Anyways, now this has finally been popped into the antiseptic light (after having been pretty well advertised in various locations in Blog-istan. Naked Capitalism for example were bleating on about Flynn’s clear breach of US law in representing the Turks back in Dec of last year. But the key point is that Flynn’s dealings and illegal lobbying actually benefited a consortium of Turkish and Israeli energy interests. One might argue that Mueller is starting to cause some collateral damage.
I guess now we know that Flynn was not faithful to the Russians in his dealings. So I guess the Russians would have to be silly to place a lot of trust in him unless they were amateurs. Flynn’s dealings with Gazprom were also well advertised however they were not on their face illegal.
Anyway, as much as I doubt the Russians did very much to subvert US democracy (unlike the senior leadership of the Dems!) I am not emotionally invested either way. I will stock up on popcorn.
So the same people who can read a Podesta email about ordering pizza for campaign staff and spin a wild story about Hillary and Podesta running a child sex ring out of the basement of a DC pizza joint (that has no basement) will now look at this and say, “What? Conspiracy to commit kidnapping is a crime now? Give me a break! It’s not like they ACTUALLY kidnapped anyone. What is worse is Hillary deleting emails that all probably contained evidence of graft, murder, child porn, selling nuclear weapons to terrorists, and doing Benghazi on purpose!”
Really? Is that the hill you’d like to campaign on? I just can’t wait to hear how the senior leadership of the Dems subverted US democracy! [bats eyelashes]
Well, there are stories suggesting the HRC campaign worked to get DT selected as the Repiublican candidate by asking friendly media to give him as much airtime as possible. And what could be more damaging for US democracy than a Trump Presidency. There are also allegations that the Clinton campaign worked out a campaign finance deal which laundered large donations via the state parties back into the HRC campaign thus subverting campaign finance laws.
But I believe Donna Brazile has written a book about it. You dont need my account.
There are “stories suggesting”/“allegations” that the Clintons were involved in a pedophilia ring based in the basement of a pizza parlor in the DC suburbs. Shall we throw that one in as well? Little to do with subverting democracy but it supports your argument just as well.
Gulen has little to do with Muslim Brotherhood. Even Erdogan himself doesn’t claim something like that, here he says fairly clearly that gulenists and MB are not the same:
Also Muslim Brotherhood is mainly an Arab thing originating in Egypt. Gulen is turkish and I can’t imagine a Turk being a figurehead for an Arabic group (Turks and Arabs don’t exactly see eye-to-eye - in fact, if you want to get a nice shiner, try to tell a Turk that he is an Arab!). Gulen’s Hizmet shares some (not all!) ideological similarities with Muslim Brotherhood but they are separate from each other.
But I think you need to read Brasile’s allegations, and note that Gensler has never rejected them. Actually no one has denied the substance of Donna’s points.
Erdogan appears to have migrated the comparatively short ideological distance from fellow islamist Gullen to the MB, so that now Erdogan is perceived as affiliated with the MB while his old ally Gullen isnt. Turkey used to be a constitutionally secular state.
I do take your point that Turks and Arabs are clearly distinct but of course they have always shared some things, like religion for example. Erdogan is MB and MB might be best seen as a project of Egyptian clerics which has recently found sponsorship in Qatar.
Im not sure the US does support Erdogan anymore. I think they did but it seems as if Erdogan believes the US might have been complicit in the coup attempt against him.
The real scandal is that this classified information should have been leaked at this convenient moment. Why isn’t everyone talking about the real scandal, that someone leaked classified information?
