Adam Schiff’s Incredible, Incurable Credulity

Putin henchman ready to assassinate Medvedev by pillow
https://twitter.com/almostjingo/status/1054963776661938176
(hat tip to Rosie Memos @almostjingo for tweeting)Rep. Adam Schiff, who takes the chair of the House Intelligence Committee in January, has a nose for hot tips about his bete noire, Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as a strong bent toward credulousness.  On October 23, 2018, Schiff solemnly told a young audience at the old Hillary Clinton/John Podesta Center for American Progress Action Fund that he had been told that Putin has one of his henchmen follow Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev around with a pillow to smother him in his sleep if he ever gets out of line.

No, the video contains no hint that Schiff was speaking tongue in cheek.  Perhaps worse, no one in the audience laughed (where do they recruit such credulous young folks?).

Be sure to scroll down for images of the pillow-carrier caught in action. :-))  He apparently has no reason to fear “identification,” since, according to Schiff’s source, “Medvedev is nothing.”

On a more serious note, it was 22 months ago that I challenged Schiff as the “Russian hacking” accusations were proliferating. ( See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdOy-l13FEg ) In the 2-minute clip, Schiff recites language highly relevant today as the Deep State tries desperately to brand Julian Assange a “known participant” — that is, an active conspirator with Russia, and not merely Russia’s “useful idiot.”

Some of our “Justice” officials today apparently think they can detour around 1st amendment hurdles if they can dredge up, or manufacture, “evidence” enabling them to use the Espionage Act of 1917 against Assange.

At think tanks like the Center for American Progress, hope springs eternal.  Impatience too.  As poor Schiff knows, Mueller has been at it for a year and a half — and FBI super-sleuth Peter Strzok for a half-year before that, after which he complained to FBI lawyer/girlfriend Lisa Page that “there is no big there there.”  But when Schiff takes the chair in January, God knows what they’ll find!

Meanwhile back at the ranch, President Donald Trump and his chief advisers give no indication they are aware of what to expect, if Trump continues to allow the Justice Department to slow-walk his order to declassify crucial documents that could — in a lawful world — land ex-FBI Director James Comey, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former CIA Director John Brennan, et al. behind bars.
The stakes are very high.  By all indications Trump is afraid — and not only of pillows.

Those wishing more background on the rudderless Schiff may wish to click on:
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Will the Gray Lady Commit Hari-Kari over Assange?

Timm interviews James Goodale, the former NY Times lawyer who insisted, correctly, that publication of the Pentagon Papers would enjoy 1st amendment protection.  Will the NYT now make an exception for Julian Assange, and thereby set “an incredibly dangerous precedent?”  And is today’s legal profession so cowed by the Deep State, as to enable suppression of the press — as in Germany 85 years ago?
 
Goodale points to the huge stakes involved in a step that would emasculate the 1st amendment that Jefferson, Madison, Mason, and other Founders saw as the core protection of our freedom.  What seems about to happen has implications far beyond the unseemly effort to “get” Assange, and to hold his case up as a high-profile object lesson as to what government is now able to do — given the widespread abdication of responsibility on the part of co-opted lawyers and timid journalists.

Greenwald: 1st Amendment in Peril; Johnstone on Dem “Karma”


As the Obama DOJ Concluded, Prosecution of Julian Assange for Publishing Documents Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedom
By Glenn Greenwald, November 16, 2018
https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16/as-the-obama-doj-concluded-prosecution-of-julian-assange-for-publishing-documents-poses-grave-threats-to-press-freedom/

The “Resistance” Struggles To Justify Support For Trump’s Prosecution Of Assange
By Caitlin Johnstone, November 19, 2018
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/11/19/the-resistance-struggles-to-justify-support-for-trumps-prosecution-of-assange/

Last Tuesday former National Intelligence Director James Clapper was asked why President Obama, two days before he left town, told a press conference that intelligence “conclusions” about “Russian hacking” were “inconclusive.” Clapper said he could not explain that.

(See:
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/11/14/clappers-credibility-collapses/ ) The reference was to one of the key conclusions of the so-called “Intelligence Community Assessment” authored by “hand-picked” analysts and briefed to Obama on January 5, 2017 (published the following day).

Here’s are the words Obama chose to use, less than two weeks later, at his final news conference (January 18), answering a question from Jeff Mason of Reuters.  Obama:

“ … the conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked.” (emphasis added)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/politics/obama-final-press-conference.html

Watching the back and forth in media reporting over the past couple of weeks, it seems a safe bet that Mueller & Associates have finally conjured up enough “evidence” to “prove” WikiLeaks was indeed “witting,” and that this — by some stretch — justifies indicting and prosecuting Julian Assange (the 1st amendment be damned).
So what about us?  Do we stand by as, well, bystanders?  Better to ponder the following warning four decades ago by Hannah Arendt.  It sure looks like time for bystanders to become “winter soldiers?”

“The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed?

“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows.

“And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”

“Progressives” Rally to Protect Mueller; Prefer to Wait for Godot

By Ray McGovern, November 11, 2018
 
“Hope springs eternal.”  As MoveOn and other Democratic Party oriented organizations orchestrate pre-emptive demonstrations to protect Saint Robert Mueller and his endless investigation, it seems only fair to ask how much more time they think he needs. Is it not time to wind things up?
 
After all, it is not as though Mueller was some kind of neophyte when appointed a year and a half ago to investigate collusion, if any, between Russia and the Trump campaign.  Mueller had headed the FBI for 12 full years.  If he didn’t know who might be able to tell him where the bodies are buried, so to speak, could it possibly be that there are no bodies of the kind he is searching for?
 
So far, the wrong bodies have been inadvertently exhumed — those of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, lawyer Lisa Page, and lover/sleuth Peter Strzok, for example.  Clearly, they are not the ones for whom Mueller mounted a full-court press to force a turn-over.

A counter-intuitive Guardian report [[[[[  https://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/53305-thousands-rally-to-protect-mueller-and-a-historic-victory-for-voting-rights ]]]]] brought to mind relevant reporting in the past on Mueller, under whom former FBI Division Counsel and Special Agent Coleen Rowley worked.  She got to know him in an  immediate way via his reactions to the two memoranda she wrote directly to him (later made public) about his covering up several still-not-satisfactorily-explained FBI screw-ups that helped make the attacks of 9/11 possible, and about his support for the fraudulent “intelligence” on WMD before the war on Iraq.

In a February 2018 article (see link below), Coleen Rowley and Nat Parry found it more than somewhat odd — “nuts,” actually — that “liberals” were going to such inordinate lengths to defend Mueller and his predicate-poor probe.
https://raymcgovern.com/2018/02/09/this-is-nuts-liberals-launch-largest-mobilization-in-history-in-defense-of-russiagate-probe/

 
More recently, another related piece was posted here:
https://raymcgovern.com/2018/09/21/a-must-read-on-meuller/
And for those who wish still more detail from former insider Rowley, her latest can be found here:
https://raymcgovern.com/2017/06/06/russia-gates-mythical-heroes-comeymueller-birds-of-a-feather/
 
Last, added below is a link to other Mueller-relevant reporting on Russia-gate:
https://raymcgovern.com/2017/06/06/russia-gates-mythical-heroes-comeymueller-birds-of-a-feather/