Cornered Dogs Bite

Tulsi Gabbard Lays Groundwork to Criminally Prosecute Democrats

It’s been ten long years and we all know the drill: when Trump finds himself in any kind of trouble, it’s time to brace for the stupidest news you’ve heard in your entire life. Trump’s distractions usually consist of culture-war ragebait: things like renaming the Gulf of Mexico, planning to reopen Alcatraz (the original prison, not the Florida one), or threatening to run for a third term. Trump often fails to follow through on his declared intentions, and when he does they rarely directly impact daily life. But the hijinks amuse his base, enrage his enemies, and divert attention away from whatever Trump is actually trying to get away with. It’s worked out for him so far.

Sometimes, though, when he’s in especially deep trouble, Trump distracts from bad press by doing something genuinely dangerous. These distractions work because they really are more of an immediate threat than whatever scandal he wants you to forget: the worse the scandal, the worse the distraction. When Trump takes this route, it’s not always obvious. Sometimes, the dangerous thing looks an awful lot like clickbait, until it doesn’t.

Ever since the Epstein thing exploded, Trump’s been throwing up every distraction he can think of. He’s made Mexican Coke American Again, declassified files on MLK Jr’s assasination, and proclaimed that Washington must either rename the Commanders or lose their shiny new stadium (he does not have the power to do this). Two of those three things are good, the third is a circus trick designed to make me mad, and none of them are even remotely able to distract the public from Trump’s heel turn on the Jeffrey Epstein case.

There is no precedent for the sheer scale and ferocity of the MAGA backlash against Trump over the last two weeks. As I wrote last Friday, the idea that Democrats are pedophiles, and that Trump will expose and punish them, is central to the movement’s entire mythos. One of the reasons Trump could, in fact, shoot someone on fifth avenue and not lose any voters is because he’s promised to purge this country of evil — and here he is, covering for that evil instead. For the first time in his political career, Trump is at risk of losing his base.

Three promises sit at the core of Trump’s MAGA mandate: eliminate the “illegal alien criminals,” expose pedophiles, and jail political opponents. He can’t appease his base by ramping up deportations, he was already doing that before he screwed up. Can’t release the Epstein files either. But he can “lock them up.” He can prosecute the Real Enemy: America’s demonic, communist Dems. Nothing short of the files themselves can truly negate the damage Trump did to himself by calling people who care about honest-to-God child sex trafficking “weaklings” who were “Conned by the Lunatic Left.” But his base might be able to at least push past that heartbreak if Trump exacts revenge against the liberals they hate.

Laying the Groundwork

Last Friday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released 118 pages of declassified documents that their official press release described as “overwhelming evidence” that “President Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.”

Here’s a basic summary of the charges: in the lead-up to the 2016 election, the intelligence community broadly agreed that Russia was unlikely to influence election results through hacking election infrastructure. In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s victory, analysts confirmed that earlier assessment: no funny business, Trump won fair and square. But then, in December, Obama and other evil Democrats forced analysts to produce an intelligence report that claimed Russians DID try to influence the election! These scheming bastards used the fake news media to spread their false story, which undermined Trump’s presidential authority and led directly to literally every setback and consequence Trump has faced since then: not just the Mueller investigation but his impeachment over J6, his criminal indictments for attempted election interference, the prosecution and incarceration of his lackeys for their own role in attempted subversion of the will of the people, and even “heightened US-Russia tensions.” I guess it’s Obama’s fault that Putin is being such a dick to Trump right now. Go figure.

It’s easy to dismiss this “bombshell revelation” as just another manufactured controversy intended to dominate the airwaves and distract from Trump’s real problems, mostly because that’s exactly what it is. People who spent the last ten years chanting some permutation of “lock her up!’ get a straight shot of that fury/elation speedball Trump has them hooked on, the rest of us roll our eyes at another egregious lie. It feels like business as usual.

But this story is not business as usual. It’s groundwork for the prosecution and arrest of high-level Democrats.

