The Duran Podcast
Russiagate; Hillary considered predictable. Brennan "Cooked The Intelligence"
All right, Alexander, let's revisit Russiagate. And an interesting article from Matt Taiby with the title, Matt Taiby and Schellenberger, as well as Alex Goodentag on "Racket News," is where I'm seeing this article. WMD Part II, CIA, cooked the intelligence to hide that Russia-favored Clinton, not Trump, in 2016. And I think this is very relevant, given the testimony, the statements that Hunter Biden is making to Congress as well. And we're kind of revisiting much of everything that happened in 2016 up to 2020 and even today. So what do you make of this article from Taiby, Schellenberger and Goodentag? And maybe you may want to touch upon some of the revelations that we've learned from Hunter Biden, for example. The big guy is Joe Biden and stuff like this. - Absolutely. Well, first of all, let's talk about the past. I mean, just to say, we were both grizzled veterans of this kind of thing, because through 2016, until what, 2018, we spent a huge amount of time piecing, taking apart and examining all the various allegations that were made in connection with the collusion allegations and the hacking allegations and all of these things, which taken together made up Russia gate. And I have to say, looking at this, I am astonished at the degree to which we got everything right. Now I say that, I don't like to sort of boast in that way, but even the most minor details that we're now starting to see about this whole picture, it's matches, it mirrors remarkably the points that we were making at that time. First of all, it's now clear that what Bill Barr and John Durham were doing by focusing on the FBI is that they were giving a completely different, they were basically protecting the CIA. Because at the time, we thought the CIA was probably very, very heavily involved. It now looks as if they were. And in fact, Brennan, the head of the CIA, seems to have been deeply implicated in all that was going on in the Russia gate at the fair. And Taibi and Co basically are telling, by the way, it's not just Taibi, it's all over, there's pieces of information coming up now from all kinds of different sources. Brennan basically created Russia gate. Again, very much as we said, he had so-called sources, which weren't really sources. He was suppressing information that contradicted the thesis that the Clinton campaign wanted. So the Clinton campaign was busy promoting this idea that the Russians were backing Trump. And as the head of the CIA, Brennan was finding or finding the information that would support that thesis, except of course that it wasn't real information. He was relying very heavily on this supposed spy that the CIA supposedly had in the Kremlin, this man called Smolankov. But it turns out that he wasn't anywhere near as high-powered as we were led to believe. And one gets the sense that maybe he was steered towards some of the information he was providing. But the most important point was that Brennan, not only found the information, but he suppressed everybody within the intelligence world, including within the CIA, who were coming back and telling to him, this is simply wrong. It isn't true the Russians don't want Donald Trump to win. They've had an internal debate about this, they don't know anything about this guy. They think he's unpredictable and volatile. Let's stick with Hillary Clinton. She's so, you know, let's, better for us, Hillary Clinton. She's predictable. She's someone we know, let's have her. And you know, obviously she's antagonistic to us, but at least better than the devil we know than the devil we don't. And we can always find some kind of way to work with her. That was the sentiment in Moscow in 2015 and 2016. And I remember saying it at the time. And I said it in part because Putin himself said it. One of the only two occasions that I've been in the same room with Putin, this huge hall, this is at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. There was Putin and he was asked by no less a person than by Zachariah, who was actually there and he was interviewing him. You know, is it true that you think that Trump is this marvelous, amazing person and that you back him? And Putin said, no, you know, all these works that I'm supposed to have said about Trump. I never said, as for Hillary Clinton, I know her, I know her husband very well. We've worked together if the American people elect her. I'm prepared to go and work with her again, as you know, I managed to do before. And it was quite obvious to me at the time. And in fact, I wrote a whole article about it at the time that Putin, in fact, on balance preferred Clinton to Trump, simply because he knew about her, he knew what she was like. And he obviously didn't especially like her. He didn't like her at all, but he understood her and knew where she was coming from. Whereas for Putin and for the Russians, Trump was unpredictable, he didn't know him. Putin made it very clear to Zachariah, I don't know this guy. And that always creates a degree of uncertainty and doubt which Putin and the Russians didn't want. And