We haven’t talked about this but the red warning lights are pinging.
Take a look at Ben Sasse during the Barr testimony.
None of this makes sense to me.
Ben Sasse references page 129-144 of the Mueller Report and how it speaks to Deripaska. Remember, if the Mueller team can escape their inquiry by finding Trump innocent, but leave the impression of overwhelming Russian GUILT, then the inquiry is deemed valuable and the Dems are left with the conclusion “Hillary only lost because of Russia = Trump is illegitimate”
It appears imperative to the intel community to paint Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election as a big deal, something for which we need to form committees, spend vast sums of taxpayer dollars, and guard against for 2020. Also, if Russian involvement is legitimate, then previous actions by FBI/DOJ/CIA – spying on the Trump campaign – would be deemed legitimate = we did it to protect you.
At the Barr hearing on Mueller’s Report, Sasse comes out of the box with questions disparaging Oleg Deripaska. Barr says he would rather not give his opinion in an open setting. Not to be deterred, Sasse goes on to quote a publicly available document from US Treasury. Sasse lists a litany of Deripaska’s “crimes and allegations” and presumes “he’s a bad guy”. Yet, Sasse goes on to call Deripaska a “bottom-feeding scum-sucker”. Ouch! “And he has absolutely no alignment with the interests of the US people”, Sasse finishes.
Well, we know that’s not…. quite….. true. Deripaska’s interests definitely aligned with John McCain, Mueller, and the CIA on several occasions.
- We know Mueller offered Deripaska 25 million dollars to help get Levinson out of Iran. Levinson was McCabe’s mentor and old boss to both McCabe and Ohr in SDNY, remember?
- Oleg also wanted a VISA to the USA and Hillary denied it, which is, perhaps, why Levinson is still in Iran.
- We also know, according to John Solomon of The Hill, McCabe approached Deripaska in NYC, for information about Trump colluding with Russia, and Oleg laughed.
- We know about Senator Warner and his conversations with Adam Waldman, the lawyer for both Chris Steele and Oleg Deripaska. Adam Waldman stopped representing Deripaska the day before Deripaska was sanctioned by our Treasury.
- And then…….. there’s that little matter of John McCain’s 70th birthday, on board Oleg Deripaska’s super-yacht….. which was docked in Montenegro.
- And McCain’s push for Montenegro to be added to the NATO list of countries, so we are defending Montenegro, which is largely considered a Russian playground on the Mediterranean. Background see here: Link
- Oh, let’s not forget the old Soviet Naval base in Montenegro, bought for a pittance by Rothschild and Deripaska, who turned it into a super yacht marina…… where John McCain had his 70th birthday party.
- And the subsequent fundraisers for John McCain, hosted by Rothschild, in London, prior to the election of 2008.
- And who could forget Nastya, the Belarus model, mistress to Deripaska, who gave classes on “how to seduce a billionaire”, but was arrested in Thailand. She claimed to have been arrested because she had information about Donald Trump. Link
What a tangled web. Deripaska has been involved in US Politics for quite a while but let’s get back to Ben Sasse. Ben continues giving his speech during the Barr hearing and claims “Manafort was on Deripaska’s payroll”, and Sasse tries to imply a nefarious reason (Deripaska loyalty) as to why Manafort would volunteer to work for Candidate Trump. Well, that’s not an entirely accurate picture either. Deripaska and Manafort tried to put the deal together for Black Sea Cable, but the deal never went through. Although much has been made of this failed deal, Deripaska did not lose the entire 18 million (only about 2 million). This incident has been painted as the source of contention between Manafort and Deripaska, but it does not pass the smell test.
Then, at about 3:30 in the video, Sasse sums up his ‘speech’ and pivots. Sasse’s mission of establishing Deripaska as a bad man was completed. Sasse pivots to FINALLY ask a question to Barr, in essence, “what can we do to avoid this problem in the future.”
The setup is glaringly odd.
If Sasse is worried about foreign intel agencies in our elections, he did not need a long-winded prerequisite about Deripaska and Manafort. See what I mean? Why the over the top language about Deripaska, “bottom-feeding scum-sucker” when we know our intel agencies AND the hero of Ben Sasse (John McCain) seemed to like Deripaska. Did I mention…. none of us have ever seen any proof of GRU involvement in influencing our elections….. we just have the word of CrowdStrike….. and the Mueller team.
We’re left with Senators and media, nodding in agreement about Russian interference, but what do we actually have as proof? From Mueller/CrowdStrike we have three main areas.
1. We have the Mueller indictment of military members of the GRU, which Russia denies and we know will never be brought to trial – even though Putin offered Mueller to trade info at the Helsinki Summit.
2. We have a few companies and individuals who worked for an alleged Russian troll farm indicted. The case is being defended by American lawyers, in a DC court, and the Mueller case is in trouble. It’s not going well for Mueller. Don’t be surprised to see this case fade away.
3. We have the charge of Russians buying approximately $164,000 worth of Facebook Ads. I looked at this one myself. From Congressional testimony of Facebook execs, we know the ads disparaged BOTH Hillary and Trump. We know the ads were placed for several months before and AFTER the election “to sow discord in the USA”. Well, I took a look at Facebook ad revenue at the end of Q1 of 2017. Facebook reported more than 9 billion dollars in ad revenue for a single quarter. Thus, if we do the math $164K/9 billion = .0000182222. Huh? That’s not even 2 thousandths of 1% of Facebook ads. AND the actual occurrence would be even less, since we know the ads were purchased over several quarters.
This is why we spent 3yrs of our time investigating interference by Russians? Think of the billions of dollars in media time spent on this subject. Think of the relatives not invited to Thanksgiving dinner because of the controversy. Think of the damage to our foreign policy. Wow, we could have teamed up with Russia in the Middle East against Islamic extremism or with Russia as an ally against China.
Yet, for some reason, our intel community, the press, and power brokers don’t want the USA and Russia to be friends. Wonder why that is………?
We have been way ahead of the curve on the Ukraine intrigue. I see Ben Sasse on the horizon. His reaction makes no sense to me, whatsoever, and we need to know why.
