Who Paid for the 'Trump Dossier'?

This is what I was talking about in my previous entry, "Katrina vanden Heuvel: 'Realism on Russia'."

We should be investigating the Democrats.

Here's Kim Strassel, at WSJ, "Have we had the whole "collusion" story completely backward?":

It has been 10 days since Democrats received the glorious news that Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley would require Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort to explain their meeting with Russian operators at Trump Tower last year. The left was salivating at the prospect of watching two Trump insiders being grilled about Russian “collusion” under the klieg lights.

Yet Democrats now have meekly and noiselessly retreated, agreeing to let both men speak to the committee in private. Why would they so suddenly be willing to let go of this moment of political opportunity?

Fusion GPS. That’s the oppo-research outfit behind the infamous and discredited “Trump dossier,” ginned up by a former British spook. Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson also was supposed to testify at the Grassley hearing, where he might have been asked in public to reveal who hired him to put together the hit job on Mr. Trump, which was based largely on anonymous Russian sources. Turns out Democrats are willing to give up just about anything—including their Manafort moment—to protect Mr. Simpson from having to answer that question.

What if, all this time, Washington and the media have had the Russia collusion story backward? What if it wasn’t the Trump campaign playing footsie with the Vladimir Putin regime, but Democrats? The more we learn about Fusion, the more this seems a possibility.

We know Fusion is a for-hire political outfit, paid to dig up dirt on targets. This column first outed Fusion in 2012, detailing its efforts to tar a Mitt Romney donor. At the time Fusion insisted that the donor was “a legitimate subject of public records research.”

Mr. Grassley’s call for testimony has uncovered more such stories. Thor Halvorssen, a prominent human-rights activist, has submitted sworn testimony outlining a Fusion attempt to undercut his investigation of Venezuelan corruption. Mr. Halvorssen claims Fusion “devised smear campaigns, prepared dossiers containing false information,” and “carefully placed slanderous news items” to malign him and his activity.

William Browder, a banker who has worked to expose Mr. Putin’s crimes, testified to the Grassley committee on Thursday that he was the target of a similar campaign, saying that Fusion “spread false information” about him and his efforts. Fusion has admitted it was hired by a law firm representing a Russian company called Prevezon.

Prevezon employed one of the Russian operators who were at Trump Tower last year. The other Russian who attended that meeting, Rinat Akhmetshin, is a former Soviet counterintelligence officer. He has acknowledged in court documents that he makes his career out of opposition research, the same work Fusion does. And that he’s often hired by Kremlin-connected Russians to smear opponents.

We know that at the exact time Fusion was working with the Russians, the firm had also hired a former British spy, Christopher Steele, to dig up dirt on Mr. Trump. Mr. Steele compiled his material, according to his memos, based on allegations from unnamed Kremlin insiders and other Russians. Many of the claims sound eerily similar to the sort of “oppo” Mr. Akhmetshin peddled.

We know that Mr. Simpson is tight with Democrats. His current attorney, Joshua Levy, used to work in Congress as counsel to no less than Chuck Schumer. We know from a Grassley letter that Fusion has in the past sheltered its clients’ true identities by filtering money through law firms or shell companies (Bean LLC and Kernel LLC).

Word is Mr. Simpson has made clear he will appear for a voluntary committee interview only if he is not specifically asked who hired him to dig dirt on Mr. Trump. Democrats are going to the mat for him over that demand. Those on the Judiciary Committee pointedly did not sign letters in which Mr. Grassley demanded that Fusion reveal who hired it.

Here’s a thought: What if it was the Democratic National Committee or Hillary Clinton’s campaign? What if that money flowed from a political entity on the left, to a private law firm, to Fusion, to a British spook, and then to Russian sources? Moreover, what if those Kremlin-tied sources already knew about this dirt-digging, tipped off by Mr. Akhmetshin? What if they specifically made up claims to dupe Mr. Steele, to trick him into writing this dossier?

Fusion GPS, in an email, said that it “did not spread false information about William Browder.” The firm said it is cooperating with Congress and that “the president and his allies are desperately trying to smear Fusion GPS because it investigated Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.”

If the Russian intention was to sow chaos in the American political system, few things could have been more effective than that dossier, which ramped up an FBI investigation and sparked congressional probes and a special counsel, deeply wounding the president...

Katrina vanden Heuvel: 'Realism on Russia'

Well, we certainly need some realism, sheesh.

Here's Ms. Katrina, at the Nation:

We must investigate claims of Russian interference in the election, while also de-escalating a dangerous crisis.

The revelation that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer promising derogatory information on Hillary Clinton reaffirms the need for a full accounting of how our democracy may have been subverted in the 2016 election. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the claims of Russian interference in the election, of collusion with the Trump campaign, and the possibility of criminal malfeasance by President Trump or his associates is essential, and it must be allowed to reach its own conclusions without interference from the White House. Beyond protecting this existing investigation, Democrats should seek an independent commission to lay out steps for protecting the integrity of future elections.

None of this should be controversial. At the same time, there is another set of facts that needs to be reckoned with in this precarious moment—facts concerning the abject failure of US policies toward Russia and the dangerous path down which our two countries are currently headed. These facts also concern real and present threats and cannot be ignored. Indeed, the crisis we are now facing makes clear that it’s time to fundamentally rethink how we approach our relationship with Russia.

