The greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. Hopefully even the left’s useful idiots here can learn.

The rise and fall of John Brennan
BY JONATHAN TURLEY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 07/26/25 10:30 AM ET

In 1980, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin saw an ad for the Central Intelligence Agency on a bus. John Brennan decided to apply, thinking that such a job would satisfy his “wanderlust.”
This month, the “wanderlust” of John Brennan came to an end, as the former CIA director stands accused of false testimony regarding the Russian collusion investigation. Ironically, Brennan was first selected for his honesty — at least in part. During his entry polygraph, Brennan admitted that he had voted for the communist party candidate for president in 1976. He was impressed that the agency took him anyway.

That honest young man seems like a faint and tragic echo of the man today. When Obama picked Brennan to be the CIA director, he had become the ultimate Democratic insider and loyalist. And it would be choosing loyalty over honesty that would prove Brennan’s undoing.
Newly declassified information contradicts Brennan’s testimony before Congress on the origins of the now-debunked Russian collusion conspiracy theory. There is a particular focus on the intelligence community assessment commissioned by President Barack Obama in December 2016, which suggested that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump.
Obama ordered the assessment after a prior assessment found no evidence of collusion or influence on the election in Trump’s favor. But Obama’s White House effectively quashed that finding from seasoned CIA analysts. To create a new version, Brennan handpicked new analysts, who effectively flipped the earlier finding on its head without any credible basis in the record.
The new assessment relied, to a significant degree, on the Steele dossier, a widely discredited report paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign that contained unfounded allegations about Trump.
In testimony on May 23, 2017, Brennan claimed that the Steele dossier “wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment that was done.” In short, Brennan dismissed any reliance on the dossier.

Yet in the material now declassified, Brennan is shown not just discussing the dossier but insisting upon its inclusion in the new assessment Obama had requested. Indeed, he expressly overruled the CIA’s two most senior Russia experts, who said it “did not meet even the most basic tradecraft standards.”
Analysts were appalled by the use of the Steele dossier and complained that it “ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.” One CIA analyst told investigators that “[Brennan] refused to remove it, and when confronted with the dossier’s main flaws, [Brennan] responded, ‘Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?’”Brennan expressly ordered its inclusion in the assessment. It would appear not just in an annex but in the main body of the assessment.
The timeline here is important. In July 2016, Brennan briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s “plan” to tie then-candidate Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” The original Russia investigation — funded by Clinton’s campaign — was launched days after this briefing. The resulting Steele Dossier’s funding was hidden as a legal expense by the Clinton campaign’s general counsel, Marc Elias.

So Brennan and the Obama Administration knew in advance about the planned political hit job. Yet, only months later, Brennan would intervene to force the dossier’s inclusion in version 2.0 of the intelligence assessment. Unnamed officials then leaked false information to the media about non-existent intelligence implicating Trump.

Keep in mind that Obama’s ordering of the new assessment was occurring at the very end of his term. There was a rush to complete the report before Trump took office after defeating Hillary Clinton. The effort seeded the Russian collusion hoax that would consume much of Trump’s first term.
In other words, it worked. However, it required the involvement of John Brennan, as well as then-FBI Director James Comey.

As time went on, Brennan continued to deny prior knowledge of the dossier. He would later become a paid contributor for MSNBC and, in 2018, insisted that he first heard “just snippets about” the dossier in the “late summer of 2016.”
As an MSNBC regular, Brennan accused Trump of “treason,” to the delight of the network hosts and viewers. (He later tried to insist that, when he called Trump’s actions “nothing short of treasonous,” he did not actually mean that Trump had “committed treason.”)
Whatever professional integrity Brennan had left after that, he set it aside in joining more than 50 former intelligence officials in signing a now-infamous letter dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 presidential election as likely “Russian disinformation.”

Joining him on the letter was former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who says that he has now “lawyered up” in anticipation of potential criminal allegations. The laptop, of course, was later found to be authentic and incriminating for Hunter Biden.
Back in 2016 and in the years that followed, this must have seemed to Brennan like just another CIA operation with “plausible deniability.” After all, he knew that he had the Biden administration and the media watching his back. Of course, the public would ultimately reject these hit jobs, not only reelecting Trump but also giving Republicans full control of Congress.
Brennan may be protected from perjury charges by the five-year statute of limitations. However, he is likely to be called again before Congress and asked the same questions. Even if he is not criminally charged, his past statements will remain an indictment of his role in history.

What is now clear is that high-level officials dismissed intelligence and evidence in order to create and spread the Russian collusion conspiracy as widely as they could. Their politicization of intelligence was raw and wrong. It succeeded only because it was an “all-hands-on-deck” effort, from the Obama White House to the CIA, the FBI, and the media.

