Examining the Pedigree of Putin's Poodle

The FBI and five other law enforcement and intelligence agencies have collaborated for months in an investigation into Russian attempts to influence the November election, including whether money from the Kremlin covertly aided President-elect Donald Trump, two people familiar with the matter said.

The agencies involved in the inquiry are the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and representatives of the director of national intelligence, the sources said.

Investigators are examining how money may have moved from the Kremlin to covertly help Trump win, the two sources said.

This has been going on for many months. So the spooks stayed quiet and allowed the Russians to do this?

Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that worried him. It was - allegedly - a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign.

It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States. The CIA cannot act domestically against American citizens so a joint counter-intelligence taskforce was created.

Notably, this was one of the few times that the FISA Court got skittish about issuing a warrant.

Lawyers from the National Security Division in the Department of Justice then drew up an application. They took it to the secret US court that deals with intelligence, the Fisa court, named after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They wanted permission to intercept the electronic records from two Russian banks.

Their first application, in June, was rejected outright by the judge. They returned with a more narrowly drawn order in July and were rejected again. Finally, before a new judge, the order was granted, on 15 October, three weeks before election day.

What were they thinking, I wonder? Did they think that if they had the goods on Trump, then they could, in effect, also make him into their asset?

So the FBI Director was willing to sink Clinton by putting out a innuendo-filled letter, but nobody was willing to say that her opponent had apparently been compromised by Putin?

We now have less than 48 hours until the West Wing effectively becomes a satellite office of the Kremlin. Fucking wonderful.

And to think that we were just worried that Trump would be a garden-variety fascist.....