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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  11 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House

    Not sure who put this out or their intentions.

Okay, I'll play.

This was leaked by the CIA, who obtained it from sources within the FSB that wish to topple Putin.

The key to tradecraft is plausible deniability in that the whole of Watergate hinged on "what did the President know and when did he know it" and the whole of Iran Contra hinged on "did the President directly order Ollie North to exchange hostages for missiles to arm the Contras." The reason this matters is you can't do a whole lot about the diplomatic actions of another country outside of diplomatic channels, while the actions of individuals are a whole lot saucier.

You mad about Russia interfering with the election? Tough titty, that's what foreign powers do. You mad about Putin interfering with the election? Well now you can get a congressional ruling against him and all of a sudden any holdings within the United States or its allies are subject to Treasury and if it's subject to Treasury you give it to the FBI and you work with Interpol and you start sniffing around foreign bank accounts and you leverage banks and you get wiretaps and you threaten to prosecute bankers and middlemen and you sniff around foreign citizens and their US holdings and you trade it up the chain and baby you got a stew going.

Putin's a thug. It is known. He is dirty and drenched in ill-gotten gains. Dude is running his life like Scarface. And it is enriching his buddies, until his buddies cross him, at which point they end up dead or in jail. Economy in Russia is in the toilet, though. Unemployment is up, they had to pump the retirement age, whenever there's an oil dust-up Russia loses (because that's the nice thing about owning MBS - you get to make Russia lose any oil deal whenever you want). And clearly, Putin gives no fucks about this so long as he has $1400 sweatpants. And really, you don't either so long as your fortunes rise with Putin's. But what if, and I'm just spitballing here, Putin starts caring more about Putin than Russia?

At the end of the day this is nothing more and nothing less than authorization for a fishing expedition into any Mafiya-related holdings of Putin Inc. and his many holdings. It will not topple him. But it will not strengthen him, either, and it likely coincides with a blank spot on the map of the SDNY's Trump battle plan.

Allen Weisselberg resigned. He's facing 18 counts. You think he resigned because he feels personally culpable? You think he's got a parachute somewhere? I'll bet that parachute is cut from interesting cloth.

We can't go after Russia's meddling without a diplomatic incident. We can go after Putin's money with a simple majority.