The rise and fall of John Brennan is an all-too-familiar Beltway tragedy. People do not lose their idealism in this city in grand moments of corruption. It starts with small lies that steadily reduce your resistance until the biggest lies become happenstance. It can create a type of self-deception as one treats lies as a moral option for the sake of the greater good.
In “A Man for All Seasons,” Sir Thomas More is asked by his loving daughter Meg to sign a false affidavit to save his own life. More tells her, “When a man takes an oath, he’s holding his own self in his own hands like water, and if he opens his fingers then, he needn’t hope to find himself again.”

In Washington, power tends to loosen fingers over time, and the truth drips out to the point that little recognizable remains. That is the true tragedy.

For Brennan, what began as a young man’s wanderlust ended in a quagmire of contradictions and deceit.

https://thehill.com/opinion/na...of-john-brennan/amp/

quote:

Originally posted by ledvm:
The greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. Hopefully even the left’s useful idiots here can learn.

The rise and fall of John Brennan
BY JONATHAN TURLEY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 07/26/25 10:30 AM ET

In 1980, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin saw an ad for the Central Intelligence Agency on a bus. John Brennan decided to apply, thinking that such a job would satisfy his “wanderlust.”
This month, the “wanderlust” of John Brennan came to an end, as the former CIA director stands accused of false testimony regarding the Russian collusion investigation. Ironically, Brennan was first selected for his honesty — at least in part. During his entry polygraph, Brennan admitted that he had voted for the communist party candidate for president in 1976. He was impressed that the agency took him anyway.

That honest young man seems like a faint and tragic echo of the man today. When Obama picked Brennan to be the CIA director, he had become the ultimate Democratic insider and loyalist. And it would be choosing loyalty over honesty that would prove Brennan’s undoing.
Newly declassified information contradicts Brennan’s testimony before Congress on the origins of the now-debunked Russian collusion conspiracy theory. There is a particular focus on the intelligence community assessment commissioned by President Barack Obama in December 2016, which suggested that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump.
Obama ordered the assessment after a prior assessment found no evidence of collusion or influence on the election in Trump’s favor. But Obama’s White House effectively quashed that finding from seasoned CIA analysts. To create a new version, Brennan handpicked new analysts, who effectively flipped the earlier finding on its head without any credible basis in the record.
The new assessment relied, to a significant degree, on the Steele dossier, a widely discredited report paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign that contained unfounded allegations about Trump.
In testimony on May 23, 2017, Brennan claimed that the Steele dossier “wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment that was done.” In short, Brennan dismissed any reliance on the dossier.

Yet in the material now declassified, Brennan is shown not just discussing the dossier but insisting upon its inclusion in the new assessment Obama had requested. Indeed, he expressly overruled the CIA’s two most senior Russia experts, who said it “did not meet even the most basic tradecraft standards.”
Analysts were appalled by the use of the Steele dossier and complained that it “ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.” One CIA analyst told investigators that “[Brennan] refused to remove it, and when confronted with the dossier’s main flaws, [Brennan] responded, ‘Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?’”Brennan expressly ordered its inclusion in the assessment. It would appear not just in an annex but in the main body of the assessment.
The timeline here is important. In July 2016, Brennan briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s “plan” to tie then-candidate Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” The original Russia investigation — funded by Clinton’s campaign — was launched days after this briefing. The resulting Steele Dossier’s funding was hidden as a legal expense by the Clinton campaign’s general counsel, Marc Elias.

So Brennan and the Obama Administration knew in advance about the planned political hit job. Yet, only months later, Brennan would intervene to force the dossier’s inclusion in version 2.0 of the intelligence assessment. Unnamed officials then leaked false information to the media about non-existent intelligence implicating Trump.

Keep in mind that Obama’s ordering of the new assessment was occurring at the very end of his term. There was a rush to complete the report before Trump took office after defeating Hillary Clinton. The effort seeded the Russian collusion hoax that would consume much of Trump’s first term.
In other words, it worked. However, it required the involvement of John Brennan, as well as then-FBI Director James Comey.

As time went on, Brennan continued to deny prior knowledge of the dossier. He would later become a paid contributor for MSNBC and, in 2018, insisted that he first heard “just snippets about” the dossier in the “late summer of 2016.”
As an MSNBC regular, Brennan accused Trump of “treason,” to the delight of the network hosts and viewers. (He later tried to insist that, when he called Trump’s actions “nothing short of treasonous,” he did not actually mean that Trump had “committed treason.”)
Whatever professional integrity Brennan had left after that, he set it aside in joining more than 50 former intelligence officials in signing a now-infamous letter dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 presidential election as likely “Russian disinformation.”

