House GOP Russia Cover-Up Is Endangering People's Lives. Is That Bad?

Marcy Wheeler sounds the alarm.

Longtime liberal internet subscribers know who Marcy Wheeler AKA "Emptywheel" is. Back in the day, when FireDogLake was a website that existed, Wheeler held court , writing about warrantless wiretaps and Gitmo and all other manner of big gub'mint abusing its power. Her sources are excellent, and her depth of knowledge in her fields of expertise is immense. She's GOOD AT SHIT, is what we mean to say.

Wheeler has a long history with somebody else who has long been concerned about civil liberties violations, fella by the name of Glenn Greenwald, from years back when he still had a shred of credibility (though his true colors were already shining through like a rainbow if you cared to pay close attention). She worked at The Intercept for a time, until disagreements over a story she was working -- and The Intercept's refusal to pay her for the work she was doing -- led her to leave. Wheeler is different from Greenwald in one important way, though: Because she is willing to do the rigorous journalism required to find out, she is now a firm believer in Russia's attacks on the 2016 election, after a lot of skepticism and after finding a shitload of receipts proving it. Greenwald, as we all know, would love nothing more than to be a freckle on Vladimir Putin's inner thigh, so he's pretty sure the whole Trump-Russia story is bullshit. 

Wheeler published a post Tuesday morning called "Putting A Face (Mine) To The Risks Posed By GOP Games On Mueller Investigation." CLICK! She explains that sometime last year, she told the FBI about somebody she knew, somebody she had been "friendly with," whom she "had come to believe had played a significant role in the Russian election attack on the US." She believes even more strongly now that she is correct in her assessment. She notes that she would never ever EVER usually go to the FBI about a source, but that this was a special case, not least because she "believed he was doing serious harm to innocent people," she "had reason to believe he was testing ways to tamper with my website," and oh yeah, on top of other reasons, she knew he was lying to her and other journalists.

We don't know who this person is, because Wheeler's not saying it out loud, and she's also not saying exactly what she believes this person did. But we have a couple of guesses as to who it is. (Exactly two of them, and you can probably guess them too. And we may all be wrong! Time will tell.)

Wheeler says she's telling her story -- with special counsel Robert Mueller's tacit blessing, it seems -- because of news that's happening RIGHT NOW, of a grand plan that seems to be in the works for America to roll over and give Russia whatever it wants in Syria, which is keeping Bashar al-Assad in power, despite how America has been fighting on the other side in that war. (Donald Trump might also tell Putin it was TOTALLY FINE when Russia invaded and stole Crimea from Ukraine. Whatever Putin wants from Trump, Putin gets! Wonder why. It's almost as if Trump's ass is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Kremlin or something.)

It seems Wheeler's source texted her with inside information on what's going down right now way back on November 9, 2016, the day after the election:

Wheeler goes through some other things that happened around that time that seem to back up what her source was saying, like for instance, remember how the Trump transition was meeting with Russians to try to get back channels to talk about Syria? Was it weird that they were trying to hide the fact that they were trying to get Michael Flynn on a secret shoe phone with Putin, to talk about Syria? IT WAS!

Wheeler continues:

[T]he text doesn't come from anyone, like Kushner or Flynn, inside the Trump team. It comes from someone who, I believe, had already done real damage to the United States as part of the Russian attack. That person understood the cooperation with Syria in terms of the US backing Bashar al-Assad, not in terms of fighting ISIS.

 Riiiiiiiiiight . Which is Russia's foreign policy goal, as opposed to the United States's foreign policy goal. NO COLLUSION, NO COLLUSION, YOU ARE THE ... oh fuck it.

Weird, right?

Wheeler says that's part of why she's talking now, as opposed to waiting until Robert Mueller makes this person famous. She says she's also doing it because now that she's had sharing time with the FBI, she has been personally threatened. No, not by Putin's thugs in Russia, but by Putin's thugs in the GOP caucus in the House of Representatives, who won't stop trying to out all the whistleblowers:

I'm a public figure. If something happens to me — if someone releases stolen information about me or knocks me off tomorrow — everyone will now know why and who likely did it. That affords me a small bit of protection.

There are undoubtedly numerous other witnesses who have taken similar risks to share information with the government who aren't public figures. The Republicans' ceaseless effort to find out more details about people who've shared information with the government puts those people in serious jeopardy.

I'm speaking out because they can't — and shouldn't have to.

Indeed, the threats to Wheeler have been so severe that she says she's even let the FBI "enter my house without a warrant, without me being present." Probably just to check for "wire tapps." OR BOMBS. Regardless, we're taking that as code for SHIT WAS GOING DOWN.

Think about Fox News over the past year. Think about the president's Twitter feed full of insinuations and outright lies about FBI agents and DOJ officials like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and Andrew McCabe and James Comey (AKA witnesses in the Mueller investigation). Think about GOP representatives like Jim Jordan and Louie Gohmert, screaming out names on the House floor of people who they somehow, in their compromised shit-brains, believe are part of a gigantic Deep State conspiracy to destroy Donald Trump's presidency. Think about Motherfucking Devin Nunes and his demands for classified intel to leak to Fox News, even if that puts FBI sources' lives in danger. And, to Wheeler's point, think about what they're doing to those people whose names we don't even know.

Oh beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, it'd be really fucking cool if Trump's GOP would stop being the KGB and the Gestapo and Hee Haw all at the same fucking time, in Jesus's name, amen, KTHXBYE.

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[ Emptywheel ]