Certain words and phrases (with minor grammatical deviations) repeat again and again within both the DNI press release and Gabbard’s appearance on Hannity last Sunday. Keep in mind that the press release is just 565 words long and she only spoke for about 6.5 minutes:

• “Years-long coup”: 5 times

• “Manufactured and politicized intelligence”: 4 times

• “Subverts/subverting the will of the American people”: 3 times

• Variations of “Our democratic republic is under threat”: 4 times

• Obama described as “directing” the alleged coup: 4 times

• The need to hold someone “accountable”: 4 times

Gabbard even manages to crowbar the word “usurp” into her press release by completely misusing the word: the “years-long coup” had “the objective of trying to usurp the President from fulfilling the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people.” “Usurp” means to unseat, violently overthrow, or appropriate: you cannot usurp someone from doing something. This is an official document, vetted and pushed by a PR team. It’s hard to imagine the misuse is an accident.

Gabbard’s carefully selected and deliberately repeated words and phrases closely resemble language used by the January 6th committee. You may recall that this committee, formed without Republican party input after the GOP torpedoed the possibility of a bipartisan investigation, held several live hearings in which they compelled testimony from high-ranking members of the Trump administration. When Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro refused to testify, they were charged and jailed for contempt. At the end of the process, the committee recommended that the Department of Justice criminally prosecute Trump, which they did: the then-former president faced charges both federally and in Georgia for “election interference.” He was looking at serious jail time for both.

“No matter how powerful, every person involved in this conspiracy must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, to ensure nothing like this ever happens again,” the press release declares. When Hannity asked Gabbard if she believes the Obama administration committed crimes, she replied: “I do, Sean. And I’m referring all of these documents that we have found and uncovered to the Department of Justice for further investigation. Accountability and action, not just investigation, but action.”

Trump’s attempt to subvert democracy was absolutely a crime, more than serious enough to warrant a congressional investigation and jail time. How serious is Gabbard’s accusation against Obama? Does the evidence support her claims?

Did Traitorous Democrats Do A “Coup”?

No.

The Trump administration’s lies can be time-consuming to disprove, but luckily the DNI gathered everything we need to conclusively demonstrate that Gabbard is full of shit in that 118-page report they claim prove these stupid claims. Every single one of Gabbard’s assertions is either a half-truth or an outright lie — not that this will stop Republicans from pretending it’s a damning indictment that warrants jail time if they decide to fully commit.

If you’d like to know more, I read the entire report and used it to debunk every claim in that stupid press release, point by point, with page annotations. It gets super in the weeds because I literally cannot help myself. I know some of you have things to do and lives to lead, so I’ll finish out the article and put that deep dive at the end for the true sickos.

Talk Is Cheap

This ground prep for tribunals and arrests is the only distraction Trump’s thrown up that has any chance of distracting the base. It at least attempts to scratch that conspiratorial itch Epstein was supposed to relieve. More importantly, it offers a different route to the ending MAGA wanted from the Epstein files: humiliation and possibly imprisonment for the demonic liberal communist America-hating pedophiles across the aisle.

The president is doing his best to make fetch happen over on TruthSocial. Two days ago, he posted a Tiktok video mashup of Democrats saying “no one is above the law” for about a minute. Then, tacked to the end of the video, we get an AI-generated clip of FBI agents arresting Obama — or, to be more precise, forcing Obama to his knees in front of a grinning Trump while YMCA plays in the background. I’ve seen pride parades less gay.

Some MAGA influencers are doing their best to whip their fans into a frenzy. Disgraced general Mike Flynn got on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast yesterday to proclaim this alleged coup “The Greatest Crime In The History of the United States of America,” Slavery would like a word but who the hell cares: if they’re going to flog their base past Epstein they’re going to need a tactical nuke of a lie. Flynn goes on to shout about revoking passports and “some kind of military trial for Obama” and Steve Bannon pushed the clip hard online. The War Room website lays out the plan in plain English, in case anyone was confused, as part of “Bannon’s Action Plan To Tear Down the Deep State Beast.”. “Back President Trump — Relentlessly” step six commands. “This isn’t about Trump. It’s about you. But Trump’s the instrument.”