Joining him on the letter was former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who says that he has now “lawyered up” in anticipation of potential criminal allegations. The laptop, of course, was later found to be authentic and incriminating for Hunter Biden.
Back in 2016 and in the years that followed, this must have seemed to Brennan like just another CIA operation with “plausible deniability.” After all, he knew that he had the Biden administration and the media watching his back. Of course, the public would ultimately reject these hit jobs, not only reelecting Trump but also giving Republicans full control of Congress.
Brennan may be protected from perjury charges by the five-year statute of limitations. However, he is likely to be called again before Congress and asked the same questions. Even if he is not criminally charged, his past statements will remain an indictment of his role in history.

What is now clear is that high-level officials dismissed intelligence and evidence in order to create and spread the Russian collusion conspiracy as widely as they could. Their politicization of intelligence was raw and wrong. It succeeded only because it was an “all-hands-on-deck” effort, from the Obama White House to the CIA, the FBI, and the media.

The rise and fall of John Brennan is an all-too-familiar Beltway tragedy. People do not lose their idealism in this city in grand moments of corruption. It starts with small lies that steadily reduce your resistance until the biggest lies become happenstance. It can create a type of self-deception as one treats lies as a moral option for the sake of the greater good.
In “A Man for All Seasons,” Sir Thomas More is asked by his loving daughter Meg to sign a false affidavit to save his own life. More tells her, “When a man takes an oath, he’s holding his own self in his own hands like water, and if he opens his fingers then, he needn’t hope to find himself again.”

In Washington, power tends to loosen fingers over time, and the truth drips out to the point that little recognizable remains. That is the true tragedy.

For Brennan, what began as a young man’s wanderlust ended in a quagmire of contradictions and deceit.

https://thehill.com/opinion/na...of-john-brennan/amp/

I LOVE it!

I hope all is true!

Payback for all your stupid involvements in other countries affairs!

I hope China joins too.

NitanHitler doesn’t need too.

He OWNS you!

Even orders you to bomb other countries!

You lot must so so proud!

Your current MAGA ARSEHOLE is getting a very negative reception in Scotland!

Opening his personal golf course at government expenses!

More troll bullshit.

I read the whole narrative twice, and tried to focus on what facts it presented as tying the premise together.

Frankly I got tired of the mental gymnastics.

IMO, it is a great and skillful example of a persuasive narrative. Perfect for a Fox contributor.

There are a few zingers, although factual in and of themselves, don't support the overall premise theme. For example, the "hidden" money spent for the opposition research producing the Steele Dossier, because it wasn't Brennan who hid it. Another example is the signing a letter saying the Hunter laptop was likely Russian disinformation. It has little to do with the narrative premise and it was truth at the time issued. Only later did it become a fact that the laptop was legit. It was initially "leaked" by a Trump supporter who owned the shop Hunter took the laptop in for some reason. That alone looks suspicious.

Another example is the there is no evidence that Brennan or others had anything to do with Buzzfeed publishing the dossier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_dossier
The Steele dossier, also known as the Trump–Russia dossier,[1] is a controversial political opposition research report on the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump compiled by counterintelligence specialist Christopher Steele.[2] It was published without permission in 2017 as an unfinished 35-page compilation of "unverified, and potentially unverifiable"[a] memos that were considered by Steele to be "raw intelligence – not established facts, but a starting point for further investigation".[4][5][6] The dossier was written from June to December 2016 and contains allegations of misconduct, conspiracy, and cooperation between Trump's presidential campaign and the government of Russia prior to and during the 2016 election campaign.[7] U.S. intelligence agencies have reported that Putin personally ordered the whole Russian election interference operation,[8] that the Russians codenamed Project Lakhta.

I'm sure I could find other examples, but the mental gymnastics are tiring.

And, based on my memory from previous research, not mentioned in the narrative is that the timing of the letter with the 51 signatures was important because the GOPers were using unproven assertions about the relevance of the Hunter laptop in an election about to happen. The letter said likely, not is Russian disinformation. And the Laptop was later shown to be a nothing there there thing anyway. The GOPers are still trying to insert that BS into a narrative, and the leaving out part makes the narrative a lie.

Another part left out is the law firm doing or hiring the opposition research was initially hired by GOPers, who didn't follow through for some reason. Then the research and the continuation was sold to democrats, resulting in the dossier.

And the narrative is presented as though opposition research is wrong in itself, when obviously Trump likes it and relies on it and twisting any tidbit of it.

And besides all that, from what I've read, Russian interference is/was proven to be factual. The Mueller Report made that clear, for one. The hacking of the DNC server and the coordinating with WikiLeaks dolling it out to the media and Rodger Stone's involvement is proof of Trump campaign's collusion, and Trump's foreknowledge of what was going to be released, content and timing, is proof too. The Trump tower meeting too.