As US-Russian relations have deteriorated, the risk of a nuclear catastrophe—including the danger posed by a nuclear-armed North Korea—has risen to its highest level since the end of the Cold War. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists now rates the danger higher than when the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear device, in 1949. The new Cold War is punctuated by perilous military face-offs in three arenas: in Syria, in the skies over the Baltic Sea; on Russia’s western border, with 300,000 NATO troops on high alert and both Russia and NATO ramping up deployments and exercises; and in Ukraine. Between them, the United States and Russia possess nearly 14,000 nuclear weapons—more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear arsenal—and keep almost 2,000 of them on hair-trigger alert. So the extreme danger of nuclear war can only be reduced through cooperation between our two countries.

At the same time, the era of cyberwarfare has arrived without any of the agreed-upon rules that govern traditional war or, for that matter, nuclear deterrence. There is now a rising threat of hackers breaching not only e-mails and elections but also power grids, strategic warning systems, and command-and-control centers. For years, there has been discussion of the need to establish clear rules of the road for cyberwarfare. Now, reports of escalating interference make it imperative that cyberweapons, like conventional, chemical, and nuclear arms, ought to be controlled by means of a binding, verifiable treaty. Again, however, this cannot happen without a more constructive US-Russia relationship.

Given these significant threats, the escalation of tensions with Russia serves neither the national interest nor our national security. Expanding sanctions will only drive a wedge between the United States and the European Union, spur Russia to take retaliatory measures, and make it more difficult to negotiate. This moment calls for diplomacy and dialogue, not moral posturing and triumphalism.

Needless to say, rebuilding a working détente with Russia won’t be easy...

Actually, I think Democrat Party collusion and election interference needs to be investigated, but otherwise, a good piece.

Keep reading.

It’s All Russia, Russia and Trump, Trump -— All the Time

From Matthew Vadum, at FrontPage Magazine, "Mueller Expands His Probe Again":

Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III is yet again expanding the scope of his off-the-rails investigation into the Left’s wacky Russian electoral collusion conspiracy theory by examining financial transactions even vaguely related to Russia involving President Trump’s businesses and those of his associates, Bloomberg News reports.

Honest observers recognize that with the election of Donald Trump, the longtime Russophiles of the morally flexible Left flipped on their traditional friends in Moscow faster than you can say Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact or Operation Barbarossa. Ignoring its own history of rampant seditious collaboration with Russia, the Left has now managed to convince many that any past or present connection a Republican has or had to Russia, however trivial, is somehow now retroactively evidence of treason against the United States.

There is still no evidence that Trump covered up a crime, or even that there was an underlying crime to be concealed but that hasn’t stopped the Left’s witch-hunt from growing and the goalposts from being shifted.

Remember that it was just a month ago as the bizarre collusion allegations got stuck in the mud that Mueller expanded his investigation to include allegations that Trump tried to obstruct justice by firing FBI Director James B. Comey on May 9. The claim is that Trump did this to end Comey’s investigation into National Security Advisor Mike Flynn’s ties to Russia. Of course, as Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz has pointed out repeatedly, the president has authority under the Constitution to fire the FBI director for any reason or no reason at all. Comey himself has freely acknowledged he served at the pleasure of the president.

That said, “FBI investigators and others are looking at Russian purchases of apartments in Trump buildings, Trump’s involvement in a controversial SoHo development in New York with Russian associates, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and Trump’s sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008,” Bloomberg reported an anonymous source saying.

The report continues, elaborating that:

Mueller’s team is looking at the Trump SoHo hotel condominium development, which was a licensing deal with Bayrock Capital LLC. In 2010, the former finance director of Bayrock filed a lawsuit claiming the firm structured transactions in fraudulent ways to evade taxes. Bayrock was a key source of capital for Trump projects, including Trump SoHo.

The 2013 Miss Universe pageant is of interest because a prominent Moscow developer, Aras Agalarov, paid $20 million to bring the beauty spectacle there. About a third of that sum went to Trump in the form of a licensing fee, according to Forbes magazine. At the event, Trump met Herman Gref, chief executive of Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank PJSC. Agalarov’s son, Emin, helped broker a meeting last year between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer [i.e. Natalia Veselnitskaya] who was said to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton and her campaign.

Another significant financial transaction involved a Palm Beach, Florida, estate Trump purchased in 2004 for $41 million, after its previous owner lost it in bankruptcy. In March of 2008, after the real-estate bubble had begun losing air, Russian fertilizer magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev bought the property for $95 million.

As part of their investigation, Mueller’s team has issued subpoenas to banks and filed requests for bank records to foreign lenders under mutual legal-assistance treaties, according to two of the people familiar with the matter.

In addition, a federal money-laundering probe of Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has reportedly been subsumed into the larger investigation headed by Mueller. Mueller’s office is also reportedly looking at Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s tenure as vice chairman of the Bank of Cyprus and at presidential advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner’s efforts to obtain financing for his family’s real estate investments.

Newt Gingrich said yesterday that Mueller “has so many conflicts of interest it’s almost an absurdity,” but all of this seems above-board to Bloomberg.

