Russia, Russia, Russia

[badlatitude]

Nonsense ... it's a distinction without a difference. The purpose of challenging is to change.

Fact check: Courts have dismissed multiple lawsuits of alleged electoral fraud presented by Trump campaign​

By Reuters Staff
6 MIN READ

Following President Joe Biden’s swearing in on Jan. 20, a Facebook post shared over 6,140 times has said: “Not one court has looked at the evidence and said that Biden legally won. Not one”. This is false: state and federal judges dismissed more than 50 lawsuits presented by then President Donald Trump and his allies challenging the election or its outcome.



Reuters Fact Check. REUTERS
The post, which can be seen here , perpetuates the false narrative that there was widespread voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election ( here ). U.S. election security officials have said the election was “the most secure in American history” ( here , here ).

In the early morning of Jan. 7, hours after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, the U.S. Congress certified enough Electoral College votes for President Biden to declare him winner of the election ( here ).
As reported by Reuters here , state and federal judges - some appointed by Trump - dismissed more than 50 lawsuits brought by Trump or his allies alleging election fraud and other irregularities.
Independent experts, governors and state election officials from both parties say there was no evidence of widespread fraud.
According to the Washington Post here , instead of alleging “widespread fraud or election-changing conspiracy” the lawsuits pushed by Trump’s team and allies focused on smaller complaints, which were largely dismissed by judges due to a lack of evidence. “The Republicans did not provide evidence to back up their assertions — just speculation, rumors or hearsay.”
On Nov 27, 2020 a federal appeals court rejected a Trump campaign proposal to block Biden from being declared the winner of Pennsylvania. ( here ). At the time, Stephanos Bibas, on behalf of the three-judge panel wrote: “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so." It added: “Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here."
Similarly, on Dec. 12, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a long-shot lawsuit by the state of Texas and backed by Trump, which sought to throw out voting results in four states ( here ). In a brief order, the justices said Texas did not have legal standing to bring the case.
On Dec. 1, then-Attorney General William Barr said that the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the election, even as President Trump kept up his legal efforts to reverse his defeat ( here ). Two weeks later, Barr announced his resignation from the Trump administration ( here).
Reuters Fact Check has debunked a series of similar false claims of election fraud. Some can be seen here , here , here , here , here .

VERDICT​

False. Courts dismissed more than 50 lawsuits of alleged electoral fraud and irregularities presented by Trump and allies. U.S. election security officials have said the election was “the most secure in American history”.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .

Fact check: Courts have dismissed multiple lawsuits of alleged electoral fraud presented by Trump campaign

Following President Joe Biden’s swearing in on Jan. 20, a Facebook post shared over 6,140 times has said: “Not one court has looked at the evidence and said that Biden legally won. Not one”. This is false: state and federal judges dismissed more than 50 lawsuits presented...

www.reuters.com

 

[jocal505]

Schiff had vast Russia expertise to offer the Intel Committee. How ironic that he is being sidelined... just as the Russia matter has gone Tinker Tailor on us.



Wray. He must have assigned McConigal to his delicate position, involving Russia and a presidential candidate. This assignment itself was a screw-up.

And Wray stinks from other angles, including the pass he gave Kavanaugh. Wray sucks. It's time for Wray to go, in disgrace.

 

[billy backstay]

Schiff had vast Russia expertise to offer the Intel Committee. How ironic that he is being sidelined... just as the Russia matter has gone Tinker Tailor on us.........

Kevin McCarthy knew about and even accused Trump of canoodling with the Ruskies over the 2016 election, but now denies it; and is certainly not going to allow Schiff anywhere near that committee!!! Pure unadulterated evil, and power hunger!!

 

[badlatitude]

Revealed: Trump secretly donated $1m to discredited Arizona election 'audit'​

Source: The Guardian

One of the enduring mysteries surrounding the chaotic attempts to overturn Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential battle has been solved: who made a secret $1m donation to the controversial election “audit” in Arizona?

The identity of one of the largest benefactors behind the discredited review of Arizona’s vote count has been shrouded in secrecy. Now the Guardian can reveal that the person who partially bankrolled the failed attempt to prove that the election was stolen from Trump was … Trump.

An analysis by the watchdog group Documented has traced funding for the Arizona audit back to Trump’s Save America Pac. The group tracked the cash as it passed from Trump’s fund through an allied conservative group, and from there to a shell company which in turn handed the money to contractors and individuals involved in the Arizona audit.

Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based company that led the Arizona audit, disclosed in 2021 that $5.7m of its budget came from several far-right groups invested in the “stop the steal” campaign to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential victory. It was later divulged that a further $1m had supported the audit from an account controlled by Cleta Mitchell, a Republican election lawyer who advised Trump as he plotted to subvert the 2020 election.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...pc=U483&cvid=a2196047a0c84bf5bc1c9a968204a290

 

[Bus Driver]

Revealed: Trump secretly donated $1m to discredited Arizona election 'audit'​

Source: The Guardian

One of the enduring mysteries surrounding the chaotic attempts to overturn Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential battle has been solved: who made a secret $1m donation to the controversial election “audit” in Arizona?

The identity of one of the largest benefactors behind the discredited review of Arizona’s vote count has been shrouded in secrecy. Now the Guardian can reveal that the person who partially bankrolled the failed attempt to prove that the election was stolen from Trump was … Trump.

An analysis by the watchdog group Documented has traced funding for the Arizona audit back to Trump’s Save America Pac. The group tracked the cash as it passed from Trump’s fund through an allied conservative group, and from there to a shell company which in turn handed the money to contractors and individuals involved in the Arizona audit.

Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based company that led the Arizona audit, disclosed in 2021 that $5.7m of its budget came from several far-right groups invested in the “stop the steal” campaign to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential victory. It was later divulged that a further $1m had supported the audit from an account controlled by Cleta Mitchell, a Republican election lawyer who advised Trump as he plotted to subvert the 2020 election.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...pc=U483&cvid=a2196047a0c84bf5bc1c9a968204a290

He donated money grifted from the Faithful.

Remember, this guy does NOT spend a penny of his own money.

 

[phill_nz]

Nonsense ... it's a distinction without a difference. The purpose of challenging is to change.

dude .. in practice there is a huge difference
perhaps it's your strict adherence to having no morals that does not allow you to see the difference

 

[badlatitude]

He donated money grifted from the Faithful.

Remember, this guy does NOT spend a penny of his own money.

On top of that, it sure sounds like bribery to me.

 

[Dog 2.0]

Bullshit.