Here's some confirmation which doesn't necessarily support the narrative. Note the date of the article from Wa Po.

I hope it's not blocked.

https://wapo.st/4l2nZv3

Clinton lawyer kept Russian dossier project closely held
October 27, 2017
More than
7 years ago

https://wapo.st/4mafPl3

RNC taps legal account to help pay for lawyers for President Trump and son Donald Jr. in Russia probes
September 20, 2017
More than
7 years ago

MAGA worshippers are trying their best at deflection from all his non stop screw up!

MAGA SCREW UPS!

It definitely shows they are determined - relentless and maybe desperate.

And it's coming from the top. They are just following orders.

quote:

Originally posted by Magine Enigam:
It definitely shows they are determined - relentless and maybe desperate.

And it's coming from the top. They are just following orders.

Desperately trying to divert attention from the Epstein/trump pedophile narrative.

It could backfire.

The intent is to do collateral damage to the opposition, just as the Epstein narrative was.

The damage could become wholesale collateral karma on themselves.

No one or group deserves it more.

https://youtube.com/shorts/A8d...?si=y82hxhHrusNQFIjg

What did Roger Stone and Manafort do for Trump?

The OP throws a grenade then vanishes.

Which suggests he doesn't believe his own horseshit.

Nah! Everything in the OP is fact and Roland is beginning to see it. Mike probably does too as he is an intelligent person. Only the greatest of the hoaxed tribe tries to argue against what we all know these days.

What GREAT TIMES we are living! Business is volcanic, investments are burgeoning, and the rats are scurrying!

If it’s so cut and dried, why aren’t republicans United on prosecuting?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/art...&bt_ts=1753706731340

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lMTrthePKU0

0bama is immune. Some Republicans likely in on the hoax.

But I believe there will be prosecution.

quote:

Everything in the OP is fact. Only the greatest of the hoaxed tribe tries to argue against what we all know these days.

There are four things worth noting in the quote above. #1 is the claim re fact. Using the term "hoaxed tribe" is revealing. "Tries to argue" is another. Of course "what we all know these days" is - special. I can't speak for others but trying to argue is different from actually arguing, which is what I'm doing.

Anyway, as I said I think the narrative is good from the view of what is representative of commentary suitable for Fox. It's persuasive and feeds the bubble.

I think it's very flawed, regarding content, premise and conclusions, for several reasons. First it's a lot of re-hash on more than one conspiracy theories, supposedly with new evidence. In the recent past GOPer new evidence turns out to be political hype for the sake of narrative with no real substance to add. Another reason is it's all about pleasing Trump and his authoritarian playbook.

The OP article narrative is hard to break down partially because it's long and also it's not easy to sort the wheat from the chafe so-to-speak.

Apparently a long article isn't a problem for Rightists, if the content feeds their hunger.

So, the best way to break it down is to quote the whole thing, and highlight parts of it.

What I'm looking for is what is the narrative premise, the support - facts or otherwise, and what conclusions are drawn. And how is the narrative constructed from a truth or fiction analysis. Also, the only editing I'll do is spacing between paragraphs to make it easier to read.

First a definition: A narrative premise is the core idea or central concept of a story, often expressed in a concise, one or two-sentence summary. It essentially encapsulates what the story is about, laying the foundation for the plot and character development. A strong premise provides a clear direction for the narrative and helps the writer maintain focus.

So, the key to this analysis if color highlights:
Narrative premise
support:
facts or otherwise
Conclusions
My commentary

quote:

Originally posted by ledvm:
The greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. (Narrative Premise) Hopefully even the left’s useful idiots here can learn.

The rise and fall of John Brennan (Narrative Premise)
BY JONATHAN TURLEY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 07/26/25 10:30 AM ET

In 1980, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin saw an ad for the Central Intelligence Agency on a bus. John Brennan decided to apply, thinking that such a job would satisfy his “wanderlust.”

This month, the “wanderlust” of John Brennan came to an end, as the former CIA director stands accused of false testimony regarding the Russian collusion investigation.

Ironically, Brennan was first selected for his honesty — at least in part. During his entry polygraph, Brennan admitted that he had voted for the communist party candidate for president in 1976. He was impressed that the agency took him anyway.

That honest young man seems like a faint and tragic echo of the man today. When Obama picked Brennan to be the CIA director, he had become the ultimate Democratic insider and loyalist. And it would be choosing loyalty over honesty that would prove Brennan’s undoing.

