Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 10/22/21 Aaron Maté on the Clintonian Origins of Russiagate

Episode Date: October 26, 2021

Aaron Maté is back on the show to discuss an article he wrote published at Real Clear Investigations. Maté explains how, although the origins of Russiagate are still murky, the Clinton Campaign seem...s to be at the center of it all. Notably with Clinton lawyers hiring Fusion GPS to look into Trump connections with Russia, an “inquiry” that led to the Steele Dossier. The Campaign’s legal team also hired Crowdstrike to investigate the DNC email leak, a step that was necessary to push the narrative that the leak was carried out by the Russians to support Trump. Maté stresses the timeline for which these events took place, because the dates alone are fatal to the establishment’s narrative.   Discussed on the show: “Coming Into Focus: Hillary's Secretive, Russiagate-Flogging Pair of Super-Lawyers” (Real Clear Investigations) Scott’s Interview with Craig Murray  “CrowdStrikeOut: Mueller’s Own Report Undercuts Its Core Russia-Meddling Claims” (Real Clear Investigations) Scott’s debate with Bill Kristol “Claims of Microwave Attacks Are Scientifically Implausible” (Foreign Policy) Aaron Maté is an NYC-based journalist and producer. He hosts the news show Pushback for The Grayzone, and writes regularly for The Nation. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on Twitter @AaronJMate. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Dröm; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt; Lorenzotti Coffee and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:30 All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, time to end the war in Afghanistan, and the brand new, enough already, time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more the 5,500 interviews since 2000. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot four you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys i love this story because i hate this story so it's great it's uh rushagate still on it it's the great aran mate writing at real clear investigations as we're learning more and more things This one is called Coming Into Focus, Hillary's secretive Russiagate flogging pair of super lawyers. Welcome back to the show. How you doing?
Starting point is 00:01:39 I'm good, Scott. How are you? I'm doing great. You know, I told Taiibi one time, well, I'm mad at you because he said he was going to write a book called Untitled Gate about the origins of Russia Gate. And it's all so murky exactly where all this came from. and you seem hot on the trail here. And it's just this one kind of, this recent indictment, seemed like it was kind of important,
Starting point is 00:02:12 but you seem to have grabbed onto it as a string and started unraveling a whole kind of aspect of the story or kind of a whole new take on information that we already knew here. So go ahead and tell us what you found. Well, you're right that the oral, origins are still murky. It's unclear exactly when this whole thing kicked off and what precipitated it. What we do know for sure is that the Clinton campaign is at the nexus of
Starting point is 00:02:42 everything. So in April 2016, they hire Fusion GPS and Fusion GPS is mandated to look into Trump's potential ties to Russia and that leads to the steel dossier and the steel dossier becomes you know the basis for a lot of FBI activity they develop this spreadsheet where they basically tried to chase down every single conspiracy theory that steel floated to them which of course they could not corroborate because it was all invented and they even use the steel dossier for surveillance applications on Carter page so you have a Clinton campaign paying an unprecedented role in an FBI investigation and one that actually targets the Clinton campaign's political opponent, the Trump campaign. So that's pretty extraordinary. But that level of, that
Starting point is 00:03:38 odd relationship is compounded by the fact that you also have the Clinton campaign at the heart of the other foundational Russia gate allegation, which is that Russia hacked the DNC and gave the emails to WikiLeaks because the party that first accused Russia of doing that was not the FBI, but it was CrowdStrike. And what is CrowdStrike? It's a private firm that was hired by Perkins Coy, who is the Clinton campaign's law firm, the same law firm that hired Fusion GPS to do the Steele dossier. And the person at Perkins Coy who hired CrowdStrike is none other than Michael Sussman, who was an attorney who last. month was indicted by John Durham for lying to the FBI. And he was indicted for lying to the FBI
Starting point is 00:04:27 while trying to give the FBI this another fake conspiracy theory that Trump and Russia might have been secretly communicating via this via a Trump organization server and a server used by Russia's Alpha Bank, a major Russian bank. And as part of that, Sussman gave the FBI some technical data that looks like it was basically fabricated. that's what we can glean from what's come out so far. So you have not just, you know, the steel of the SAA coming from the Clinton campaign, but also the even more foundational claim that Russia hacked the DNC coming from the Clinton campaign as well, a Clinton campaign contractor.