As anyone who actually cares about law and order, Democracy, and this country would, Philly took issues with the attempts by the defeated ex-President and his followers when they "conspired to defraud the nation by changing the results of the election".

You, then claimed it is only bad when Republicans do it. When pressed, you claimed Democrats engaged in the same, going so far as to list individual Democrats. Of course, a mere allegation is bullshit absent evidence, which you have been repeatedly asked to supply. You have provided nothing to back up you assertion that Democrats engaged in the same type of behavior as Republicans, in trying to change the results of an election.

Instead, you are trying to equate "challenging the results of an election" (legal) with "changing the results of an election" (not legal). There also were those words like "conspired" and "defraud". It appears you find them meaningless, so you just ignore them.

Philly took issue with Republicans challenging the certification of the election and I took issue with that. It's right there in black and white.

 

[Bus Driver]

Philly took issue with Republicans challenging the certification of the election and I took issue with that. It's right there in black and white.

Philly took issue with people who “conspired to defraud the nation by changing the results of the election".

The word you seem to be having trouble with is "changing", and appear to equate that with "challenging". They are different words, with different meanings.

It's okay to have a problem with the result of an election. It's okay to object, or challenge it.

It's not okay to attack the Capitol to disrupt Congress' Constitutional obligation. It's not okay to submit false slates of electors. It's not okay to call a Secretary of a State and ask that he "find" you votes.

This has been explained by me and others far too many times for you to be imply ignorant of it. Therefore, you are being willfully ignorant.

 

[phillysailor]

Philly took issue with Republicans challenging the certification of the election and I took issue with that. It's right there in black and white.

Yes. You’re trying to say that Republicans submitting false slates of electors and summoning a mob which they stirred up with lies to attack the Capitol was the same as parliamentary maneuvers by an opposition party.

You’re saying Trumps attempt to bribe, threaten and cajole state election officials to find him one more votes than he needed was the same.

You’re saying the head of the Republican Party trying to put an unqualified lackey who would use the DOJ to advance false election fraud theories was the same.

And having his VP break the law and reject certified electors… all this being the same as democrats raising an objection.

And in your mind you “love” America.

Maybe you love America like an abusive husband beats his wife.

 

[Steam Flyer]

Philly took issue with Republicans challenging the certification of the election and I took issue with that. It's right there in black and white.

A lie on top of another lie

D2wdyL?

 

[Voyageur]

which picture shows democracy working?

 

[Ishmael]

which picture shows democracy working?

View attachment 570502
View attachment 570501

The second one, because if those idiots did that in a non-democracy they would probably be dead.

 

[ODSailor]

Great piece from Timothy Snyder that ties the recent story about FBI agent McGonigal to Russian interference in the 2016 election (long). Evidence of conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign continues and will continue to build. At this point anyone who cries 'Russia Hoax!' must be a witting or unwitting dupe who manifestly puts tribal allegiance before country.


Thinking about...
The Specter of 2016
McGonigal, Trump, and the Truth about America
Timothy Snyder
Jan 26

We are on the edge of a spy scandal with major implications for how we understand the Trump administration, our national security, and ourselves.

On 23 January, we learned that a former FBI special agent, Charles McGonigal, was arrested on charges involving taking money to serve foreign interests. One accusation is that in 2017 he took $225,000 from a foreign actor while in charge of counterintelligence at the FBI's New York office. Another charge is that McGonigal took money from Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch, after McGonigal’s 2018 retirement from the FBI. Deripaska, a hugely wealthy metals tycoon close to the Kremlin, "Putin's favorite industrialist," was a figure in a Russian influence operation that McGonigal had investigated in 2016. Deripaska has been under American sanctions since 2018. Deripaska is also the former employer, and the creditor, of Trump's 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

The reporting on this so far seems to miss the larger implications. One of them is that Trump’s historical position looks far cloudier. In 2016, Trump's campaign manager (Manafort) was a former employee of a Russian oligarch (Deripaska), and owed money to that same Russian oligarch. And the FBI special agent (McGonigal) who was charged with investigating the Trump campaign's Russian connections then went to work (according to the indictment) for that very same Russian oligarch (Deripaska). This is obviously very bad for Trump personally. But it is also very bad for FBI New York, for the FBI generally, and for the United States of America.
Another is that we must revisit the Russian influence operation on Trump’s behalf in 2016, and the strangely weak American response. Moscow’s goal was to move minds and institutions such that Hillary Clinton would lose and Donald Trump would win. We might like to think that any FBI special agent would resist, oppose, or at least be immune to such an operation. Now we are reliably informed that a trusted FBI actor, one who was responsible for dealing with just this sort of operation, was corrupt. And again, the issue is not just the particular person. If someone as important as McGonigal could take money from foreigners while on the job at FBI New York, and then go to work for a sanctioned Russian oligarch he was once investigating, what is at stake, at a bare minimum, is the culture of the FBI's New York office. The larger issue is the health of our national discussions of politics and the integrity of our election process.

For me personally, McGonigal's arrest brought back an unsettling memory. In 2016, McGonigal was in charge of cyber counter-intelligence for the FBI, and was put in charge of counterintelligence at the FBI's New York office. That April, I broke the story of the connection between Trump's campaign and Putin's regime, on the basis of Russian open sources. At the time, almost no one wanted to take this connection seriously. American journalists wanted an American source, but the people who had experienced similar Russian operations were in Russia, Ukraine, or Estonia. Too few people took Trump seriously; too few people took Russia seriously; too few people took cyber seriously; the Venn diagram overlap of people who took all three seriously felt very small. Yet there was also specific, nagging worry that my own country was not only unprepared, but something worse. After I wrote that piece and another, I heard intimations that something was odd about the FBI office in New York. This was no secret at the time. One did not need to be close to such matters to get that drift. And given that FBI New York was the office dealing with cyber counterintelligence, this was worrying
The reason I was thinking about Trump and Putin back in 2016 was a pattern that I had noticed in eastern Europe, which is my area of expertise. Between 2010 and 2013, Russia sought to control Ukraine using the same methods which were on display in 2016 in its influence operation in the United States: social media, money, and a pliable candidate for head of state. When that failed, Russia had invaded Ukraine, under the cover of some very successful influence operations. (If you find that you do not remember the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, it is very possibly because you were caught in the froth of Russian propaganda, spread through the internet, targeted to vulnerabilities.) The success of that propaganda encouraged Russia to intervene in the United States, using the same methods and institutions. This is what I was working on in 2016, when a similar operation was clearly underway in the United States.
To this observer of Ukraine, it was apparent that Russia was backing Trump in much the way that it had once backed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, in the hopes of soft control. Trump and Yanukovych were similar figures: nihilistic, venal, seeking power to make or shield money. This made them vulnerably eager partners for Putin. And they had the same chief advisor: the American political consultant Paul Manafort. Russian soft control of Trump did not require endless personal meetings between the two principals. It just required mutual understanding, which was abundantly on display during the Trump presidency: think of the meeting between Putin and Trump in Helsinki in 2018, when the American president said that he trusted the Russian one and the Russian president said that he had supported the American one as a candidate. The acknowledgement of mutual debts was obvious already in 2016: Russian media talked up Trump, and Trump talked up Putin.

During Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, the rapprochement between Trump and Putin could be effected through intermediaries. An obvious intermediary was Paul Manafort: first he worked for the Russian oligarch Deripaska as a consultant to teach the Kremlin how to influence Americans. Then he worked for Russia's man in Ukraine Yanukovych, helping to get him elected. Finally Manafort worked for Trump, in the same capacity. You might remember Manafort's ties to Russia as revealed by the press in 2016. He (and Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump, Jr.) met with Russians in June 2016 in Trump Tower. Manafort had to resign as Trump's campaign manager that August after it become public he had received $12.7 million in cash while he was working Yanukovych and had not reported it.

By 2016, when he was Trump's campaign manager, Manafort owed Deripaska millions of dollars. At the end of their political collaboration, they had entered into a murky investment, at the end of which Deripaska was pursuing Manafort in court. Manafort acknowledged the debt to Deripaska, in the sense that he treated his work for Trump as a way to pay it off. As Trump's campaign manager, and as Deripaska's debtor, Manafort wrote to offer Deripaska "private briefings" on Trump's campaign. Through an intermediary, Manafort sent the Russians data from the Trump campaign, including campaign polling data about Americans that would be useful for influence operations. Manafort was asked to communicate a Russian plan for the partition of Ukraine to Trump. Manafort was hoping to pay Deripaska back in a currency other than money -- in Manafort's own words, "to get whole." (These and other details are in Road to Unfreedom.)

Thinking our way back to 2016, keeping in mind Russia's pattern of seeking soft control, recalling what we know now, let's now reconsider how the FBI treated the Trump-Putin connection that year. After Trump became president, he and some other Republicans claimed that the FBI had overreached by carrying out any sort of investigation at all. Now that McGonigal has been arrested, Trump has claimed that this somehow helps his case. Common sense suggests the opposite. The man who was supposed to investigate Russian support of Trump then took money from a Russian oligarch close to Putin, who was at one remove from the Trump campaign at the time? That is not at all a constellation that supports Trump's version of events. If the FBI special agent (McGonigal) who was investigating Trump's connection to Russia was on the payroll of the Russian oligarch (Deripaska) to whom Trump's campaign manager (Manafort) owed millions of dollars and provided information, that does not look good for Trump. It looks hideous —but not just for Trump.

Anne Applebaum once put the question the right way: why didn't the FBI investigate Trump’s connections to Putin much earlier? In retrospect, it seems as though the FBI investigation of Trump’s campaign and its Russian connections in 2016 was not only late, but weirdly understated. Known as "Cross-Fire Hurricane," it defined the issue of Russian influence narrowly, as a matter of personal contact between Trump campaign officials and Russians. Meanwhile, as that investigation was going on, Russia was in the middle of a major social media campaign which, according to the leading scholar of presidential communications, made it possible for Trump to be elected. And that larger influence campaign was not investigated by the FBI, let alone countered.

If anything, it looks as though the New York office of the FBI, wittingly or unwittingly, rather pushed in the same direction than resisted Russia’s pro-Trump influence operation. As no doubt everyone remembers, Russia was able to phish for emails from institutions and people around Clinton, and used some of them, out of context, to create harmful fictional narratives about her. Simultaneously, there was a concern about Clinton's use of a private email server. In the popular mind, these two issues blurred together, with Trump's help. Trump asked the Russians to break into Clinton's email account, which they immediately tried to do. Nothing about Clinton's emails proved to be of interest. The FBI closed an investigation in July 2016, saying that there was no basis for criminal charges against Clinton.

Then, weirdly, FBI director James Comey announced on 28 October 2016, just ten days before the election, that the investigation into Clinton's emails had been reopened. This created a huge brouhaha that (as polls showed) harmed Clinton and helped Trump. The investigation was closed again after only eight days, on 6 November, with no charges against Clinton. But that was just two days before the election, and the damage was done. As I recall it, in the fury of those last forty-eight hours, no one noticed Comey's second announcement, closing the investigation and clearing Clinton. I was canvassing at the time, and the people I spoke to were still quite excited about the emails. Why would the FBI publicly reveal an investigation on a hot issue involving a presidential candidate right before an election? It now appears that Comey made the public announcement because of an illicit kind of pressure from special agents in the FBI New York office. Comey believed that they would leak the investigation if he did not announce it.

In office, Trump knew that Russia had worked to get him elected, but the standard of guilt was placed so high that he could defend himself by saying that he personally had not colluded. The Mueller Report, which I still don't believe many people have actually read, demonstrated that there was a multidimensional Russian influence campaign on behalf of Trump. The Trump administration countered by claiming that there was no evidence that Trump personally had been in contact with Putin personally. That defense was certainly misleading; but it was available in part because of the narrow scope of FBI investigations in 2016.

To be fair, FBI, along with Homeland Security, did investigate cyber. But this was after the election when it could make no difference; and in the report, cyber was defined narrowly, limited to phishing and the breach of systems. These are important issues, but they were not the main issue. What the phishing and breach of systems enabled was the main issue: a social media campaign that exploited emotions, including misogyny, to mobilize and demobilize voters.
Russia used the raw email in specific operations on Trump's behalf, for example by rescuing him from the Access Hollywood tapes scandal. Right after it emerged that Trump advocated sexual assault, Russia released a fictional scandal connecting Clinton to the abuse of children. That allowed Trump's followers to believe that whatever he did, she was worse; and the scandal was blunted. It verges on inconceivable that McGonigal was unaware of Russia's 2016 influence campaign on behalf of Trump. He knew the players; he is now alleged to have been employed by one of them. Even I was aware of the Russia's 2016 influence campaign. It became one of the subjects of my book Road to Unfreedom, which I finished the following year.

