Russiagate — Why Its Existence?

— Little can be worse than Democrats behaving like Republicans!

Michael Weddle
7 min readJun 4, 2022
Throughout all of Russiagate, I always felt like there was either a Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes or Karl Rove-like figure passing nasty notes to the likes of Democrats in general, the Clinton operatives, the Sunday pundits, the MSNBCers, WashPotypes and NYTers — It was always like something foul was in the air!

From the beginning I told my friends and everyone I knew on social media that the Russiagate narrative was fraudulent.

Until the Clinton Campaign I’d been a lifelong Democrat. My first vote was for Senator Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire’s Democratic Primary. Sadly, due to the dishonesty of the DNC — especially the Clinton Campaign which controlled the DNC — I was forced to become a registered Independent voter.

I can’t tell you how saddening it was to find myself arguing with Democrats with whom, for reasons of peace, labor and liberties, I’d been politically aligned with for decades. Unfortunately, way too many of ‘em believed everything about Russiagate was true. I think this was mostly so they could remain loyal to the Democratic Party. In reality, however, they have been led like sheep!

More and more, today, many folks have come to realize virtually none of Russiagate was ever true!

My Long-Held Claims:

I claimed the DNC computer documents were leaked internally, not hacked online. I totally dissected Crowdstrike the firm that alleged that the Russians hacked. Over and over, I pointed out serious flaws and misrepresentations with Crowdstrike’s reporting and the agencies reliant upon its findings.

Here’s some background:

Crowdstrike’s final report was never delivered to the FBI and the two initial reports that were delivered to the FBI were substantially in redacted form. Those redactions were conducted not by the FBI but by the Clinton Campaign and DNC-hired attorney, Michael Sussmann.

Moreover, Crowdstrike’s second report included a provision proving the software used in the DNC hack was the same as used for Russians once hacking Ukrainian artillery positions. But this became discredited soon after release to the public. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said Crowdstrike used IISS data to prove a Russian intrusion. This was wrongful and IISS disavowed any connection to CrowdStrike’s report. The Ukraine Ministry of Defense also insisted Crowdstrike misused its data and there was no connection.

So Crowdstrike retracted and then rewrote its second report. But this activity received barely a blip in the establishment legacy media. Typically, when it came to Russiagate, one had to remain tuned-in to the independent news sources in order to learn accurate up-to-date information. On Russiagate, main media specialised in lies, distortions, omissions and perversions of truth.

Again, Crowdstrike never presented its previously-announced final report.

Worse, Crowdstrike’s CEO Shawn Henry admitted to the House Intelligence Committee in December of 2017 that his firm had no actual proof Russia hacked the DNC. Astonishingly, this never became disclosed to the public until 2019. More incredulously, this fact has never yet been reported by the New York Times and its copycat or syndicated reporting outlets. Folks were simply left in the dark on this important fact!

One might ask: How and why could this possibly happen in a society that supposedly prides itself and values the free flow of information, i.e., a freedom of the press? Guess what. This did happen! Moreover, it happens a lot!

I also claimed the Steele dossier made no sense and seemed authored more to back up the sensational DNC hack allegation. Thus, the dossier become a convenient fit for the Director of National Intelligence’s January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).

Offering very little solid evidence, The ICA mysteriously devoted 12 pages of its crucial report aimed against Russia Television (RT) — America. Just for the heck of it, look up which famous American news personalities were working for RT-America back in 2015–2016. One RT new personality’s grandfather was actually the inventor American football! But, of course, the ICA never included any of this information with its strong anti-Russian sentiment and assessment.

Much of the ICA report appeared sensational. It made no sense. Remember the initial media reports and hoopla over how the hack and Russian election interference had been determined by the finding of 17 different US intel agencies seemingly working together? Well, after the heavy intel-laden spectacular report was front-paged everywhere and deeply instilled into the public’s consciousness, it later was discovered the report got put together by handpicked agents from three agencies. The FBI and CIA routinely rubber stamped the findings with a high degree of confidence, while the NSA (the one agency that’d truly know) only moderately agreed with the findings.