Starting point is 00:05:07 And as I show in my article real clear, just going through the available public documents, including testimony that was before Congress and the Mueller report and Senate reports, Michael Sussman, this lawyer, played an instrumental role in managing the information that CrowdStrike gave the FBI. Because critically, just as the FBI relied on the steel dossier for surveillance warrants and for investigative leads, the FBI also relied on Crowdstrike for its investigation of the DNC server breach because the DNC did not get independent access to the DNC server. They instead relied on Crowdstrike's forensics. Crowdstrikes reports that were given to the FBI were heavily redacted. And who oversaw that process?
Starting point is 00:05:54 Michael Sussman. All right. So now, I imagined when I read this that you have a 2016 calendar with notes all over it to keep this straight in your head. I don't know if that's true or not. But can you help me understand in the timeline how this fits with the announcement that WikiLeaks is going to put out something Hillary related? and or the setting up of Papadopoulos
Starting point is 00:06:21 by the Cambridge 4 and this weird group in England and all these other things that are going around right in, we're talking about the very early months of this giant fake scandal here. What I know for sure is that in April 2016, first, at some point during that month, that's when Perkins Coy,
Starting point is 00:06:46 the Clinton campaign lawyer, Hires Fusing GPS, specifically to look into Trump's ties to Russia, okay? And that's pretty early on, right? That is very early on. It's very early on. It's, you know, and then shortly, and then at the end of the month, that's when the DNC supposedly learned that it's been hacked. And the last days of April is when Michael Sussman at Perkins Coy calls a crowdstrike and hires
Starting point is 00:07:13 them. And according to assessment, within a day, he says, CrowdStrike came to conclusion, and it was Russia. And you've talked about this before. I mean, experts like Jeffrey Carr have pointed out that there's just no way you can make a conclusion that quickly that this hack comes from some specific actors. The only people who could do that would be the NSA. But the NSA was not involved here, at least at this stage.
Starting point is 00:07:41 And it's unclear even to what extent the NSA has weighed in on this question at all. So very, very quickly, you have a private firm hired by Michael Sussman, concluding that it was Russia, just days after Michael Sussman's colleague, Mark Elias at Perkins Coy, hired Fusion GPS to look into Trump's ties to Russia. It's all very, very convenient. And fast forward to June. So on June 12th, Julian Assange says publicly for the first time that he has upcoming leaks related to days. Hillary Clinton, and he's basically teasing the DNC leagues. Two days later, Michael Sussman gets the DNC and Crowdstrike to go to the Washington Post and tell them that they've been hacked by Russia.
Starting point is 00:08:32 That's when CrowdStrike first comes forward on June 14th and says the DNC was hacked by Russia. Conveniently, just two days after Julian Assange said that he had Hillary Clinton emails. And the next day after a crowd strike comes forward, and again, Michael Sussman is responsible for that story, that's when this interesting character, Guzifer 2.0, comes up, and he claims credit for hacking a DNC, and he even releases some files that come from the DNC. But interestingly, he has metadata in his documents that make it very easy to discover that he's tied to Russia.
Starting point is 00:09:09 He's using a VPN that's in Russia. he's using metadata that is Russian. So Guzifer 2.0 while claiming credit for hacking the DNC makes it very, very, very convenient to look as if it makes it very, very easy to discover that he is from Russia. And then it's later on that Mueller says that Guzsupor 2.0 is the entity that gave the stolen DNC emails to Julian Assange, which doesn't make any sense because it's true that Assange and Guzaparte 2.0 made content.
Starting point is 00:09:41 But they only made contact after Assange had already announced that he had the emails. So Mueller's timeline does not make sense, you know, as I pointed out before. And he doesn't attempt to demonstrate it in any other way, does he? Mueller? Right, in the report. What Mueller does is he points out that at a certain point, Gooseford 2.0 did send Assange something. He sent WikiLeaks something because Goosever was taking credit for giving all the things. He ignores the fact that that was after the fact.