But the base isn’t buying it, not enough of them, not really. At time of writing, “Barack Obama” is trending on Twitter, but none of the posts about the so-called coup are doing real numbers and they feel phoned-in; no genuine outrage, no lurid revenge fantasies. Newsmax had the story front and center on Monday morning, but it fell off the landing page completely by afternoon. A collection of stories about Trump’s feud with the Wall Street Journal over Epstein’s birthday letter had taken its place. On Fox, the story didn’t even warrant the top headline spot before it slipped beneath the waves of content.

Oddly it is Ben Shapiro who trips, falls, and accidentally captures the moment. “There is no doubt whatsoever that the Obama administration actively attempted to undermine the incoming Trump administration with rumors and innuendos,” he said on his Monday podcast. “It didn’t require Tulsi Gabbard to come out with this additional information.” Shapiro is irritated at Gabbard for publicly ordering the FBI — a department she has no jurisdiction over — to conduct criminal investigations. “Why am I warning about that? Because I think one of the reasons people are so upset about the Epstein case is because of the oversell. They’re upset because the thing they were led to believe about the Epstein case…may not have been justified, based on the evidence.”

Shapiro is peddling Trump’s lie about the Epstein papers and sanewashing what Gabbard is trying to do with her report, and yet he’s captured the fundamental reason why the rank and file has so far refused to get excited about the prospect of Obama in chains. Here are the three top comments beneath the video at time of writing:

1. “What’ll be really shocking is if anyone’s held accountable in any way shape or form”

2. “And no one will be held accountable”

3. “Unless someone goes to jail, I’m not interested anymore.”

Trump promised to expose everyone involved in Epstein’s sex trafficking ring. He lied. It’s the billionth lie he’s told in his life, but it’s the first one that’s mattered to them. Unfortunately for Trump, the base no longer believes he’ll follow through on anything.

And that’s why I’m so worried about the groundwork Gabbard is laying here. Because it’s not enough to talk about arresting Democrats anymore. Either Trump does it, or he’s done. Those disaffected voters he activated back in 2016 will deactivate, and take a bunch of others with them. That’s the midterms lost. That’s 2028 in the toilet. I don’t think either of those elections will be free or fair, but as things stand now ballots will still be cast, and Trump will have a hard time rigging the election enough to make up for the loss of those disillusioned faithful.

Trump has clearly lost several steps — the politician who descended that golden escalator would never have made this mistake with Epstein, nor would the rage-fueled creature that raised himself from the dead in the aftermath of January 6th. Stephen Miller hasn’t. Russ Vought hasn’t. The writing’s on the wall. Something has to give.

Things seem to be moving in that direction. Gabbard has officially sent a criminal referral to the DOJ: the ball’s in Pam Bondi’s court, and she’s as desperate for redemption as Trump is. Today, a reporter asked Trump who the DOJ should target based on Gabbard’s report. “"President Obama. He started it. And Biden was there with him. And Comey was there. And Clapper. The whole group was there.” Trump briefly interrupted himself to talk about what a great job he’s done decorating the Oval Office compared to Obama, then returned to the subject at hand. “The leader of the gang was Obama. Barack Hussein Obama, have you heard of him?”

“Look, he’s guilty. There’s not a question.”

For The Sickos: The Full Press Release Breakdown

All right. Let’s do this:

Gabbard’s press release contains six claims in bullet points, plus an extra claim at the bottom. Let’s compare them to the report they’re supposedly based on:

“In the months leading up to the November 2016 election, the Intelligence Community (IC) consistently assessed that Russia is “probably not trying … to influence the election by using cyber means.”

• The declassified Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) from September 12, 2016, does contain this quote.

• The word “probably” does a lot of work here: the authors “have only moderate confidence in our overall threat assessment” (p17) and “judge Russia has conducted cyber and intelligence operations that suggest that it has potential interest in disrupting the US presidential election.” (p17). Ultimately, the report states, “our foreign adversaries do not have and will probably not obtain the capabilities to successfully execute widespread and undetected cyber attacks” due to America’s decentralized election system (p21, emphasis added).

