I’ve been staring at this article for days now. It makes me feel like some 19th century yokel who’s struck oil on his property, knows it’s valuable, but doesn’t have the first idea what to do about it.
Try as I might, I can’t figure out how to either distill it or add to it. It was particularly fun to read this legal brief on Felix Sater. Sater really should be understood as a second Whitey Bulger, although one who worked very closely with the future president of the United States, as well as for the most powerful and dangerous crime boss in the world. If you want to read it for yourself, scroll down to where the Statement of the Case starts, and you won’t be disappointed. Suffice to say that you’ll want to know why a judge let him keep about $80 million of ill-gotten gains and refrained from imposing any jail time on him despite his rampant criminal activities, including making terroristic threats on several occasions.
The point of the piece is that the FBI is ill-suited to get to the bottom of their investigation of Trump’s Russia connections because their handling of Sater would be exposed.
You can see previous Washington Monthly coverage of Sater here, here, here, and here. His name came up most recently in this connection:
Hopefully, you’ve already seen the New York Times piece from this weekend detailing how Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen took a dossier to Michael Flynn that had been provided to him by a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician named Andrii V. Artemenko and a Russian mob-connected former employee of the Trump Organization named Felix Sater.
The dossier reportedly contained damaging information about the anti-Russian Ukrainian president, Petro O. Poroshenko, that the Trump administration could conceivably use to oust him. It also contained some kind of Russian-Ukrainian “peace plan” that would facilitate the lifting of sanctions on Russia.
What people are focusing on, quite justifiably, is the involvement of this Felix Sater character. I could write a whole, very long piece dedicated to nothing more than how obviously crazy it is for a personal lawyer to Donald Trump to meet with Sater, let alone carry his information personally to Trump’s national security adviser. Hopefully, however, you can find that argument made elsewhere.
As you can see, even then I was struggling with how to report on Sater in a way that is consistent with short-form blogging. So, I am going to cheat here and quote from the Russ Baker, C. Collins AND Jonathan Z. Larsen article cited at the top:
Sater and Trump sometimes traveled together. In September 2005, Trump and apparently Sater flew along with his wife Melania to Colorado, where Sater talked to a local reporter about possible Trump-Bayrock development projects in Denver.
The real estate tycoon and the undercover mobster were close enough that, according to his deposition testimony, Sater could simply walk up a flight of stairs to Trump’s office and stop in for an impromptu chat. Indeed, Sater and the Trump clan grew so close that in February 2006, at the personal request of Donald Trump, the mobster joined his children Ivanka, Donald Jr., and his son’s wife Vanessa in Moscow to show them around, according to his deposition testimony. While he was in Moscow he emailed a journalist about possible Trump-Bayrock developments in Denver, in which he indicated he was with Don Jr.; a few days later Sater is alleged to have called one of the partners at the Arizona project and threatened to have him “tortured and killed,” according to later court filings.
Sater’s tenure at Bayrock might have lasted longer, had The New York Times not “outed” his criminal past in 2007.
Yet a few years later, after Sater had left Bayrock, he could still be found in Trump Tower. But now he was apparently working directly for Trump himself, with an office, business cards, phone number and email address all provided by the Trump Organization. The cards identified him as a “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump.”
Today, Trump claims to have trouble remembering Sater.
“Trump was asked about Sater in depositions related to other cases in 2011 and 2013. In the first, Trump acknowledged that he used to speak with Sater ‘for a period of time.’ Yet in the second, Trump said, ‘if he were sitting in a room right now, I really wouldn’t know what he looked like,’” Mother Jones reported.
In early December 2015, Trump still seemed unclear when asked by an Associated Press reporter about Sater. “Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it,” he said. “I’m not that familiar with him.” Ivanka and Don Jr. also later said that they had no memory of being with him in Moscow.
One aspect of the FBI’s protection of Sater is that it has prevented Trump from facing legal liability from defrauded investors, particularly on the Trump SoHo project. But, on the other hand, there is some question whether Trump was witting about the fact that he was partnering with a Russian crime figure who had been flipped by the FBI, or whether the FBI orchestrated Sater’s rise at Bayrock and facilitated his partnership with Trump.