“The Justice Department’s May 17 order to Mueller,” the media outlet reports, “instructs him to investigate ‘any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign’ as well as ‘any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation,’ suggesting a relatively broad mandate.”

Trump lawyer John Dowd disagrees. He said examining the president’s business dealings should be out-of-bounds for Mueller.

“Those transactions are in my view well beyond the mandate of the Special counsel; are unrelated to the election of 2016 or any alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and most importantly, are well beyond any Statute of Limitation imposed by the United States Code,” he told Bloomberg in an email.

Meanwhile, the Left is digging in its heels.

In a defamatory, overheated column, the buffoonish purveyor of partisan drivel Jonathan Chait claims:

New reports in the Washington Post and New York Times are clear signals that Trump is contemplating steps – firing Mueller or issuing mass pardons – that would seem to go beyond the pale. Except Trump’s entire career is beyond the pale, and in his time on the political stage, the unthinkable has become thinkable with regularity.

Chait pontificates that:

Trump’s actions are best understood in the context of the overwhelming likelihood he, his family members, and at least some of his associates are guilty of serious crimes. The investigation might not produce proof of criminal collusion with Russia’s illegal hacking of Democratic emails. (Though reasonable grounds for suspicion already exists in abundance.)

Except there is no “overwhelming likelihood” that Trump, his family members, or associates are “guilty of serious crimes,” at least not based on publicly available evidence. Chait is engaging in pure speculation precisely because there is no proof of wrongdoing.

Chait shrieks that Trump’s New York Times interview this week and other news reports citing unidentified sources are proof that the president is a threat to the republic. “The ominous threats emanating from the White House are an administration mobilizing for war against the rule of law,” he wrote.

But what did Trump actually tell the Old Gray Lady?

"I have done nothing wrong,” he said. “A special counsel should never have been appointed in this case.”

One interviewer asked the president, "Last thing, if Mueller was looking at your finances and your family finances, unrelated to Russia, is that a red line?" Another then chimed in with, "Would that be a breach of what his actual charge is?"

Trump responded, probably correctly, with “I would say yeah. I would say yes."

"Would you fire Mueller if he went outside of certain parameters of what his charge is?" an interviewer asked.

"I can't answer that question because I don't think it's going to happen," Trump replied.

It is horrifying to Chait that Trump is daring to defend himself in an interview.

Then there is that anonymously-sourced Washington Post article that claims Trump is considering firing Mueller and issuing mass-pardons – kind of like when Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) unilaterally re-enfranchised felons by the hundreds of thousands to help Hillary Clinton during the last election cycle – in order to put himself and those close to him above the law.

It’s the kind of juicy, implausible story that the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” crowd has been known for since Trump was elected. The claim that the president’s legal team is examining the backgrounds of Team Mueller – as these attorneys are perfectly entitled to do – is much more plausible, though, according to Chait, such actions mark Trump as a budding dictator.

As left-wingers like Chait see it, the president isn’t allowed to defend himself from scurrilous, malicious allegations when he’s a Republican.

Confusing matters is the fact that the straight-shooting president delivered an extraordinarily unusual public flogging of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, upbraiding him behind enemy lines in the New York Times interview. Trump said it was a mistake for Sessions to recuse himself from the Russia probe and that he may not have nominated him for the post if he had known beforehand that the attorney general would make the recusal decision.

It is true that with the benefit of hindsight, Sessions’ recusal, hailed at the time by the media and the rest of the Left as a noble, unifying gesture after a very, very nasty, hard-fought election, now looks boneheaded. Sessions is a good man and an outstanding public servant but he may have been in too much of a hurry to be liked by the Washington swamp. Appointing a special counsel calmed the Left down only briefly. Appeasing the radicals of today’s Democratic Party doesn’t work.

Although the unusual rebuke of Sessions may suggest the former Alabama senator’s days at the Justice Department may be numbered, White House Deputy Press

Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said yesterday the president “still has confidence” in Sessions despite the high-profile criticism...

Still more.

Louise Mensch's Donald Trump Russian Collusion Conspiracy Theories

Interestingly, I posted this one almost one year ago today: "Louise Mensch Implores Me to Come Back to the Light."

Well, who has lost touch with the light? I don't think it's me. But Louise is extremely self-sure of her "truths," to say the least.

She asked me to write for her during her short-lived editorship at Heat Street (a publication whose days are numbered, it turns out), but nowadays she never responds when I say hello on Twitter. She's ensconced herself in a cocoon.

In any case, the very sharp Charles C.W. Cooke has a new essay on Louise's "investigations," at National Review, "Louise Mensch’s Destructive Fantasies":

Mensch, a former British MP, is now the purveyor of fantastical conspiracy theories about Donald Trump and Russia.

A few years back, my father and I voluntarily submitted ourselves to an episode of Question Time, a long-running program on the BBC on which sundry British politicians try to sound as indignant as possible while expressing nothing whatsoever beyond the day’s conventional wisdom. On the panel that evening was one Louise Bagshawe, a Tory MP from London who had a gig on the side as a writer of teen-girl books.

“That woman,” my dad said to me about half-way through the show, “is one of the dullest people I’ve ever seen. Even for Question Time.” So much for plus ça change.