Newly declassified information contradicts Brennan’s testimony before Congress on the origins of the now-debunked Russian collusion conspiracy theory. (Narrative premise)

There is a particular focus on the intelligence community assessment commissioned by President Barack Obama in December 2016, which suggested that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump. (The Mueller report did far more than suggest, and later in this narrative the author conflates interference with collusion, and his qualifications suggest that's intentional)


(This part of the narrative is questionable, conclusive and unsupported)

Obama ordered the assessment after a prior assessment found no evidence of collusion or influence on the election in Trump’s favor. But Obama’s White House effectively quashed that finding from seasoned CIA analysts. To create a new version, Brennan handpicked new analysts, who effectively flipped the earlier finding on its head without any credible basis in the record.

The new assessment relied, to a significant degree, on the Steele dossier, a widely discredited report paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign that contained unfounded allegations about Trump. In testimony on May 23, 2017, Brennan claimed that the Steele dossier “wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment that was done.” In short, Brennan dismissed any reliance on the dossier.

Yet in the material now declassified, Brennan is shown not just discussing the dossier but insisting upon its inclusion in the new assessment Obama had requested.

Indeed, he expressly overruled the CIA’s two most senior Russia experts, who said it “did not meet even the most basic tradecraft standards.” Analysts were appalled by the use of the Steele dossier and complained that it “ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.” One CIA analyst told investigators that “[Brennan] refused to remove it, and when confronted with the dossier’s main flaws, [Brennan] responded, ‘Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?’” Brennan expressly ordered its inclusion in the assessment. It would appear not just in an annex but in the main body of the assessment.

The timeline here is important. In July 2016, Brennan briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s “plan” to tie then-candidate Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” The original Russia investigation — funded by Clinton’s campaign — was launched days after this briefing.

The resulting Steele Dossier’s funding was hidden as a legal expense by the Clinton campaign’s general counsel, Marc Elias. (This I covered in previous post and it's not relevant to the premise)

So Brennan and the Obama Administration knew in advance about the planned political hit job. Yet, only months later, Brennan would intervene to force the dossier’s inclusion in version 2.0 of the intelligence assessment. Unnamed officials then leaked false information to the media about non-existent intelligence implicating Trump.

(This whole claim below is conjecture, conflation of interference with collusion, unsupported conclusion)
Keep in mind that Obama’s ordering of the new assessment was occurring at the very end of his term. There was a rush to complete the report before Trump took office after defeating Hillary Clinton. The effort seeded the Russian collusion hoax that would consume much of Trump’s first term.

In other words, it worked. However, it required the involvement of John Brennan, as well as then-FBI Director James Comey. (Conclusion)

As time went on, Brennan continued to deny prior knowledge of the dossier. He would later become a paid contributor for MSNBC and, in 2018, insisted that he first heard “just snippets about” the dossier in the “late summer of 2016.”

(This next section, in pink, is questionable re factual, relevancy to premise and conclusive)

As an MSNBC regular, Brennan accused Trump of “treason,” to the delight of the network hosts and viewers. (He later tried to insist that, when he called Trump’s actions “nothing short of treasonous,” he did not actually mean that Trump had “committed treason.”)

Whatever professional integrity Brennan had left after that, he set it aside in joining more than 50 former intelligence officials in signing a now-infamous letter dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 presidential election as likely “Russian disinformation.”

Joining him on the letter was former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who says that he has now “lawyered up” in anticipation of potential criminal allegations. The laptop, of course, was later found to be authentic and incriminating for Hunter Biden.

Back in 2016 and in the years that followed, this must have (conclusive and questionable non-factual) seemed to Brennan like just another CIA operation with “plausible deniability.” After all, he knew that he had the Biden administration and the media watching his back. (non-factual, questionable and conclusive) Of course, the public would ultimately reject these hit jobs, not only reelecting Trump but also giving Republicans full control of Congress. (Actually, It's Trump who has complete control of congress)

Brennan may be protected from perjury charges by the five-year statute of limitations. However, he is likely to be called again before Congress and asked the same questions. Even if he is not criminally charged, his past statements will remain an indictment of his role in history.

(I highlighted the above quote in bold because it says so much. It practically tells the reader what this is about. It's red meat for MAGA. The winners get to write history, for example and Orwell's 1984 quote: "He who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past" https://www.google.com/search?...gHLQ&sclient=gws-wiz

The GOPers in congress know the statute of limitations and for other practical reasons Brennen and others will never be prosecuted for the treason Trump claims. The evidence doesn't lend to indictments or prosecutions. But they think, as usual, they can squeeze some political juice out of this, and maybe get some farce contempt charge or new perjury by asking and twisting the right questions if they question him or them under oath. And if nothing is there there, they still accomplish the mission. It should be seen as SOP for a do nothing GOPer congress, under Trump's thumb.)