Either way, Trump’s organization was penetrated by the FBI and the Russian mob when he began working closely with Sater, and his work with Sater was criminal in nature, both because Sater never disclosed to investors that he was a felon and because Sater ran Bayrock in a criminal manner.
Given all this, it really is remarkable that Trump’s lawyer was still willing to sit down with Sater just a couple of months ago and agree to convey his message to the National Security Adviser of the United States.
Manipulation of prosecution evidence by paid informants has been a long-term weakness of the FBI. Political manipulation of the FBI by its director has been another long-term weakness of the FBI. Overactive and deceptive public relations activities by the FBI has been a third long-term weakness of the FBI.
Figure what the movie about Trump, Felix Sater, and the FBI will look like and you’ll have the FBI’s preferred narrative. Where do the facts depart from that narrative?
Almost every movie I have seen which has portrayed long engagements between the FBI and informants has gone against the FBI’s preferred narrative.
These movies have shown the FBI to be morally misguided and often corrupt in its own way. The plots most often have turning points which confront informants and agents with the need to choose between decent humanity and continuing their relationship with the FBI.
It seems to me the FBI’s public relations activities have utterly failed in this area.
Just a general remark about the issue of veracity of evidence and potential for manipulation: Suppose you read a long story in The New Yorker by Seymour Hersh in which he, as usual, referred to his sources as “well placed intelligence sources” or something similar. Hersh is, as you probably know, most famous for exposing the My Lai massacre. Would you demand the same level of evidence from Hersh as you do for stories about Putin and Russia? If not, why not?
I’ll never forgive that fucker for using his credentials to mislead the public (read: me included) for his reporting on the chemical weapons attack.
>>If not, why not?
because Hersh, unlike most of his critics, has actually done good and important journalism in his career. He’s been right in the past. Who in the Russia stories has a track record for me to look at?
Of course.
I would, simply put about half the time he’s uncovered something important. The other half his sources are feeding him pure bullshit.
It is not Hersh’s credibility in any one instance, it’s his sources. Hersh’s credibility is on the line when there is a pattern of bad sourcing–something some prominent journalists other than Hersh are never held to account for. Why? Because they are cut-outs for trial balloons or administration or intelligence community statements that can’t be given attribution for political or accountability reasons.
As for the chemical weapons story, Democracy Now framed it this way at the time: “Hersh reveals the U.S. intelligence community feared Turkey was supplying sarin gas to Syrian rebels in the months before the attack took place — information never made public as President Obama made the case for launching a strike.”
Do you have any way to prove that that statement about the intelligence community was not afraid of Turkey trying to frame Assad to get the US involved in Syria and bring in NATO with it?
What we do know is that the possibility of US (and NATO?) involvement was real enough to prompt Putin to get his client to rid himself of his entire chemical weapons capability. That was one of Obama’s and Kerry’s major accomplishments.
We still don’t know the story about whether Turkey was playing a double game. Likely never will. But it shows some degree of competence that at least the folks around Hersh’s sources were entertaining that as a complicating possibility that could blindside any US policy.
Reading stuff only from the perspective of “does it help or hurt my team” misses a lot of the complexity and limitations of power that exist in reality.
Hersh’s Dark Side of Camelot is also a crock. And a very influential one.
https://consortiumnews.com/archive/story60.html
Could have been worse: his original manuscript included all sorts of (easily checkable and falsifiable) dirt which any junior reporter working on a paper would have been fired over for submitting. He was forced to remove them and, after a day or so of bad press, went on to get his book and the critically unskeptical news doc based on the book by the late Peter Jennings and ABC.
A case of a usually good reporter trying to sell his preferred fictional story rather than the truth, because his strong negative biases (he hated the Kennedys) drove his reporting, and not the objective verifiable facts.
Thanks for the background. It shows how easy it was for the disinformationists to make him their (presumably unwitting) tool.
Not a comment on Hersh, but in the same vein…Due to Trump’s trashing of CNN I find myself now often scanning CNN. The conclusion being that CNN must be achieving a level of veracity that this administration finds threatening.
