Mueller's Investigation A Farce: Files Joke Indictment Against Russian Trolls
If one needed proof that Mueller's investigation was an utter farce, they were in for a treat this morning when the Deputy Attorney General announced the indictment of thirteen "Russian trolls," for allegedly interfering in the 2016 Presidential election by posting on social media accounts.
Laying Mueller's disregard of the First Amendment aside, the indictment is blatantly hypocritical in light of active social media intervention by pro-Clinton David Brock and his multi-million dollar efforts to 'Correct The Record.'
Julian Assange tweeted regarding the news:
The indictment alleges that: “Beginning in or around June 2014, the ORGANIZATION obscured its conduct by operating through a number of Russian entities, including Internet Research LLC, MediaSintez LLC, GlavSet LLC, MixInfo LLC, Azimut LLC, and NovInfo LLC.”
The indictment further alleges that: “The ORGANIZATION sought, in part, to conduct what it called information warfare against the United States of America through fictitious U.S. personas on social media platforms and other Internet-based media.”
According to the indictment, the co-conspirators “engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.”
The indictment represents the latest mutation of Russian interference allegations that have dragged on for over a year. As this author previously noted, the definition of Russian interference has mutated from unsubstantiated claims of Russian hacking, to Russian collusion, and finally to Russian social media trolling.
Wikileaks tweeted on the matter:
The Washington Post reported in 2015 that David Brock's Correct The Record would work directly with the Clinton Campaign, "testing the legal limits" of campaign finance in the process. How did Correct The Record skirt campaign finance law? The Washington Post tells us: "by relying on a 2006 Federal Election Commission regulation that declared that content posted online for free, such as blogs, is off-limits from regulation." And post online, Brock's PAC did: "disseminating information about Clinton on its Web site and through its Facebook and Twitter accounts, officials said."
Peter Daou, left, and David Brock of Shareblue at its office in New York. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Time reported the opinion of a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center who characterized Correct The Record as: “creating new ways to undermine campaign regulation.” Meanwhile, The New York Times detailed the "outrage machine" that Brock and fellow Clinton supporter Peter Daou had created:
"Peter Daou sat with his team at a long wooden table last week, pushing the buttons that activate Mrs. Clinton’s outrage machine. Mr. Daou’s operation, called Shareblue, had published the article on Mr. Trump’s comment on its website and created the accompanying hashtag.“They will put that pressure right on the media outlets in a very intense way,” Mr. Daou, the chief executive of Shareblue, said of the Twitter army he had galvanized. “By the thousands.”Going further, the New York Times details fervently the $2 million budget of Daou's Shareblue and admits that the intent of the entire operation is interference in the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton: "Beyond creating a boisterous echo chamber, the real metric of success for Shareblue, which Mr. Brock said has a budget of $2 million supplied by his political donors, is getting Mrs. Clinton elected. Mr. Daou’s role is deploying a band of committed, outraged followers to harangue Mrs. Clinton’s opponents."
The New York Daily News put the matter most bluntly: "Hillary Clinton camp now paying online trolls to attack anyone who disparages her online." The LA Times described the active election interference: "It is meant to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical.”
Despite the millions of dollars poured into a pro-Clinton 'outrage machine' bent on her support, Clinton inexplicably lost the election to Donald Trump, a fact which still seems not to have sunk in for the former First Lady and Secretary of State.
But why bring up this apparently old news, in the face of Mueller's latest mockery of the American judicial process and the First Amendment? Because it reveals in the words of the legacy press that by definition Mueller's circus has zero interest in campaign or election integrity and is solely interested in getting scalps for Clinton and for the unelected powers she represented.
Despite obvious hypocrisy given the actions of Shareblue and David Brock's Correct The Record, corporate media ignored all double standards and attempted to report on "Russian twitter trolling" with a straight face. Business Insider wrote: "Russian Twitter Trolls Tried To Bury Or Spin Negative Trump News Just Before Election," as if that wasn't what Correct The Record spent millions on doing for the benefit of Clinton.
The double standards applied to Clinton for her benefit goes beyond hypocrisy. Many have claimed that constantly metamorphosing allegations of Russian interference represent an insidious effort to silence dissent and anti-establishment political discourse: for example, by turning third-party, anti-establishment or conservative voices into "Russians" by proxy of their opposition to Clinton.
By converting legitimate American free speech into insidious "Russian bots," a pretext is created to silence dissent across the board. Without the Russian interference circus, the efforts to breach the First Amendment would be overtly authoritarian and would be inexcusable even by the most corrupt establishment media standards.
The results of such a clamp-down on free and effective speech have manifested in censorship crackdowns across large social media platforms including Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook, with Twitter admitting to actively censoring roughly 48% of tweets that included the "#DNCEmails" hashtag. It seems anyone with an opinion the establishment doesn't like is liable to be memory-holed.