Starting point is 00:10:12 He certainly ignores that. Right. Now, Guesopher did apparently send WikiLeaks something, but Mueller has no idea what is in that, and it's unclear if WikiLeaks ever published what he got from Guzifer. Mueller suggests that what Guzifer sent to Assange is the stolen DNC emails. But according to the timeline, it doesn't make sense because, again, Assange already announced that he had them before he even made contact with Guzifer.
Starting point is 00:10:36 So what I think Guzsaphr was was a stunt to basically publicly try to take credit for the DNC emails and then making contact with Assange was a way to establish some kind of paper trail to make it look as if he was sending him something. Whereas Assange was just basically asking for Guzifer 2.0 for whatever he might have had that Assange didn't already have. I think that's what Athanj's interest was in speaking to Guzper 2.0. it's and muller certainly does not state affirmatively that that gusufor gave assange the emails because he he can't prove that yeah um and but it's enough to confuse the issue and and leave the implication uh that oh see this gusufor guy's all tied up and this asan's stuff when as you lay it out me it's not conclusive at all and in fact it looks like a put on like someone is coming up with this stuff to try to insinuate themselves
Starting point is 00:11:34 into the story when they don't really have anything to do with it. And I don't know if I've ever discussed this with you. I think I probably have, but it's been a lot of years of this. But I interviewed Craig Murray. And Craig Murray said, not that he received the leap. The Daily Mail got that wrong. And he corrected that on the record when I interviewed him. But he said that he met with the leaker.
Starting point is 00:11:54 And he knew who of the DNC stuff. And he knew who the leaker of the Podesta emails was. and that in either case are they Russian, they're insiders. And I think the implication was, and he was not, he did not make any direct implication about Seth Rich or that whole angle. But it was somebody with access to the Democratic emails. And then I think on the Podesta emails, he implied that it was someone at one of the intelligence agencies, someone like an NSA officer who was upset that these secrecy rules
Starting point is 00:12:32 apply to them, but not to Hillary, and they'd cook her goose and show her kind of thing. And so I'm not saying I know that that's 100% right, but, well, I do know I got two witnesses say they saw him leave dinner early that night, that he supposedly went and met with the source in Washington, D.C., in a park. And he assured me, and I believed him at the time, because this whole story is obviously garbage. The other side of the story is, I mean, the Hillary Clinton side of the story, that he went and met with this person in a park in D.C.
Starting point is 00:13:02 see and could 100% verify to me no tie whatsoever to the Russians yeah he said that and look a quick worry someone I really respect in fact he he's in prison right now for in a ridiculous case having to do with his blog postings he's literally in jail right now it's so he's faced persecution in the UK for a long time By the way, I'm sorry, because I should have said for people not familiar, Craig Murray's a former ambassador to his Becca standing blew the whistle on America and Britain turning their blind eye to torture there. But, and as a friend and associate of Assange's, but can you elaborate?