What is now clear is that high-level officials dismissed intelligence and evidence in order to create and spread the Russian collusion conspiracy as widely as they could. Their politicization of intelligence was raw and wrong. It succeeded only because it was an “all-hands-on-deck” effort, from the Obama White House to the CIA, the FBI, and the media. (This is conclusion stated as fact and it's a conspiracy theory. Also, it conflates collusion with interference and coordination. It's a fact that Trump admin and Trump himself and his sons coordinated with Russian interference. Collusion has a specific definition in context, but even Mueller didn't exonerate Trump of collusion as Trump claimed. Muller just said he couldn't get enough prosecutable evidence, mostly because Manafort and Stone refused to cooperate. As we recall, that was quid pro quo - silence for pardon)

The rise and fall of John Brennan is an all-too-familiar Beltway tragedy. (conclusion)

(The following three paragraphs are as ironic as it gets regarding GOPer or Rightist's honesty, and other self-supposed virtues)

People do not lose their idealism in this city in grand moments of corruption. It starts with small lies that steadily reduce your resistance until the biggest lies become happenstance. It can create a type of self-deception as one treats lies as a moral option for the sake of the greater good.

In “A Man for All Seasons,” Sir Thomas More is asked by his loving daughter Meg to sign a false affidavit to save his own life. More tells her, “When a man takes an oath, he’s holding his own self in his own hands like water, and if he opens his fingers then, he needn’t hope to find himself again.”

In Washington, power tends to loosen fingers over time, and the truth drips out to the point that little recognizable remains. That is the true tragedy.

For Brennan, what began as a young man’s wanderlust ended in a quagmire of contradictions and deceit. (conclusion)

https://thehill.com/opinion/na...of-john-brennan/amp/

==================================================

Going back, and analyzing my analysis, I was a bit surprised to find nothing highlighted in green , signifying fact. Hummm

In summary that whole narrative was written for the true believers, for the non-critical thinkers, and to promote Trump's lies, and perhaps to deflect from the Epstein thing. It conflates conclusions with supposed facts or partial facts as though the conclusions are facts themselves supporting the premise. IOW it's typical Fox in the hen house.

I made is as far as the title, "John Turley, Opinion Contributor ".

I don't find opinion to be factual.

quote:

Originally posted by Scott King:
I made is as far as the title, "John Turley, Opinion Contributor ".

I don't find opinion to be factual.

What about bullshit that agrees with your point of view?

quote:

Originally posted by LongDistanceOperator:

quote:

Originally posted by Scott King:
I made is as far as the title, "John Turley, Opinion Contributor ".

I don't find opinion to be factual.

What about bullshit that agrees with your point of view?

Why do i need the affirmation? Why in this specific case do I need the agreement?

Over the years I've come to believe that government is mostly dishonest, politicians are mostly dishonest and specifically Trump and his executive staff along with many of his supporters are dishonest.

Whatever the Fox News Opinion Contributor John Turley has to say I'm certainly not going to take as truth at face value and on the other hand I'm not inclined to believe in the integrity of the Obama administration.

The above all being the actual God's honest truth, I'm not more or less an individual American voter that lives far out in Timbuktu. Last election day, the race was called for trump before I voted. My vote and my opinion has little to do with anything.

But if Doc Lane wants to to sway me he has to do a little better than "greatest hoax ever!" and John Turley Opinion Contributor.

quote:

Originally posted by Scott King:

quote:

Originally posted by LongDistanceOperator:

quote:

Originally posted by Scott King:
I made is as far as the title, "John Turley, Opinion Contributor ".

I don't find opinion to be factual.

What about bullshit that agrees with your point of view?

Why do i need the affirmation? Why in this specific case do I need the agreement?

Over the years I've come to believe that government is mostly dishonest, politicians are mostly dishonest and specifically Trump and his executive staff along with many of his supporters are dishonest.

Whatever the Fox News Opinion Contributor John Turley has to say I'm certainly not going to take as truth at face value and on the other hand I'm not inclined to believe in the integrity of the Obama administration.

The above all being the actual God's honest truth, I'm not more or less an individual American voter that lives far out in Timbuktu. Last election day, the race was called for trump before I voted. My vote and my opinion has little to do with anything.

But if Doc Lane wants to to sway me he has to do a little better than "greatest hoax ever!" and John Turley Opinion Contributor.

My mistake. I thought I was replying to ledvm.

once the damages are done internally or and externally how long to recover ... certainly way longer than to create it first ...

quote:

Originally posted by ledvm:
Everything in the OP is fact and Roland is beginning to see it. Mike probably does too as he is an intelligent person. Only the greatest of the hoaxed tribe tries to argue against what we all know these days.

What GREAT TIMES we are living! Business is volcanic, investments are burgeoning, and the rats are scurrying!

IMO, there's real depth regarding the OP narrative in both the author and ledvm's belief it's all fact.

