IDK, 51 intelligence agents swore on a stack of Bibles that Hunter Biden's laptop was made in Moscow, so who you gonna believe, the NYT or your own thought processes?
I meant primarily "Democrats" supporters. Most of their Congressmen and women are, of course, lying pieces of shit, not forgetting their hacks in the media.
The fortified election should be exposed for the fraud that it was. however I think it helped the cause because Trump is considerably more than he was in 2020
Not going to happen, the CIA/FBI are bigger than Trump, or Biden, and his cabinet.
Think for a moment, there is no reason to keep the JFK files locked up, the only entities left to point a finger at are the CIA and FBI, even the people who ran them are either in their 90s or dead.
Another file to be opened should be the 9/11 files, but Trump won't touch that, Adelson/Netanyahu have him on a much shorter leash than that!
Agree - enough is enough and this bad behavior has to become painfully consequential, not consequence-free. Our system has proven resilient (see the 2024 Election Results) but the opportunity cost of this behavior is hugely detrimental to our society. The quantitative costs of Russia-gate are disgusting enough. The societal costs - we are still paying those, sadly.
The only thing I disagree with you about is the idea that we have EVER had an honest Government. However, there have always been truth tellers and "leakers" in the Government and honest Politicians as well. Sadly most vote for more and more weapons and support any Military Action no matter how immoral it is and how much it is based on lies.
I second that .... EXACTLY RIGHT: Thanks, Matt, for continuing to report about Russiagate. The architects of Russiagate really are disgusting scum (mildest phrase I will use here online).
Russiagate was the equivalent of the McCarthy era. Shouldn’t the bad actors and their actions not be exposed? The challenge is that the corporate media is complicit in Russiagate so the exposure will be limited to outlets that are not in CYA mode.
IMO Russiagate was far worse than the McCarthy debacle. Vastly more people were targeted in Russiagate for what amounted to fabrications.
In the 50's there were reasonable suspicions about Communist influence in the West and the US. The blacklists though were an unreasonable reaction when efforts were made to bring the 'bad actors' to light.
Russiagate, from the outset, was a scripted gameplan of malfeasance and untruths designed to distract and confuse the US public from discovering what leftist political operatives were attempting to achieve by discrediting a viable candidate running for the office of President.
Russiagate was simply an attempted coup (by the Clinton campaign, FBI, CIA, possibly MI6, and the mainstream media) to overturn the results of a legitimate election.
Actually there were no reasonable suspicions, 90% of the McCarthy 'red scare' was to kill unions, it was all part of Smedley Butler's Racket, he was before that time and just saw only the military part of the corruption.
Admittedly there were a lot of 'Big Guys' then too, so maybe their interests were threatened?
Maybe killing some of the unions wasn't such a bad idea. Why would teachers and postal workers need unions at all if they'd been getting fair treatment from their employers?
Watergate was a story about a break-in at the Democrat HQ at the Watergate done by a group of shady Republicans known as 'The Plumbers.' Nixon had NOTHING to do with it. But Nixon had an enemies list. and when He found out about this break-in, he tried to disassociate himself and the party from this group engaging in a COVER-UP. Nixon's on crime was the cover up- obstruction of justice. Hillary Clinton wiped information off her servers that were under subpeona and got NO PENALTY whatsoever. Nixon was treated like the worst criminal ever...partly because, well, he was right. He did have enemies!! But Waterage is a Greek tragedy. a person undone by his own fatal flaw (Nixon's paranoia and enemies' list). Had Nixon let it go, he would have probably been accused by his enemies, but thats all. He had no role. So Russia-gate is a quizzical moniker to me. Russia-gate would be better known as Fabriaction-gate. It is a fabricated tale, and that is the point. It just happens to use 'Russia.' The name Fabricationgate would shine a brighter light on all the Psy-Ops strategies used by Democrats against Trump. While Trump is no huggable lovey-dovey candidate, he is not the ogre Democrats portray him as, and many many Demcoats did far worse. We could go back to the Parkland Hospital doctors (Dallas) who attended to JFK immediately on that fateful day and knew on Day One that JFK was shot from the front, not the rear (where Oswald was alleged to be) and THEY were ordered to be silent on which wounds were entry or exit wounds. But now they are talking, this information is OUT. Who kiiled Kennedy, really? Why was that investigation subverted from day 1? The Warren Commission is the longest-lasting misinformation-Op in the history of this country. Why? What DID they know? When did they know It? <the Watergate Questions re-appear> Why DID they lie to us from Day-one? By comparison, Trump's 'lying' is chump change. There is also climate change, the vaccine, the virus, Fauci, Wuhan, and so much to investigate—so little time. I am no wacko, but be careful what your government says that you choose to believe. Trump's election was substantially because of people who are waking up to this fact. The lying over Biden's health was a watershed- maybe even a heath-gate for the Dems...
