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Dr. Spook and the Manchurian President?
Well, that’s a heck of a story to wake up to:
During a special briefing last Friday, leaders of the intelligence community gave President-elect Donald Trump a synopsis of unsubstantiated and salacious allegations that Russian operatives had obtained potentially compromising personal and financial information about the president-elect, a U.S. official confirmed Tuesday.
I gather that everyone who’s anyone in Washington has read the memo containing these allegations, but no one thought it was worth publishing (until now).
Some thoughts, in random order:
1. It looks as if the first publication to write about this was Mother Jones, on October 31. Here’s how they put it:
And a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence tells Mother Jones that in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump—and that the FBI requested more information from him.
Let’s call the “former senior intelligence officer for a Western country” Dr. Spook, for short. Was Dr. Spook shopping this to every publication in the US? Or just to Mother Jones? Maybe Mother Jones was the only publication willing to publish it? Kurt Eichenwald at Newsweek also seems to have used the memos in his reporting. Did Dr. Spook fax his memos to every journalist in Washington?
2. The story as it’s now being presented is that this became newsworthy because Trump himself had been briefed about it. Who leaked the story that he’d been briefed about it, and why? Why now? Apparently, “multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings” told CNN about this. How many people would have direct knowledge of these briefings in the first place? Why didn’t any of these leaking briefers think to come forward with this before the election, given that everyone in Washington apparently knew about this?
3. As Lawfare blog puts it,
… it is significant that the document contains highly specific allegations, many of which are the kind of facts it should be possible to prove or disprove. This is a document about meetings that either took place or did not take place, stays in hotels that either happened or didn’t, travel that either happened or did not happen. It should be possible to know whether at least some of these allegations are true or false.
If Dr. Spook was passing these memos to every journalist and politician in Washington as early as October 31, at least a few of the key points should have been substantiated by now, wouldn’t you think?
4. John Schindler of 20Committee says that the “GOP was informed back in the spring that Trump was a 1-man FSB kompromat machine come to life. They did nothing. This is on them now.” Was this circulating as early as last spring, then? And no one has made any progress since then in substantiating or discrediting it?
5. Presumably everyone in Hillary’s camp also knew about it, too: It was an oppo research briefing, right? I wonder what kept her from bringing it up?
… the documents reached the top of the FBI by December. Senator John McCain, who was informed about the existence of the documents separately by an intermediary from a western allied state, dispatched an emissary overseas to meet the source and then decided to present the material to Comey in a one-on-one meeting on 9 December, according to a source aware of the meeting. The documents, which were first reported on last year by Mother Jones, are also in the hands of officials in the White House.
McCain is not thought to have made a judgment on the reliability of the documents but was sufficiently impressed by the source’s credentials to feel obliged to pass them to the FBI.
Who is this source? And who’s the Guardian’s source for this story, I wonder? The point of sending an emissary overseas to meet the source is to ensure that only he and the emissary knew of it. So I assume McCain authorized this leak. Why would McCain leak to the Guardian, though? Why not at least leak to a US publication?
7. The Guardian claims that as early as last summer, the FBI applied FISA warrant to monitor four members of the Trump team “suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials.” If so — what’s up with the FBI?
8. If Trump’s the victim of a disinformation campaign, who’s behind it? Is this the intel community’s response to Trump’s claim that they have “no clue?” Hillary’s revenge?
9. It doesn’t help when yet again, Trump replies using exactly the same language the Kremlin does:
10. I don’t understand how our Deep State works. Don’t we have spies of our own in Russia? Why do we need Dr. Spook to tell us this? Why is this only being reported now?
My verdict: I’ve got no idea what’s going on, but this seems fishy.
That said: That people will believe it is Trump’s fault. His behavior toward Putin has been so sycophantic and bizarre that even an extraordinarily weird story like this sounds plausible. If Obama’s refusal to use the phrase “Islamic terrorism” convinced a significant number of Americans that he was a Muslim, the same phenomenon will be at work here — even if these memos prove to be a complete fabrication and fantasy.
It’s entirely plausible to imagine that Trump enjoyed the company of ladies of poor repute when he was in Russia. No one can say, with a straight face, “That’s ridiculous. Donald Trump is an upright and responsible married man and a faithful husband. He would never consort with Slavic hookers.” Exactly no one would be surprised if he had, and exactly no one would be surprised that the Russians taped the encounter.
Trump’s eagerness to adopt the Kremlin’s line in matters of foreign policy and his general mien of moral incontinence will be enough to convince a significant number of Americans that all of these allegations are true.
It won’t be enough for Trump to Tweet indignantly and wait for the media to bore with the story. It won’t. We’ll hear of nothing but this for years to come, I reckon.
What do you make of it?
UPDATE: The Trump Dossier: Dynamite or Disinformation? makes the skeptical case better than I did, and concludes:
In the absence of any evidence, this will do nothing but widen the dangerous divide within American society.
And here’s the irony: that’s exactly what the Kremlin wants. Whether damning proof of complicity with an antagonistic foreign power, or a piece of raw anti-Trump disinformation, at present this cache of documents is probably more effective than any number of hours of programming by Russia’s RT television station – which emerged as the star of the recent and deeply flawed open source on the hacking case – in turning America against itself.
Published in General
Guilty! We all have to watch for it.
