Tag: trump russia

Have the Mass Arrests Started Yet?

Mike Rothschild

You might have heard that on March 24th, Attorney General William Barr released a short summary of the (presumably) much longer final report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The finding, at least that we’ve been told: Trump and his campaign did not actively collude with Russian interests, and that there wasn’t enough evidence to either charge or exonerate Trump with obstruction of justice.

Obviously, this doesn’t end the many other investigations currently looking into pretty much everything Trump has ever done. And there’s a metric ton of litigation to follow on from Barr’s letter. But to Trump/Russia true believers, even just this cursory summary is a crushing blow. And to Trump supporters and Russia skeptics, it’s total victory.

And to QAnon supporters? It’s nothing less than the first step in the final destruction of the deep state, leading to centuries of secrets being brought to light, darkness banished, evil punished, and of course, lots and lots of arrests.

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Every Robert Mueller Indictment, Ranked

Mike Rothschild

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has returned indictments against 19 people so far. While he’s got a long way to go before breaking Watergate’s record of 69 indictments (nice), Mueller has also nailed more people much faster.

They are a relatively random collection of Trump staffers and Russian trolls, most of whom have never met. But it’s important that we understand who they are, what they did, and how much they’ll mean to the grander case against Trump that Mueller is pursuing.

So I ranked them all in order of importance, and of their role in the Trump/Russia fiasco. Ranking bad people is fun!

19. Vadim Vladimirovich Podkopae – A low-ranking researcher and shitposter at the troll farm. If you were arguing with a broken-English Twitter account, it might have been this guy.

18. Gleb Igorevich Vasilchenko – Another rank and file Internet Research Agency poster who pretended to be American and dumped crap on social media. Meh.

17. Vladimir Venkov – Yet another staff troll at the Internet Research Agency. Apparently, he’s not cool enough to get his middle name used in the indictment.

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We Were Sitting Ducks For Russian Trolling

Mike Rothschild1 Comment

In the wake of the surprising indictments of 13 Russians involved in the coordinated trolling of the 2016 election, online arguments raged as to what impact it had on Donald Trump’s win.

But the already-fertile ground that the misinformation landed on was left mostly unexplored.

We know how Russia trolled us. But we still don’t really know why. And given the fairly low amount of effort they put into it, we don’t know why it worked.

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Missing Texts? Golf Fees? Deep State? A Guide to Conservative Infotainment Terms

Mike Rothschild1 Comment

If you want an alternate view of the Robert Mueller investigation into President Trump and Russia, just spend a few minutes taking in right wing infotainment.

It’s a fantasy land of non-stop TV, radio, and internet catastrophy where Trump is the victim of a vast conspiracy involving the liberal media, globalist financiers, Obama-era holdovers in the brutally corrupt Justice Department and FBI, and a Special Counsel hopelessly compromised by conflicts of interest.

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What Is “The Memo?” And Why Are Russian Bots Demanding to Release It?

Mike Rothschild5 Comments

If you’ve spent time on Twitter in the last 24 hours (and if you haven’t, congratulations), you’ve likely seen an odd hashtag blowing up political and Trump-supporter feeds: #ReleaseTheMemo.

Like virtually everything related to the Republican role in investigating Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, it’s a mix of bad faith, conspiracy theorizing, memes, blaming the Clintons and Obama, and Russian bots. So many Russian bots.

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