Today, Louise Bagshawe is Louise Mensch, a show-woman and a fantasist of world-class ability. No longer a member of Parliament, Mensch now lives in the United States, where she spends at least 18 hours a day filtering current affairs through the mind of Edward Lear. Over the last six months, Mensch has unleashed her unfiltered stream-of-consciousness on the denizens of her new country — both in short-form on Twitter, which she uses in much the same way as a woodpecker uses a wall, and in longer episodes on her Patribotics blog, which describes itself as “Pro-America, pro-democracy, pro-NATO, pro-Russia, anti-Putin,” but which seems most consistently to be pro-clicks. In both arenas, she has made sure to set herself at the thriving center of a hive of unfastened theorizing and molten-hot dudgeon. If a hot topic can be linked to Donald Trump or to Russia, Louise Mensch will manage it. And if it can’t, she’ll manage it too.

In theory, Mensch represents the fact-checker’s deepest-held fantasy — the moment for which all that training was contrived and intended. In practice, she is uncheckable and unaccountable in precisely the same manner as is a primal scream. Mensch reads like a woman who speaks civics as a third or fourth language that she lost touch with long ago. She has a pidgin grasp on the American settlement, and an ersatz, bastardized relationship with reality. One part novella-fantasy, one part hallway-hearsay, Mensch’s world is one in which an ethereal “they” are omnipresent and omnipotent. “They,” she tells us, are considering executing Steve Bannon, though he hasn’t been charged with so much as speeding in a school zone. “They” have already “sentenced” Rudy Giuliani — to what fate we will presumably find out when someone next mentions his name on television. “They” will soon overturn the election results, and are on the verge of making Orrin Hatch president. Donald Trump, in turn, is perennially but a few steps from the gallows. On the 13th of April, Mensch promised that the “first arrests may be as soon as next week.” Yesterday, she related that the president faced imminent “federal execution.” Presumably, “they” just needed some more time.

Usurpation abounds, at home and abroad, and seems never to be walled in by anything as prosaic as the law. Mensch’s Supreme Court has proactive police powers and a Bruce Willis–esque “marshal” who chases down helicopters and colludes heroically with the rogue justices. Her Congress acts primarily in camera, and may already have informed Trump that he is no longer permitted to use his legal powers. Her FISA courts issue indictments they have no authority to present. And the rules? They’re suggestions, really. The America of Mensch’s imagination is a place in which the entire Republican party is imminently going to jail — on RICO charges, no less — because Paul Ryan is a partisan. What the Da Vinci Code was to Christian theology, Louise Mensch is to James Madison’s handiwork. See how the symbols line up in the moonlight?

It is on the subject of Russia, however, that Mensch has really hit her stride...

Keep reading.

The Tactics Used by Hecklers Against Megyn Kelly Will Soon Be Used Against Rachel Maddow and Others

I said so much on Twitter the other day. Frankly, I was kind of shocked that NBC caved to the mob.

But see Jack Shafer, at Politico, "Megyn Kelly Pantses Alex Jones":

How, exactly, can you examine a newsworthy subject without giving him some sort of a platform? https://t.co/OpQABsvwIn

— POLITICO Magazine (@POLITICOMag) June 19, 2017

For all the pre-interview fuss, NBC’s new star exposed the Infowars host for what he is. But the controversy was never really about him.

The censorious powers of the heckler’s veto have evolved now to the point that people are willing to call for the banning and shunning of works of journalism not yet published. Former Fox News Channel and current NBC News anchor Megyn Kelly got the treatment this week as news of her Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly interview with Infowars mainspring Alex Jones, well before it was scheduled to air June 18, made the rounds. At least the Ayatollah Khomeini waited for the publication of Satanic Verses before he issued a fatwa ordering the murder of its author, Salman Rushdie.

Sandy Hook Elementary families implored NBC News to dump the segment because Jones has called the Newtown, Connecticut, school killings a hoax—by actors, not real people—designed, Jones said, to encourage new gun control laws. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio concurred, writing, “Pull the segment.” The NBC affiliate in nearby Hartford refused to air the episode because the “wounds of that day that have yet to heal.” Fleeing from the controversy, advertiser JPMorgan Chase dropped its spots from the show, and the usual voices damned Kelly for giving Jones “a platform.”

Not to be outshone, Jones performed some culture jamming of his own, releasing his own secretly recorded audio of the pre-interview in which Kelly buttered him up. “It’s not going to be some gotcha hit piece, I can promise you that,” Kelly told Jones on the tape. Predictably, Jones made his own call for a boycott, tweeting, “I’m calling for @megynkelly to cancel the airing of our interview for misrepresenting my views on Sandy Hook.”

When Kelly’s show finally aired, she took the mendacious Jones apart in such a textbook manner you had to wonder what all the shouting had been about. The Jones pattern, she said at the segment’s top, is making “reckless accusations followed by equivocations and excuses” when questioned. The two best examples of this are his promotion of the “Pizzagate“ lies about a satanic child porn ring and his wild allegation that Chobani was “importing Migrant Rapists,” as Infowars hyped its report on Twitter. In both cases, lawsuits have forced Jones to retract and apologize for airing these dishonest stories, and yet in conversation with Kelly he still hedges and quibbles like a con artist in an effort to have his conspiracy pizza and keep his yogurt, too. Likewise with the pathetic claims about the Sandy Hook killings. He’s still throwing the see-through drapery of devil’s advocacy to blur the fact that on most subjects he’s talking out of his tinfoil hat.