Starting point is 00:13:47 Do you know much about that story about what he's doing in jail now? Because I've not been able to keep up with that. You know, honestly, I don't understand it. All I know is he was, there was some kind of gag order over a trial that he was involved in. And somehow they think they ruled that his, blog posts violated that. That's what I think it is. I could be wrong. But regardless, it's ridiculous. It's so obviously political persecution because he's someone who's, you know, been challenging the national security state in the UK for a long time. Ever since he blew the
Starting point is 00:14:18 whistle on torture and in Uzbekistan and how the UK government was basically covering it up. So because they were an ally of the government there. So Craig Murray is a hero and he's being punished for it right now. And he has said that. that I know. I mean, it's, I, I try to go off what I can prove, you know, and what's, what's, what's, what's in the public record. And what's in the public record is damning enough to the official narrative that Russia did. It's so, they have so many evidentiary holes. The problem is, there's so few people in media willing to look at the actual available evidence. It's, instead, people just go with what the intelligence officials dictate. They say something happened. So then this becomes religious doctrine. It becomes what's, the official story is and it doesn't matter what the Mueller report to the Senate reports actually say it's what the narrative says but I mean the reason I've been able to just cover this for so long and stay busy is because there's so much material in reports in court filings that undermine the official story and as I point out in my new article crowd strike was not as confident privately
Starting point is 00:15:28 as it was publicly that Russia hacked these emails because we learned in May 2020 that Sean Henry, the CEO of CrowdStrike, that he had testified under oath that a crowd strike, in fact, had no evidence that these alleged Russian hackers actually exfiltrated anything from the DNC servers. He admitted that under oath in December 2017, which is, you know, relatively early on in Russia Gate. It's after it's been going on for about a year. But we didn't learn about that until May 2020 because that testimony was kept under wraps by Adam Schiff, who was the head of the House Intel Committee and basically wouldn't release that testimony until more than one year after the Mueller report was released. So it's, you know, it's
Starting point is 00:16:13 things like that. And, um, but if you look at, if you go back and read retrospectively, the intelligence reports had been put out from, uh, the FBI in December 2016. And then the Mueller report, in March 2019, they include these qualifiers about the attribution of Russian hacking. They talk about Russian hackers likely exfiltrating data, and they say Russian hackers appear to have exfiltrated data. And those qualifiers, read in retrospect, likely reflect the fact that Crowdstrike itself, which the FBI relied on, did not have any evidence of any actual exfiltration. And I pointed out these qualifiers, those qualified language.
Starting point is 00:16:57 very early on i think we did an interview about it scott back in the summer of 2019 after i wrote a very long article in real clear called crowd called crowd strikeout right i noted the evidentiary gaps in muller's report when it comes to the claims of russian hacking it's always been there but again this stuff just does not get reported elsewhere because journalists are not interested or most journalists are not interested in looking at the actual available facts right all right Sorry, hang on a second, important business here. I was telling my friend, man, you drink too much. You know it's causing all these other problems.
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Starting point is 00:18:51 Find it in the right-hand margin at Scott Horton.org. Yeah, I mean, it was amazing. It was almost like weapons of mass destruction. No, we're here to spread democracy. Everybody, what? Because when the Mueller report came out, they're like, Russia. No, no, no.
Starting point is 00:19:05 This investigation was never about Russia. This investigation was about whether there was obstruction of justice in this investigation. And then because they didn't want people reading the Russia part of the story. And I just did like a live blog at anti-war.com or at the Libertarian Institute, I guess, where I just, as I read it, I just took. screenshots of it and I was checking y'all's Twitter too because y'all were ahead of me but I was just going through and going wow look at all this we think and we heard and somebody said one time and all this stuff all throughout the thing it was just amazing but you know on your point about the media there and everybody else's kind of unwillingness to go back over this I mean just to back
Starting point is 00:19:43 up a sec once it came out that hey this wasn't really true then immediately everybody in journalism, especially those who had gone along with this and believed in it and reported it, should have said, wow, we better turn around and report on what was behind the effort to make us all believe this and tell the American people it was true. And they should all be doing the exact work that you're doing here. And the closest I can think of in, you know, the major media would be Eric Wemple at the Washington Post. If there's others, let me know. But He had a series on accountability. He took Rachel Matt out of task and others.
Starting point is 00:20:27 And I had his email address from, you know, he'd asked me for a comment on something years ago and never used it. I don't know. Anyway, so I emailed him and I couched it really carefully. And I said, listen, man, I'm not going off on some Seth Rich thing here. I'm not trying to make presumptions. I'm not, you know, but I'm just saying in a very, very serious way, man. Like, here, here's a great article where Philip Bump even says, like, has all these qualifiers and expresses skepticism and explains that we really don't know what happened, where these DNC things came from.
