Why Trump World is suddenly focused anew on the Russia scandal

[LetMyPeopleVote]

The Senate intelligence committee found that Russia interfered with the 2016 election but TFG and his supporters want to rewrite history and pretend that Putin did not help elect TFG

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-world-suddenly-focused-anew-russia-scandal-rcna45243?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma

To be sure, on the surface, this isn’t altogether new. Republicans were eager to dismiss, discredit and disregard the Russia scandal since its origins, largely out of partisan necessity: The truth was a disaster for Trump and his political operation, so their allies set out to assure Americans that we need not trust our lying eyes.

But the matter has taken on new urgency in recent weeks, as the former president faces an intensifying scandal over classified materials he brought to his glorified country club and didn’t want to give back. The implicit pitch from Trump and his allies is far from subtle: Sure, federal law enforcement is investigating a series of possible felonies, and sure, it looks like the former president is in real legal jeopardy. But the Justice Department took the Russia scandal seriously, too......

But for everyone else, now seems like a good time to review five core truths about the Russia scandal.

Russia attacked the American elections in 2016
Every U.S. intelligence agency and lawmakers from both parties have long agreed that the Kremlin launched an expansive and expensive covert military intelligence operation that targeted the U.S. political system in 2016. This basic fact is no longer contested — except by Trump, who publicly declared that he found Vladimir Putin more reliable than his own administration’s officials — and its importance is too often overlooked.

Russia’s goal was to put Trump in power
The Kremlin’s operation was not politically neutral: Moscow attacked our elections in the hopes of helping dictate the outcome. According to the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies, the Mueller investigation, and the multi-step investigation from the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee, Russia saw Trump as a prospective ally and believed it would be in its interests if the Republican were in the White House.

Russia and Team Trump were political allies
As regular readers know, investigations from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team and the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee documented the extent to which Trump and his team welcomed, received, and benefited from Russian campaign assistance. (They also obstructed the investigation into this assistance — by some measures, 10 times.)

The evidence also showed there was coordination and high-level connections between Trump’s political operation and those responsible for the attack on our elections. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report at one point literally described a “direct tie between senior Trump Campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services.”

Team Trump lied about its communications with Russia
No, really, Team Trump lied about its communications with Russia. A lot. Out loud and on record. Over and over again, Trump and his spokespersons insisted there were absolutely no interactions between the Republican, his political operation, and their Russian benefactors. We now know definitively that they were lying — though they still haven’t been forthcoming about why.

The Russia scandal led to a series of felony convictions and prison sentences
For an alleged “hoax,” the Russia scandal led to an amazing number of federal prosecutions. In fact, the investigation — the one Lowry derided as “a national fiasco” — led to the convictions of, among others, Trump’s White House national security advisor, campaign chairman, deputy campaign chairman, foreign policy advisor, personal lawyer, and to the indictment of 13 Russian nationals who interfered in our elections as part of the larger plot.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

1. Does Putin feel adequately repaid or is that why the orange thing was sweating so much?

Seth Abramson -- live tweet thread from Pennsylvania rally

[ ... ]

So much of this speech is obscene and hateful and false I have to leave out much of what Trump says, as it's deranged and dangerous.

Trump is sweating pretty profusely, which is fine, but I am noting it because he did. He (falsely) claimed it was "100 degrees" on stage.

Now he is calling Doug Mastriano, a QAnon sicko, up to the stage.

[ ... ]

[kentuck]

2. I have a theory about the recent attention to the Russian "hoax".

I think the FBI may have information that directly ties him to Russian collusion with some criminal enterprise and he is trying to quickly create a narrative to counter it.

Just a hunch.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Trump presented his Russia hoax theory to a court. It went poorly.

TFG has been pushing the bizarre theory that Russia never tried to influence the 2016 election. This theory has no basis in reality, but TFG cannot accept the concept that he did not win 2016 on his own merits. It is clear that in the real world, Putin got TFG elected and TFG cannot accept reality

The lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, the Clinton campaign and 30+ defendants was so bad that it was impossible to read. Again, this lawsuit was drafted by two lawyers whose offices are in shopping centers and these idiots just put down TFG's craze ravings as facts. i loved the opinion that came down today that rejected TFG's crazed beliefs about Russian and the 2016 election.

Link to tweet

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/trump-2016-russia-clinton/

One of the hallmarks of Donald Trump’s tenure in American politics has been the extent to which he remained cocooned in his own world.....

And then, earlier this year, a change. Trump proudly removed his Russia theory from its home and presented it to the court, like a kid digging up a dandelion he’d been watching in his yard and offering it as a horticulture contender at the state fair. The verdict, offered in a filing on Thursday, was probably not what Trump would have hoped.

Suffice it to say, he did not earn a blue ribbon.

The background here is interesting, by the way. Trump presented his grand Russia hoax conspiracy in the form of a lawsuit, alleging that Hillary Clinton and others — FBI officials, attorneys, IT guys — had conspired against him in violation of racketeering statutes (a.k.a. RICO). The suit was filed in a specific courthouse in the Southern District of Florida, apparently with the hope that it would be heard by a particular judge that Trump himself had appointed......

In short, the theory that flourished in Trump’s friendly ecosystem was that the Russia probe was a function of explicit dishonesty on the part of Clinton: that her allies sought to create a dossier of false reports about Trump and Russia and that they used stolen data to suggest a link between Trump’s business and a Russian bank......

The judge made very clear that he understood Trump’s suit for what it obviously is.

“At its core, the problem with Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is that Plaintiff is not attempting to seek redress for any legal harm,” he wrote. “ … instead, he is seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him, and this Court is not the appropriate forum.”

TFG's had no facts to support his claims and the court had no problem rejecting TFG's rants. Now it is time to sanction TFG and his shopping center lawyers for wasting the court's time on TFG's bizarre theory