The Russian influence campaign was an issue for American counterintelligence. It is worth pausing to understand why, since it helps us to see the centrality of McGonigal and the meaning of this scandal. Intelligence is about trying to understand. Counterintelligence is about making that hard for others. Branching out from counterintelligence are the more exotic operations designed to make an enemy not only misunderstand the situation, but also act on the basis of misunderstandings, against the enemy's own interests. Such operations, which have been a Russian (or Soviet) specialty for more than a century, go under the name of "provocation," or "active measures," or "maskirovka." It is the task of counterintelligence to understand active measures, and prevent them from working. The Russian influence operation on behalf of Trump was an active measure that the United States failed to halt. The cyber element, the use of social media, is what McGonigal personally, with his background and in his position, should have been making everyone aware of. In 2016, McGonigal was section chief of the FBI's Cyber-Counterintelligence Coordination Section. That October, he was put in charge of the Counterintelligence Division of the FBI's New York office.

And it was just then, in October 2016, that matters began to spin out of control. There were two moments, late in the presidential campaign, that decided the matter for Donald Trump. The first was when Russian rescued him from the Access Hollywood scandal (7 October). The second was FBI director James Comey's public announcement that he was reopening the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails (28 October). The reason Comey made that public announcement at that highly sensitive time, ten days before the election, was not that he believed the public needed to know, nor that the matter was likely of great consequence. On his account, it was that he believed that FBI New York office was going to leak it anyway. Rudolph Giuliani had apparently already been the beneficiary of leaks; claimed to know in advance of what he called a "surprise" that would help Donald Trump, namely Comey's public announcement of the email investigation.

It looked at the time like Comey had been played by people in FBI New York who wanted Trump to win. Comey has now confirmed this, although his word choice might be different. And I did wonder, back then, if those special agents in New York, in turn, were being played. It was no secret at the time that FBI special agents in New York did not like Hillary Clinton. Making emotional commitments public is asking to be exploited. For people working in counterintelligence, this is a particularly unwise thing to do. The nature of working in counterintelligence is that, if you are not very good, you will find yourself in the vortex of someone else's active measure. Someone else will take advantage of your known vulnerabilities - your misogyny, perhaps, or your hatred of a specific female politician, or your entirely unjustified belief that a male politician is a patriotic messiah -- and get you to do something that feels like your own decision.

Now that we are informed that a central figure in the New York FBI office was willing to take money from foreign actors while on the job, this line of analysis bears some reconsideration. Objectively, FBI New York was acting in concert with Russia, ignoring or defining narrowly Russia's actions, and helping deliver the one-two punch to Clinton in October that very likely saved Trump. When people act in the interest of a foreign power, it is sometimes for money, it is sometimes because the foreign power knows something about them, it is sometimes for ideals, and it is sometimes for no conscious motive at all -- what one thinks of as one's own motives have been curated, manipulated, and directed. It seems quite possible -- I raise it as a hypothesis that reasonable people would consider -- that some mixture of these factors was at work at FBI New York in 2016.

All of these pieces of recent history must hang together in one way or another, and the fresh and shocking revelation of McGonigal's arrest is a chance for us to try to see how. Again, if these allegations are true, they will soon be surrounded by other heretofore unknown facts, which should lead us to consider the problem of election integrity in a general way. As of right now, the circumstantial evidence suggests that we consider the possibility that the FBI's reporting work in 2016, which resulted in a framing of the issue which was convenient for Trump and Russia, might have had something to do with the fact (per the indictments) that one of its lead agents was willing to take money from foreign actors while on the job. In connection with the leaks from FBI New York late in the 2016 campaign, which had the obvious effect of harming Clinton and helping Trump, McGonigal's arrest also demands a broader rethink of the scale of the 2016 disaster. How much was FBI New York, wittingly and unwittingly, caught up in a Russian active measure?

The charges have not been proven. If they are, it would be a bit surprising if the two offenses with which McGonigal is now charged were isolated events. There is a certain danger, apparently, in seeing them this way, and letting bygones be bygones. A U.S. attorney presenting the case said that McGonigal "should have known better"; that is the kind of thing one says when a child gets a bellyache after eating too much cotton candy at the county fair; it hardly seems to correspond to the gravity of the situation.

Failing to understand the Russian threat in the 2010s was a prelude to failing to understand the Russian threat in 2020s. And today Americans who support Russia in its war of atrocity tend to be members of the Trump family or people closely aligned with Trump, such as Giuliani. The people who helped Trump then take part in the war on Ukraine now. Consider one of the main architects of Russia's 2016 campaign to support Trump, Yevgeny Prigozhin. In 2016, his relevant position was as the head of the Internet Research Agency; they were the very people who (for example) helped spread the story about Clinton that rescued Trump from the Access Hollywood scandal. Without the Internet Research Agency covering his back, Trump would have had a much harder time in the 2016 election. Today, during the war in Ukraine, Prigozhin is now better known as the owner of Wagner, sending tens of thousands of Russian prisoners to kill and die.
The implications of the arrest go further. McGonigal had authority in sensitive investigations where the specific concern was that there was an American giving away other Americans to foreign governments. Untangling what that means will require a concern for the United States that goes beyond party loyalty. Unfortunately, some key political figures seem to be reacting to the news in the opposite spirit: suppressing the past, thereby destabilizing the future. Immediately after the McGonigal story broke, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy ejected Adam Schiff from the House intelligence committee, in a grand exhibition of indifference to national security. A veteran of that committee, Schiff has has taken the time to learn about Russia. It is grotesque to exclude him at this particular moment, in the middle of a war, and at the beginning of a spy scandal.

McCarthy's recent move against Schiff also recalls 2016, sadly. Much as I did, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had an inkling, back then, that something was wrong with Trump and Russia. He expressed his view that June that Donald Trump was the Republican most likely to be taking money from Vladimir Putin. This showed a fine political instinct, sadly unmatched by any ethical follow-through. McCarthy did not share his suspicion with his constituents, nor do anything to follow through. He made the remark it in a conversation with other Republican House members, who did not disagree with him, and who apparently came to the conclusion the the risk of an embarrassment to their party was more important than American national security. Republicans in the Senate, sadly, took a similar view. They deliberately marginalized a CIA investigation that did address the Russian influence campaign for Trump. In September 2016, Mitch McConnell made it clear to the Obama administration that the CIA's findings would be treated as political if they were discussed in public. The Obama administration bowed to this pressure.