Or it could just mean CNN is achieving a level of retribution, and is running with whatever raw information it gets (probably from dubious US IC sources) in order to get back at Donald, the actual facts be damned.
I don’t watch much CNN these post-election days. Do they still have Barbara Starr? She strikes me as a trusted and well-paid Pentagon employee.
This part of BooMan’s post…
“…While he was in Moscow he emailed a journalist about possible Trump-Bayrock developments in Denver, in which he indicated he was with Don Jr.; a few days later Sater is alleged to have called one of the partners at the Arizona project and threatened to have him “tortured and killed,” according to later court filings.”
…really put things in perspective for me.
I’m looking forward to the community discussion here.
“…tortured and killed,…”
“Mir I Druzhba“
Russ Baker is interesting because his metier is to go out to the edge of acceptable public discourse as he assembles his collusion narratives (or “conspiracy theories”).
Probably the best example is his book Family of Secrets, about the Bush family, which threads together so many strands from the Nixon and Reagan eras (returning to a lot of the Len Colodny Silent Coup ground concerning GHWB and Watergate) in order to uncover the reasons why someone like George W. Bush could possibly end up as President. In the introduction to the book (which was republished in a new, augmented edition), Baker as much as admits that most people won’t accept his findings and theories, not because they’re wrong or because he’s made mistakes…but simply because his conclusions are “beyond the pale” — that, in order to accept the Baker narrative, you need to literally change your basic thinking about how the world works, which people simply aren’t willing to do.
I think this is a fascinating phenomenon, which I’ve encountered before — for example, there were people who believed that Senator Paul Wellstone was murdered, and I’ve seen that theory get greeted by an automatic “You’re out of your mind” before any evidence was presented, simply because it’s generally understood that things like that just don’t happen and to simply bring them up is to lose all credibility (and to get equated with right-wing nuts who think Vince Foster was murdered or that Obama was working in collusion with Muslim nations or whatever).
Every so often there’s a Watergate or an O. J. Simpson trial where the public is forced to change its thinking, and overcome the obstacle I’m discussing — the one Baker fully understands that he’s constantly attempting to propel us through. We may be at that stage now — the public may be forced to accept that a vast international criminal conspiracy resulted in the tainting of an American national election and subsequent policy. If there ever was a time for the Russ Bakers of the world to succeed, this is it.
I think people respond that way to the Wellstone “murder” because there is no plausible motive in evidence, nor any other credible evidence, come to that.
Lacking a convincing backstory for murder, people will react that way.
That’s it in a nutshell. Wellstone’s death was tragic. Nothing I am aware of or would have been aware of at the time indicated foul play. Occam’s Razor applies. Absent compelling evidence otherwise, the rational conclusion is that it was an unfortunate airplane accident. Beyond that, we get into Fox Mulder territory, and yeah, that tends to get the treatment it deserves (i.e., ridicule).
Very good points — it may not be the best example. But the overall point remains: people have already made up their minds about most theories before they hear them. (I recommend Baker’s essay, as I said — the introduction to his Bush book.)
Regrettably, that does seem to be the case. Once a pet hypothesis (belief) is in place, it’s often about confirming the hypothesis (belief) rather than put it to the test. Turns out to be a lousy way to live. But we as a species continue to muddle along doing so.
I’m a bit pressed for time at the moment, but I’ll put that book on my wishlist for a bit later on. Thanks for the tip.
I have no firm opinions re Wellstone’s crash, just lingering suspicions. Seemed strange to me, e.g., the fact that no distress communications were heard from the plane before it crashed. Just silence as I recall. But I haven’t revisited that case since 2002. Maybe a plausible explanation was given that holds up.
True, the official record shows no evidence of foul play. But that’s different from concluding there was no foul play and evidence in support can never be found. If you don’t look, you won’t find. And that’s the problem sometime when people stop looking rather quickly.
TPTB love that, makes their coverup job so much easier. And no one enjoys being called a “conspiracy theorist” or nut job tin foil hatter. Far easier socially to pull out the old Occam’s Razor and join the non-conspiracy theorist ranks.
Plane flight in Minnesota during the winter is not without its risks.