NPR Headline for Trump’s speech. No bias here
Watch Live: Trump’s First Press Conference As President-Elect, Annotated
NPR is doing a live transcript of the press conference while they fact check it real time. When did this fact check (spin) real time stuff start?
http://www.npr.org/2017/01/11/509137239/watch-live-trump-holds-first-press-conference-as-president-elect
I think the point @bryangstephens, is that this thing is so hokey that it wouldn’t get traction outside the most feverish of the feverswamps if it were about most anyone else. But there isn’t much that’s entirely unbelievable about Trump. I haven’t read but snippets of it (and don’t intend to) but I suspect there’s probably something there that bears some resemblance to the truth, even if it’s only by accident.
“John McCain: I gave Russia blackmail dossier on TRump to FBI”
The reelection of McCain is the reason the Republican agenda will be bogged down by nonsense. Just like it was under George W Bush.
My wife is watching the press conference Trump is having about this right now, and she made asked a question that I think is somewhat salient: Why is Trump talking about this?
This “report” is very obviously fake. It is so fake that pretty much everyone passed on publishing it for months, despite having incentives to do so. Trump has been attacked before, and constantly, with criticisms more substantial than this. So, why throw a press conference to talk about peeing Russian hookers?
My wife’s opinion was that something in there might be actually true to some extent, even if someone made it all up. I don’t buy that, but I’m wondering now whether or not there was bad news that was going to come out today that Trump wants off the front page. It’s his MO to throw up a big showy distraction (e.g. call for a Muslim immigration ban) right when he has bad news (e.g. he had a ruling against him in the Trump University case).
So what’s he up to? Or is this just narcissism? I’m usually OK with narcissism as an explanation for his tweets but it’s a bit of a stretch when he’s escalating to a full press conference.
This is a prime example of corporate irresponsibility. Perhaps Chuck Todd and Lester Holt should be asking their bosses why they’re spending so much time trying to rescue journalism from itself when NBCU has poured $400M into the crap hole known as BuzzFeed.
In short, he is asking for it because he is Trump. No one deserves to have this sort of thing said about them as a slur, and we already know for sure, one part is totally fake (as I linked to above).
So, this is blaming the victim because of his manners. If he did not dress with that short dress on, it would not stick. False attacks on character like this, used to be fought by the entire right. Now, the right blames Trump for it.
Bush II tried to ignore this sort of thing, and it blew up on him. They trashed him and turned Dick Cheney into Darth Vadar. You have to fight back, and Trump, frankly, has done well against the Press so far.
I dunno if that comparison is apt. I mean, I get it in principle but I’m not sure if it’s the right parallel to draw for something as bogus as this.
I mean, this report is about on the same level as the ongoing slander that Dubya and Condi Rice were having an affair. Nobody reported on that because there wasn’t any evidence, but the rumors were around for years. Bush and Cheney were hit with stuff more substantial than this that they should have pushed back on, but the Condi/W trash rumors weren’t one of them, because it was on-it’s-face bogus.
This has been reported. That is different than the slander above.
Again… Trump dealt in this stuff, birtherism, 9/11 truther, Cruz’s father/JFK assaasination, People on the right tolerated or defended it, if not the info itself, ….that it was just Trump being Trump and he can’t help what comes out of his mouth. To deny Trumps role in propagating crap as news is being willfully blind.
We are saying the same thing. Trump dresses trashy, therefore he has it coming. You are just describing how high his dress is.
OMG. I never thought of that. Could..could it all be true?
Soooo …. Your argument here is what, exactly? “It serves him right?”
And what do you have against Russian hookers?
I thought you were a Libertarian?
Hahahaha!
Makes me recall a quote from (of all people) celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain regarding a certain kind of Russian woman …
“…stunningly beautiful but as warm and cuddly as a fistful of quarters.”
yep, and now we have to listen to Trump and his defenders complain about people checking to see if he is wearing underwear…
This is not a reasonable point. What would you call it?
Basically, yes …. If you play with matches, don’t complain when a fire starts.
Boring, repetitive, and tense.
No, we are hearing people say he was asking to be assaulted.
Do we know that that is true? Why would we believe the CIA believed it?
Why wouldn’t it be just a
thing?
It’s the golden rule….. Pee on prostitutes in Russian hotels at your own risk,… oh, no.. the other one.. something about treating others the way you want to be treated.
Right. Trump makes some campaign comments, those are like dressing like a tart, or cat calls. When you produce a 35 page “report” that Trump published as “news” get back to me.
I’m inclined to believe the “former British intelligence guy” story. For one thing, all the news organizations that are now saying “we had this but didn’t report it” seem to agree on that source. For another, Reince Preibus:
Maybe it’s a way of consolidating the support of his base?
It may be that the distinction between “normal” and “abnormal” (as opposed to merely between “good” and “bad”) is particularly important to those likely to support Trump, meaning they’ll be particularly outraged on his behalf about dubious allegations of sexual abnormality.
The allegation is too on-the-nose (“golden”? really?) to not sound like fiction. But to those without a very strong preference on the normal-abnormal axis, it’s not particularly disgusting, just funny. A person who prized chastity, for example, but not sexual normality, would not really have any more reason to be disgusted by believing this rumor: everyone already knows Trump is a serial adulterer and somewhat casual about his sexual appetites – compared to that, a kink is no big deal.
But if you do prize normality, Trump’s admitted sexual sins are at least “healthy”, “normal” ones, and you might be particularly eager to defend the future President against allegations of sexual abnormality.
Yeah we are still waiting for the proof that Trumps PI’s found in Hawaii regarding BHO birtherism or his evidence on who was behind the DNC leaking that he that only he knows about and refuses to release to John Q Public…
I guess we will just have to differ on the level of sin.
It’s not like he’s doing stuff with cigars…
That was different because W did have a DUI.