Part of it is trying to pre-frame emotions on the 2020 election. By the time the right-wing smears did their damage, Hillary Clinton had very high unfavorables. Plus, she lost. Trump wants to rub that scent all over the Democratic contenders as the primaries heat up.
But there’s way more up Trump’s sleeve. Hillary and her time in public service has been a well the Republicans have gone back to over and over again… almost always for creepy conspiracy theories. So, Rudy has been whispering dark lies about her in Trump’s ears, and there’s hardly anything Trump likes more than that.
So:
Trump is no great strategist, but no way Pompeo and Barr set sail on their various do-or-die missions without actionable tasks that had a reasonable path to success.
My gaming-out of possibilities leads to the following scenario as the most likely plan, with the caveat that they are in the game to shore up Trump‘s floor and get him to the 2020 election with polls that keep him within the MOE to win. (Targeted hacking of election machines can’t produce ridiculous results...)
They will drop an allegation that the State Department, under the direction of Hillary Clinton, and with the assistance of the American Ambassador to Ukraine Masha Yovanovitch, and massive economic pressure from Joe Biden, created a hacking operation in Ukraine to manipulate the 2016 election.
If he pulls through and gives his base that massive chunk of red meat, it will give all Republicans a counter-narrative to point to that pre-dates all the Mueller Investigation allegations and thus, of course, allow them to claim that everything Trump has been accused of are actually false flag countermeasures that Hillary’s hackers created out of thin air. Thus, they will claim, she is guilty and must go to prison; the Deep State is evil and must be destroyed; and Trump, Pompeo, and Giuliani are the real heroes and must be given all the power, forever.
Trump specifically cited the ex-Ambassador Yovanovitch in his call to President Zelensky as headed towards future difficulties:
“The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news, she’s going to go through some things.”
The DoJ has interviewed almost two hundred officials who served under Secretary Clinton, and retroactively changed classification on documents from that time period.
They are clearly framing Hunter and Joe Biden as acting corruptly at that time.
Most importantly, Trump ‘s “fixer,” Attorney General Barr (spits on ground), has been AWOL in Italy in the middle of the biggest pile of scandals to ever rain down on ANY President, much less a whiny, childish one who can’t think for himself!?
The Only Way Barr could be away from DC right now is if he’s up to his neck in conspiracy parts in his secret lair, building a monster out of lies and falsified documents to try and end the investigations for good.
Super interesting point: while Barr, Pompeo, Gorka, et al. are in Italy, a key player, Dmytro Firtash, who is a Russian-backed Ukrainian fighting extradition to the United States, is in neighboring Austria and his legal team was generating sworn affidavits tying Hunter Biden to corruption in Ukraine as recently as early September of this year.
That reeks of a quid-pro-quo: swear to Trump’s story to get the U.S. to let another dirty Russian-backed oligarch out of trouble.
This is my guess as to what it’s going to look like. What do you think?