It’s a good thing for House Republicans that they lack the capacity for shame. Otherwise, the revelation that Russian operatives have been leading them around by their dicks would cause them to die of it: CNN — The former FBI informant charged with lying about the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine told investigators after his arrest that Russian intelligence officials …
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Special counsel David Weiss is also facing a unique dilemma as both the erstwhile dupe and current prosecutor of Smirnov. Weiss is another Trump-appointed US attorney whom AG Merrick Garland chose to head up a politically fraught investigation, this time into the president’s son: (TPM gift link)
Hunter Biden’s lawyers are now claiming, as part of their effort to force new disclosures by Weiss’s office, that it was new or newly specific accusations from Smirnov which scuttled the plea deal which blew up as it was being agreed to in a federal court room. That point about the plea deal remains an accusation and obviously an interested one from Biden’s attorneys. But given what we’ve learned over the last week from the prosecution side — the folks who were repeatedly duped and took actions on the basis of disinformation directly from Russian intelligence — it seems to me highly likely that it’s true.
A semi-side note here is that I can’t see how Weiss’s office can manage its two cases at once. It’s prosecuting Smirnov for knowingly injecting Russian disinformation into U.S. law enforcement. He’s also prosecuting Hunter Biden for charges that appear to stem from the dissolution of the plea deal, which was itself quite likely tainted by Smirnov’s manipulation. How can you possibly do those two things credibly at once? Is Weiss going to take the stand at Smirnov’s trial as one of Smirnov’s marks and explain how he tricked him into blowing up Biden’s plea deal? While he’s also prosecuting the cases that stem from blowing up that plea deal? That seems absurd.
Yep, it sure does. Marshall also notes that mainstream news outlets haven’t covered themselves in glory either. After serving as a conduit for Russian operatives who sowed discord with hacked DNC emails, most MSM outlets hesitated to run with the Hunter Biden laptop story in the waning days of the 2020 election.
That’s what they should have done since the provenance of the laptop material was unknown and followed a well-established influence operation pattern. But in the days since, they allowed themselves to be shamed by clowns in the House GOP and fascism-adjacent oligarch Elon Musk into repudiating their original, correct decision. And they still aren’t connecting the dots.
The real issue, as I note above, is the reporters, editorialists and commentators, who vouched for and credited this whole edifice of lies and bullshit. Yes, they guffawed when James Comer came forward yet again with more revelations that never quite panned out. But they didn’t give up hope. They were always waiting for the next revelation. Comer and his Republican colleagues hadn’t provided “hard evidence” yet but there sure was a lot of smoke.
This entire thing has been based on Russian plants and intelligence operations from the start. Every bit of it. It’s been obvious. And yet, well … they’re all dupes. Somehow almost a decade after this whole thing started we’re shocked to see, wow, Weiss’s office was being led around by another cat’s paw of the Russian intelligence services. We’re shocked. But why are we shocked? Every last person among the serious people of the nation’s capital and the sprawling thing called elite received opinion has egg on their face. And it’s not even clear they fully realize it yet.
Putin has a lot riding on the upcoming election and much to gain from re-empowering his stooge Trump, so the disinformation onslaught will be fierce. To repeat a point made in another post about how our shitty political media actively sabotages democracy, we can’t count on the Fourth Estate to help us defend democracy. We’ll have to find a way to win with their dead weight strapped to our backs.