Beyond the obvious reason it was written and believed, because it's what Trump wants and needs, it represents a core of Trumpism. Trump NEEDS these narratives and he NEEDS believers, otherwise his whole ploy for authoritarianism has a big hole in it.

I could spend a lot of words and time trying to explain that, but others can explain it better:

https://youtu.be/jIonrnzj_BU?si=Bw8Vs0FboQas2jpV

The MAGA Ideology That Brought Us to This Moment | Explainer

https://youtu.be/iDnmZifq2JM?si=fqPjz1KTbhriSS1D

How Trump Controls Minds: A Chilling Psychological Breakdown

(look at the comments below the video)

==============================================

Here's one I can't resist posting. It has rhythm!

https://youtube.com/shorts/4Bv...?si=SinDJwxGL80mg9TX

I hope that some of you found the above videos informative.

Here's a short article:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...Oyv?ocid=socialshare

MAGA was 'groomed for this moment' as Trump seeks to shed Epstein: analyst
Story by Robert Davis • 5h •
2 min read

============================================

The author is writing about recent events, but in reality MAGA has been groomed since at least Reagan, perhaps longer.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...m0c?ocid=socialshare

FBI investigated, never verified, purported Clinton plan to link Trump with Russia
Story by Warren Strobel • 14h • 5 min read


The FBI investigated intelligence reports alleging that 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton approved a plan for her campaign to vilify opponent Donald Trump by tying him to Russian President Vladimir Putin, but it was ultimately unable to verify that such a plot existed, according to a document the Trump administration declassified and released on Thursday.

The document, a classified annex to the 2023 report by U.S. special counsel John Durham, includes emails among Clinton campaign aides indicating that her team saw then-candidate Trump’s ties to Russia as potential campaign fodder and discussed how to highlight the issue for political gain.

But the report contains no proof that — as Trump officials and allies have alleged in recent weeks — Clinton and senior U.S. officials close to President Barack Obama schemed to concoct erroneous Trump links to Moscow, sullying his 2016 election victory and first term.

In a half-dozen targeted document dumps over the past month, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and top Justice Department officials have sought to relitigate the presidential election of nearly nine years ago and refute earlier findings by multiple investigations that Putin intervened in the 2016 contest to help Trump.

The actions of Ratcliffe and Gabbard, whose positions are supposed to be apolitical, are highly unusual, if not unprecedented.

Gabbard last week accused Obama and his national security team of engineering a “years-long coup” against Trump. Ratcliffe has said he referred his CIA predecessor John Brennan, former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. and former FBI director James B. Comey to the FBI for investigation.

The existence of unverified intelligence suggesting Clinton approved a campaign plan to tie Trump to Russia has been publicly known since at least 2020.

Details about how the FBI and other U.S. agencies handled that information are revealed in the document released Thursday, part of the report by Durham, who was charged by Attorney General William P. Barr during Trump’s first term to investigate U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies’ actions during the 2016 campaign.

The origins of the intelligence reports on Clinton and Russia are somewhat obscured in the document, which remains partially redacted. But they appear to be derived in part from Russian spy agencies’ hacking of private U.S. think tanks that were in touch with the Clinton campaign and federal agencies.

The New York Times reported in 2023 that the memos Russia obtained through hacks and the accompanying analysis by Moscow were in turn retrieved by a Dutch spy service which infiltrated Russian computer servers and provided the material to the CIA.

The material obtained by the FBI includes summaries of hacked emails allegedly sent by Leonard Benardo, an official at the Open Society Foundations, an organization founded by George Soros.

A memorandum regarding those emails, apparently translated from Russian, reports that on July 26, 2016, Clinton approved a plan by a top policy adviser, Julianne Smith, “to smear Donald Trump by magnifying the scandal tied to the intrusion by the Russian special services in the pre-election process to benefit the Russian candidate.” The “intrusion” apparently referred to Russian spy agencies’ hacks of computers belonging to the Democratic Party and Clinton’s campaign.

Another alleged email from Benardo regarding the Clinton campaign’s thinking reported that “Later the FBI will put more oil into the fire” — suggesting foreknowledge of cooperation between the Democratic campaign and the Obama administration to fuel the Trump-Russia narrative.

Smith, in an interview with Durham’s investigators, denied making any proposal to enlist the FBI and said she didn’t recall proposing a plan to smear Trump. Smith, who served in senior national security posts in the Obama and Biden administrations, did not reply to a request for comment.

Benardo told investigators he did not recall drafting the emails. He declined to comment when reached by phone.

“The claim that the Open Society Foundations helped orchestrate an FBI investigation is an outrageous falsehood,” a spokesman for the group said. “It is grounded in malicious disinformation traced to Russian intelligence and now weaponized as part of a politically motivated campaign to attack our leadership and our work to promote human rights.”

