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Title : Tick tock
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Tick tock
Not many hours ago, George Papadopoulos -- who clearly has returned to Trump's good graces -- tweeted "Tick tock."What's that about? My first thought was that he had obtained advance word of a development in the Manafort trial. Hung jury. Pardon.
But it is far more likely that he is referring to some development in his own case. I suspect that some conservative news outlet will publish a story indicating that Joseph Mifsud is an intelligence asset for MI6 or CIA or the FBI (as he very likely was). This story will initiate a propaganda blitz designed to convey the impression that Papadopoulos was the victim of one of those Deep State conspiracies that the Alex Jonesians love to blabber on about.
Of course, the whole brouhaha will be a classic case of misdirection and obfuscation. Papadopoulos said what he said while in his cups, and nothing can change that fact.
Don't forget that Mueller is accusing GP of protecting Mifsud.
Friday's 10-page filing provided fresh details of how Papadopoulos' lies impeded the FBI, according to prosecutors, who went on to say his lack of cooperation justified a prison term.As Marcy Wheeler notes...
They said Papadopoulos' initial lies hindered investigators' ability to effectively question, challenge or detain a London professor who Papadopoulos said first told him that Russians had 'dirt"on Hillary Clinton in the form of emails.
The FBI located the professor in Washington about two weeks after Papadopoulos' initial Jan. 27, 2017, interview with Mueller's investigators, but the professor left the country on Feb. 11, 2017, and has not returned to the United States, prosecutors said
This claim is overly dramatic, but it makes the frothy right’s conspiracy about Mifsud being an FBI plant all the more interesting — if he’s an FBI plant, then why did Papadopoulos cover for him while he was in the US? (Yeah, I know the premise is insane but that’s what conspiracy theories do to sanity.)Marcy's remark increases my suspicion that "tick tock" refers to some STARTLING! NEW! SHOCKING! revelation concerning Mifsud.
The right-wing Twitter chatter sure seems to point in that direction. Example. In order to better understand that ticking sound, check out yesterday's filing in the GP case by the Mueller team.
The pro-Trump conspiracy-scribblers are pretending that this document represents incredibly bad news for the FBI, although most people who read it will not understand what they hell those scribblers are squawking about.
I think I know what's coming. Someone on the right side of the web will publish a major piece arguing that Mifsud was an FBI asset all along. This assertion or revelation will be seen as a conflict with this section of the filing:
Seventh, the lies were material to the investigation. The defendant’s lies to the FBI in January 2017 impeded the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Most immediately, those statements substantially hindered investigators’ ability to effectively question the Professor when the FBI located him in Washington, D.C. approximately two weeks after the defendant’s January 27, 2017 interview. The defendant’s lies undermined investigators’ ability to challenge the Professor or potentially detain or arrest him while he was still in the United States. The government understands that the Professor left the United States on February 11, 2017 and he has not returned to the United States since then.Oh my God! Mueller said that George hid Mifsud from the FBI, yet Mifsud worked for the FBI! Mueller is lying! Do you hear me? LYING! DEEP STATE! ILLUMINATI! SATANIC PEDOPHILES! AIEEEEE!!!!
Actually, there is no real conflict between the assertion that X was an American informant and that GP obstructed the FBI from tracking down Mifsud. Papadopoulos probably thought that Mifsud was a Russian asset, not an American asset.
In the first place, it is likely that Mifsud worked for CIA or MI6, not the FBI.
In the second place, it can be damned difficult to determine the ultimate loyalty of an asset or an agent. Some of you may recall the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, the subject of several previous posts. There is evidence that Awlaki worked, for a while, for us -- even though his true loyalties were with Al Qaeda.
But none of that matters. The Trumpers possess a remarkable talent for turning material that damns them into material that damns the FBI and Robert Mueller. The most striking example: The FISA warrant on Carter Page. Page damn well ought to have been spied upon: The feds identified as an FSB recruitment target as early as 2013, and he made a mysterious trip to Moscow in the heat of the 2016 campaign. The Page story should have been devastating for Trump. Yet Trump managed to convince his followers that a FISA warrant on Page was overreach or partisan harassment.
In the same fashion, the Trumpers will now "exonerate" Papadopoulos.
Propaganda. It's fucking amazing.
Marcy says that the problem is not "what conspiracy theories do to sanity." Actually, the problem is how fascists use conspiracy theories to mislead the populace. I'm convinced that many Fox-watchers and Breitbarters can't actually follow the details of the weird tales pushed at them every hour of every day. The details don't really matter; it's all about emotion. Trump supporters are insecure, rage-filled people who have a psychological need to claim "victim" status, even if doing so requires getting married to a ludicrous argument.
Trump will probably pardon Papadopoulos. Even if that doesn't happen, six months is nothing. GP will be amply rewarded in the future.
The House won't go blue. More evidence. I don't trust this Salvanto guy, but trust isn't the point. The point is this: He has provided a rationale for everyone to latch onto when the "wave" turns out to be a lot pinker than expected.
That’s why Salvanto is relying more on CBS’s ongoing tracking poll and less on random-sample telephone polling, ahead of this year’s midterm elections.In other words: Let's toss out everything we know about polling methodology. Let's all latch onto some new method favored by the right, even though all polling experts in previous times would have denounced this new method as ludicrous.
“That decision is very much informed by 2016,” Salvanto said.
A tracking poll sets up a panel of thousands of voters and returns to them repeatedly over months. That lets pollsters discern the factors driving voter decisions — and gauge how attitudes change as the campaign wears on. In 2016, only two major surveys’ final predictions foresaw a Trump victory. Both of them — from the LA Times/USC and IBD/TIPP — were tracking polls.
“It gives us a great advantage in trying to explain the meaning of the poll results,” Salvanto said.
I well recall that USC poll. Throughout 2016, everyone dismissed it due to its bizarre methodology, which coughed up results far different from all other polls. Now we are told that we must toss out random sampling, even though randomness has heretofore been considered mandatory. The right way to do it is to concentrate on tracking hand-picked respondents.
Riiiiiight.
This is precisely the kind of trickery one should expect from a state lurching from democracy to totalitarianism.
Whenever you hear a guy like Salvanto go quack-quack-quack, think about all those stories you've read about how easy it is to hack into the voting tabulators. Vote-riggers need after-action rationalizations. "The final result conflicts with the polls? Don't blame the machines. Blame the polls!"
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