Starting point is 00:21:04 And if you read the Mueller report, it's not conclusive at all that, oh, here, the Russians gave this stuff to WikiLeaks. It's just not, they don't even claim that. So, listen, and you've taken on every last one of these claims, except the DNC leak. And do we have any real reason to believe that the Russians had anything to do with it at all other than just intelligence officials say? And like, don't you think that you should do that? That should be the final chapter of your comeuppance series here is do we know that even the single most important salient assertion at the beginning of this thing? the hacking of the DNC emails had anything to do with Russia
Starting point is 00:21:48 and he said to me something like you know what I will look into that and you do make a good point and that kind of thing and then he never did and I tried to follow up with him a couple of times and nothing happened I don't know it's like it's like these allegations
Starting point is 00:22:02 of Syria chemical weapons attacks you're just not allowed to go there even the you know even though you have whistleblowers inside the OPCW you have documented evidence that the investigation of Duma, this alleged chemical attack in Syria, was manipulated. You have the original report by the original team, and then you have the doctored report that they tried to rush out in its place, falsely accusing Syria of all these things. You know, you're not allowed to even acknowledge the existence of those whistleblowers.
Starting point is 00:22:31 I mean, it's never been reported in the Washington Post, never been reported in the New York Times, except one time in passing at the bottom of a fawning profile of Bellingcat. They mentioned, like, they obliquely referenced one of the OBCW whistleblowers in passing, but then quickly dismissed it because Bellingat says there's nothing to see here. So it's like that's, and there's the same thing. It's just this allegation that Russia hacked the DNC, it's too, it's too important to too many powerful people. It, you know, it served the interests of, you know, generating more Cold War tensions with Russia. It served the interest of distracting the public from the contents of those emails showing corruption. in the DNC and the Clinton campaign
Starting point is 00:23:13 and changing the subject to who stole them and how it was all Putin and part of Putin's plans to destroy democracy. So it's just, that's a third rail that you're just not allowed to touch, even though all the evidence shows it. And so what someone like Eric Weppel does, it's a good example.
Starting point is 00:23:27 They take on the low-hanging fruit, which is the steel dossier, which is such a farce. It's such a joke that like you just, it's so, like you look like an idiot if you don't acknowledge what a complete scan, the steel dossier. was because all these ridiculous conspiracy theories paid for by the Clinton campaign. It doesn't
Starting point is 00:23:47 get more ridiculous and corrupt than that. It's just, and of course, there's no evidence for any of its ludicrous claims, like, you know, Michael Cohen meeting in Prague with Russian hackers. I mean, Michael Cohen's turned on Trump. And even he says that Christopher Steele is deranged. And amazingly, ABC News just did a documentary of Christopher Steele treating him as if he's a serious person and not mentally unstable um but so someone like eric wumple you know he he's allowed to go and at least criticize that but um but that's to me is low-hanging fruit it's very very low-hanging fruit yeah and listen i got a mea culpa in here you know obviously people notice this i did too believe me that in my debate with bill crystal he made the claim about sarongas two or three
Starting point is 00:24:34 times and i didn't i just didn't get a chance to refute it but for the record In the book enough already, I have a subsection on my Syria chapter called three fake sarin attacks about Guta, Kanshi Koon, and Duma, where of course I cite you and WikiLeaks and the OPCW whistleblowers on Duma there. And so for everyone who said, why didn't you say that? I had too many things in my notes and I just didn't have time. But, Scott, listen, that was a, if I can say, I want to thank you on behalf of humanity for that debate. That was you, you destroyed him and and it was just so satisfying to watch and yes your performance was flawless the only thing that you let slide was the was his was this thing about chemical attacks on
Starting point is 00:25:21 syria but you know what that was such an amazing he also said we didn't intervene in the iran ira rock war when we back both sides of that that's important oh i missed that huh yeah there was there were a couple more too like yeah there were two or three or four things i wish i had had time to and i just had too many things in my notes and i couldn't categorize it right in terms of order of importance you know i would not i would be shocked if bill crystal was not cheering on saddam in the 1980s when you know right yeah i'm sure i'd be surprised that you couldn't find an example of him doing that was his buddy ladin who was arranging the selling of the missiles to the iatollah so either way yeah yeah yeah yeah well he's anti-war now though so don't worry about it but
Starting point is 00:26:06 all right now so now this law firm this guy's been indicted now by all uh durham and uh oh durham he's hard to believe in but it sounds like okay so the the other guy that he got it was a really big deal what the guy done did right it was uh the the just department lawyer who redacted the fact that Carter Page was a loyal asset of the CIA, not some dupe of the Russians, and that the CIA vouched for him and everything. That was huge, but it led to a very small punishment and, you know, not too many ways. They didn't like, you know, threaten him with decades and turn him against his bosses or anything like that. And in this case, I don't know what, you know, if they're trying to use this guy against anybody else or anything like that. But it sounds like, you know, they got him
Starting point is 00:27:02 on line to the FBI, trying to conceal something from the FBI and manipulate them into investigating this while not revealing they were working for the Clintons and all that. So as you have made so much more sense out of that part of the story based on the information in this indictment, I wonder if you're also picking up that this might lead somewhere else and they're going to continue to prosecute people because they're getting right at the heart of the story here, it sounds like. Well, it would certainly not surprise me if it did lead to more because, you know, this is a relatively simple charge, a false statement.