Watergate may have been the second Deep State attempt to neutralize a president, after the JFK assassination. Remember the players in the break-in: former FBI and CIA goons, E. Howard Hunt ,James McCord, former FBI G. Gordon Liddy, and the CIA's Cuban operators. Also, remember who spilled the beans to the WaPo reporters: Mark Felt (aka Deep Throat) who was then the sitting Associate Administrator of the FBI.
Why go after Nixon, one might ask. Same reason to go after Kennedy. People forget how 'liberal' Nixon was. He initiated detente with Russia, he met with Mao and established full diplomatic relations with Communist China, he ended the draft, and eventually the war in Vietnam. On the domestic side Nixon established the EPA, and OSHA, he signed the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. He also signed off on the 26th Amendment lowering the voting age from 21 to 18. He was simply more liberal in many ways than Democrats Clinton, Obama and Biden put together. Plenty of reasons, as Bill Burr would say.
So yes, by all means investigate Russiagate while it is still fresh in most peoples' minds, sadly it is probably too late to reopen the Watergate coup.
A great recitation of things accomplished under the Nixon administration. I am a McGovern voter at the age of 18 in 1972, but look at what good was done EXCEPT --- Viet Nam. But that doesn't explain Deep Throat. Or does it?
I first 'met' you, Matt, when you were at the eXile, many decades ago.
Not in person, but through your writing. I knew nothing about you and assumed you to be much, much older than your tender years back then. But I so admired your work. A truth-teller in a sea of mirrors. You were a "must-read."
My life took a shift; I walked away from the media landscape and I lost you. Finally saw you were at Rolling Stone. "Ah, good on him!"
And now...
I am proud I ID'ed you as a great reporter and writer almost 30 years ago.
I don't have many heroes. Too old and too cynical for that. But you ... you remain one. A person who truly just seeks the truth and is an 'old-style' [if only in our dreams] reporter who tries to be objective with every fiber of his being.
You fight a good fight. And you've taken the blows. I've been there, too. I know the struggles, the self-examination and the sadness that flows from this.
I sometimes feel like a mother to you. I recognize your pain, confusion, and sorrow. But you keep moving. Somehow you stay strong.
"Watching, I was dumbfounded when California’s Jackie Speier began pressing Comey on the supposed “tarantula web” of Trump-Russia connections and brought up “Michael Caputo,” a “PR professional” and “conservative radio talk show host” she said worked “to improve Putin’s image” in the United States.
Wait, I thought. I know Michael Caputo! "
Once you catch them lying about something which you have personal knowledge about, you never trust them again.
The most important thing is to have a careful investigation that digs up and documents all the facts about who did what and when. I know people who still believe that Trump colluded with Putin to influence the 2016 election in his favor. If these people could ever be persuaded otherwise, it will be a big win for the truth.
Successful prosecution of the miscreants would be a great bonus.
No, it makes absolutely no sense to 'just let it go' Matt!
Our country, many lives were irreparably harmed in the doing of the travesty of Russiagate. Millions of dollars were wasted, millions of hours spent on spreading what have now been proven to have been untruths, outright lies, fabrications, all directed at keeping powerful interests protected from discovery and punishment.
To simply forgive and forget would be a profound mistake. The evidence is still there but my fear is that, with time that evidence will be 'disappeared'. The time is NOW, the reasons are PROFOUND, the effort must be made to bring those responsible to justice for their multitude of crimes.
At times it devolves to the “Bleak House” phenomenon. The amount of time, money and emotional energy expended in trying to get to the bottom of issues like Russiagate end up being disproportionate to the satisfaction of trying to unearth the “truth”, whatever that may be. The coverup of the origins of Covid-19 which ultimately cost millions of people their lives and disrupted the lives and wellbeing of billions should be at the top of the list for a lot of additional scrutiny.
Jackie Speier was my Congressman for years, and Ro Khanna succeeded her. She was utterly loathsome… boasting about the importance of her purely convenience-motivated legal abortion and her public preparation of a shiv to stab her predecessor (Tom Lantos) in the back in the Democratic primary (which she never had to use because he became terminally ill). Her proposal to use the 25th Amendment in a coup against Trump should have gotten her arrested for sedition. She was shot and left for dead at Jonestown… given all the evil that surrounded her later on, it was a shame that they missed.