• The report explicitly does not rule out a successful cyber operation capable of changing election results: “If a “perfect storm” of coincident political and technological sensitivity were to develop, a cyber adversary might be able to target a small number of critical counties in highly contested states with significant numbers of Electoral College votes. This could potentially alter the apparent outcome of, and almost certainly undermine public confidence in, the election. Although we understand this scenario is unlikely, it remains a possibility that we cannot discount.” (p24, emphasis added)

• The intelligence community is worried about a different type of cyber operation. “The most likely cyber threat to the election is from low-level, detectable, cyber intrusions and attacks that cause localized disruption but do not threaten the overall functionality of the election services or infrastructures.” The “detectable” part is what makes these operations dangerous. “Foreign adversaries are more likely to focus election-related cyber operations on undermining the credibility of the electoral process than on clandestinely manipulating the vote outcome through cyber means” (p22, emphasis added)

• The report specifically finds (with moderate confidence) that Russia had already begun to meddle in the US election: “Russia has conducted cyber and intelligence operations that suggest that it has potential interest in disrupting the US presidential election” (p25). With high confidence, the report found that Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and other organizations (p25), and pointed out that Russia has manipulated elections in other countries“[using] general media messaging to promote or disparage candidates and other tools” (p25). Investigation into potential election interference in 2016 centered around these claims.

“On December 7, 2016, after the election, talking points were prepared for DNI James Clapper stating, “Foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome.”” (emphasis added)

• The talking points prepared for DNI James Clapper contain this quote. It is the first sentence (p41).

• Subsequent talking points cite possible instances of Russia attempting to influence election results through cyberattacks. Illinois and at least 20 other states reported “vulnerability scanning attempts and attempts to compromise websites” carried out mostly by servers belonging to a Russian corporation. “We now assess with low-to-moderate confidence that Russian Government-affiliated actors compromised the Illinois voter registration database and tried to compromise comparable infrastructure in multiple other states” (p42).

• The talking points also state that, according to signals intelligence, the Russians executed a spear-phishing campaign against several government agencies and “individuals in national security, defense, international affairs, public policy, and European Asian studies organizations” (p41-42).

• The report echoes the September ICA: analysts have “high confidence” that Russia was behind the hacks of the DNC and DCCC, and “most IC agencies assess with moderate confidence that Russian services probably orchestrated at least some of the disclosures of US political information.” (p42)

“On December 9, 2016, President Obama’s White House gathered top National Security Council Principals for a meeting that included James Clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe and others, to discuss Russia.”

• Yep. The report includes a “summary of conclusions” from a meeting of the Principles Committee that occurred on December 9th, and all these people were invited. The meeting’s subject is: “Summary of Conclusions for PC Meeting on a Sensitive Topic [REDACTED].” The redacted word is maybe 5 characters long.

• The summary indicates that the meeting focused on possible diplomatic responses to Russia for attempts at election interference and that spear-phishing campaign outlined in the talking points above (p67-69).

• The State Department and FBI were tasked with developing a plan to remove “suspected Russian intelligence officers in the United States”

• Two paragraphs within the minutes are completely redacted

• The council agreed to release as much information as possible regarding the election interference attempts and spear-phishing campaign discussed in the talking points

• The council was divided on whether to “issue the designations of Belan and Bogachev under EO 13694 as part of the response to Russian interference in our electoral process.” Some members opposed it because “the conduct in question was unrelated to the election-related activity.”
  
  It’s not clear from the document which side won out or who Belan and Bogachev even are, but luckily we live in the future and can find out: Belan and Bogachev are cybercriminals and the Department of the Treasury declared sanctions against them on December 29th in a “parallel action” with sanctions relating to election interference. The memo concentrates entirely too much on election interference and anyone skimming the report would be forgiven for thinking these two assholes interfered with the election. That sucks, but it’s not an outright lie and certainly not a “years-long coup.”

“After the meeting, DNI Clapper’s Executive Assistant sent an email to IC leaders tasking them with creating a new IC assessment “per the President’s request” that details the “tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election.” It went on to say, “ODNI will lead this effort with participation from CIA, FBI, NSA, and DHS.”