Short of waterboarding him, I don’t know what more Kelly could have done to expose Jones’ dark methods...

*****

Most viewers extend to broadcasters like Anderson Cooper, Chris Wallace, Jake Tapper and Erin Burnett the sort of goodwill they draw on to tackle fraught topics and subjects that will end up upsetting somebody. Due to her Fox background, Kelly doesn’t command that sort of goodwill—the protests against her show are more about her than they are Alex Jones or Sandy Hook. Kelly’s enemies, places like liberal agitprop outfit Media Matters for America, which has been riding this story hard, would likely be raising a ruckus if she went to work as a Today co-host and did celebrity fluff.

Would the calls for a Kelly boycott be so insistent if a similar technique hadn’t succeeded in driving Fox’s Bill O’Reilly off his network? My guess is that they wouldn’t. Kelly won this round, but she wasn’t the only one to pay the price. If you like edgy, truth-telling journalism, the spirited campaign against her has written a heckler’s veto playbook that future activists and scolds will eventually apply to your preferred anchor, be it Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity. You’ve been warned.

Fox News Retracts Story on Murdered D.N.C Staffer Seth Rich (VIDEO)

Really interesting developments on this, starting with the Fox News statement on the retraction, at top. Sean Hannity said earlier today that he "retracted nothing," but then on his evening broadcast announced he was "backing off" the story for now.

As noted previously, I don't care for this story. I don't know what evidence there is linking the young man's murder to the Democrat Party. That said, clearly, as seen in Hannity's segment, there is absolutely no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign, Russia, the D.N.C. hacks, or whatever. It's all a scam.

Fox News finally retracts its story on the Seth Rich investigation https://t.co/WTF1ecrYMU

— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) May 23, 2017

A remarkable rant by Hannity on his radio show re: Seth Rich. Read for yourself. "I retracted nothing!" https://t.co/t523hnckwd pic.twitter.com/rY0Wu0FOkS

— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) May 23, 2017

Max Boot, the Perpetually Unhappy Camper

Honestly, if I was Max Boot, I'd just focus on writing books and academic scholarship. Since the nomination (and then election) of Donald Trump, Boot's been publishing one piece after another bemoaning all the old institutions to which he had ties, first it was the GOP itself, now it's Fox News.

He's really pathetic. And that's the saddest thing. I used to find him interesting. I used to respect him. Now look what's happened. All because of President Trump. I don't know. Chalk it up to "Trump Derangement Syndrome."

In any case, here's Boot, at Foreign Policy, "The Seth Rich ‘Scandal’ Shows That Fox News Is Morally Bankrupt":

.@MaxBoot: Fox News has allowed itself to become a sensationalist information weapon for the Kremlin. https://t.co/mIkK8Ecz1y

— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) May 22, 2017

The network I once respected as a necessary antidote to liberal media now peddles craven lies and Russian disinformation.

It was just a coincidence, but a telling one, that Roger Ailes died on May 18 just as the television powerhouse that he created, the Fox News Channel, was propagating a conspiracy theory involving a Democratic National Committee staffer named Seth Rich, whose murder in Washington, D.C., last summer remains unsolved.

If you don’t watch Fox News, read Breitbart or the Drudge Report, or listen to Rush Limbaugh, you likely don’t have any idea who Seth Rich was. If, however, you are a devotee of those dubious news sources, you have been fed a grab bag of unsubstantiated allegations designed to make you think that Rich was murdered by some kind of Democratic Party cabal for having revealed the party’s secrets to WikiLeaks.

These spurious insinuations have been put forward (before being largely recanted) by a sometime Fox News contributor named Rod Wheeler. Never mind that Rich’s family, the Washington police force, CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, among others, have debunked these conspiracy theories, showing there is no evidence that Rich was a WikiLeaks source, much less that his murder has anything to do with the stolen Democratic Party emails. Sean Hannity, one of the last of the old guard hired by Ailes to rule prime time, nevertheless devoted three separate segments of his show last week to the “DNC murder mystery.” On Sunday morning, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was pushing the same allegation about Rich’s “assassination” on Fox & Friends. Lou Dobbs has spouted these theories on Fox Business Network, too.

Fox’s tasteless conspiracy-mongering has been denounced by the Rich family, which wants the far-right to stop exploiting their son’s tragic death, but it has found support in an unlikely quarter. Ever happy to play the troll, the Russian Embassy in London tweeted: “‪#WikiLeaks ‪informer Seth Rich murdered in US but MSM was so busy accusing Russian hackers to take notice.”

I'm not up on the Seth Rich story, and that's not by accident. I personally stay away from conspiracy theories. That said, I distinctly remember Julian Assange saying, at the time of Rich's death, that he suspected that his sources were putting their lives in danger. I don't recall him conceding that Seth Rich had leaked documents to WikiLeaks. He simply said that powerful people had an invested interest in making those leaks stop. Assange and WikiLeaks (one and the same, as far as I know) have stated consistently that they do not divulge the names of their sources. But that's about as far as I'll go.