It's none of your fucking business why someone has an abortion. Your criticism of ANYTHING is hollow as fuck when you appoint yourself the morality police. That shit never ends well, not just for reasonable people but for folks like you too.
Just read the whole thing with great interest. Lord knows that the prior administration (along with the FBI and Justice Department since 2016) stretched the U.S. Code to absurd extremes in their pursuit of lawfare against their perceived political foes. I like the fact that Caputo isn't recommending that be done against the other side, per se, but he's right to ask for the law to be fairly applied, that the playing field be made flat again.
There has to be an accounting and scalps must be taken. Not for revenge but to shatter the fatalistic view, held both within the deep state and without, that the slimiest backstabbers will never face accountability, and standing up to them will be disastrous for any voices opposing them.
Just as McCarthyism was discredited, so also should Russiagate fever be discredited and shut down. It was originally contrived to save or legitimize a failed campaign, but lives on as talking heads who still today continue to promote unfounded theories based upon false premises in pursuit of the partisan mud-slinging. These are ironically are often the same players that ridicule conspiracy theory mongering while they themselves have bought into the biggest conspiracy theory of them all.
The entire Russiagate story must be exposed or we’ll never have an honest government again.
Especially when it's clear many are deluded or deranged enough to still believe it.
We believe what we want to believe. Delusion is our natural state that requires work to avoid.
IDK, 51 intelligence agents swore on a stack of Bibles that Hunter Biden's laptop was made in Moscow, so who you gonna believe, the NYT or your own thought processes?
I don’t think the majority of them are diluted. I think they’re lying pieces of shit.
I meant primarily "Democrats" supporters. Most of their Congressmen and women are, of course, lying pieces of shit, not forgetting their hacks in the media.
Russiagate was the signal low in dirty politics. We should not let it go until there is full accountability
Prosecutions and jail time will be required
the fraud of 2020 must also be exposed or we will never be able to get past it or expunge the crime from our playbook.
The fortified election should be exposed for the fraud that it was. however I think it helped the cause because Trump is considerably more than he was in 2020
This is what keeps coming to my mind. The Trump of 2024 is so much wiser and more aware of the beast he is facing.
Unironically: Matt is a hero to me.
Same. All those that chose truth over tribe are heroes.
That probably ended with the Dulles brothers in the ‘50s.
Not going to happen, the CIA/FBI are bigger than Trump, or Biden, and his cabinet.
Think for a moment, there is no reason to keep the JFK files locked up, the only entities left to point a finger at are the CIA and FBI, even the people who ran them are either in their 90s or dead.
Another file to be opened should be the 9/11 files, but Trump won't touch that, Adelson/Netanyahu have him on a much shorter leash than that!
Agree - enough is enough and this bad behavior has to become painfully consequential, not consequence-free. Our system has proven resilient (see the 2024 Election Results) but the opportunity cost of this behavior is hugely detrimental to our society. The quantitative costs of Russia-gate are disgusting enough. The societal costs - we are still paying those, sadly.
The only thing I disagree with you about is the idea that we have EVER had an honest Government. However, there have always been truth tellers and "leakers" in the Government and honest Politicians as well. Sadly most vote for more and more weapons and support any Military Action no matter how immoral it is and how much it is based on lies.
…exposed and criminals prosecuted !!!
Looking forward to that story, Matt. Thank you for not letting it go.
I second that .... EXACTLY RIGHT: Thanks, Matt, for continuing to report about Russiagate. The architects of Russiagate really are disgusting scum (mildest phrase I will use here online).
Russiagate was the equivalent of the McCarthy era. Shouldn’t the bad actors and their actions not be exposed? The challenge is that the corporate media is complicit in Russiagate so the exposure will be limited to outlets that are not in CYA mode.
IMO Russiagate was far worse than the McCarthy debacle. Vastly more people were targeted in Russiagate for what amounted to fabrications.
In the 50's there were reasonable suspicions about Communist influence in the West and the US. The blacklists though were an unreasonable reaction when efforts were made to bring the 'bad actors' to light.
Russiagate, from the outset, was a scripted gameplan of malfeasance and untruths designed to distract and confuse the US public from discovering what leftist political operatives were attempting to achieve by discrediting a viable candidate running for the office of President.
Russiagate was simply an attempted coup (by the Clinton campaign, FBI, CIA, possibly MI6, and the mainstream media) to overturn the results of a legitimate election.
Chris G speaks for me
Actually there were no reasonable suspicions, 90% of the McCarthy 'red scare' was to kill unions, it was all part of Smedley Butler's Racket, he was before that time and just saw only the military part of the corruption.
And the other 10%?
Admittedly there were a lot of 'Big Guys' then too, so maybe their interests were threatened?
