Is Russia Using Senate's Dumbest Republican To F*ck With Election, ALLEGEDLY?

Everything old is dumb again.

When we read this letter the Democratic members of the so-called "Gang of Eight" (Schumer, Pelosi, Warner, Schiff) sent last week to FBI Director Christopher Wray, we thought to ourselves, "How opaque! What could Adam Schiff and his best pals be talking about?" (That is not really what we thought, we are saying that to increase drama at the beginning of this blog post.)

The letter reads, in part:

Dear Director Wray:

We write to request that the Federal Bureau of Investigation provide a defensive counterintelligence briefing to all Members of the House of Representatives and the Senate regarding foreign efforts to interfere in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

We are gravely concerned, in particular, that Congress appears to be the target of a concerted foreign interference campaign, which seeks to launder and amplify disinformation in order to influence congressional activity, public debate, and the presidential election in November.

How opaque! What could Adam Schiff and his best pals be talking about?

 
  hamster chewing GIF by Demic    Giphy 

You know, aside from how Wisconsin GOP Senator Ron Johnson, very obviously the dumbest Republican in the whole Senate, has been leading a transparently bullshit Russian propaganda-influenced investigation into claims that Joe Biden and his dumb son Hunter have been involved in MANY NEFARIOUSES in Ukraine — claims that appear to come direct from Russian intelligence propaganda mills, laundered through pro-Russia Ukrainian political figures. We've watched a lot of these crazy propaganda ideas have unprotected sex with Rudy Giuliani's brain, and obviously, the same has happened to poor Ron Johnson, who is very stupid, if we forgot to mention that.

Wouldnya know it, Politico confirms that is exactly what this letter is about, at least in part:

Among the Democrats' concerns is that a Senate investigation being led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has become a vehicle for "laundering" a foreign influence campaign to damage Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, according to two people familiar with the demand. [...]

Though the letter did not mention the Johnson investigation, it included a classified addendum that the two sources say identified the probe as one of the sources of their concern.

Huh, well that is a surprise. Did we mention the part about how Ron Johnson is so dumb he might have a hard time picking out which one is "elephant" on the VERY HARD cognitive assessment test Donald Trump aced like a genius? He is very dumb, AKA a rich target for a Russian influence campaign.

Wait, What Is All This About? We Forget.

So do we, probably!

Wonkette has been covering Johnson's dumb Hunter Biden/Burisma/Ukraine investigation in the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which he chairs, ever since Trump was impeached for ... extorting Ukraine to give him a bullshit announcement about fake investigations into the Bidens and Burisma, the energy company on whose board Hunter Biden sat. At heart, it's based on the stupid propaganda lie, pushed by the Kremlin, that ACTUALLY when Joe Biden told Ukraine to fire a corrupt prosecutor in 2016 — as was the stated position of the American government and basically the whole rest of the developed world — he was doing it to protect Hunter, because that corrupt prosecutor was going to EXPOSE HUNTER. Or something. It's really stupid. (Hey, know who ELSE has been looking for very important documents on Burisma and the Bidens? NO, YOU GUESS. )

It's bullshit, and Ron Johnson knows it's bullshit, because at the very same time that happened in 2016, Johnson was one of the senators who signed a letter telling then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to reform that corrupt prosecutor's office.

Another part of the conspiracy theory aims to absolve Russia of all guilt in helping get Trump "elected" in 2016, even though all American intelligence agencies, the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee, and the Mueller investigation confirmed that yes, Russia did it, they did it for Trump, and so on. The alternative facts Kremlin version is that ACTUALLY Ukraine was the REAL collusion, and they were doing it to HELP HILLARY, and ... ugh.

Allow us to copy/paste five paragraphs of Wonkette for a moment. If you are not interested in wading through these crap details again, please skip.

There is a Ukrainian scammer named Andrii Telizhenko. He is one of the assholes who has seen an easy mark in Rudy Giuliani, and has been spreading bullshit — the kind that's already been debunked by the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee — about how UKRAINE WAS TEH REAL COLLUSIO!11!N!! in 2016.

Clearly Telizhenko has seen an easy mark in [Ron] Johnson too, and you gotta give the guy credit for being not wrong about that . He was able to score a very long meeting last summer with Johnson's staff, so he could whisper sweet nothings to them about how the DNC and Ukraine worked together to FRAAAAAAME Paul Manafort, and God knows what else.

(Also an easy mark? New York Times reporter Ken Vogel, probably the worst investigative reporter in America, and we are including neighborhood watch newsletters on NextDoor. When Vogel was at Politico, Telizhenko was his source for his hilariously debunked article about UKRAINE WAS TEH REAL COLLUSIO1!1!N1^%%%%%n! You know, the article that gives all the Republican senators and congressmen paper cuts in their pants, because of how they jerk off with it constantly.)

And how this ties into Hunter Biden is that Telizhenko also used to work for this Blue Star Strategies lobbying outfit, which repped Burisma [...]. And Ron Johnson is just pretty sure that while Blue Star repped Burisma, it did #BadThings and used Hunter Biden's name to get some kind of goodies from the State Department or something, nobody fucking knows or cares.

And so on! Is there a new character in Ron Johnson's fake drama? Sure! Tell us some new reporting, Politico!

Johnson renewed his demand [last week] for transcribed interviews and documents [...] days after a Ukrainian lawmaker — Andriy Derkach, who has met with Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to discuss investigating the Biden family — used a news conference to accuse the Bidens and Amos Hochstein, a former special envoy for international energy affairs at the State Department, of an elaborate conspiracy to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from Ukraine.

Never mind, not new character, BORING. We wrote about Derkach when he first hooked up the propaganda hose to Rudy Giuliani's butt and turned the machine on. Hey guess what? Derkach's dad was literally KGB. And Derkach used to be part of the pro-Russia Party of Regions in Ukraine, uh huh, yep, the one Paul Manafort worked for!

Does this somehow tie into OBAMAGATE, which is the biggest crime? Yeah, sure, why not. Is this kind of like QAnon, but somehow more indecipherable and abstract and ultimately way more boring? You bet. Everything old is new again, and can we please go to sleep until November 3, please?

Fucking Hell.

AGREED.

Johnson's dumb as a broken doorstop, as you can see by the way he's going about this, but he's not so stupid that he doesn't know what he's doing. He knows this has alllllllll been thoroughly debunked. The GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee has debunked the Ukraine conspiracy theories specifically . GOP Senator Richard Burr, who used to chair that committee until he ran into some wee personal problems, has told Johnson to cool it with this garbage

But he's not cooling it.

So yeah, the "Gang of Eight" Democrats would like the FBI to do a defensive briefing for all of Congress on active efforts to fuck with the election for Trump's benefit, efforts where bad foreign actors (Russia) are targeting Congress (cough GODDAMMIT, RON! cough) to influence the election (to help Trump, just like in 2016).

In other news, Joe Biden released a whole statement Monday on how he plans to treat bad foreign actors who fuck with the election when he becomes president, and spoiler, he does not plan to treat them nicely. Stay tuned for a separate post on that!

The only good news in all of this — "good" — is that the Biden campaign appears to see it coming. And so do Democrats in Congress. And also too NOBODY GIVES A FUCK ABOUT HUNTER BIDEN AND UKRAINE, JESUS CHRIST.

Goodbye, we are done with this post now.

[ Politico ]

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