The Russian operation to get Trump elected in 2016 was real. We are still living under the specter of 2016, and we are closer to the beginning of the process or learning about it than we are to the end. Denying that it happened, or acting as though it did not happen, makes the United States vulnerable to Russian influence operations that are still ongoing, sometimes organized by the same people. It is easy to forget about 2016, and human to want to do so. But democracy is about learning from mistakes, and this arrest makes it very clear that we still have much to learn.

26 January 2023
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[Ishmael]

Great piece from Timothy Snyder that ties the recent story about FBI agent McGonigal to Russian interference in the 2016 election (long). Evidence of conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign continues and will continue to build. At this point anyone who cries 'Russia Hoax!' must be a witting or unwitting dupe who manifestly puts tribal allegiance before country.


Thinking about...
The Specter of 2016
McGonigal, Trump, and the Truth about America
Timothy Snyder
Jan 26

We are on the edge of a spy scandal with major implications for how we understand the Trump administration, our national security, and ourselves.

On 23 January, we learned that a former FBI special agent, Charles McGonigal, was arrested on charges involving taking money to serve foreign interests. One accusation is that in 2017 he took $225,000 from a foreign actor while in charge of counterintelligence at the FBI's New York office. Another charge is that McGonigal took money from Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch, after McGonigal’s 2018 retirement from the FBI. Deripaska, a hugely wealthy metals tycoon close to the Kremlin, "Putin's favorite industrialist," was a figure in a Russian influence operation that McGonigal had investigated in 2016. Deripaska has been under American sanctions since 2018. Deripaska is also the former employer, and the creditor, of Trump's 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

The reporting on this so far seems to miss the larger implications. One of them is that Trump’s historical position looks far cloudier. In 2016, Trump's campaign manager (Manafort) was a former employee of a Russian oligarch (Deripaska), and owed money to that same Russian oligarch. And the FBI special agent (McGonigal) who was charged with investigating the Trump campaign's Russian connections then went to work (according to the indictment) for that very same Russian oligarch (Deripaska). This is obviously very bad for Trump personally. But it is also very bad for FBI New York, for the FBI generally, and for the United States of America.
Another is that we must revisit the Russian influence operation on Trump’s behalf in 2016, and the strangely weak American response. Moscow’s goal was to move minds and institutions such that Hillary Clinton would lose and Donald Trump would win. We might like to think that any FBI special agent would resist, oppose, or at least be immune to such an operation. Now we are reliably informed that a trusted FBI actor, one who was responsible for dealing with just this sort of operation, was corrupt. And again, the issue is not just the particular person. If someone as important as McGonigal could take money from foreigners while on the job at FBI New York, and then go to work for a sanctioned Russian oligarch he was once investigating, what is at stake, at a bare minimum, is the culture of the FBI's New York office. The larger issue is the health of our national discussions of politics and the integrity of our election process.

For me personally, McGonigal's arrest brought back an unsettling memory. In 2016, McGonigal was in charge of cyber counter-intelligence for the FBI, and was put in charge of counterintelligence at the FBI's New York office. That April, I broke the story of the connection between Trump's campaign and Putin's regime, on the basis of Russian open sources. At the time, almost no one wanted to take this connection seriously. American journalists wanted an American source, but the people who had experienced similar Russian operations were in Russia, Ukraine, or Estonia. Too few people took Trump seriously; too few people took Russia seriously; too few people took cyber seriously; the Venn diagram overlap of people who took all three seriously felt very small. Yet there was also specific, nagging worry that my own country was not only unprepared, but something worse. After I wrote that piece and another, I heard intimations that something was odd about the FBI office in New York. This was no secret at the time. One did not need to be close to such matters to get that drift. And given that FBI New York was the office dealing with cyber counterintelligence, this was worrying
The reason I was thinking about Trump and Putin back in 2016 was a pattern that I had noticed in eastern Europe, which is my area of expertise. Between 2010 and 2013, Russia sought to control Ukraine using the same methods which were on display in 2016 in its influence operation in the United States: social media, money, and a pliable candidate for head of state. When that failed, Russia had invaded Ukraine, under the cover of some very successful influence operations. (If you find that you do not remember the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, it is very possibly because you were caught in the froth of Russian propaganda, spread through the internet, targeted to vulnerabilities.) The success of that propaganda encouraged Russia to intervene in the United States, using the same methods and institutions. This is what I was working on in 2016, when a similar operation was clearly underway in the United States.
To this observer of Ukraine, it was apparent that Russia was backing Trump in much the way that it had once backed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, in the hopes of soft control. Trump and Yanukovych were similar figures: nihilistic, venal, seeking power to make or shield money. This made them vulnerably eager partners for Putin. And they had the same chief advisor: the American political consultant Paul Manafort. Russian soft control of Trump did not require endless personal meetings between the two principals. It just required mutual understanding, which was abundantly on display during the Trump presidency: think of the meeting between Putin and Trump in Helsinki in 2018, when the American president said that he trusted the Russian one and the Russian president said that he had supported the American one as a candidate. The acknowledgement of mutual debts was obvious already in 2016: Russian media talked up Trump, and Trump talked up Putin.

During Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, the rapprochement between Trump and Putin could be effected through intermediaries. An obvious intermediary was Paul Manafort: first he worked for the Russian oligarch Deripaska as a consultant to teach the Kremlin how to influence Americans. Then he worked for Russia's man in Ukraine Yanukovych, helping to get him elected. Finally Manafort worked for Trump, in the same capacity. You might remember Manafort's ties to Russia as revealed by the press in 2016. He (and Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump, Jr.) met with Russians in June 2016 in Trump Tower. Manafort had to resign as Trump's campaign manager that August after it become public he had received $12.7 million in cash while he was working Yanukovych and had not reported it.

By 2016, when he was Trump's campaign manager, Manafort owed Deripaska millions of dollars. At the end of their political collaboration, they had entered into a murky investment, at the end of which Deripaska was pursuing Manafort in court. Manafort acknowledged the debt to Deripaska, in the sense that he treated his work for Trump as a way to pay it off. As Trump's campaign manager, and as Deripaska's debtor, Manafort wrote to offer Deripaska "private briefings" on Trump's campaign. Through an intermediary, Manafort sent the Russians data from the Trump campaign, including campaign polling data about Americans that would be useful for influence operations. Manafort was asked to communicate a Russian plan for the partition of Ukraine to Trump. Manafort was hoping to pay Deripaska back in a currency other than money -- in Manafort's own words, "to get whole." (These and other details are in Road to Unfreedom.)