Maybe killing some of the unions wasn't such a bad idea. Why would teachers and postal workers need unions at all if they'd been getting fair treatment from their employers?
Very nicely put.
Much better than my take.
We need another Tail Gunner.
No. Don’t let it go. The government operatives criminalized our justice system to attack Trump. Now they’re playing victim?
Never in a million years did they think Trump would win. Jan 20 is time for a massive MAGA shock and awe campaign.
Don't kid yourself. How did "lock her up!" go?
Watergate was a story about a break-in at the Democrat HQ at the Watergate done by a group of shady Republicans known as 'The Plumbers.' Nixon had NOTHING to do with it. But Nixon had an enemies list. and when He found out about this break-in, he tried to disassociate himself and the party from this group engaging in a COVER-UP. Nixon's on crime was the cover up- obstruction of justice. Hillary Clinton wiped information off her servers that were under subpeona and got NO PENALTY whatsoever. Nixon was treated like the worst criminal ever...partly because, well, he was right. He did have enemies!! But Waterage is a Greek tragedy. a person undone by his own fatal flaw (Nixon's paranoia and enemies' list). Had Nixon let it go, he would have probably been accused by his enemies, but thats all. He had no role. So Russia-gate is a quizzical moniker to me. Russia-gate would be better known as Fabriaction-gate. It is a fabricated tale, and that is the point. It just happens to use 'Russia.' The name Fabricationgate would shine a brighter light on all the Psy-Ops strategies used by Democrats against Trump. While Trump is no huggable lovey-dovey candidate, he is not the ogre Democrats portray him as, and many many Demcoats did far worse. We could go back to the Parkland Hospital doctors (Dallas) who attended to JFK immediately on that fateful day and knew on Day One that JFK was shot from the front, not the rear (where Oswald was alleged to be) and THEY were ordered to be silent on which wounds were entry or exit wounds. But now they are talking, this information is OUT. Who kiiled Kennedy, really? Why was that investigation subverted from day 1? The Warren Commission is the longest-lasting misinformation-Op in the history of this country. Why? What DID they know? When did they know It? <the Watergate Questions re-appear> Why DID they lie to us from Day-one? By comparison, Trump's 'lying' is chump change. There is also climate change, the vaccine, the virus, Fauci, Wuhan, and so much to investigate—so little time. I am no wacko, but be careful what your government says that you choose to believe. Trump's election was substantially because of people who are waking up to this fact. The lying over Biden's health was a watershed- maybe even a heath-gate for the Dems...
Watergate may have been the second Deep State attempt to neutralize a president, after the JFK assassination. Remember the players in the break-in: former FBI and CIA goons, E. Howard Hunt ,James McCord, former FBI G. Gordon Liddy, and the CIA's Cuban operators. Also, remember who spilled the beans to the WaPo reporters: Mark Felt (aka Deep Throat) who was then the sitting Associate Administrator of the FBI.
Why go after Nixon, one might ask. Same reason to go after Kennedy. People forget how 'liberal' Nixon was. He initiated detente with Russia, he met with Mao and established full diplomatic relations with Communist China, he ended the draft, and eventually the war in Vietnam. On the domestic side Nixon established the EPA, and OSHA, he signed the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. He also signed off on the 26th Amendment lowering the voting age from 21 to 18. He was simply more liberal in many ways than Democrats Clinton, Obama and Biden put together. Plenty of reasons, as Bill Burr would say.
So yes, by all means investigate Russiagate while it is still fresh in most peoples' minds, sadly it is probably too late to reopen the Watergate coup.
A great recitation of things accomplished under the Nixon administration. I am a McGovern voter at the age of 18 in 1972, but look at what good was done EXCEPT --- Viet Nam. But that doesn't explain Deep Throat. Or does it?
Good question. What was Felt’s motive? Was Nixon a unique threat to the republic?
Lyndon Johnson had Barry Goldwater’s campaign plane bugged and nobody said a word. They were equivalent crimes in my opinion
Absolutely great analysis. I do think we need to start with Nov 22 1963 as the starting point for some truth.
Mr. Caputo left Adam Schiff off of his list for those who need to be held to account. I hope he's added to it.
Absolutely. Aside from those who created the BS story, he was one of the worst offenders at promulgating it.
And Adam Schiff was just rewarded for all the lying he did during Russiagate by being elected Senator of California. Karma needs to get this guy.
I first 'met' you, Matt, when you were at the eXile, many decades ago.
Not in person, but through your writing. I knew nothing about you and assumed you to be much, much older than your tender years back then. But I so admired your work. A truth-teller in a sea of mirrors. You were a "must-read."
