Cicero on McCain and other Ruling Elite

Abstract:   A lot is going on and the Olympics seem to be a convenient distraction.  For over a year, we have been inundated by a Russian collusion narrative.  To date, there has been no evidence to support this allegation.  To the contrary, facts are emerging that are not consistent with this narrative.  The challenge for us consumers of the news is to be able to sort fact from fiction.  The following article introduces emerging facts that challenge the prevailing fiction.

            Old Gadfly:  Senator McCain was quick to rebuke the Nunes memo.  Why?

            AM:  Central to the memo is the role the Russian dossier played in justifying FISA-approved surveillance on those associated with the Trump campaign.  As we discussed previously, it was McCain’s staffer that was sent overseas to get the dossier and then for McCain to hand it over to the FBI.  McCain has a fingerprint on this manufactured document that clearly shaped and controls the public narrative.  Amazingly reported in The New York Times, here is how McCain’s role was portrayed:

 

James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director whose firing by Mr. Trump prompted the appointment of a special counsel to oversee the Justice Department’s Russia investigation, received a copy of the memos after Election Day from Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. Mr. McCain had dispatched David J. Kramer, a former top State Department official, to obtain the dossier directly from Mr. Steele.  And before Election Day, the F.B.I. reached an agreement to pay Mr. Steele to continue his research, though that plan was scrapped after the dossier was published.

            IM:  McCain offered no rebuke when his colleague Senator Feinstein publicly and unilaterally released the closed door testimony of Glenn Simpson from Fusion GPS, against the objections of the committee chair.  Some argue this release was designed to defuse the role Fusion GPS played in manufacturing the dossier.

            AM:   McCain is one of the longer standing ruling elite.  I just finished reading Red Notice by Bill Browder, grandson of Earl Browder who was the former President of the Communist Party USA.  Browder’s book is a true story about corruption in Russia.  To make a long story short, one of his Russian accountants was tortured and murdered by the Russian government.  Bill Browder wanted justice and advocated the Magnitsky Act in the US Congress.  A multi-billionaire, Browder was unsuccessful in getting an audience with McCain until he convinced a powerful lobbyist to facilitate a meeting.

            IM:  Is McCain really that naïve about the Nunes memo?  At some point in time, facts do catch up with fiction.  He must be naïve in this case, otherwise he must have some equity in perpetuating the fiction.  At any rate, he knows his days are numbered so perhaps he anticipates mortality will win the race with the facts.

            Old Gadfly:  Joe DiGenova, a former federal prosecutor, provides a compelling narrative (take notes and watch more than once) to the Daily Caller News Foundation.  The two heroes in this narrative are Vice Admiral Mike Rogers and Representative Devin Nunes.  We need heroes today to offset those Cicero warned us about:

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.