Thinking our way back to 2016, keeping in mind Russia's pattern of seeking soft control, recalling what we know now, let's now reconsider how the FBI treated the Trump-Putin connection that year. After Trump became president, he and some other Republicans claimed that the FBI had overreached by carrying out any sort of investigation at all. Now that McGonigal has been arrested, Trump has claimed that this somehow helps his case. Common sense suggests the opposite. The man who was supposed to investigate Russian support of Trump then took money from a Russian oligarch close to Putin, who was at one remove from the Trump campaign at the time? That is not at all a constellation that supports Trump's version of events. If the FBI special agent (McGonigal) who was investigating Trump's connection to Russia was on the payroll of the Russian oligarch (Deripaska) to whom Trump's campaign manager (Manafort) owed millions of dollars and provided information, that does not look good for Trump. It looks hideous —but not just for Trump.

Anne Applebaum once put the question the right way: why didn't the FBI investigate Trump’s connections to Putin much earlier? In retrospect, it seems as though the FBI investigation of Trump’s campaign and its Russian connections in 2016 was not only late, but weirdly understated. Known as "Cross-Fire Hurricane," it defined the issue of Russian influence narrowly, as a matter of personal contact between Trump campaign officials and Russians. Meanwhile, as that investigation was going on, Russia was in the middle of a major social media campaign which, according to the leading scholar of presidential communications, made it possible for Trump to be elected. And that larger influence campaign was not investigated by the FBI, let alone countered.

If anything, it looks as though the New York office of the FBI, wittingly or unwittingly, rather pushed in the same direction than resisted Russia’s pro-Trump influence operation. As no doubt everyone remembers, Russia was able to phish for emails from institutions and people around Clinton, and used some of them, out of context, to create harmful fictional narratives about her. Simultaneously, there was a concern about Clinton's use of a private email server. In the popular mind, these two issues blurred together, with Trump's help. Trump asked the Russians to break into Clinton's email account, which they immediately tried to do. Nothing about Clinton's emails proved to be of interest. The FBI closed an investigation in July 2016, saying that there was no basis for criminal charges against Clinton.

Then, weirdly, FBI director James Comey announced on 28 October 2016, just ten days before the election, that the investigation into Clinton's emails had been reopened. This created a huge brouhaha that (as polls showed) harmed Clinton and helped Trump. The investigation was closed again after only eight days, on 6 November, with no charges against Clinton. But that was just two days before the election, and the damage was done. As I recall it, in the fury of those last forty-eight hours, no one noticed Comey's second announcement, closing the investigation and clearing Clinton. I was canvassing at the time, and the people I spoke to were still quite excited about the emails. Why would the FBI publicly reveal an investigation on a hot issue involving a presidential candidate right before an election? It now appears that Comey made the public announcement because of an illicit kind of pressure from special agents in the FBI New York office. Comey believed that they would leak the investigation if he did not announce it.

In office, Trump knew that Russia had worked to get him elected, but the standard of guilt was placed so high that he could defend himself by saying that he personally had not colluded. The Mueller Report, which I still don't believe many people have actually read, demonstrated that there was a multidimensional Russian influence campaign on behalf of Trump. The Trump administration countered by claiming that there was no evidence that Trump personally had been in contact with Putin personally. That defense was certainly misleading; but it was available in part because of the narrow scope of FBI investigations in 2016.

To be fair, FBI, along with Homeland Security, did investigate cyber. But this was after the election when it could make no difference; and in the report, cyber was defined narrowly, limited to phishing and the breach of systems. These are important issues, but they were not the main issue. What the phishing and breach of systems enabled was the main issue: a social media campaign that exploited emotions, including misogyny, to mobilize and demobilize voters.
Russia used the raw email in specific operations on Trump's behalf, for example by rescuing him from the Access Hollywood tapes scandal. Right after it emerged that Trump advocated sexual assault, Russia released a fictional scandal connecting Clinton to the abuse of children. That allowed Trump's followers to believe that whatever he did, she was worse; and the scandal was blunted. It verges on inconceivable that McGonigal was unaware of Russia's 2016 influence campaign on behalf of Trump. He knew the players; he is now alleged to have been employed by one of them. Even I was aware of the Russia's 2016 influence campaign. It became one of the subjects of my book Road to Unfreedom, which I finished the following year.

The Russian influence campaign was an issue for American counterintelligence. It is worth pausing to understand why, since it helps us to see the centrality of McGonigal and the meaning of this scandal. Intelligence is about trying to understand. Counterintelligence is about making that hard for others. Branching out from counterintelligence are the more exotic operations designed to make an enemy not only misunderstand the situation, but also act on the basis of misunderstandings, against the enemy's own interests. Such operations, which have been a Russian (or Soviet) specialty for more than a century, go under the name of "provocation," or "active measures," or "maskirovka." It is the task of counterintelligence to understand active measures, and prevent them from working. The Russian influence operation on behalf of Trump was an active measure that the United States failed to halt. The cyber element, the use of social media, is what McGonigal personally, with his background and in his position, should have been making everyone aware of. In 2016, McGonigal was section chief of the FBI's Cyber-Counterintelligence Coordination Section. That October, he was put in charge of the Counterintelligence Division of the FBI's New York office.

And it was just then, in October 2016, that matters began to spin out of control. There were two moments, late in the presidential campaign, that decided the matter for Donald Trump. The first was when Russian rescued him from the Access Hollywood scandal (7 October). The second was FBI director James Comey's public announcement that he was reopening the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails (28 October). The reason Comey made that public announcement at that highly sensitive time, ten days before the election, was not that he believed the public needed to know, nor that the matter was likely of great consequence. On his account, it was that he believed that FBI New York office was going to leak it anyway. Rudolph Giuliani had apparently already been the beneficiary of leaks; claimed to know in advance of what he called a "surprise" that would help Donald Trump, namely Comey's public announcement of the email investigation.

It looked at the time like Comey had been played by people in FBI New York who wanted Trump to win. Comey has now confirmed this, although his word choice might be different. And I did wonder, back then, if those special agents in New York, in turn, were being played. It was no secret at the time that FBI special agents in New York did not like Hillary Clinton. Making emotional commitments public is asking to be exploited. For people working in counterintelligence, this is a particularly unwise thing to do. The nature of working in counterintelligence is that, if you are not very good, you will find yourself in the vortex of someone else's active measure. Someone else will take advantage of your known vulnerabilities - your misogyny, perhaps, or your hatred of a specific female politician, or your entirely unjustified belief that a male politician is a patriotic messiah -- and get you to do something that feels like your own decision.