Oh, well, that, and Max Boot is a special snowflake neocon wienie.

BONUS: At the New York Times, "How the Murder of a D.N.C. Staff Member Fueled Conspiracy Theories."

Louise Mensch Claims President Trump's About to Be Impeached

Following-up from yesterday, "Leftist Conspiracy Theories Flourishing in the Age of Trump."

I don't know. It's like spraying machine gun fire: you're likely to hit something after a while. Maybe Louise is about to get lucky and prove her detractors wrong.

Seen on Twitter (be sure to click through for the tweets):

Twitter Loses It When Louise Mensch Says ‘Marshal of the Supreme Court’ Told Trump About Impeachment https://t.co/jJp3gXUren pic.twitter.com/NNRFxTqvLf

— Mediaite (@Mediaite) May 20, 2017

This is just sad now. Eternal shame on the people with prominent platforms who have enabled this. https://t.co/ejxSElGnA7 pic.twitter.com/wcA5ngLCdg

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 20, 2017

Leftist Conspiracy Theories Flourishing in the Age of Trump

I don't usually post Vox articles, but this one's talking about Louise Mensch, who I used to consider a friend on Twitter. She invited me to write at Heat Street, where's she's the editor-in-chief. But she writes at Patribotics blog, publishing all her theories and "investigations" into Russian meddling. She's acquired the reputation as a nutjob. It's kind of sad.

In any case, at Vox, "Democrats are falling for fake news about Russia: Why liberal conspiracy theories are flourishing in the age of Trump."

Democrats are falling for fake news about Russia https://t.co/mZX2ZxzXDp

— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) May 19, 2017

Lauren Southern: Top 2016 Election Conspiracies (VIDEO)

Be sure to stay with this to the end. I'm not sure how Ms. Lauren can keep a straight face, but it's pretty funny.

And ICYMI, her new book, Barbarians: How The Baby Boomers, Immigration, and Islam Screwed my Generation.

White Anger, Racial Violence, Economic Despair

It's been two weeks, but leftist hysteria shows no signs of abating any time soon.

Here's Jeff Schechtman, at Alternet, "Election Reflection: White Anger, Racial Violence, Economic Despair, and the Worst Is Yet to Come — A Journalist's Dark View from Flyover Country."

This is an interview with Sarah Kendzior, and it's all transcribed.

(She's a little unglued, but interesting, as I've been saying.)

Sarah Kendzior's Losing It

She's such a perceptive analyst, and often right, that she's gotten carried away by her own predictions of authoritarianism. She's now kinda pathetic.

A message about what we are facing. Please share. #Resist pic.twitter.com/CGMuidgUbg

— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) November 16, 2016

Is There Any Level to Which Democrats Won't Sink? (VIDEO)

Word is InfoWars has been getting a lot more attention these days, considering what's going on and all.

I don't care for it, although I think Alex Jones is a funny character. I'm just not into 9/11 trutherism or (more recently) anti-Semitic conspiracies.

Still, he's pretty hilarious.

Watch:

The Economist Special Report on Russia: Putinism

"Ominous" is the word folks are using to describe this cover at the Economist.

Here's the report, "The threat from Russia: How to contain Vladimir Putin’s deadly, dysfunctional empire."

WikiLeaks sees the conspiracy there, a poorly veiled anti-Semitic conspiracy. Nasty:

The new sober cover of the Economist, which is controlled by Lynn de Rothschild, Clinton's "loyal adoring pal" https://t.co/oTCspy3ddR pic.twitter.com/KuRRfEELLJ

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 22, 2016

Florida Atlantic University Fires James F. Tracy, Professor Who Pushed Conspiracy Theories About Mass Shootings

Kind of fascinating that I've never heard of this guy. Of course, I don't traffic in conspiracy theories.

This guy is literally insane and needs help, bad.

At the New York Times, "Florida Professor Who Cast Doubt On Mass Shootings Is Fired":

MIAMI — A Florida Atlantic University professor who suggested in blog postings and radio interviews that the 2012 massacre of children at Sandy Hook Elementary and other mass shootings were a hoax designed by the Obama administration to boost support for gun control was fired Tuesday.

James F. Tracy, 50, a tenured associate professor of communications at the Boca Raton university, has repeatedly called into question the authenticity of recent mass shootings, including the slaying of churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., and office workers in San Bernardino, Calif. In his blog postings and radio interviews, Mr. Tracy has said the Newtown massacre may have been carried out by “crisis actors” employed by the Obama administration.

Mr. Tracy’s ideas fall into part of a larger movement of Internet conspiracy theorists who believe the spate of mass murders have simply been staged by the government. A few of the theorists do not think the shootings took place at all.

Florida Atlantic University, which first reprimanded Mr. Tracy in 2013, dismissed him less than a month after the parents of 6-year-old Noah Pozner, the youngest victim of the shooting at Sandy Hook in Newtown, Conn., publicly accused the professor of harassment in a Sun Sentinel opinion piece. Lenny and Veronique Pozner, angered by Mr. Tracy’s conspiracy theories, had asked Mr. Tracy to remove a photograph of Noah from his blog, Memory Hole. In return, Mr. Tracy sent them a certified letter demanding proof that Noah ever lived and that the Pozners were his parents.

