So, what's going on with all the noise? To many, it appears to be a concerted effort to prepare for some kind of imminent shock to Trumpworld. Here are some perspectives (as always, please check out the entire articles at the links):
Jonathan Chait:
Having apparently decided that defending the Trump campaign against charges of collusion with Russian cyberattacks is an impossible task, the Republican Party has decided to go on offense. The House Intelligence Committee, putatively assigned to investigate collusion, is instead running a counter-investigation into Trump’s nemeses. Their argument, incredibly enough, is that the FBI and Robert Mueller are the real perpetrators of collusion with Russia. “No puppet, no puppet, you’re the puppet” has become the new Republican argument against Mueller.
Their case, which is being quickly spread by Republican officeholders and conservative media, centers on the role of Christopher Steele, a respected retired British intelligence officer turned private investigator, and Fusion GPS, the firm for which he worked. During the Republican primary, donors opposed to Trump’s candidacy hired Steele to conduct opposition research into Trump. After Trump won the primary, Democrats continued to finance his investigation. Steele compiled a now-famous dossier alleging a web of corrupt ties, including blackmail, between Trump, his inner circle, and the Kremlin. The FBI took at least some steps to investigate the allegations Steele made, a natural response given the serious possibility that the Kremlin had compromised a president-elect. The questions surrounding Trump’s collusion are in some sense an outgrowth of the larger question of his corrupt relationship with Russia.The Los Angeles Times:
But it’s absurd to suggest that this new wrinkle vindicates Trump’s longstanding claim that the “Trump Russia story is a hoax.” If some of the allegations in the Steele dossier are accurate, it’s of small importance that they were turned up as part of an opposition research operation. And, of course, the Steele document isn’t the only source of suspicion about Russian meddling or about improper contacts between Russian operatives or intermediaries and people in the Trump orbit.
Not for the first time — remember the bogus scandal about the supposedly improper “unmasking” of Trump transition officials whose names appeared in intelligence intercepts? — the president and his allies are seizing on a sideshow to distract attention from the main event: Russian interference in last year’s election and allegations that the Trump campaign colluded in that interference — and that Trump tried to frustrate investigations of that conduct, including by firing former FBI Director James B. Comey. Neither the public nor federal investigators should be fooled into taking their eyes off the ball.Former FBI double agent Naveed Jamili on MSNBC:
“I think that these people are worried and the best they can do is do a preemptive attack on whatever it is that’s coming,” Jamili explained. “The fact that these things are coming out now, when there’s no reason to rebut anything, is for lack of a better word, just ‘curious.’ I think it’s exactly what you’re leading towards, which is there is something coming, they know about this, and they’re preemptively trying to distract the American public from something fairly big that’s coming down the pike.”Juliette Kayyem on Boston Public Radio:
National security expert Juliette Kayyem is predicting news from Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation will be announced within the next month.
“I think it is safe to say that before Thanksgiving ... something’s going to drop with Mueller,” she said on Boston Public Radio today. “The pace is too much right now. Every 12 hours we’re now dealing with a piece of this story at a pace we haven’t seen.”
Kayyem was prompted to make her prediction by the buzz surrounding a story about how Hillary Clinton’s campaign funded what would eventually become the famous “Trump-Russia Dossier” that surfaced in January.It appears the Trump regime knows the house is coming down around their compromised heads, likely with indictments of former campaign manager Paul Manafort and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, which should reveal significant information about where Special Counsel Robert Mueller is headed in his investigation. No wonder they're suddenly trying to distract, deflect and derail.
BONUS: A panel on CNN debunked the Russian uranium sale faux scandal, identifying it as a smear campaign by Fox "News" and Republicans to take the focus off the Rump regime's Russia scandal.
BONUS II: Too late for inclusion above, Digby also has a good read about how these shitheels are promoting "the real Russian scandal."
