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Trump wiretap is the REAL scandal of the US election, bogus Russia story is the real cover-up

By Alexander Mercouris | The Duran | March 4, 2017

Back on October 10th 2016, shortly after the US intelligence community published its first claim that Russia was trying to interfere in the US election, I wrote an article for The Duran in which I pointed out that the true story was that for the first time in its history the US intelligence community was interfering in a US election in order to swing the election behind its favoured candidate – Hillary Clinton – and that the practices the US intelligence community had honed to interfere in elections in other countries were now being imported to the US.

In an article for The Duran on October 31st 2016 – just a week before the election – I said that Hillary Clinton and her supporters had planted a bomb under US democracy by orchestrating a campaign claiming that her opponent Donald Trump was the favoured candidate of Russia, and that the result would be that if Donald Trump were elected his legitimacy as President would be challenged.

In a further article for The Duran on 10th December 2016, in the fraught run up to the inauguration and whilst the Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign were actively lobbying electors on the Electoral College to disregard the results of the election and to vote against Donald Trump, I said that the CIA and the US intelligence community by playing up the paranoia against Russia were engaging in what amounted to a coup against the country’s constitutionally elected President. The word ‘coup’ is now also being used by people like Mark Levin to describe what has been happening.

What we now learn is that the Obama administration, of which Hillary Clinton was once a part, used the US’s federal security and intelligence agencies during the election to spy on Hillary Clinton’s opponent, Donald Trump, and on his campaign. They did so despite the fact that no evidence existed or has ever come to light of any wrongdoing by Donald Trump or by anyone else working on his behalf or for his campaign such as would normally justify surveillance.

This is the true scandal of the US Presidential election of 2016. By contrast the various claims of Russian interference in the election are unproven and threadbare and almost certainly wrong, whilst the claims of illicit contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia are undoubtedly false and wrong.

Donald Trump is comparing this scandal to Watergate. On any objective assessment it is far worse than Watergate. The reason Richard Nixon had to set up his own amateur intelligence agency within the White House to carry out his ‘dirty tricks’ – the so-called “White House plumbers” – was because the federal security and intelligence agencies – the CIA and FBI – refused to do his bidding by acting against his political opponents.  By contrast on this occasion these same federal security and intelligence agencies have actively colluded in taking action against Donald Trump – the Obama administration’s and Hillary Clinton’s electoral opponent – by carrying out surveillance upon him and his associates though there has never been any evidence that either he or they did anything wrong. That is something which ought to cause serious concern to people, though so far with the exception of a small number of people it does not appear to be doing so.

Nor did Nixon try to provide legal and political cover for his various activities by orchestrating a bogus campaign that his opponents were somehow allied to Russia or to some other foreign power (eg. China or North Vietnam). By contrast not only did the Obama White House, the Hillary Clinton campaign and certain officials within the US intelligence community do precisely that, but the smoke they have created around this bogus issue in order to conceal and justify their activities continues to confuse many people, and will no doubt go on doing so.

To be clear, just as the wiretapping of Donald Trump’s phone and of the Trump campaign are the real scandal of the US election of 2016, so the bogus Russia story is the real cover-up.

To say all this does not unfortunately mean that this scandal is going to play out the way it should, or that people will see it for what it really is.

Many powerful people in the US political system, including in the US’s Deep State, in the media and in Congress, are deeply implicated in this scandal, and they will fight tooth and nail any attempt to hold them to account, continuing to use the bogus Russia cover story to justify and protect themselves, as they have been doing successfully up to now.

Beyond that there are a great many people who have bought into the Russia story – bogus though it is – falling for the entirely wrong and repeatedly discredited psuedo-principle that there cannot be smoke without fire (there not only can be; there usually is).

Lastly, the paranoia about Russia in the US and in western Europe is now so great that it is easy to dupe many people by conjuring it.

Nonetheless, though it is far from sure that many people will be able to see the true scandal through all the smoke, the proof of the real scandal of the Presidential election of 2016 is now finally out there.  It remains to be seen whether the highly corrupt and deeply compromised US political system retains sufficient vitality and integrity to investigate it.

March 4, 2017 - Posted by aletho | Deception, Timeless or most popular | CIA, Hillary Clinton, NSA, Obama, United States