.
The right has a tendency to adopt people and events to try and make them fit our world view. Some try to pound the square peg into the round hole. It primarily comes from a place of good intentions but often leaves us disappointed when the peg won’t fit as more info comes to light or our adopted stray turns out to be feral.
Precilla Presley must be haunted: first, Lisa Marie’s son kills himself, then Lisa.
And now back to our regularly scheduled program.
Anyone capable of running two or more functioning brain cells together knew the Russian angle was bullshit from the beginning.
Problem we have is Democrats have dug themselves so deep in to the hole that it’s impossible for them to get out of it. I’d be watching for an increase in vivid deaths as people start to suddenly stop being able to testify in the up coming hearings.
Also, Epstein did not Clinton himself.
Since the collusion ( we even know it at the time) was between Pencil Neck and the Russia hoax. Where are the calls from the left for his resignation?
And now we have a “special counsel,” who was connected with Steele and the Russia hoax. I feel a little insulted. Do they have to be this obvious with the fix?
They’re still in power, and they’re aware of it. The House is a minor inconvenience.
As I keep repeating ad nauseum that the Maoist State Media are never to be believed.
Secondly, I wonder if the people holding up the signs demanding Nunes resign are even faintly embarrassed at this time? Probably not.
The good news is the Democrats and corporate media are so committed to honest reporting and censoring disinformation that they will have to censor themselves.
It’s all very high minded to say we are defending freedom of speech, etc etc, but even in these evil times anyone with normal intelligence, curiosity and internet access can readily obtain alternative information from very credible sources.
The problem is that our democracy allows the ignorant, the young, the dependent and the incurious to vote. All this hubbub about Twitter. I have never been on it. I don’t know how to use it. Politics is all about appealing to large swaths of ignoramuses. We should fight to change the system so that it functions more like the republic it was meant to be. Otherwise political discourse is reduced to ham acting.
There is a fatal tension between universal suffrage and intelligent governance. The founders tried to firewall that with a government of limited delegations beyond which they had no power, and a set of rights that were not amenable to alteration by any voting. The problem is that the inevitable collusion between power-hungry tyrants and stupid voters can and has nullified both, de facto if not de jure. Uncontrolled immigration just accelerates this problem in spades.
The modern notion that ignorant, lazy and politically uninvolved Americans vote in large numbers or as a bloc is a myth.
—
John Adams and others called them the mob – the same mob Samuel Adams set against Tory colonials representing the Crown. Boston rope beaters were uneducated, rough men but dang if they couldn’t mount a customs house revenue agent on a rail and ride him out of town.
We can’t vote our way out of this.
“What you got ain’t nothin’ new. This country’s hard on people. You can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.”
Scandal — The profession of astonished objection to an otherwise untouchable other’s behavior; whether actual, imagined, or invented. The astonishment and objection can likewise be actual, imagined, or invented.
“Russiagate scandal was built on the craven dishonesty of politicians and reporters”
The Russian Collusion pseudo-scandal “was built on the craven dishonesty of politicians and reporters.”
The Russiagate Scandal is the fact of that dishonesty, fabrication, and false-dealing; it is ongoing, and not limited to politicians and reporters.
One wonders if The Feckless R’s will have the discipline n fortitude to keep pounding this one, as their counterparts did with Watergate, making such an issue of that particular instance of business as usual, it became the name for the type.
Just a month ago, Adam Schiff was talking about running for Senate.
Now, there are people who want him expelled from Congress.
Doubling-down on what’s worked, works well, until it stops working at all. Shift-y thought more of the same was his ticket to more of the wame, as it has been for him so far.
The mistake is second-order: failing to notice that that game isn’t working this time. You gotta pay attention, because winning lets you “play again at a higher level” where the rules are different. Sarah Palin comes to mind, as a more than competent retail politician in the outlands, elevated into a game, her game wasn’t fit for.