FBI

First Impeachment vote of then-President Donald Trump over extortion of Ukraine for aid in defense against Russia

Former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov pleaded guilty to completely fabricating the story about the “$5 million bribes” paid to Joe and Hunter Biden by Ukranian energy company Burisma, and has been sentenced to 6 years in prison for his role in attempting to influence the 2020 election in favor of Donald Trump. The Burisma hoax led to a Special Counsel probe and a years-long attempt by Republican lawmakers to impeach Biden for alleged “corruption.”

Meanwhile the GOP apparently knew the whole thing was made up — because they helped ferry the disinformation from Russian sources to further their political goals. Trump had sent Rudy Giuliani and Lev Parnas on a fishing expedition to “dig up dirt” on the Bidens in Ukraine circa 2018-2019, making them almost eager to be willfully conned by Russian active measures. The Russians of course did not disappoint — first implanting the Burisma disinformation through this channel.

Later Lev Parnas would testify before Congress to having been duped himself during his involvement in the deception scheme. He went on to present evidence both that the allegations of Burisma bribes were completely fabricated, and that GOP leaders were knowingly spreading the fake Russian disinfo in order to help Trump muddy the waters around his first impeachment trial initiated by a whistleblower who revealed the phone call in which Trump attempted to extort Ukranian President Volodomyr Zelensky over military aid in its defense against the Russian invasion of 2014 and ongoing occupation. Then-NSC member Alexander Vindman testified to the veracity of the whistleblower’s complaint before Congress, and Trump would later fire him in retaliation.

The Lev Parnas story would become the basis of the excellent Rachel Maddow-produced feature-length documentary, “From Russia with Lev”:

Burisma bribes were fake

In other words, both arms of the “Biden bribes” story have been thoroughly debunked — which led House Republicans to drop the Biden impeachment inquiry, but not to drop their disinformation campaign around the alleged corruption. So, GOP lawmakers know the Burisma story is fake, that Russian spies planted it, and “disinformation courier” Smirnov will serve jail time for it — but they continue to push it anyway, in an attempt to create a vague veneer of corruption around sitting President Joe Biden.

Meanwhile, the about-to-be-sitting-President Trump is actively planning to profiteer from the Presidency. His new “ethics plan” ups the ante from his first term by newly allowing deals between the Trump Organization and foreign businesses. In December, Eric Trump announced deals for 2 Trump Towers in Saudi Arabia.

The Republican flavor of whataboutism that tries lamely to stand up an entirely fake, intentionally fabricated story about $5 million bribes to the Bidens against the unprecedented scale of openly naked corruption as Trump brazenly seeks to profit from his public service is a morally reprehensible ethical stain that I hope follows them into history as a legacy of abject greed and lust for power that thoroughly characterizes the Republican Party in this era. To the extent the GOP stands for anything, it is corruption.

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Project 2025 mind map of entities

Project 2025, led by former Trump official Paul Dans and key conservative figures within The Heritage Foundation, sets forth an ambitious conservative and Christian nationalist vision aimed at fundamentally transforming the role of the federal government. Leonard Leo, a prominent conservative known for his influence on the U.S. Supreme Court‘s composition, is among the project’s leading fundraisers.

The initiative seeks to undo over a century of progressive reforms, tracing back to the establishment of a federal administrative framework by Woodrow Wilson, through the New Deal by Roosevelt, to Johnson’s Great Society. It proposes a significant reduction in the federal workforce, which stands at about 2.25 million people.

Project 2025 plans

Essential measures include reducing funding for, or even abolishing, key agencies such as the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Departments of Education and Commerce. Additionally, Project 2025 intends to bring semi-independent agencies like the Federal Communications Commission under closer presidential control.

At its heart, Project 2025 aims to secure a durable conservative dominance within the federal government, aligning it closely with the principles of the MAGA movement and ensuring it operates under the direct oversight of the White House. The project is inspired by the “unitary executive theory” of the Constitution, which argues for sweeping presidential authority over the federal administrative apparatus — in direct contradiction with the delicate system of checks and balances architected by the Founders.

It is also inspired by religious fervor (and the cynical exploitation thereof) — and Project 2025 has brought together a pantheon of Christian nationalist organizations and groups to draft policy that could be implemented with alacrity, select potential appointees for the administration, build networks with GOP at the state and local levels — and with right wing groups and networks around the world.

Project 2025 goals

To realize their extremist, authoritarian goal, Dans is actively recruiting what he terms “conservative warriors” from legal and government networks, including bar associations and offices of state attorneys general. The aim is to embed these individuals in key legal roles throughout the government, thereby embedding the conservative vision deeply within the federal bureaucracy to shape policy and governance for the foreseeable future.

Continue reading What is Project 2025: The GOP’s plan for taking power
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seditious conspiracy

The first convictions of January 6 perps for seditious conspiracy in decades are epically monumental given the history of past efforts. Before the first conviction in November, 2022 of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and the latest round of convictions on January 23, 2023 (in which 4 more seditionists were convicted), there has been little success in the realm of prosecuting insurrection or coup plotters for seditious conspiracy — and only a handful of trials:

  • No convictions in the Christian Front trial (1940)
  • None in the Sedition Trial of US Nazi sympathizers (1944)
  • None in Fort Smith sedition trial (1988) — Louis Beam and the Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord white supremacist and Christian nationalist group
  • None in Hutaree trial (2010)

Does that make this the first successful sedition conviction of white paramilitaries?!

Before January 6, there came these attempts to overthrow the American government.

Christian Front trial (1940-41)

The Christian Front trial of the 1940s was a highly publicized criminal trial in the United States that took place in 1940 and 1941. The Christian Front was a right-wing, antisemitic, and pro-Nazi organization that was active in New York City in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Continue reading Forgotten Coups: January 6 wasn’t the first seditious conspiracy in the U.S.
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The FBI took the extraordinary step of initiating a counterintelligence investigation into the President of the United States, based according to the New York Times on the firing of James Comey and Trump‘s public actions surrounding that event, in which he linked the firing to the Russia investigation vociferously several times.

This is a historical first.

Hold on to your hats.

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