Mr. Tracy continued his clash with the Pozners on Facebook, where he called the Newtown shootings a “drill,” a reference to a theory that the massacre was an exercise in which no one died staged by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“The Pozners, alas, are as phony as the drill itself, and profiting handsomely from the fake death of their son,” Mr. Tracy wrote in a letter that is attributed to him on the Sandy Hook Hoax Facebook page. Mr. Tracy declined to comment on his termination. His lawyer, Thomas Johnson, also declined to comment on whether Mr. Tracy would seek legal action or file a grievance against the university over his dismissal.

In a column published in December in the Sun Sentinel, Mr. Tracy said the Pozners had mounted a “vicious attack” on him meant to intimidate his employer into firing him. The attacks, he said, stem from his efforts to question “the state-sanctioned Sandy Hook narrative.”

On Wednesday, the Pozners put out a statement to the newspaper, saying that they hoped that Mr. Pozner’s firing “sends a strong message to conspiracy theorists that Sandy Hook and other mass shootings actually happened and that many people, including our little boy, Noah, lost their lives in those shootings.”

Mr. Tracy, who has taught at the university since 2002, has also spread his views in the classroom, saying in interviews that it is his job as an academic to spark debate among students.

Florida Atlantic University ultimately dismissed him on grounds that have nothing to do with his theories or his feud with the Pozners...

More.

And truly bizarre. Makes me feel bad for the families, but then, only a little. The whole gun control agenda has become a cult movement. Better to stay away from all of this sometimes.

U.S. Officials Suspect Islamic State Planted Bomb Aboard Russian Jetliner in Egypt (VIDEO)

Following-up from earlier, "Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Downed Russian Passenger Jet in Egypt (VIDEO)."

There were lots of doubts initially, but not so much now.

At Telegraph UK, "Russian plane crash: US intelligence suggests bomb was planted by Islamic State as Britain suspends Sharm el-Sheikh flights - latest news."

And here's Lester Holt, at NBC Nightly News:

Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Downed Russian Passenger Jet in Egypt (VIDEO)

Well, I warned about conspiracy theories, although I was thinking of the Russian variety, suggesting for example that the U.S. and its "Zionist allies" brought down the plane.

Of course, we could see ISIS conspiracies, except that I don't doubt the Islamic State could bring down a jet liner. If pro-Russian rebels could bring down MH-17, there's no reason to belief ISIS couldn't do the same with Flight 7K9268.

Zero Hedge has the video, "ISIS Releases Video of Alleged Russian Airplane Mid-Air Exposion After It Claims Responsibility For Disaster."

And at the Times of Israel, "Islamic State in Egypt claims it brought down Russian plane; 224 dead: Terror group hails success, although Sinai officials say technical failure led to crash; Russia rejects claim."

A YouTube of the ISIS video is here.

Plus, lots of doubts about the theory, at the Guardian, "Russian plane crash: investigation into cause begins – as it happened."

And at Tornoto's National Post, "Russian Metrojet plane carrying 224 people crashed in Sinai province, Egypt says. There were no survivors."

Air France, Lufthansa Suspend Flights Over Sinai Pending Crash Probe

You think?

At the Times of Israel, "2 European carriers take safety precautions after IS claims responsibility for downing Russian plane with loss of 224 lives."

PREVIOUSLY: "Russian Jet Crashes in Egypt, Killing 224 People (VIDEO)."

Russian Jet Crashes in Egypt, Killing 224 People (VIDEO)

Boy, you can bet there's going to be monstrous conspiracy theories.

At WSJ, "Russian Passenger Jet Crashes in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Killing 224 People":

A Russian passenger jet crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board, after losing contact with aviation authorities on Saturday.

Egyptian officials said the Airbus A321 jetliner, which was operated by Russian carrier Kogalymavia, was flying to St. Petersburg from Sharm El Sheikh, a resort town popular with Russian tourists, when it disappeared from radar screens.

Egypt’s flagship state-run newspaper, Al Ahram, quoted an Egyptian aviation official as saying the plane’s pilot had requested to land at the nearest airport after an unspecified mechanical problem shortly after taking off at 5:50 a.m. local time. The newspaper later cited another Egyptian aviation official as saying the pilot hadn’t made any distress calls or requests to land.

Egypt’s chief prosecutor said the cause of the crash was being investigated. He didn’t say whether terrorism was suspected.

Sinai Province, the Egyptian branch of Islamic State, claimed responsibility for downing the plane, but officials have cast doubt over whether the group has the capabilities to carry out such an attack. Islamic State and its affiliated groups have frequently made exaggerated claims.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to form a state commission to investigate the crash, the Kremlin said Saturday.

The Russian Embassy in Cairo said on its official Twitter account that all those on board were killed.

Mr. Putin “expressed his deepest sympathies to the families of those who died in the crash.”

The wreckage was located south of the city of Al Arish in the sparsely populated, mountainous north Sinai, according to the aviation authority. As many as 50 ambulances were dispatched, it said.

A spokesman for Egypt’s prime minister said 15 bodies had been recovered and sent to a morgue in Cairo, while investigators continued to search the crash site for evidence and victims. One of the black boxes, which record flight data and audio, was located and taken into the custody of the prosecutor general’s office, he said.

