Reuters/Washington Post Puts a Slice of Kushner Cheese on Russian Nothingburger and simultaneously prove the Obama Administration was spying on the Trump campaign.

The extent of the U.S. media’s straw-grasping is boundless, but this one is going to backfire. HOPEFULLY. For the most recent example consider the Washington Post and Reuters claiming President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner participating in a proposal to set up a back-channel with Russia for communication after the November 8th election.

Firstly, Reuters and The Washington Post are idiots in their claimed “exclusive” bombast, etc. UPI reported on the nothingburger back-channel Russian construct on April 3rd. This “breaking” news is old news, and old nothingburger news at that.

Of course President-elect Trump’s staff would consider a back-channel set up for communications with Russian government officials in November and December 2016, just about everyone with a tinge of common sense was saying that exact construct was needed.

Why?

Well, you must remember the atmosphere after the November 8th election during the time period being discussed. President Obama, in close coordination with his U.S. media allies, was filling the airwaves with toxic anti-Russian narratives in an explicit attempt to make any structural positive relationship between the pending Trump administration and Russia impossible.

[ALSO – Insert your memory card for CIA Director John Brennan’s recent timeline of his Russian contacts as related to congress here] Watch from 10:30 to around 15:00 (prompted):

.

Eventually, to give some optical reasoning for the conspiracy theme, this entire fiasco known as the ‘muh Russian conspiracy’ led to President Obama sanctioning Russia and kicking 35 Russian diplomats out of the U.S. Though in the past five months not a single shred of evidence showing what Russia ever did to “interfere in the election” has ever surfaced.

Allow me to provide an example: If you’ve ever heard the term “Russia hacked the election“, ask yourself (or others): what exactly did Russia hack?… {{{crickets}}} The assertion is a catch-phrase soundbite, albeit a ridiculously silly one at that.

Even within John Brennan’s most recent testimony to congress, he couldn’t outline a single relevant example of factual interference; he only explained “possibilities” and various “scenarios of concern” the intelligence community were certain existed, but the certainty only goes as far as their concern – not the factual evidence. The intelligence community was most certainly concerned.

To provide cover for the December 29th Russian Sanctions (which was actually a necessary narrative construct by President Obama), the intelligence community published a Joint Analysis Report put together by the CIA (Brennan), ODNI (Clapper), FBI (Comey) and NSA (Mike Rogers) –Reminder HERE–

The report noted the NSA (Rogers) did not have the same degree of confidence in the content as Brennan, Clapper and Comey. Notice, not coincidentally, that Brennan, Clapper and Comey are gone and Mike Rogers is still running the NSA.

The Joint Analysis Report was widely rebuked by almost everyone who looked at it. Again, remember the conclusion of the report was that RT (Russian TV) was promoting propaganda, and there were Russian profile social media accounts pushing anti-Clinton memes on the internet. THAT’S IT. Reminder:

The “Russian Malicious Cyber Activity – Joint Analysis Report” (full pdf below) is pure nonsense. It outlines nothing more than vague and disingenuous typical hacking activity that is no more substantive than any other hacking report on any other foreign actor.

This might as well be a report blaming Nigerian fraud phone solicitors for targeting U.S. phone numbers. DUH! Just because your grandma didn’t actually win that Nigerian national lottery doesn’t mean the Nigerian Mafioso are targeting your employer to hold you accountable for her portion of the bill.

This FBI report is, well, quite simply, pure horse-pucky.

However, what the report does well is using ridiculous technical terminology to describe innocuous common activity. Example: “ATPT29” is Olaf, the round faced chubby guy probably working from his kitchen table; and “ATPT28” is his unemployed socially isolated buddy living in Mom’s basement down the street.

This paragraph is priceless in it’s humorous and disengenuous gobblespeak:

Both groups have historically targeted government organizations, think tanks, universities, and corporations around the world. APT29 has been observed crafting targeted spearphishing campaigns leveraging web links to a malicious dropper; once executed, the code delivers Remote Access Tools (RATs) and evades detection using a range of techniques. APT28 is known for leveraging domains that closely mimic those of targeted organizations and tricking potential victims into entering legitimate credentials. APT28 actors relied heavily on shortened URLs in their spearphishing email campaigns. Once APT28 and APT29 have access to victims, both groups exfiltrate and analyze information to gain intelligence value. These groups use this information to craft highly targeted spearphishing campaigns. These actors set up operational infrastructure to obfuscate their source infrastructure, host domains and malware for targeting organizations, establish command and control nodes, and harvest credentials and other valuable information from their targets.

(*note the emphasis I placed in the quote) All that nonsense is saying is a general explanation for how hacking, any hacking, is generally carried out. This entire FBI report is nothing more than a generalized, albeit techno-worded, explanation for how Nigerians, Indians, or in this case Russians, attempt to gain your email passwords etc., nothing more. (read report)

Again, for emphasis: That’s the source evidence of the JAR for the “vast Russian conspiracy”: Russian TV news and social media bots pushing frog memes interfered with the 2016 U.S. election result. That’s their conclusion.