While top FBI officials debated the veracity of the intelligence on Clinton’s plans, they ultimately were unable to verify it. Durham reported that his office could not determine whether it “was entirely genuine, partially true, a composite pulled from multiple sources, exaggerated in certain respects, or fabricated in its entirety.”

Durham’s 2023 report chastised the FBI for not investigating the issue as aggressively as it had probed Trump’s ties to Russia.

In 2020, Ratcliffe, who was then Trump’s director of national intelligence, declassified some information about the purported Clinton campaign plan, emphasizing that the U.S. intelligence community “does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.”

On Thursday, Ratcliffe said in a statement that the declassified Durham document shows “the false Trump-Russia collusion narrative for what it was — a coordinated plan to prevent and destroy Donald Trump’s presidency.”

CIA spokeswoman Liz Lyons said in a statement that “a mountain of evidence” supports Ratcliffe’s latest statement. “The Director has been clear and consistent on this issue, grounding his position in both overwhelming evidence and basic common sense. He remains firmly committed to presenting the facts to the American people — and to ensuring that intelligence is never weaponized again,” she said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday asserted that the Durham annex “is further evidence that Hillary Clinton approved the Russia hoax against President Trump. Her campaign financed it again. She approved it. And the FBI and the CIA were both weaponized, too.”

Multiple independent investigations, include a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report and the probe by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, concluded that Russia engaged in a sweeping campaign to interfere in the 2016 election with the aim of disrupting U.S. democracy and helping its preferred candidate, Trump.

Trump administration officials have released successive tranches of documents over the past month intended to counter the latter point and create a new narrative that implicates former Democratic officials in a conspiracy.

In early July, Ratcliffe released a review of the tradecraft that intelligence analysts used in a key January 2017 assessment that concluded Russian President Vladimir Putin “aspired” to help Trump in 2016. The review identified procedural problems in creating the assessment but did not challenge its conclusions.

Last week, Gabbard released a 2017 report by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee that disputed spy agencies’ finding that Putin had favored Trump in 2016. Democrats called the GOP report a partisan exercise, and former U.S. intelligence officials who led the January 2017 assessment said they stood by their sourcing and conclusions.

quote:

Originally posted by ledvm:
0bama is immune. Some Republicans likely in on the hoax.

But I believe there will be prosecution.

Obama didn't do anything wrong. Ethically or legally. This entire thing has been gone over and investigated ad nauseum.

The recent allegations are trump's way of deflecting attention from the ever-tightening Epstein noose that is dangling over his head. He'll do anything, say anything, make up any lie in order to deflect attention from his sexual weirdo pedo antics with Epstein.

The truly amusing thing about all of this is how the brainwashed trumptards are willing to accept any utterance from their orange shit-gibbon as being true.....when every human on the planet knows that he is a pathological liar.

quote:

Originally posted by Mike Mitchell:

quote:

Originally posted by ledvm:
0bama is immune. Some Republicans likely in on the hoax.

But I believe there will be prosecution.

Obama didn't do anything wrong. Ethically or legally. This entire thing has been gone over and investigated ad nauseum.

The recent allegations are trump's way of deflecting attention from the ever-tightening Epstein noose that is dangling over his head. He'll do anything, say anything, make up any lie in order to deflect attention from his sexual weirdo pedo antics with Epstein.

The truly amusing thing about all of this is how the brainwashed trumptards are willing to accept any utterance from their orange shit-gibbon as being true.....when every human on the planet knows that he is a pathological liar.

He doesn't need to tell the truth or be accurate in anything he says because his supporters don't hold him to account. They either don't want to, or are just too plain dumb to realise they are having smoke blown up their backsides.

quote:

Originally posted by nute:

quote:

Originally posted by Mike Mitchell:

quote:

Originally posted by ledvm:
0bama is immune. Some Republicans likely in on the hoax.

But I believe there will be prosecution.

Obama didn't do anything wrong. Ethically or legally. This entire thing has been gone over and investigated ad nauseum.

The recent allegations are trump's way of deflecting attention from the ever-tightening Epstein noose that is dangling over his head. He'll do anything, say anything, make up any lie in order to deflect attention from his sexual weirdo pedo antics with Epstein.

The truly amusing thing about all of this is how the brainwashed trumptards are willing to accept any utterance from their orange shit-gibbon as being true.....when every human on the planet knows that he is a pathological liar.

He doesn't need to tell the truth or be accurate in anything he says because his supporters don't hold him to account. They either don't want to, or are just too plain dumb to realise they are having smoke blown up their backsides.

I’ll go with the plain too dumb…q