It’s time to Break It Down!
Donald J. Trump has consistently maligned the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, using terms like witch hunt, hoax, fake news, and phony scam. If you’ve followed the situation, you know he hasn’t stopped there. Mr. Trump routinely levels broadside assaults against the FBI, and ignores the assessment of his own (as in he appointed them) Intelligence Agency Directors. In the considered opinion of the collective American Intel community, The Russians meddled in the 2016 Presidential Election. This has turned out to be quite problematic, but not because of the reason(s) one might think.
The very idea of this conclusion is akin to a bur in Trump’s very ample saddle. By his way of thinking, the mere suggestion that anything other than his personal brilliance, and stellar campaign tactics were responsible, in any way, for his victory, is not just a rank miscalculation, but also an affront to his not so refined sensibilities.
The Leader of the free world is so personally absorbed with his perception of being ill-treated by the FBI, he asserted that the Agency was responsible for the recent Florida school shooting because…they were obsessed with Trump, rather than with conducting the appropriate follow-up on Nikolas Cruz, the young man who killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL on Valentine’s Day. Of course, this completely ignores the fact that the FBI has 35,000 employees, and that the criminal investigation in Florida is in no way connected with the political meddling case. other than that, the argument is still completely illogical on its face.
Add to all this the fact that Trump refuses to take Vladimir Putin and Russia to task for their fundamentally bad actor moves; not even by executing Sanctions already approved by the U.S. Senate by a vote of 98-2, and in the House by a vote of 419-3, or a total in the entire Congress of 517-5. In other words, in this hyper-partisan era, 99.4% of the entire Congress voted for Sanctions that the President refuses to enact. Does that mean the President of the United States has more faith, trust, and confidence in Putin than in his own FBI, and more respect for Vlad than he does the United States Congress, in which his Party controls both Houses? You be the judge!
Last Friday, Deputy Attorney Rod Rosenstein held a news conference at which he detailed charges related to indictments against 13 Russian Nationals and three Russian entities for trying to influence the 2016 Presidential Election in the United States…in favor of Donald Trump. Boom! As they say in the MiO commercial, “This changes everything.”
A summary of the 37-page indictment, as detailed by Bloomberg, includes several key elements:
Twelve of the Russians worked in various capacities to carry out election and political interference operations targeting the U.S. — “by impairing, obstructing and defeating the lawful function of the government through fraud and deceit.”
The campaign started in 2014, ran through the presidential election of 2016, and continued after that.
“Some defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign and with other political activists.”
An American with a Texas-based grass-roots organization suggested to the Russians that they should focus their activities on “purple states like Colorado, Virginia and Florida.” After the exchange, the Russians commonly referred to targeting those states.
Their financing was provided by the 13th defendant, Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and companies which he allegedly controlled.
Mueller Accuses Russians of Pro-Trump, Anti-Clinton Meddling
The Russians posed as Americans, created fake personas, and ran social media pages and groups designed to attract U.S. audiences, including on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. They also used stolen identities of real Americans to post on those accounts.
The goal was “to sow discord in the U.S. political system,” including the presidential election, by supporting the Trump campaign and disparaging his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, with ads and rallies.
They’re charged with failing to disclose those expenditures, failing to register as foreign agents and obtaining visas through false and fraudulent statements.
The program was run from St. Petersburg, Russia.
It employed hundreds of individuals for its online operations
The organization, with an annual budget equivalent to millions of U.S. dollars, aimed to carry out “information warfare” against the U.S.
From Introduction to Substitute Assets, Mueller’s Indictment covers 99 individually enumerated topics, several of which also included alpha-based subdivisions. To give you an idea of the depth of the strategies and tactics the Russians employed, I pulled items 43-46 for your edification. These elements focus on the Russian operatives communicating derogatory information about Trump’s GOP Primary opponents, and Hillary Clinton, and communicating information in support of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. During the General Election, they produced and distributed an array of pro-Trump and anti-Clinton election materials, maintained corresponding social media accounts, and undertook a variety of efforts to suppress minority voting.
- By 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used their fictitious online personas to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump. 43. By 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used their fictitious online personas to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.
- Certain ORGANIZATION-produced materials about the 2016 U.S. presidential election used election-related hashtags, including: “#Trump2016,” “#TrumpTrain,” “#MAGA,” “#IWontProtectHillary,” and “#Hillary4Prison.” Defendants and their co-conspirators also established additional online social media accounts dedicated to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, including the Twitter account “March for Trump” and Facebook accounts “Clinton FRAUDation” and “Trumpsters United.”
- Defendants and their co-conspirators also used false U.S. personas to communicate with unwitting members, volunteers, and supporters of the Trump Campaign involved in local community outreach, as well as grassroots groups that supported then-candidate Trump. These individuals and entities at times distributed the ORGANIZATION’s materials through their own accounts via retweets, reposts, and similar means. Defendants and their co-conspirators then monitored the propagation of content through such participants.
- In or around the latter half of 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators, through their ORGANIZATION-controlled personas, began to encourage U.S. minority groups not to vote in the 2016 U.S. presidential election or to vote for a third-party U.S. presidential candidate.
- On or about October 16, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used the ORGANIZATION-controlled Instagram account “Woke Blacks” to post the following message: “[A] particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we’d surely be better off without voting AT ALL.”
- On or about November 3, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators purchased an advertisement to promote a post on the ORGANIZATION-controlled Instagram account “Blacktivist” that read in part: “Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it’s not a wasted vote.”
- By in or around early November 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used the ORGANIZATION-controlled “United Muslims of America” social media accounts to post anti-vote messages such as: “American Muslims [are] boycotting elections today, most of the American Muslim voters refuse to vote for Hillary Clinton because she wants to continue the war on Muslims in the middle east and voted yes for invading Iraq.”
Considering there was 95 other numbered items in the indictment, you can imagine the degree of specificity and depth involved in Friday’s Mueller indictment. As these revelations come to light, I am particularly disheartened by the reality that many of my Woke Brothers and Sisters must now face. They were “played.” “Clinton Fraudation,” “Killary,”, “Hillary4Prison,” “Rather not vote,” so much Russian machination. In embracing this artful ruse, far too many otherwise Woke black folks helped elect a Useful Idiot-in-Chief. As ignorance is no excuse for not knowing the law, unwitting is no excuse for this horrific unintended consequence. Elections have consequences! There is really only one more point I wish to underscore with this post. The charade is over…“Witch Hunt. Hoax. Fake News. Phony Scam. #NotAnyMore!”
I’m done; holla back!
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Consult the links below for more detailed information on a variety of aspects relating to this post:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/rosenstein-mueller-indictment-russia/553601/
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XoAf_I3ULwE
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/16/deputy-ag-rod-rosenstein-on-grand-jury-indictment-of-russians.html
BREAK IT DOWN! 