Imagine the Trump administration runs into some serious political turbulence, perhaps a serious Congressional investigation, perhaps a piece of legislation important to the Russians, or perhaps a rising political star challenging Trump in the future (think Elizabeth Warren, for instance).
Now read what happened to this old-time Soviet dissident, erstwhile prisoner in the Soviet gulag, who became a Putin critic living quietly in the suburbs of London...until the British police came banging on his door to seize his computers and announce a criminal investigation into child pornography...
I read this story yesterday (I’m just now beginning to slowly get back into reading ‘traditional media’ again after the election debacle) and suddenly I realized how today’s ‘fake news’ is going to turn into tomorrow’s ‘political assassination’. A phenomenon we’re used to hearing about in foreign countries is likely to increasingly rear its ugly head in the West and the United States political scene.
Think about it. You’ve got Darth Vader (Steve Bannon, prime trafficker of fake news) as the right hand of Trump. Trump himself was very likely ‘recruited’, along with other Russo-friendly financiers and the American wealthy/powerful elite (ie Carter Page, Peter Thiel, Gen. Mike Flynn, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, et al, many fueled with outdated ideas of genetic predeterminism that informs their political philosophy), years ago by Putin’s oligarchy as a cutout for the Kremlin’s plans (and would explain Trump’s weird insistence even up to the current day of leading and now maintaining his ‘birtherism’ of Obama in spite of all documentary evidence to the contrary) to infiltrate the American political establishment and begin to delegitimize its leadership.
Just to illustrate what such a plan looks like in bullet points, let me borrow a page from Malcolm Nance’s “The Plot To Hack America” (pg 80):
- Phase 1: Make contact, befriend, and encourage the asset.
- Phase 2: Make asset feel indebted to Russia.
- Phase 3: Conduct covert cyber-intelligence preparation of the battle space.
- Phase 4: Prepare the political battle space.
- Phase 5: Develop and sustain supporting political/propaganda
- Phase 6: Fund and manipulate a cutout asset to disperse ‘kompromat’ information.
- Phase 7: Execute kompromat operations.
Personally, I don’t think the Kremlin counted on Trump first actually running for the presidency; and then when he ran that he’d actually win the nomination and the office. Signs are, when he denounced the Khan’s and then when the Celebrity Apprentice bus tape came out, the Russians thought his goose was cooked (because that’s their modus operandi, only it’s usually faked material).
Lo, and behold, the FSB can’t believe their luck that their cutout is now in the WH (er, Trump Tower)!
Trump really is a kind of Manchurian Candidate.
And with Bannon as their useful-idiot conduit, they can do a lot to protect their high-level asset from here on out. The GOP is in denial because to admit the possibility that the Trump campaign was the recipient of Russian psy-ops delegitimizes their party leader and president.
And from here on out, anyone who seriously challenges this administration is likely to become a target with some ugly and difficult-to-refute allegations that will function nicely to ‘deflect and protect’ that asset.
And not just from the Russians.
Anyone who follows Bannon, his activities, his public statements, or the company he keeps, wouldn’t put it past him, when push comes to shove, to play dirty with his tens of millions of Breitbart followers in ways similar to what the Kremlin/FSB have shown works in Eastern Europe.
If you haven’t already realized it, we’re in a new world of political skullduggery, folks. We now have to be skeptical of even the worst rumors and innuendo about our political establishment as being potentially manufactured for political purposes.
Edit: included Tillerson link.