Yes, that’s the entire final analysis within the report that led to the expulsion of 35 Russian unimportant nobody diplomats – all created to push a narrative, and only created to push a narrative. The goal of the narrative was to undermine the election results and paint the upcoming Trump administration into a corner as it related to Russia and Vladimir Putin.

That’s the backdrop for the earlier April UPI story (link here) and that’s the environment created by President Obama where the Trump Transition team was considering a back-channel way to talk to the Russians without all of the Obama-Manufactured-Anxiety causing friction.

And here is today’s slice of Kushner Cheese for the Nothingburger. NOTE THE DISCLAIMER customarily pushed way down into the weeds of the article:

REUTERS – […] After the Nov. 8 election, Kushner and Flynn also discussed with Kislyak the idea of creating a back channel between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that could have bypassed diplomats and intelligence agencies, two of the sources said. Reuters was unable to determine how those discussions were conducted or exactly when they took place. Reuters was first to report last week that a proposal for a back channel was discussed between Flynn and Kislyak as Trump prepared to take office. The Washington Post was first to report on Friday that Kushner participated in that conversation. […] FBI scrutiny of Kushner began when intelligence reports of Flynn’s contacts with Russians included mentions of U.S. citizens, whose names were redacted because of U.S. privacy laws. This prompted [FBI/Comey] investigators to ask U.S. intelligence agencies to reveal the names of the Americans, the current U.S. law enforcement official said. Kushner’s was one of the names that was revealed, the official said, prompting a closer look at the president’s son-in-law’s dealings with Kislyak and other Russians. FBI investigators are examining whether Russians suggested to Kushner or other Trump aides that relaxing economic sanctions would allow Russian banks to offer financing to people with ties to Trump, said the current U.S. law enforcement official. The head of Russian state-owned Vnesheconombank, Sergei Nikolaevich Gorkov, a trained intelligence officer whom Putin appointed, met Kushner at Trump Tower in December. The bank is under U.S. sanctions and was implicated in a 2015 espionage case in which one of its New York executives pleaded guilty to spying and was jailed. The bank said in a statement in March that it had met with Kushner along with other representatives of U.S. banks and business as part of preparing a new corporate strategy. Officials familiar with intelligence on contacts between the Russians and Trump advisers said that so far they have not seen evidence of any wrongdoing or collusion between the Trump camp and the Kremlin. Moreover, they said, nothing found so far indicates that Trump authorized, or was even aware of, the contacts. There may not have been anything improper about the contacts, the current law enforcement official stressed. (link)

Pay attention to this part: “[…] FBI scrutiny of Kushner began when intelligence reports of Flynn’s contacts with Russians included mentions of U.S. citizens, whose names were redacted because of U.S. privacy laws. This prompted [FBI/Comey] investigators to ask U.S. intelligence agencies to reveal the names of the Americans, the current U.S. law enforcement official said.”

Reflect back on CIA Director John Brennan’s testimony to congress and reread that paragraph broken into two parts and combined with the Brennan testimony:

….FBI scrutiny of Kushner began when intelligence reports of Flynn’s contacts with Russians included mentions of U.S. citizens, whose names were redacted because of U.S. privacy laws….

That’s exactly what Director Brennan said happened. The CIA intercepted the communications around the Russian officials attempting to gain access to the Trump circle because no-one in the Russian government knew anything about Trump’s positions.

…This prompted [FBI/Comey] investigators to ask U.S. intelligence agencies to reveal the names of the Americans, the current U.S. law enforcement official said…

That is also what Brennan said. Brennan said he gave the raw intelligence to the FBI (James Comey) and to the White House (Susan Rice) and it was then out of his hands. The FBI (Comey) then asked the NSA (Rogers) to reveal the names. Brennan then briefed the gang-of-eight in congress.

Additionally, if Jared Kushner -as the WaPo claims- discussed setting up a “secret channel” of communication with Kysliak in December 2016 then common sense would tell you they didn’t have one prior to the election on Nov 8th. {{poof}} …there goes the ‘vast Russian conspiracy.

Aside from proving the Obama administration was specifically using James Comey to spy on the Trump campaign – So what if team Trump, or Candidate Trump, or President-Elect Trump, wanted a way to talk privately with representatives of the Russian government? That’s politics. That’s the same for every country, not just exclusive to Russia.

If anything the fact that President Obama’s political intelligence gathering operatives were spying on the Trump campaign to identify such communication, and then unmasking them to the political opposition, is evidence of the need for such communication channels….

What this Reuters and Washington Post story actually does is prove the Obama Administration was spying on the Trump campaign. That’s the explosive angle to the story.

It’s not the nothingburger report that Jared or anyone else was trying to set up communication lines that matters – the real story is Reuters and the Washington Post proving that Obama was spying on conversations about setting up those lines of communication.

*” Когда луна попадает в глаза, как большой пирог с пиццей”…

(*When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie that’s Amore’)