by the way, just recently, Putin has made it essentially the same point about Biden. He hasn't quite come out and said, I prefer Biden to Trump, obviously not. But he said, he's old school, he's old guard. I know Biden, with Trump, it was all, you know, more dramatic and anyway. So it's very, very similar. And the CIA knew all of that. They knew that the Russians in 2016 on balance felt that Clinton would work better with them than Trump would do. And Brennan made sure that all that information, which was far more extensive than all the bad and inconsistent and cobbled together evidence that the Russians were supposedly backing Trump. Brennan made sure that the information that the Russians preferred Clinton was suppressed and was kept away from the various intelligence assessments and the media. So a completely false narrative was spun, one which was entirely upside down. - Right, I mean, Clinton, and I mean, we know now, I don't think this is controversial to say that it was, it was Clinton and Robbie Mook as they were campaigning against Trump during the election. They're the ones that decided to put together this whole, Trump is a Putin puppet narrative during the election cycle. And it looks like Brennan, this kind of got out of hand, this whole Trump is a Russian stooge narrative that they put together. This thing grew and I think it got away from, or maybe it got away from Clinton and Robbie Mook and it turned into this huge story, this huge issue. And it looks like Brennan had to come in and in order to keep this narrative going, he had to come in and suppress the fact that actually the Russians, they find Hillary Clinton more predictable. It doesn't mean that they wouldn't have dealt with Trump or that they wouldn't have found a way to engage in diplomacy with Trump. It's, as you said, it's the devil that they knew. And this is the way that Putin has always been. He's always been risk-averse when it comes to these types of things. So, I mean, it does look like Brennan came in to save this narrative that originally started as a way to damage Trump during the 2015-16 campaign. - He did save the narrative because there was so much information pouring in that pointed in the exact opposite direction. So, I mean, he suppressed all of that evidence and highlighted the little scraps of evidence that actually supported the story that Hillary and Mook was spinning. And, you know, Brennan was playing a very complex game. He was clearly very nervous also while he was doing it because on the one hand, he was briefing Obama that Hillary and Mook were up to this sort of thing. And at the same time, he was coming along to Obama, but no, just not putting it in any intelligence briefings so that the rest of the intelligence community weren't being informed about it. But he was coming along to Obama at the same time and telling him, you know, I got the spy in the Kremlin and he's confirming what Hillary is saying. So, he's playing a very, very complex game, a very stressful game. But the other thing he was doing is, and this is something that we discussed at the time, I remember us talking about this as, you know, the revelations came up, is that according to Taibi and the others, he was leaning on the other five eyes intelligence agencies to actually help to construct this case. And that brings us into all kinds of complicated questions about what we really was going on, especially in London at that time. You remember with the Trump aid, George Papadopoulos, we've never got to the bottom of that. We still haven't, because the CIA, Gina Hasbork, who was the CIA director during Trump's time, basically prevented any real investigation of what was going on in London, what had happened in London. So, you know, we still don't know the full story about Professor Mifserv, you remember the, mysterious professor who met George Papadopoulos in a hotel in London, the meeting between Papadopoulos and a downer, the Australian diplomat in a wine bar in Kensington. We don't know all this, we don't really know the whole story there, and it hasn't really been looked into it. By the way, I should explain that the reason we know all of this is that before 2018, a House Intelligence Committee, at that time, headed by Devin Nunes, at a time when the Republicans control the House and the committee carried out its own investigations, and they were able to get a lot of information together, and they were able to build up quite a significant dossier, in which started to work towards, started to identify all that this information, and apparently they provided a report. But then what happened was that in 2018, control of the House switched from the Republicans to the Democrats in the midterms, and the new chair of the House Intelligence Agency, Adam Schiff, basically made sure that all this, this entire investigation was stopped, and all its findings were kept under lock and key. Now, what I suspect has happened, is that with Kevin McCarthy gone, and with Mike Johnson now in charge, people in the House are going and opening the safes and the cupboards, and they're finding all of this information, and that's why