This article was co-authored with Kenneth Whittle
Rod Rosenstein needed something to distract from the 17 killed in the school shooting in Florida after not once, but twice the FBI he oversees were warned about the shooter and did nothing.
Rick Scott (Gov Fl) has rightly called for the FBI Director Christopher Wrey to resign. Rod Rosenstein needs to resign as well. They have both overseen months of shenanigans and cover-ups by the senior levels of the FBI instead of holding people accountable and focusing on executing the FBI's core mission effectively and efficiently.
Retirement and Reassignment is not holding wrong doers accountable.
Great post - upvoted and resteemed
Another Day of Electronic Warfare on Truth & the People.
Thank you so much! Agreed.
If they try and take down Trump on something as seemingly small as doctoring paperwork there will be a nationwide revolt. And the electorate will realise it has to put some kind of militia warlord in the Whitehouse to fix the widespread corruption in Washington.
Deliver cold hard evidence of Putin and Trump working hand in glove or stop pissing our money away on a witch hunt and let OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS DO WHAT WE ELECTED THEM TO TO DO.
The American people know Trump has a closet full of skeletons... WE ELECTED HIM ANYWAY.
And that there shows how the ruling class presently operates: they assume that the rest of us either have flawed memories or can be batted down with denials. In a very real way, it's a blessing that they still act as if the elephant's-memory Internet didn't exist.
Life's still coming at them fast.
Yep - and that's precisely why Shareblue and CTR are notorious in 4Chan circles.
/pol finds out fast. ;)
Gee, if they investigate hillary they could put her away for 8 gazillion years.
Right, because that progression is totally true... and 13 indictments for Russian interference absolutely have nothing to do with any of the higher charges.
The funny part here being that if you really believe that then your guess as to the ruling class' "assumptions" is proven pretty much correct.
Wow it's almost like you're a paid troll here to respond to every single comment on this post in order to create the perception that these indictments aren't the most ridiculous thing to happen since Sessions recused himself.
You need to go spend some time with my good friend HA Goodman, he'll sort you right out.
Don't they have a criminal division within the FBI that takes care of this sort of thing or are they to busy covering their asses for submitting faked evidence to a FISA court and ignoring school shooters who say they are going to shoot up a school and then doing it?
I replied to like two comments, so yes I'm definitely a paid troll.
Are you truly incapable of actual independent thought or is it just conspiracies everywhere? If you spill a glass of water do you look over your shoulder for paid trolls?
But sure, indicting a bunch of Russians who interfered in our electoral process is ridiculous. Why shouldn't hostile powers be allowed to sow chaos and discontent? That can't be bad for the country at all!
I mean, it's a little weird though that you seem to be concerned about paid trolls commenting here but not about paid trolls who bought millions of dollars worth of attack ads.
The Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turbull, interfered in the US election when he and two of his female ministers criticized Trump over "pussy gate" during the election. He even held a press conference. Why can't Turnbull be charged with the same crime? Why only Russians? He is going to the US next week which gives law enforcement an opportunity to take Turnbull into custody.
Im assuming he has not done this on US soil. Well, you cant commit a crime the US could prosecute if you are not on US soil at the time of your action, period. Now, thats not to say you cant be held responsible if you own a company which operates in the US and does something there which violates US law, but then that company is (among potentialy other places) in the US:
And that's only a scratch compared to what the Mexican government has done. Looky here:
And read the article where it came from.
Was Turbull pretending to be an American while he made that criticism? No? So then it's different?
Thank you for an excellent report Elizabeth!
Some juicy tidbits on Robert Mueller revealing his true colors:
Mueller enabled the Deep State Overtake of the Agency – Former FBI Agent
Thank you!! :)
Excellent read, @elizbethleavos, right on every count.
Thank you so much!! :)
It's pretty interesting that you equate an American corporation influencing an election to a hostile foreign power influencing an election...
Thirteen random Russian citizens with zero connection to government = "a hostile foreign power"?
Nope.
Two million spent in coordination with the campaign of one candidate in order to directly influence the outcome of the election via social media trolling and spoofing an organic grass roots movement with cash........? Yes, that is a problem. And yes, Mueller's investigation is a multimillion dollar farce.
Yeah, all 13 probably tried to vote!
Random Russian Citizens? That's odd, because the actual indictment calls them "A Russian organization." Why are you trying to make it sound like it was random people doing things on their own when they were definitely organized and funded and created a company to specifically interfere in our electoral process?
And no ties to government? The guy who funded this is literally nicknamed Putin's Chef because of his close ties to Putin.
So, you're kidding right?
This is adorable. The emotional Trump-hating, Samantha-Bee-watching mainstream is even turning on this "investigation".
Because they are embarrassed now....only trying to save face