Now that we are informed that a central figure in the New York FBI office was willing to take money from foreign actors while on the job, this line of analysis bears some reconsideration. Objectively, FBI New York was acting in concert with Russia, ignoring or defining narrowly Russia's actions, and helping deliver the one-two punch to Clinton in October that very likely saved Trump. When people act in the interest of a foreign power, it is sometimes for money, it is sometimes because the foreign power knows something about them, it is sometimes for ideals, and it is sometimes for no conscious motive at all -- what one thinks of as one's own motives have been curated, manipulated, and directed. It seems quite possible -- I raise it as a hypothesis that reasonable people would consider -- that some mixture of these factors was at work at FBI New York in 2016.

All of these pieces of recent history must hang together in one way or another, and the fresh and shocking revelation of McGonigal's arrest is a chance for us to try to see how. Again, if these allegations are true, they will soon be surrounded by other heretofore unknown facts, which should lead us to consider the problem of election integrity in a general way. As of right now, the circumstantial evidence suggests that we consider the possibility that the FBI's reporting work in 2016, which resulted in a framing of the issue which was convenient for Trump and Russia, might have had something to do with the fact (per the indictments) that one of its lead agents was willing to take money from foreign actors while on the job. In connection with the leaks from FBI New York late in the 2016 campaign, which had the obvious effect of harming Clinton and helping Trump, McGonigal's arrest also demands a broader rethink of the scale of the 2016 disaster. How much was FBI New York, wittingly and unwittingly, caught up in a Russian active measure?

The charges have not been proven. If they are, it would be a bit surprising if the two offenses with which McGonigal is now charged were isolated events. There is a certain danger, apparently, in seeing them this way, and letting bygones be bygones. A U.S. attorney presenting the case said that McGonigal "should have known better"; that is the kind of thing one says when a child gets a bellyache after eating too much cotton candy at the county fair; it hardly seems to correspond to the gravity of the situation.

Failing to understand the Russian threat in the 2010s was a prelude to failing to understand the Russian threat in 2020s. And today Americans who support Russia in its war of atrocity tend to be members of the Trump family or people closely aligned with Trump, such as Giuliani. The people who helped Trump then take part in the war on Ukraine now. Consider one of the main architects of Russia's 2016 campaign to support Trump, Yevgeny Prigozhin. In 2016, his relevant position was as the head of the Internet Research Agency; they were the very people who (for example) helped spread the story about Clinton that rescued Trump from the Access Hollywood scandal. Without the Internet Research Agency covering his back, Trump would have had a much harder time in the 2016 election. Today, during the war in Ukraine, Prigozhin is now better known as the owner of Wagner, sending tens of thousands of Russian prisoners to kill and die.
The implications of the arrest go further. McGonigal had authority in sensitive investigations where the specific concern was that there was an American giving away other Americans to foreign governments. Untangling what that means will require a concern for the United States that goes beyond party loyalty. Unfortunately, some key political figures seem to be reacting to the news in the opposite spirit: suppressing the past, thereby destabilizing the future. Immediately after the McGonigal story broke, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy ejected Adam Schiff from the House intelligence committee, in a grand exhibition of indifference to national security. A veteran of that committee, Schiff has has taken the time to learn about Russia. It is grotesque to exclude him at this particular moment, in the middle of a war, and at the beginning of a spy scandal.

McCarthy's recent move against Schiff also recalls 2016, sadly. Much as I did, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had an inkling, back then, that something was wrong with Trump and Russia. He expressed his view that June that Donald Trump was the Republican most likely to be taking money from Vladimir Putin. This showed a fine political instinct, sadly unmatched by any ethical follow-through. McCarthy did not share his suspicion with his constituents, nor do anything to follow through. He made the remark it in a conversation with other Republican House members, who did not disagree with him, and who apparently came to the conclusion the the risk of an embarrassment to their party was more important than American national security. Republicans in the Senate, sadly, took a similar view. They deliberately marginalized a CIA investigation that did address the Russian influence campaign for Trump. In September 2016, Mitch McConnell made it clear to the Obama administration that the CIA's findings would be treated as political if they were discussed in public. The Obama administration bowed to this pressure.

The Russian operation to get Trump elected in 2016 was real. We are still living under the specter of 2016, and we are closer to the beginning of the process or learning about it than we are to the end. Denying that it happened, or acting as though it did not happen, makes the United States vulnerable to Russian influence operations that are still ongoing, sometimes organized by the same people. It is easy to forget about 2016, and human to want to do so. But democracy is about learning from mistakes, and this arrest makes it very clear that we still have much to learn.

26 January 2023
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That was an excellent article. A link would be helpful so others can find him. I have a free subscription, so he lands in my mailbox.

The Specter of 2016

McGonigal, Trump, and the Truth about America

snyder.substack.com

 

[Navig8tor]

That was an excellent article. A link would be helpful so others can find him. I have a free subscription, so he lands in my mailbox.

The Specter of 2016

McGonigal, Trump, and the Truth about America

snyder.substack.com

Very good article.
Sounds like McCarthy et al continue to do Russias bidding because they want to avoid party embarrassment, seriously?

 

[jocal505]

FBI agent accused of taking Russian money allegedly turned in by ex (sources: MSN & Insider)

Charles McGonigal, the former Special Agent In Charge of the New York FBI Counterintelligence Division, was allegedly turned in to the Bureau by his ex-lover, Allison Guerriero, after he ended their relationship and revealed he was not going to leave his wife for her. During her time with McGonigal, Guerriero discovered a bag of cash in his Park Slope, Brooklyn apartment in October 2017, and when she questioned him about it, he claimed to have won the money through gambling on a baseball game. Guerriero alleged their affair lasted over a year and that he would spend large amounts of cash on her and have sex in FBI-owned vehicles.

When the couple met, Guerriero was 44 and was a former substitute kindergarten teacher who volunteered for law-enforcement causes, working as a contractor for a security company while living at home with her dad. McGonigal, was 49 years old, had just started a new job at the FBI's New York office. Pictured: Allison with former MLB pitcher Sparky Lyle in a photo from June 2017.

The Southern District of New York unsealed a five-count indictment against McGonigal and Sergey Shestakov earlier this week, charging them with violating and conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and with conspiring to commit money laundering. McGonigal, who retired in 2018, played a role in sensitive and high-profile investigations, including Robert Mueller's probe into Russia's purported ties to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Charles McGonigal, now 54, walked free from Manhattan federal court on Monday on a $500,000 personal recognizance bond, following his arrest Saturday on charges laid out in two newly unsealed indictments.

