Trolls and Turkeys

Trolls Trolling:  Last February, Special Counsel Mueller indicted thirteen Russian nationals and Yevgeniy Prighozhin, the oligarch known as Putin’s chef,  for conducting what they called “information warfare against the US” and what Mueller called federal crimes and US political interference.   Those thirteen “trolls” are employees of the St. Petersburg based owned Internet Research Agency (IRA) which is controlled by Prighozhin.  Yesterday, the Senate Intelligence Committee which, unlike its House counterpart, has managed to do its work on a bipartisan basis, released two reports detailing some of the Russians’ most nefarious and manipulative actions.  Among other things the trolls likened Trump to Jesus while vilifying Hillary Clinton as demonic. They energized conservative voters over immigration and gun rights and “sowed  distrust” in the electoral process to suppress the vote of certain Democratic leaning demographic groups most notably targeting African-Americans, convincing a significant enough number that Hillary Clinton didn’t deserve their vote. It’s probably not a coincidence that during the campaign when Trump bragged about how well his message was going over in the African community, he didn’t always claim that he was getting more Black votes, instead he frequently said that he was convincing a number of Black people to refrain from voting for Hillary, going on to say if that meant that they just stayed home, that was fine with him. At the end of the day, though few African Americans voted for Trump enough of the typically Democratic voter group stayed home to affect the election. The Russian trolls maximized the impact of their messages by using a number of social media platforms including FaceBook, Twitter,  Instagram, Reddit, Google+, Vine, Gab, Meetup Pinterest, Tumblr and others.  Despite the indictments and belated efforts by the major social media companies to curb their activities, the wily Russian trolls are still at it, most recently they’ve targeted Mueller and his investigation.  Given his constant Mueller tweet attacks, we know that the trolls’ activities continue to be just fine by Trump.

Flynn’s Follies:  The Russian trolls may be effective communicators and social influencers, their efforts really have impacted  Mueller’s popularity ratings, his approval figures hover around 45% even though around 60% of Americans now believe that Trump lies about everything.  That said, so far the trolls have done nothing to stop Mueller from pursuing his work.  Yesterday, his team indicted two more individuals, former national security advisor Michael Flynn’s business partner Bijan Kian and one of his Turkish associates, Ekim Alptekin.  In the run up to the 2016 election while Flynn was already advising Trump on national security issues, the three men worked on behalf of the Turkish government to “discredit and delegitimize” Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish cleric who Turkey’s President Erdogan blames for all the ills that have befallen him including the 2016 coup attempt against his government.  In addition to badmouthing Gulen, the three were also paid to plan and carryout the rendition of Gulen back to Turkey, a rendition that hasn’t happened, yet.  It’s worth noting that despite his claims to the contrary, reports are that Trump is still considering sending Gulen a US permanent resident back to Turkey, probably to get Erdogan to stop revealing all of the really upsetting details about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s involvement.  Flynn’s cooperation on the Turkey investigation and his willingness to throw his colleagues under the bus in exchange for leniency is one of the reasons that Mueller has only charged him with lying to the FBI about his calls with Russian Ambassador Kislyak and their discussions about sanctions relief and a UN vote about Israeli West Bank settlements. Notice, I said one of the reasons, though there is no information available at this point to prove it, a number of former Federal prosecutors believe that Flynn must have given up even more information to Mueller to get such lenient treatment, their view is that Flynn is getting off way to easy given how involved he was in the Turkey project.  They surmise that he may also be providing Mueller with useful information about someone else, someone who is very senior, and that the someone else is likely Trump because only Trump and VP Pence are senior enough to warrant Flynn getting off so easy.  Flynn is due to be sentenced today and for some inexplicable reason last week his lawyers claimed that one of the reasons that he should be awarded a “get out of jail free” card is because  the FBI treated him unfairly by letting him sit for questions without counsel by his side, and that they backed him into what lawyer/fixer Rudy Giuliani and Trump like to call a “perjury trap” by asking particularly tricky questions.  That tricky question assertion was disproved yesterday after Mueller’s team released a somewhat redacted transcript of Flynn’s FBI interview.  That transcript, which was released at the direction of the judge overseeing Flynn’s case, reveals that he was treated with kid gloves by his FBI interviewers, one of whom was Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who later lost his job after his texts with his paramour revealed that he generally disliked Trump and almost every other politician imaginable. The FBI agents gave Flynn several opportunities to come clean about his conversations with Kislyak, they even “fed” him information about calls he conveniently forgot to mention.  Despite their spoon feeding Flynn continued to lie which is how he got into this mess in the first place and may be why the judge wanted the transcript in the public domain.  Though Mueller recommended that Flynn receive only the lightest of sentences, it’s possible that the  Judge may be annoyed enough with Flynn and his lawyer’s assertion that Flynn was unfairly “forced” to lie that he might actually sentence him to spend some time in the slammer.  Since Flynn’s lying is what ultimately led to former FBI Director Comey’s dismissal it’s fitting that yesterday the loquacious but usually tempered Comey finally lost it.  After sitting for another six hours of last ditch grilling by the Republican chaired House Judiciary and Oversight Committees who remain focused on Hillary Clinton’s emails and his “mishandling” of the Russia investigation, a “fiery and combative“ Comey spoke his mind.  He told the assembled reporters that he’d had enough, saying that “Somebody has to stand up and speak for the FBI. People who know better, including Republican members of this body, have to have the courage to stand up and speak the truth, not be cowed by mean tweets or fear of their base. There is a truth and they're not telling it. Their silence is shameful." He went on to call Trump a liar.  Later White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded by citing tremendous FBI corruption.  Of course she did.

Politics Unusual: A partial government closure remains on the horizon for Friday night as Trump is still insisting on getting $5 billion in wall funding included in the spending bill that must get passed to keep the government fully operational.  On the political front, Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander announced that he won’t be seeking reelection when his term ends in 2020.  The 78 year old Alexander is a spring chicken by Senate standards and a moderate by Republican standards so his decision to jump ship is particularly notable.  His planned retirement should be concerning to Trump because Republicans tend to speak their mind when their political careers are no longer in jeopardy and there is a chance, albeit a small one, that Alexander’s new found freedom could result in him going rogue and that would represent a bigly problem for Trump as he looks to the Senate to protect him from those problematic House Democrats, the ones who are likely to start impeachment proceedings at some point next year.