Trish: We let Putin succeed in creating division
Hermitage Capital CEO Bill Browder on the Russia investigation and Russian efforts to have him extradited.
There is a new twist in the spygate story that may soon go down in the history books as one of the biggest political scandals in American history. Russian President Vladimir Putin may have guessed just how deep our deep state was -- Edward Snowden, after all is his buddy -- and he would have wanted to expose that for his own political gain.
Let’s jump back to what we already know. We know that Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid its D.C. law firm Perkins Coie to funnel money to Fusion GPS, the so-called investigative firm, to dig up dirt in Russia on now President Trump.
We also know that Fusion GPS hired a former British spy named Christopher Steele and paid him $168,000 to pen the now infamous dossier that our FBI later used as a reason to investigate the Trump campaign. Steele called up a bunch of his former intelligence friends to see what he could find out, including some longtime former KGB folks and others close to Putin. Talk about an open invitation to Russia! I mean, Putin, the political animal that he is, was just handed a magnificent opportunity. Think about it: If he wanted to create division this was one easy, great way to do it and given the partisanship already rampant in the U.S., he managed to achieve something that may have been beyond his wildest ambitions, and the mainstream media helped him every step of the way.
Putin was able to directly funnel whatever garbage he thought Clinton and U.S. intelligence agencies might want to hear straight to them all while, simultaneously, making sure that Americans, no matter how this election turned out, would eventually discover Donald Trump was set up by the so-called deep state. Fusion GPS and the Clinton campaign opened our democracy right up to direct disturbance from the Russians. It’s like we waved a flag and said, “Hey, come and get us!” What better way than to injure an opponent than by using the age-old method of divide and conquer — straight from the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu’s book. Tzu advises on how to wound your enemy: “If his forces are united, separate them.”
That’s exactly what Putin and Russia did.
We are separated as a country right now. We are so divided that sources tell me the Russians have told the Nicolas Maduro regime, “Don’t worry about the U.S. The U.S. can’t do anything. The U.S. is so caught up in its Mueller mess.”
They are partly right. We are divided. Although, hats off to the administration for taking on major policy reforms despite the chaos. And if you ask me, Putin wants us to know how deep our deep state is. The breadcrumbs are there. Just in case you missed any, Putin highlighted them when speaking in Helsinki after being asked about the dossier:
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“I believe that Russia is a democratic state, and I hope you are not denying this right to your own country, you're not denying that [the] United States is a democracy. Do you believe [the] United States is a democracy? And if so, if it is a democratic state, then the final conclusion in this kind of a dispute can only be delivered by a trial, by the court, not by the executive, by the law enforcement.”
Putin is challenging us on what we consider a democracy and advocating for a full discovery of what may have led to the dossier because by further dividing us, he helps Russia on the international stage.