Thus, the table for Russiagate became well set and anti-Russian prejudice grew into becoming well-established. What the Russians did often was heard on late-night comedy shows. In the PR world, this is how you’re really able to get hardcore news tucked into the consciousness of an unsuspecting public: use late-night comedians! Once they’re indoctrinating the public, it becomes nothing but a downhill slide for influencing people.

I further pointed out the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) and indicted Russians did not in any way impact social media so as to tilt the election away from Clinton toward Trump. Though we were informed by the US media that this happened, it simply wasn’t and never had been true.

How much did the Russians spend on internet ads? I quote Aaron Maté in Real Clear Investigations (July 5/ 2019):

“Even putting aside the complete absence of a Kremlin role, the case that the Russian government sought to influence the U.S. election via a social media campaign is hard to grasp given how minuscule it was. Mueller says the IRA spent $100,000 between 2015 and 2017. Of that, just $46,000 was spent on Russian-linked Facebook ads before the 2016 election. That amounts to about 0.05% of the $81 million spent on Facebook ads by the Clinton and Trump campaigns combined — which is itself a tiny fraction of the estimated $2 billion spent by the candidates and their supporting PACS.”

So let’s compare the presumed Russian influence (as alleged by the Mueller Investigation). From Open Secrets: According to mediaQuant, Inc., from July 2015 through October 2016 Trump received free media worth more than $5.9 billion. Clinton received $2.8 billion. In terms of actual spending, Trump spent $398 million and Clinton $768 million.

All in all, it looks like the Russians kicked very few beans, if any, into the soup. By the way, I also predicted all of those indicted Russians would not be found guilty.

Seven Aspects to Russiagate:

1) Helped with deflecting and diminishing the surprisingly strong showing of Bernie Sanders. It took the concept of Democratic Socialism that Bernie had created off of the front burner. It helped to keep the focus on Clinton and not on Sanders who had gained tremendous mo-mo.

2) Helped with enabling the media not to report on Clinton’s shameful and unfair transgressions against the Sanders Campaign. This was because of the priority and importance of needing to push the Russiagate issue.

3) Helped with painting Trump as less of an American due to his financial improprieties with Russia (Russian mob ties, golf course deals, the hotel business and real estate connections, etc.). Prurient and undercurrent sexual improprieties also reduced Trump’s morality standing. Of course, Russiagate got competitively matched with the gross Access Hollywood Trump P****-recording that Hillary’s political operatives had tucked away and loaded ready for pre-election day release.

4) Helped to become an explainable excuse for Clinton cloaking her very expensive campaign loss to her donors and everybody else she let down with her unanticipated loss to Trump. Like The Titanic, her campaign was supposedly unsinkable. She needed an excuse!

5) Helped Clinton get good campaign mileage detracting energy away from her email and Freedom of Information Act controversy and many of her other flaws.

6) Helped pro-Clinton elements of the deep state maintain an antagonistic posture towards Russia. Those deep staters aiding her campaign fully expected they’d become part of a Clinton administration. They saw Russiagate as a perfect delivery vehicle!

7) Helped to create a tool for fighting back against Julian Assange’s Wikileaks organization that had successfully been overseeing projects exposing numerous documents and videos related to US war crimes, murder and torture tactics. Significantly, Wikileaks also exposed the CIA’s Vault 7 cyber tools which were deemed helpful for information control, hacking third party entities without attribution, foreign government coup planning, manipulating the media and much more.

Overall, Russiagate flew many important balloons on one string. It became a certain territorial imperative for the political operatives of oligarchy. If anything, Russiagate, on the heels of America’s Occupy Movement, showed how much America, the entire world, had markedly changed. Our American Dream — once filled with our value of democracy, our taste for the chimes of freedom, where we knew our vote counted — decisively disappeared with the help of Russiagate.

It’s time to turn it all around folks! Get rid of the Obama-Clinton-Biden Democrats! We need better Democrats! True progressive Democrats! Stop letting the political center-right and rightwing control our lives!

Below is a very interesting conversation relative to Russiagate:

Additional Reading:

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Michael Weddle
Michael Weddle

Written by Michael Weddle

Founder of Boston’s Climate Change Band; former NH State Representative; Created Internet’s 1st Anti-War Debate; Supporter of Bernie Sanders & Standing Rock!

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