Starting point is 00:27:41 But Durham's indictment was 27 pages where he, you know, lays out a very detailed narrative of Clinton campaign operatives and allies fabricating data and giving that to the FBI to try to trigger an investigation about this Trump alpha bank server. And by the way, this raises, this has implications for, you know, know, what we're talking about, which is crowd strike in the DNC. Because, look, if you were to say to someone like Eric Wemple, what you said before, I mean, what evidence is there that Russia actually did this? You know, they'll point to the Mueller report and, you know, whatever, we can show the
Starting point is 00:28:16 Mueller report doesn't actually show what people thinks it does. But they will also point to the fact that there was a Mueller indictment of 12 alleged Russian intelligence officers and accusing them of stealing the Democratic Party emails. and it's very detailed, right? So, you know, someone could say, well, so if it's all fake, then what is that based on? Well, look, what happened here with this, you know, Alpha Bank story is some fake data was given to the FBI. It looks like some people out there fabricated traffic between a Trump-affiliated marketing server used to send out spam emails for Trump properties and Russia's Alpha Bank.
Starting point is 00:28:58 it looks like that was actually fabricated and that data was given to the FBI. So the FBI didn't make an indictment here but it does raise the possibility if data was fabricated here and if claims about Trump-Russia collusion were fabricated by steel,
Starting point is 00:29:15 who's to say the data wasn't fabricated to try to connect somehow these alleged Russian operatives to the theft of DNC emails? It's possible. There's a preponderance of fakery elsewhere so it's possible that there was fakery here. I'm not saying that there was for sure,
Starting point is 00:29:32 but given how much fakery there was elsewhere, I think it's quite plausible here. And given the ties of Clinton campaign lawyers to scams, to Trump-Russia scams, it's just quite possible that CrowdStrike is a part of that. And that could mean many things. It could mean that Crowdstrike was wittingly involved in pushing fabricated material.
Starting point is 00:29:53 Or they were just, they were brought in to look at something that was fabricated already, and that's what they picked up. But regardless, there's so much fakery going on. You have to be skeptical of everything, and that skepticism is compounded when you have things like Crowdstrike admitting they have no evidence of exfiltration, which is pretty key. If you're going to accuse Russia of stealing the emails, how can you do so if you have no
Starting point is 00:30:20 evidence that they actually stole anything? And all the other evidentiary holes that we've talked about. So it's just, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if this, if this leads to more. Certainly with the Alpha Bank angle, it looks like Durham is looking at a lot more people. I mean, there's been grand jury subpoenas of many other people. And it looks like, I mean, if I were to predict, I think it's quite likely he'll indict some of the people involved in fabricating the web traffic between the Trump organization affiliated server and Alpha Bank. Yeah. All right.
Starting point is 00:30:52 last point here the worst media culprits seem to have all gotten promotions like this natasha bertrand went from pushing the steel dossier and in all of these ridiculous lies she's one of the worst of them and she just keeps getting promoted and of course a year ago she was the one who came out with the big story that was obviously ridiculous hoax in the first place but an extremely effective one at the time that hunter biden's laptop must be russian and disinformation. And so, in other words, like, she should already just had a job washing dishes by then after all this Russiagate stuff didn't come true.