it's now being circulated. Just so. Okay, so that brings us up to date, then, with what's happening today, with Hunter Biden and his statements, his testimony. So you have the whole Russia-gate thing going on in 2016, and we get to 2020, and Biden's the guy, and Biden and his family have this whole history with Ukraine going back to Burisma in 2014, and Kolomoysky, and then everything that was happening there. So I fired the prosecutor, so getting all of that was going on from 2014 to 2020, pretty much. And now you have Hunter Biden. He is giving statements, answering questions from Congress, and he is basically saying, look, Biden is the, he's the big guy, he's the 10%, but there was nothing illegal going on, there was no pay to play, there were no bribes, and everything I was doing at Burisma, I was doing in order to protect the United States from Russia and from Russian disinformation, and let's not forget that Trump was impeached because of the whole Ukraine thing. So I mean, here we are today now with this same story, recycled and repackaged, and now we're getting new information from the Republican House. - Absolutely, and indeed so. And I mean, I have to say a straight away, I think Hunter Biden is a disastrous witness. I mean, what he's actually doing is that he is confirming to a great extent, all the facts. Okay, he's not able to dispute the facts, he can't deny that he was working for Burisma, he can't deny that he was being paid huge amounts of money, he can't deny that the big guy is indeed his father, this is a, these are impossible things for him to deny. So he can't deny the facts, but clearly on advice through his lawyers and the political people, and perhaps also this is his own inclination, he is doing it what Clinton did before, and Biden has done before it's all the Russians ultimately, it's all about the Russians. I went there to save Ukraine from the Russians. Of course, the person you sent to Ukraine, to save Ukraine from the Russians is Hunter Biden, because, you know, he's James Bond, presumably, I mean, it's such a preposterous idea that Hunter Biden is the person who's going to protect and save Ukraine from the Russians and he's going to preserve and secure the interests of the United States, I mean, he's only got all kinds of problems that we all know about, and lives a chaotic lifestyle and all that sort of thing. But, you know, nonetheless, not withstanding, that's obviously deep cover, because you send this superb agent to Ukraine to carry out the policies of the United States and protect the United States, and that's really what it was. It was a purely altruistic, patriotic operation, which, of course, he was highly paid, and the Russians are the real bad guys. Now, I think that kind of story worked quite well in 2016 and especially in 2017, when, you know, Russia gave fever in the United States, was at its peak. I don't think anybody believes it today. I don't think even many of the people who repeat it believe it. Yeah, I agree with you there, but they're going to still try to peddle this new form of Russia. I think we are on Russia, Gate 3.0. They are going to try and go with this as we head into the elections in 2024, November. I have to say it again, you know, this is what one is used. It's a lawyer's defense. It's the kind of defense that no one takes seriously. But you put it together in a courtroom and basically you're playing for time. I mean, that's what they're doing. They want to drag this out as long as they can until the election, and they hope that if the election goes their way, that all of this will die and fall away. Because on its face, this defense is an absurd one. But as you know, I'm very familiar from court proceedings, even absurd defenses in the framework of a court process, or indeed, as in this case, a process in the context of a House investigation, even an absurd defense takes up time, taking a part, and you know, it also gives talking points to people in the media. They can play up to this, they can play up to the fact that, you know, Weiss has now prosecuted a former FBI informer, long term FBI informer, Russian connections, who tried to piggyback on top of this story to make money, clearly, and came and provided information that he didn't know anything about, you know, made up stories of Brown Hunter. So they're focusing on that, too, because it's a complete red herring. That whole story is a complete red herring. It's intended, as I said, to take away from the actual evidence and the real witnesses, people like Tony Brublinsky and people like that, and Devin Archer. So, that's what they're doing. Lawyers are very, very familiar with this sort of thing. You find yourself in a situation where you really have no case, say you spin and play for time and put together very, very weak and absurd cases. But you say to yourself, well, look, provided I can run down the clock. I'm OK. Yeah. All right. We will add to there the duran.local.com. We are in Rumble Odyssey Bitchewed Telegram Rockfin. And Twitter X and go to the duran shop, 15% of all t-shirts. Take care. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music)