Nunes Memo: Another Step Towards Proving Russiagate Is a Hoax
By Philip Giraldi
February 08, 2018 "Information
Clearing House"
- The
so-called Nunes
memo prepared
for the Republican majority on the House of
Representatives Intelligence Committee, even
if overblown, clearly suggests that there
might have been an unwarranted and quite
possibly illegal Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) surveillance of a former
Trump staffer over his completely legal
Russian business ties. Meanwhile, the nine
month-long Special Counsel Robert Mueller
investigation into Moscow’s possible
interference in the US election has so far
only demonstrated that it was Israel rather
than Russia that meddled with the campaign
by meeting with Trump associates and seeking
favors. Notably missing is any evidence that
the Russian government did anything beyond
the usual probing that intelligence agencies
worldwide do when confronted by important
developments in another country that is
either a competitor or adversary.
An aspect of the Republican memo that has
been scarcely commented upon in the
avalanche of news reporting centered on the
story is how the mainstream media is
continuing to exercise a dangerous
obsession with Russia and
is insisting that the Russiagate inquiry
should continue even more aggressively in
spite of the concerns raised by the
Republican memo that the entire process has
been politicized. There is absolutely
nothing in the memo itself that indicates
that Moscow actually tried to recruit any
Trump associate as an agent or interfere in
the US election. The raison d’etre for
both the Congressional and Special Counsel
Robert Mueller investigations appears to be
lacking. It might eventually emerge that
Russia did little or even nothing beyond the
usual probing and nosing around that
intelligence agencies routinely do.
President Donald Trump, who ran for office
on a sensible pledge to seek better
relations with Moscow, has provided only
feeble resistance to the media and political
class onslaught. He has recently allowed the
Justice Department and Treasury to punish
Russia’s two major news outlets operating in
the United States, RT America and Sputnik.
They both have been forced to register as
foreign agents, even though no other
non-American news service operating in the
United States has been compelled to do the
same, while new allegations about perfidious
Moscow surface weekly.
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Two recent news
reports illustrate perfectly just how
out-of-control the Russia inquiry has
become. At the end of January, the US
Treasury Department released
the names of
210 alleged Kremlin insiders, including
government ministers, who were being
included on a list for possible sanctions,
though it was also announced that no
sanctions would be put in place pending
further ongoing review of the behavior of
those individuals under the Countering
America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.
The so-called “Kremlin List” was clearly
designed to put pressure on the inner circle
of the Russian government as many of those
named have major business dealings with the
United States and Western Europe that could
be severely damaged through sanctions. The
intention may have been to encourage those
individuals to lessen their support for
President Vladimir Putin in the upcoming
Russian national elections, beginning on
March 18th.
The Kremlin List is clearly an attempt to
interfere in Russian internal politics and
should be regarded as such. It comes on top
of an obviously coordinated British
government claim that
Moscow intends to rip British
“infrastructure apart, actually cause
thousands and thousands and thousands of
deaths,” and create “total chaos within the
country.”
The second
story,
which is more bizarre than the first,
describes how Congressman Adam Schiff told a
University of Pennsylvania audience that
Russian-promoted ads during the 2016
election encouraged people to exercise their
Second Amendment rights to own guns. Per
Schiff, “the Russians would be thrilled if
we were doing nothing but killing each other
every day, and sadly we are.”
Neither Congressman Adam Schiff’s
meanderings nor the Countering America’s
Adversaries Through Sanctions Act serve any
conceivable United States national interest
and the Nunes Memo demonstrates, if
anything, that the evidence for Russian
interference in the US election is somewhat
elusive. If the alleged Russiagate
conspiracy is never actually demonstrated,
which looks increasingly likely, it would
certainly disappoint the many American
talking heads and media “experts” who have
been making a living off of bashing Moscow
24/7, but it might also provide a window for
the White House to fulfill its electoral
promise to fix the Russia relationship.
This article was originally published by "Strategic Culture Foundation" -
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