According to the spokesman, the passengers comprised 214 Russians and three Ukrainians, of which 138 were women, 62 men and 17 children. The count didn’t include the seven crew members.

According to the Kremlin, Vladimir Puchkov, Russia’s minister of civil defense, emergencies and disaster relief, was ordered to send aircraft to Egypt to aid in the recovery of the wreckage of the aircraft. Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said five aircraft were flying to Egypt with first responders and forensic investigators on board. The ministry also set up a hot line to aid families of the victims.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration in March warned U.S. airlines to avoid flying over the Sinai Peninsula below 26,000 feet. Airline routes traversing the region “are at risk from potential extremist attacks involving antiaircraft weapons,” the FAA said, including shorter-range, shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles. “Some of these weapons have the capability to target aircraft at high altitudes,” or when approaching or departing airports, the U.S. aviation regulator said, noting that an Egyptian military helicopter flying at lower altitudes had been downed by extremists using a missile...

More.

Also at Russia Today, "Bodies of 224 7K9268 crash victims delivered to Cairo morgue," and "Russian A321 fell 'almost vertically', technical fault behind crash."

Fall of Ramadi is Military Humiliation and Humanitarian Disaster

A blistering editorial, at the Wall Street Journal, "Losing in Iraq Again":

No matter how much the Pentagon and White House downplay it, the fall of Ramadi to Islamic State on Sunday shows that President Obama’s strategy is failing. The question now is whether Mr. Obama has the political courage to change or watch Iraq descend into more chaos and perhaps a Sunni-Shiite civil war.

For now U.S. officials prefer the sunny days school of military analysis. “Regrettable but not uncommon in warfare,” says Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Secretary of State John Kerry added that “I am absolutely confident in the days ahead that [Ramadi’s fall] will be reversed.” This recalls the generals who said in 2006 that Iraq was making progress even as hundreds turned up in the morgues each night.

In reality, the fall of Ramadi is a military humiliation and humanitarian disaster with large political consequences. The city is the provincial capital of Anbar province, Iraq’s Sunni heartland. U.S. forces waged a block-by-block battle to reclaim Ramadi from insurgents during the 2007 surge because it is crucial to the sectarian geography of Iraq. Winning there proved that the U.S. could prevail anywhere, and it provided the psychological momentum to swing the Sunnis to America’s side.

So much for that. The Obama Administration strategy has rested on a plan to arm Sunni tribesmen friendly to the government in Baghdad to fight ISIS. That’s a good idea in theory, since the Iraqi army has proved mostly ineffective against ISIS while Iraq’s Shiite militias answer to Iran and are brutal and unwelcome in Anbar.

But wars aren’t waged in theory, and the effort to arm and train the tribes has foundered on Shiite resistance in Baghdad and America’s lack of commitment and urgency. A serious training program began only days ago and Mr. Obama refused to deploy U.S. combat troops to bolster vulnerable Iraqi positions. In Ramadi, ISIS took advantage of a sandstorm that prevented the U.S. from supporting the Iraqis with air strikes. But that only underscores the limitations of relying on air power alone.

The larger problem is that Mr. Obama wants to wage a de minimis campaign against an enemy with maximalist ambitions. The Administration often insists that Iraqis must defend their own country, which is true. But after making the ouster of then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki a condition of U.S. support, the least the U.S. can do is provide meaningful support to his successor, Haider al-Abadi.

That hasn’t happened. “Until now our feeling is that the international support is not convincing,” Selim al-Jabouri, the speaker of Iraq’s parliament, told Reuters in January. Mr. Obama promised Mr. Abadi no new weapons when they met last month in Washington. The number of air sorties flown by the U.S. and its coalition partners—about 3,800 in all since September—averages about 14 a day. The U.S. flew some 47,000 sorties in the first month of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

The White House and its military commanders have also grossly underestimated the resilience of Islamic State. “The enemy is now in a defensive crouch and is unable to conduct major operations,” U.S. Centcom Commander Lloyd Austin told Congress in March, sounding like White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

U.S. attempts to stand up a dependable Sunni fighting force have been seriously damaged. Ramadi’s fall has humiliated Mr. Abadi and discredited his strategy of trusting the U.S. Mr. Maliki and his Iranian backers are angling to return to power—and unleash Shiite militias armed and trained by Iran. The danger is that on present trend the country will soon be divided into a Shiite east dominated by Iran and a Sunni west controlled by Islamic State.

All of this matters far beyond Iraq, or even the Middle East. ISIS is a global threat, attracting more than 22,000 foreign fighters, including 3,700 from the West. A recent recording from ISIS leader Abu-Bakr Baghdadi, released in English, Russian, Turkish, German and French, called on Muslims to “migrate to the Islamic State or fight in his land.” Nearly all of the “lone wolf” terrorists in the West—including the May 3 attack in Garland, Texas—were inspired by ISIS.

The best way to diminish Islamic’s State appeal is to drive it as quickly as possible from the territory it holds...

Pathetic. The fruits of Democrat Party foreign policy. A disaster all around. And all the left can do is blame the evil BOOOSSHHH!

More.