Who Believes in Russiagate?

At the same time, there is a growing consensus among reporters and thinkers on the left and right—especially those who know anything about Russia, the surveillance apparatus, and intelligence bureaucracy—that the Russiagate-collusion theory that was supposed to end Trump’s presidency within six months has sprung more than a few holes. Worse, it has proved to be a cover for U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement bureaucracies to break the law, with what’s left of the press gleefully going along for the ride. Where Watergate was a story about a crime that came to define an entire generation’s oppositional attitude toward politicians and the country’s elite, Russiagate, they argue, has proved itself to be the reverse: It is a device that the American elite is using to define itself against its enemies—the rest of the country.

Terrific article, and thanks for posting. Many of us have known for some time that the key to the entire affair was illicit release of classified information, particularly surveillance information, through complicit members of the media who profited by that release in terms of career, celebrity, and political power. The problem was always that due to the nature of that exchange names were seldom possible to pin down.

Here we have one, Adam Entous, once of the Wall Street Journal and now "the New Yorker's man in Washington." Less clear is the identity of those who were passing him illegal information. If he knew it was, and it seems difficult to imagine him not knowing, both ends of the transaction belong in prison. The probability of that approaches zero in the real world.

And yes, it's very disturbing.

The specter of an intelligence bureaucracy working in tandem with the press to preserve the prerogatives of a ruling clique is the kind of thing that someone who knows Russia from the inside and actually fears the specter of authoritarian government would naturally find worrying.

There is a common fantasy on the Left that power once attained is theirs forever and may never be turned against them. Harry Reid's tweaking of the Senate rules is a case in point - his party ended up powerless when control of the Senate changed hands, a thing which apparently was unimaginable to party strategists. This arrangement, between unelected intelligence bureaucrats and equally unelected media celebrities is not, I am afraid, quite that easy to turn around. A few well-timed prison sentences would certainly help that process, however.

Instead we have the Never-Ending Russiagate factory churning out sealed indictments like Christmas cookies, NSA surveillance data traded like baseball cards, and the Washington establishment proud of its role in protecting the country forcing the country to realize that what it really needs protection against is that establishment. It isn't, and shouldn't be, partisan, but the Democrats in power in the 0bama administration were happy to benefit so long as it went their way. Should it stop going their way, it may be too late for anyone to do anything about it.

"....Who Believes in Russiagate?...."

The people who voted for Hillary and Bernie.

Along with the three gays, two transgenders and one I'm-not-sure-what-I-am-today folks who watch Rachael's MadCow Disease on MSNBC.

And the three worn-out souls who still cling to the #RussiaDidItForTrump story that CNN runs 24/7. It's been CNN's only story since it replaced their missing-Malaysian-airliner-might-have-disappeared-down-a-black-hole story they ran endlessly before Trump was elected.

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