Gubu.ie

If I had seen this thread title somewhere in the last few years I would have avoided immediately. Right wing nonsense surely. In fact I remember someone over on the other place banned repeatedly for saying this kind of stuff(Pete). Oh how right he was.

Igor Danchenko (the guy behind the Steele Dossier[The Trump+ russia conspiracy theory]) has been indicted for lying to the FBI on 5 counts following special prosecutor Durham's investigation. This dossier led to surveillance on Trump's team during the 2016 election(Cross fire Hurricane).

The dossier, which was circulated to the FBI and media outlets before the November 2016 election, set out still-unproven assertions that Russia had embarrassing information about Trump and some of his Republican campaign's advisers and that Moscow was working behind the scenes to defeat his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

The indictment alleges Danchenko made false statements about information he said he had received from an anonymous caller who claimed the Kremlin might have been helping to get Trump elected. It says Danchenko knew the information to be untrue.

-Reuters

Just did a quick google search for "Trump Russia" and a time range of 2016 - 2017 and these are the kinds of headlines you get:

Trump 'compromising' claims: How and why did we get here? / BBC
80 times Trump talked about Putin - CNN.com /CNN
British spies were first to spot Trump team's links with Russia /Guardian
From Russia with love: why the Kremlin backs Trump /Reuters
Here's what we know about Donald Trump and his ties to Russia /Washington Post

What is the headline now?
"Analyst charged with lying to the FBI".
Fake news boils my blood. This thread title would be much more appropriate.

The document was held up by Democrats to paint Mr Trump as a Russian puppet, a narrative amplified in a feedback loop by most US media for much of the president's four years in office

Mr Steele was hired to conduct the research through a law firm on behalf of Mr Trump's political opponents, including the campaign of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate in the 2016 election.

-BBC(Today)

Information from Danchenko was a central element of a series of reports from a former British spy, Christopher Steele, that the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign commissioned to detail alleged ties between Donald Trump and Russia.

[....]
The new indictment does not allege that Danchenko was working for the Russian government or Russian interests, but it hints that he might have been.

The charges say that in June 2016, a public relations executive and Democratic activist with close ties to the Clinton campaign wrote an email that said of Danchenko: “He is too young for KGB. But I think he worked for FSB. Since he told me he spent two years in Iran. And when I first met him he knew more about me than I did. [winking emoticon].”

[...]
Danchenko is the third person to face criminal charges in the Durham probe, which Barr gave formal special counsel status in October 2020.
Last month, Durham brought an indictment against D.C. lawyer Michael Sussmann that alleged he made a false statement to the FBI’s general counsel early in the Russia probe. Sussmann, who has pleaded not guilty, is accused of misleading the FBI by denying that he was representing the Democratic National Committee or any other client when he passed along suspicions about potential ties between computers at Trump Tower and a Russian bank.

In January of this year, a former FBI attorney, Kevin Clinesmith, was sentenced to a year probation for altering an email related to a surveillance request that was part of the Russia investigation.

-Politico

That surveillance request was granted thanks to Mr. Clinesmith's falsifying of information. A former FBI attorney. Sussmann's indictment alleges he told Baker(FBI general counsel) that he did not represent a client for the purposes of their meeting(Sussmann presented what he and others believed was evidence of potential communications between computer servers at the Russian Alfa-Bank and the Trump Organization), when he was actually representing the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign. Sussman had stated during a 2017 congressional deposition that he sought the meeting with Baker on behalf of an unnamed client, a cybersecurity expert who had analyzed the server communications data.

Yep. The amount of weirdness that has gone on in the past several years with US Dems painting themselves as incorruptible Saviours and all opposition as literal deplorable demons, and the media completely playing along, una voce, and calling any people who said "hold on a sec" about anything conspiracy theorists, etc. It's been an odd old time to watch.

Not that there has not always been lots of weirdness on all sides, but there were at the sa…login to view the rest of this post