Starting point is 00:31:32 And already was, you know, finally confirmed to not be true in the spring of 2019. What's she doing in the fall of 2020 coming out with some nonsense like that where anybody can read it or see? And the answer is no accountability. Just like with, you know, Iraq and Libya and Syria before. There's no accountability. so they just keep rolling on. Yeah, and what's their new one now?
Starting point is 00:31:56 It's now it's Havana syndrome. It's that Russians have directed laser beams at, or whatever it is, microwave weapons at U.S. officials across the world and giving them these mysterious brain injuries. And the same people who push Russiagate like Natasha Bertrand and Kandalanian of NBC News, who famously sent his articles to the CIA for approval. And Julia Yafi, same people are now onto Havana syndrome. There are no consequences for being a propagandist. In fact, there are the only consequences you get promoted.
Starting point is 00:32:34 And boy, that Havana syndrome one, I like that one, just because it's so stupid. You know, like when they're lying like this about killing the Branch Divideans, that makes me really, really angry. But when it's this kind of level of delusion about their own stupid headaches, that I just enjoy knowing that they have headaches at all. I don't know. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:32:56 Then I just, I love it. And especially because we already know that it was just crickets and hangovers, you know, in Havana. And we already, there's this lady, I'm sure you saw this, Cheryl, something or other. I was trying to get her on the show, who wrote this thing in foreign policy like six months ago saying, listen, I know a thing or two about microwaves and using them for, you know, attempted listening devices and different kinds of things. I worked at the lab with these guys on these projects back in the day, and I can tell you that this is nonsense, man. That's not how microwaves work and where she explains all of this.
Starting point is 00:33:33 And there's been plenty of debunkings. I have like threads and threads of these things on Twitter of all the different debunkings by anybody who knows anything about any real aspect of this. But then, in fact, I saw a great tweet on plagiarizing now on Twitter the other day. Hell, you might have retweeted. I don't know. where the lady said notice it's all national security reporters who are reporting on this but it's not health officials and it's not you know i add it it's not technicians right it's not scientists and experts in ray beams of any kind you know it's it's all natasha bertrand and
Starting point is 00:34:10 friends going wow guess what my sources told me to tell you that's a good point that's a really really good point but again it's unbelievable how these people are allowed to still um publish i mean it's you know russia gate should have should have ended the careers of a lot of people i i hate to i hate to say that i had to say that people should not be working you know but it's i'm sorry like it it's the level of stenography and embarrassment was just uh it was off the charts but look look what happens It just continues. It gets even more absurd. And look, there's lots of honorable work besides journalism.
Starting point is 00:34:52 They should be able to have jobs. We're not trying to cancel them out of polite society forever. Just, you know, if you lie us into war or you lie us into impeaching a president or, you know, you lie us into anything on this level, three years of pretending the president was guilty of high treason with the Kremlin for crying out loud, then, yeah, you should have to have a job, you know, out in the real. real world doing regular work for regular people, not telling stories in the media. You know, that seems simple. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I agree.
Starting point is 00:35:25 And, you know, I could be mean and say, oh, they should all have to have jobs down at the sewage plant or whatever, but, or mopping up to play geranium dust in Iraq or some kind. But, you know what, they could get office jobs in the air conditioning, but still not be in charge of the media, you know? There should be some kind of rule. It's like in stand-up comedy. You're not allowed to steal jokes.
Starting point is 00:35:47 Of course, there's no copyright on it. But if you go around stealing people's jokes, there will be accountability. Well, there should be accountability like that in the media, you know, and it should be effective. Here, here, here, here. All right. Well, you're doing a hell of a job. I'll give you that, man. This one is at Real Clear Investigations, the great Aaron Mante, coming into focus, Hillary's secretive Russiagate flogging pair of super lawyers.
Starting point is 00:36:12 Thanks, Aaron. Thanks, Scott. The Scott Horton show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.

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