My life took a shift; I walked away from the media landscape and I lost you. Finally saw you were at Rolling Stone. "Ah, good on him!"
And now...
I am proud I ID'ed you as a great reporter and writer almost 30 years ago.
I don't have many heroes. Too old and too cynical for that. But you ... you remain one. A person who truly just seeks the truth and is an 'old-style' [if only in our dreams] reporter who tries to be objective with every fiber of his being.
You fight a good fight. And you've taken the blows. I've been there, too. I know the struggles, the self-examination and the sadness that flows from this.
I sometimes feel like a mother to you. I recognize your pain, confusion, and sorrow. But you keep moving. Somehow you stay strong.
I am so proud of you.
Matt is my hero as well.
Thank you for sharing your history. Feels like we are bumping elbows and chatting at the pub.
"Watching, I was dumbfounded when California’s Jackie Speier began pressing Comey on the supposed “tarantula web” of Trump-Russia connections and brought up “Michael Caputo,” a “PR professional” and “conservative radio talk show host” she said worked “to improve Putin’s image” in the United States.
Wait, I thought. I know Michael Caputo! "
Once you catch them lying about something which you have personal knowledge about, you never trust them again.
Gell-Mann amnesia: hopefully people are curing themselves.
Absolutely do not let it go. Publicize the names of those involved, at a minimum, and prosecute and/or sue for damages where appropriate.
The most important thing is to have a careful investigation that digs up and documents all the facts about who did what and when. I know people who still believe that Trump colluded with Putin to influence the 2016 election in his favor. If these people could ever be persuaded otherwise, it will be a big win for the truth.
Successful prosecution of the miscreants would be a great bonus.
I completely agree.
Do Not Let It Go!!! Those scumbags deserve to be prosecuted!
No, it makes absolutely no sense to 'just let it go' Matt!
Our country, many lives were irreparably harmed in the doing of the travesty of Russiagate. Millions of dollars were wasted, millions of hours spent on spreading what have now been proven to have been untruths, outright lies, fabrications, all directed at keeping powerful interests protected from discovery and punishment.
To simply forgive and forget would be a profound mistake. The evidence is still there but my fear is that, with time that evidence will be 'disappeared'. The time is NOW, the reasons are PROFOUND, the effort must be made to bring those responsible to justice for their multitude of crimes.
At times it devolves to the “Bleak House” phenomenon. The amount of time, money and emotional energy expended in trying to get to the bottom of issues like Russiagate end up being disproportionate to the satisfaction of trying to unearth the “truth”, whatever that may be. The coverup of the origins of Covid-19 which ultimately cost millions of people their lives and disrupted the lives and wellbeing of billions should be at the top of the list for a lot of additional scrutiny.
Jackie Speier was my Congressman for years, and Ro Khanna succeeded her. She was utterly loathsome… boasting about the importance of her purely convenience-motivated legal abortion and her public preparation of a shiv to stab her predecessor (Tom Lantos) in the back in the Democratic primary (which she never had to use because he became terminally ill). Her proposal to use the 25th Amendment in a coup against Trump should have gotten her arrested for sedition. She was shot and left for dead at Jonestown… given all the evil that surrounded her later on, it was a shame that they missed.
So she has been a member of multiple cults?
Amen! Speier is now back in office to our deep disgust.
It's none of your fucking business why someone has an abortion. Your criticism of ANYTHING is hollow as fuck when you appoint yourself the morality police. That shit never ends well, not just for reasonable people but for folks like you too.
Bloody handed murder for matters of convenience is bad enough… but she BOASTED of her evil actions to win her acclaim in California.
Just read the whole thing with great interest. Lord knows that the prior administration (along with the FBI and Justice Department since 2016) stretched the U.S. Code to absurd extremes in their pursuit of lawfare against their perceived political foes. I like the fact that Caputo isn't recommending that be done against the other side, per se, but he's right to ask for the law to be fairly applied, that the playing field be made flat again.
There has to be an accounting and scalps must be taken. Not for revenge but to shatter the fatalistic view, held both within the deep state and without, that the slimiest backstabbers will never face accountability, and standing up to them will be disastrous for any voices opposing them.
Scalps must be taken, and paraded.
Just as McCarthyism was discredited, so also should Russiagate fever be discredited and shut down. It was originally contrived to save or legitimize a failed campaign, but lives on as talking heads who still today continue to promote unfounded theories based upon false premises in pursuit of the partisan mud-slinging. These are ironically are often the same players that ridicule conspiracy theory mongering while they themselves have bought into the biggest conspiracy theory of them all.