• The “to” line of the email is redacted but the attribution makes logical sense. The quotes above can be found in the email (p72).

• The email lists five “tools Moscow used” (p72):

  • 1. Hacking: Previous reports consistently stated, with high confidence, that Russia hacked the DNC and DCCC

  • 2) Leaks: Previous reports also consistently stated that Russia was likely behind at least some of the leaked info from that hack

  • 3) Cyber activity against voting system: the James Comey talking points discuss attacks against Illinois and at least 20 other states

  • 4) Media spin/trolls/fake news: mentioned briefly as a possible threat in the September 12th but not thereafter. This is a new avenue of inquiry, but it’s assigned to Open Source Enterprise (OSE), an agency mentioned only one other time in this report (intelligence from the agency was used in a September 14th presidential briefing, p37-8). It makes sense that the report hasn’t mentioned fake news until now, since communications from the agency investigating the issue aren’t included in the report

  • 5) Domestic Russian Intelligence efforts: Very unclear what this means from the memo. The report itself suggests that individuals attempted to gain physical access to election monitoring but were denied access (p94). I can’t find anything else in the report that matches this description.

“Obama officials leaked false statements to media outlets, including The Washington Post, claiming, “Russia has attempted through cyber means to interfere in, if not actively influence, the outcome of an election.””

• The report does not mention the Washington Post

• The report does not contain this quote

• I can’t find any record of this quote before Gabbard published this press release

“On January 6, 2017, a new Intelligence Community Assessment was released that directly contradicted the IC assessments that were made throughout the previous six months.”

• No it fucking doesn’t (p81-107).

• I seriously don’t even know what to say here. The report includes a LOT of information on the media spin/trolls/fake news aspect, which we haven’t seen before because we don’t have any reports or emails from OSE. It has more info on Putin preferring Trump over Clinton, but that was never discussed either way and seems to draw on open source data. The report emphasizes the most damning aspects of the previous reports, it uses more strident language, but that’s not the same thing as a contradiction and it’s certainly not a “years-long coup.”

“After months of investigation into this matter, the facts reveal this new assessment was based on information that was known by those involved to be manufactured i.e. the Steele Dossier or deemed as not credible.”

• No, and the report literally says the opposite

• Page 108 to 118 of this report contain a 2019 FOIA request from all communications between FBI and the DNI office from May of 2016 to February of 2017 pertaining to the Steele Dossier (a discredited report on Trump’s connection with Russia) — or at least, it contains a summary of the request and a reply from the National Intelligence Officer for cyber issues (Sean Kanuck) who’d served in that role since 2015. Kanuck replied that the only “highside” (classified) email he’d received that referenced the Steele Dossier was a news compilation and that using the wide range of search terms included in the request (one of these terms is “dossier,” I shit you not) on all correspondence between the DNI and FBI would be “impractical.”

• Kanuck states, unequivocally, that “At no time in my [intelligence community] career has ‘dossier’ material ever been represented to me in a work setting as something the [National Intelligence Council] viewed as credible, or that was influential in crafting NIC products.”

• The intelligence world includes “compartmentalized” information on the principle that if you don’t need to know something for your job, you don’t get to know it no matter what security clearance you hold. Kanuck acknowledged it’s possible that some other compartment drew on the Steele Dossier, and stated he’d heard second-hand that something from the Steele dossier made its way into a briefing presented to Trump during the hand-off back in 2016.

• The exchange ends with an extremely snippy demand for Kanuck to execute the FOIA request. That’s the end of the report. There is nothing else

So yeah. This is baseless bullshit. A completely manufactured conspiracy and a Hail Mary pass to save a floundering, failing president from his own stupidity. Here’s hoping it doesn’t work, because if this absolute nonsense somehow lands a former president in jail it will be one of the most embarrassing things to ever happen in this country — and that’s a high bar.

Hopefully this article will vanish beneath the waves and I’ll never have to reference it again. Hopefully, these accusations go nowhere and we don’t have to care about any of this. I would really, really like that to be true.