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Tick-Tock: Redirecting Attention from Epstein Coverup Conspiracy

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Rayne
How conveniently the story about Vance's canoe trip popped up just about the time the Epstein conspiracy meeting was making too much trouble for Trump and his conspirators.

John Durham's Guccifer Gaps

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emptywheel
When SVR first plotted to frame Hillary Clinton, that plan was tied to Guccifer 2.0, the persona adopted to hide Russia's role in the hack-and-leak campaign.

How Chuck Grassley's Politicized Redactions Gave Putin Leverage over Trump

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emptywheel
Days before Trump sent his golfing buddy Steve Witkoff to pretend he's going to get stern with Vladimir Putin, all Trump's top spies renewed a secret they share with Putin's own spies. And that likely dooms any effort to get tough with Vladimir Putin.

Planning for a Cover-Up in a House with Small Children and Other Stories of How Todd Blanche Is Helping a Sex Trafficker

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emptywheel
Todd Blanche will conduct his next effort to make Trump's sex trafficking problem go away in a home where JD Vance is raising three young children.

Old Man Transparency Chuck Grassley Confesses He Covered Up the ICA Annex for Five Years

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emptywheel
Chuck Grassley bragged of transparency yesterday when he released a document -- the ICA annex summarizing the Steele dossier -- he's been sitting on for over five years.

Russia's Useful Idiom, John Ratcliffe: Lost in Two Translations

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emptywheel
The July 26 SVR email that discusses framing Hillary Clinton is almost certainly the first of the emails about a plan cited in John Durham's classified annex. And John Ratcliffe may not know this, but there are at least two translations.
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The Growth of the Nazi Bar lndustry [UPDATE-2]

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Rayne
If it walks like a Nazi bar, talks like a Nazi bar, swims like a Nazi bar...

By "Vilifying" SVR Victim Julianne Smith, Kash Patel Establishes Precedent to Share the Epstein Files

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emptywheel
Kash Patel and Pam Bondi said they wouldn't release details about what Trump knew about Ghislaine Maxwell stealing girls from his spa, recruiting one into a sex slavery, because such disclosure would not be "appropriate or warranted." But Kash adopted radically different rules last week when he smeared SVR victim Julianne Smith with his release of the Durham classified annex.

Donald Trump's Parallel Ghislaine Maxwell and Vladimir Putin Problems

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emptywheel
As Trump attempts to look strong in the face of Vladimir Putin's intransigence on Ukraine, consider the twin pillars of compromise Putin has on him.

John Ratcliffe and Kash Patel -- and Durham Himself -- Committed the Crime John Durham Was Hunting

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emptywheel
The unsealed Durham annex provides evidence that John Brennan and the CIA weren't discussing a Hillary Clinton plan to frame Trump. They were instead discussing an SVR to frame Hillary. And he spent four years pursuing that lie.

MattyDickPics Taibbi Doesn't Like When Charlie Savage Takes Away His Russian Spy Toys

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emptywheel
Matty Dick Pics Taibbi claims it doesn't matter that the emails on which he has built a nine-year grift are manufactured, because he'll keep conflating "real" for "true" anyway.

Days After the FBI Announced an Investigation, Russian Spies Deliberately "Put More Oil into the Fire"

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emptywheel
Joke's on us! Nine years into this influence operation, that phrase, "put more oil into the fire," a phrase that someone at the FBI should have recognized as a Russian idiom at least five years ago, is still ripping the country to pieces. 

FBI Thwarted an Investigation into How Russians Injected Disinformation in the Steele Dossier

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emptywheel
The same analyst who introduced John Durham to the SVR collection also discovered that Christopher Steele's network had been compromised before Steele delivered his first dossier report.

In a Desperate Bid to Survive His Latest Fuck-Up, FBI Director Kash Patel Desperately Clings to Propaganda

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emptywheel
Kash Patel is so desperate to fix his latest fuck up (revealing that the entire Durham investigation was built off Russian disinformation) he made to cover up his earlier fuck up (stoking an Epstein scandal that implicated his boss in uncomfortable ways) that he is openly clinging to dumb Federalist propaganda, in the process seemingly adopting the belief that Trump only won in 2016 with Jim Comey's interference.

Fridays with Nicole Sandler

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emptywheel
We talked about Ghislaine Maxwell and Emil Bove.

How John Durham and Chuck Grassley Covered Up Getting Ass-Handed by Russia

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emptywheel
John Durham (with Chuck Grassley's help) tried to obscure that on the same day as the Russian spy report that drove his entire investigation, Russian spooks discussed seeding conspiracies about "dark forces."

BREAKING: Right Wingers Believe Jim Comey Threw the 2016 Election to Trump and Jim Jordan Must Go to Jail

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emptywheel
If you believe it's a crime for a political ally to gin up FBI noise about a foreign hack during an election -- the most that John Durham's purported Clinton Plan substantiates (and he falls far short of substantiating that) -- then you believe Jim Jordan should go to prison.
A bar graph showing that the percentage of orange juice America consumes has grown to 90%.

The Real Squeeze Inside Trump's Brazil Tariffs

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emptywheel
Trump excluded orange juice -- a crucial breakfast staple -- from yesterday's tariffs on Brazil, but not coffee -- possibly an even more crucial breakfast import. By doing so, he'll moot a lawsuit filed two weeks ago challenging his capricious attack on Brazil.

Constitutional Cope in the Time of Texas Hold'em

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emptywheel
There are really better ways to fight fascism than focusing on what magical ponies we'll ride if we "win." But if you're going to do that, consider what would need to happen to actually reverse the tide. 

Trump's Emergency Emergency

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emptywheel
Donald Trump says it risks the national security of the United States if Brazil subpoenas Xitter.
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