by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
If the Democrats are intent on living at the Vast Conspiracy Hotel, they ought to widen their list of suspects in the leaking of embarrassing Democratic documents. Roger Stone and Nigel Farage -- men much closer to Donald Trump’s brand of politics than Vladimir Putin -- have had curious contacts with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Stone is “the champion Republican Party dirty trickster,” while Farange, the British rightwinger, is a friend of Trump.
Freedom Rider: Is Trump the DNC Hacker?
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
“Suppose Donald Trump and or his associates were directly involved in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee without any help from the Russian government?”
The Democratic Party is going all out with its charge of Russian involvement in the 2016 election. In doing so they achieve two very important goals. First, they distract their voters from asking why Hillary Clinton lost and why they are perennial losers at every level of government across the country. Secondly, they can wage war by other means as they attempt to exact regime change in Russia. That is the desired endgame as they attempt to crush the sovereignty and independence of that resource-rich nation which spans Eurasia.
The so-called evidence of Russian involvement in the election is flimsy at best. Yet the claim has been repeated so often that even skeptics have been deterred from reaching a far more logical conclusion. Suppose Donald Trump and or his associates were directly involved in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee without any help from the Russian government? The exposure of DNC emails and their evidence of corruption and incompetence is a classic political dirty trick and the Trump team had means and motive. As Democrats breathlessly speak of “connecting the dots” to their claims of Russian interference there are other dots to connect that lead in different directions.
On March 9, 2017, Trump’s British ally Nigel Farage was seen entering the Ecuadorean embassy in London. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange sought asylum there in 2012 and has been living in the embassy ever since. Wikileaks released the DNC emails which were so damaging to Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. When asked why he went to the embassy, Farage incredibly claimed that he couldn’t remember. Several days later he admitted seeing Assange but said his only goal was to meet a man he long admired. The explanation is nonsensical but the encounter points to desperation and guilty panic.
“As Democrats breathlessly speak of ‘connecting the dots’ to their claims of Russian interference there are other dots to connect that lead in different directions.”
Farage was the key figure in the 2016 Brexit referendum which took the U.K. out of the European Union. That result was not just an expression of popular will, it was also a product of high end technological manipulation. Cambridge Analytica is a British political consulting firm which specializes in using social media to maximize get-out-the-vote efforts. They claim an ability to use the information freely given on Facebook to target undecided voters, which turned the tide for Brexit and for Trump too. The firm is owned by Robert Mercer, the hedge fund billionaire who saved the Trump campaign. Trump strategist Steve Bannon was a Cambridge Analytica board member. Cambridge Analytica not only uses technology but has a history of old-fashioned disruption and fraud in nations as disparate as Latvia and Nigeria.
Farage is the public face of Brexit, having been the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), a right-wing group which forced the governing Tories to bring the issue to a vote. In one of his infamous Twitter posts, Trump declared that his friend should be Britain’s ambassador to the United States. Yet there may be more to this relationship than a mere ideological bromance. Trump and Farage may be co-conspirators who must stay close lest the other man lose his nerve and tell all.
Another Trump ally is Roger Stone, the champion Republican Party dirty trickster. Stone sent a mob to stop the Florida 2000 vote recount which led to George W. Bush being declared the winner. Stone was involved in the exposure of New York governor Eliot Spitzer’s involvement with a prostitution ring. Months before that story broke Stone predicted that Spitzer “wouldn’t serve his full term.” Stone also funded Al Sharpton’s 2004 presidential campaign and used it to help bring down one-time Democratic front runner Howard Dean.
“Trump and Farage may be co-conspirators who must stay close lest the other man lose his nerve and tell all.”
Stone bragged about communicating with Assange and knew that a “motherlode” of leaks were on the way from Wikileaks. He also communicated with the hacker known as Guccifer 2.0 on Twitter, a public platform with no secrecy whatever. The Trump people may be dirty but they aren’t very smart. The message to Guccifer was used as proof of the Russian connection but it is possible that Stone is as amateurish at this level of subterfuge as the rest of the Trump team.
To sum up, we know the following. The man who released the DNC emails has had at least one face to face meeting with a Trump partisan. The British group that claims success in the Brexit vote and Trump victory is connected with political manipulation around the world and also with Farage and Steve Bannon. Yet another dot can be connected with Roger Stone who has a proven history of making conspiracy theory reality and who bragged about connections with Wikileaks.
All of the contradictions of the Trump era are rolled into one seamy tale. Julian Assange has long been a hero to leftists around the world after he revealed the extent of surveillance over our lives and the depravity of the war machine. Yet he allowed himself to do business with the likes of Trump and Farage. The Democratic Party piles fabrication upon fabrication in an effort to frame Russia for a non-existent crime. They prefer to obey the war makers and their corporate patrons rather than offer policy change that would lead to victory.
The endgame of the Russia bashers isn’t clear. Do they want to impeach Trump? Or would they rather have him neutralized and discredited, and thus become an easy target in the 2018 and 2020 elections? Regardless of the intended consequence they have opened a hornets nest they are unprepared to deal with. Intelligence agencies are now political pawns and Democratic bloviating about an “act of war” by Vladimir Putin could very well lead to the real thing.
The democrats have said nothing about what is far more likely than Putin choosing sides in an American campaign. Investigating a likely scenario doesn’t suit their purposes at all. If the DNC hack ends the Trump administration it will not be for noble purposes.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
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