One of the indictments, filed in Manhattan, accused McGonigal of violating U.S. sanctions laws by working for Oleg Deripaska, a billionaire crony of Vladimir Putin, following his 2018 retirement from the FBI. The other charges, filed in Washington DC, allege McGonigal took $225,000 in cash bribes from an unnamed former Albanian intelligence agent while leading the counterintelligence branch in the FBI's New York field office.

In an interview with Insider, Guerriero alleges that McGonigal used FBI resources for their relationship, including having intercourse in an FBI vehicle. She notes how McGonigal may have also abused his position of trust having once opened an FBI investigation into a U.S. citizen who lobbied for an opponent of the Albanian prime minister whom he had become close with. Monday's indictment states that McGonigal was accompanied by the unnamed ex-spy when he secretly met with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama (pictured) in September 2017, where he gave Rama 'FBI paraphernalia' and offered advice on lucrative oil drilling licenses.

McGonigal is also accused of hiding from the FBI key details of a 2017 trip he took to Albania with the former Albanian intelligence official who is alleged to have given him at least $225,000 in three separate cash payments. Once there, according to the Justice Department, McGonigal met with Albania's prime minister and urged caution in awarding oil field drilling licenses in the country to Russian front companies. McGonigal's Albanian contacts had a financial interest in those decisions.

In an example of how McGonigal allegedly blurred personal gain with professional responsibilities, prosecutors in Washington say he 'caused' the FBI's New York office to open a criminal lobbying investigation in which the former Albanian intelligence official was to serve as a confidential human source. Pictured: Allison Guerriero in 2017.
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In an example of how McGonigal allegedly blurred personal gain with professional responsibilities, prosecutors in Washington say he 'caused' the FBI's New York office to open a criminal lobbying investigation in which the former Albanian intelligence official was to serve as a confidential human source. Pictured: Allison Guerriero in 2017.

McGonigal did so, prosecutors allege, without revealing to the FBI or Justice Department his financial connections to the man. In her interview, Guerriero claimed how McGonigal would spend lavishly on her - far more than his FBI salary would typically allow. He would give her gifts of of $500 or $1,000 for her birthday and Christmas - and even gave a homeless person $100 on the street.

She only decided to blow the lid off their relationship after finding out he was married with two teenage children, and wanted to remain so, staying with the woman he would refer to as his 'ex-wife.' ​

​

After a drinking session and in a fit of jealousy, Guerriero emailed McGonigal's boss, William Sweeney (pictured) who was in charge of the FBI's New York City bureau, directly. She revealed details of the affair to him together with extensive dealings she had noticed McGonigal had with contacts in Albania. McGonigal had befriended Albania's prime minister had gone back and forth to the country several times.​

​

Indeed, McGonigal is now accused of spinning his own web of deception in multiple alleged schemes to profit from illegal foreign payments. The most stunning charge accuses him of working with a former Soviet diplomat-turned-Russian interpreter on behalf of Deripaska, a Russian billionaire they purportedly referred to in code as 'the big guy' and 'the client.' Pictured: Jim Hayes, left, a retiree from the Dept of Homeland Security, Guerriero, center, and FEHSF Executive Board Member Vincent LeVien, right, in May 2019.​

​

McGonigal, who had supervised and participated in investigations of Russian oligarchs, including Deripaska, worked to have Deripaska's sanctions lifted in 2019 and took money from him in 2021 to investigate a rival oligarch, the Justice Department said. Speaking of why she decided to blow the whistle on her former lover Guerriero claims: 'I was shocked, I was very much in love with him, and I was so hurt.' Pictured: Guerriero with FBI Special Agent in Charge Douglas Leff of the San Juan Field Division in 2019.​

​

Three years after sending the email, federal agents showed up on her doorstep to inquire about McGonigal together with the allegations she had made over any Albanian connections he had made. They even showed her a picture of McGonigal with the Albanian Prime Minister. The agents questioned her about all of her communications with McGonigal and focused especially on any 'payments or gifts' he may have given her. 'Charlie McGonigal knew everybody in the national security and law-enforcement world,' Guerriero said to Insider. 'He fooled them all. So why should I feel bad that he was able to deceive me?​

​

Guerriero has admitted that her grudge against him led her to carry out some obsessive and disturbing behavior herself, including writing to McGonigal's family. 'I really did go overboard. I harassed them. I'm not going to deny that. I was horrible to them.' Things got so bad on Guerriero's end following the end of the affair that she spent a night in jail after she harassed McGonigal's wife, Pamela, and her children. It saw Guerriero breaching a restraining order that had been put in place against her in New Jersey following a series of 'nasty' emails and 20 telephone calls made to the wife and children in just one day alone. 'I am ashamed and embarrassed and sorry for my actions during the time that I was drinking,' she said to Insider. Pictured: Pamela Fox McGonigal.​

​

Things also started to get worse for Guerriero when in early 2021, she was badly burned during a fire at her father's home leading her to ask for help through GoFundMe. The FBI has refused to comment on any of Guerriero's tale but notes how the organization holds their employees to 'the highest standard' treating everyone equally, 'even when it is one of our own.'​

McGonigal (pictured) worked for the FBI from 1996 until his retirement in 2018, and from 2016 until he left the bureau he was the special agent in charge of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division in the New York field office. As well as playing a in high-profile investigations, including Robert Mueller's probe into Russia's purported ties to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, he also led an FBI team that investigated why CIA informants in China were being arrested and killed -- a probe that led to the arrest and conviction of Chinese double agent Jerry Chun Shing Lee.

In a bureau-wide email Monday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said McGonigal's alleged conduct 'is entirely inconsistent with what I see from the men and women of the FBI who demonstrate every day through their actions that they're worthy of the public's trust.' Pictured: Pamela Fox McGonigal and husband Charles McGonigal are pictured during happier times.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...vid=3013e9f6dc8e4a919177830f679940be#image=17>

 

[Voyageur]

can chatgpt write a speech for someone that wanted to sound as dumb as TFG?
answer: shall we play a game?

 

[Ishmael]

If anyone has a couple thousand hours to spare, this report is pretty interesting. The chart is classic.

Think You Know How Deep Trump-Russia Goes? Think Again: This Chart/Info Will Blow Your Mind

(Russian/Русский перевод) Perhaps the main problem with coverage of Trump’s Russia ties is that many of the various actors’ less salient ties to each other are missed, with much time and complexity…

realcontextnews.com

 

[billsreef]

What was it Nancy Pelosi said, all roads lead to Putin.