Which is why I said I don’t conclude it was foul play, but still suspicious nonetheless.
Whenever I see some/all of these factors — Small Plane + Prominent Politician + Outspoken Popular Liberal — my suspicions are raised. Would be stupid and naive not to be skeptical. And official reports of untimely deaths in the past have been found to be, shall we say, less than complete.
John Denver, most of Lynrd Skynrd (apologies to those I left out. Seems almost certain there are more, since those came right off the top of my head).
No worries – but I would be remiss if I did not mention Richie Valens. Now there was a talent whose life ended too soon. Small planes and winter weather are an awful combination.
How about Roberto Clemente?
A great ballplayer, style and talent galore. But not someone the scary guys in power are interested in offing.
As I noted, the NTSB concluded that weather was not a factor in Wellstone’s plane going down. Pilot error they said.
Another great career cut short. I may have a Clemente card somewhere in my collection. Got a good trade occasionally as a kid.
A bit off point — no one contends that non-pol small plane crashes don’t occur. And musicians? They fly in them frequently. Buddy Holly and Ricky Nelson were two other famous ones who died that way.
But TPTB aren’t involved in those tragedies. Musicians — with the possible exception of “troublemaking hippies” like John Lennon — are usually irrelevant to TPTB.
Btw, the NTSB concluded weather had nothing to do with the crash of Wellstone’s plane. Pilot error, they concluded.
because Buddy Holly started my list (re: ” . . . two OTHER famous ones who died that way”).
Shorter you: “deaths in small planes that don’t fit into my conspiracy theory framework aren’t suspicious . . . duh!”
politicians DON’T “fly in them frequently”?
Your conspiracy theorist’s confirmation bias is remarkable.
Why is it always the people who look like they’re actually on the cusp of turning this country in a better direction that die or are killed while regressive racists like Reagan survive? When the better (though not really good) are killed while the guys that make things worse win it is pretty frustrating.
Either God hates us, it’s a series of tragic random events, or a human conspiracy. Who wants to attribute our shitty existence to random chance? That’s why these rumors exist.
We human beings appear to be wired to seek out meaningful patterns to events. The thought that sometimes “shit happens” does not seem to satisfy us. Hence the search for conspiracies. We also seem to get focused on negative events – there is abundant data on that – which leads us to believe that the good die young and those who fall far short of that live forever. In the meantime, take solace. Bernie Sanders is alive, well, and still can be a force for change should he choose. The Notorious RBG is still on the Supreme Court, and does plenty of good in that chamber. There are plenty of positives to be found – we do have to do a bit more looking, but they can be found.
No plausible motive? Ever hear of Jim Jeffords or Norm Coleman?
Does James Comey look like a completely principled director with firm control of the FBI or what?
You have to wonder what these people have on him now, too.
“principled” means different things to different people.
as tarheeldem correctly noted above
>>Political manipulation of the FBI by its director has been another long-term weakness of the FBI.
what’s new here is political manipulation by cliques within the bureau separate from the director. “firm control”? not at all.
That has a little less force if Newsweek is correct about Comey’s plan, during the campaign, to publish an op-ed about Russian meddling.
I must admit…as opposed to the mainstream DemRat and RatPublican presidents, Trump certainly does traffic with a lower level of criminals.
For example…that “tortured and killed thing?”
That is disgraceful!!!
Good thing nobody in the Permanent Government does stuff like that!!
Oh.
Wait a minute!!!
Nevermind…
Yore freind…
Emily Litella
The sole response of the mass media when confronted with these sorts of truths if they are not under orders from a (temporarily) retrenching Permanent Government to publicize them.
Never mind…
At your own mortal peril!!!
WTFU!!!
Before it’s too late.
Like dat.
AG
How can “things” simultaneously not be “what they seem” and not be “otherwise”?
If they are not what they seem then they are by definition other than what they seem. It makes no sense at all; it’s completely illogical and incoherent and it bothers me every single time (nearly as much as the infantile “Like dat” or the recommendation that we “bet on it”).
I know, I know; if you don’t like him than don’t read him. My eye is drawn by the colorful collage, as it would be to kids’ artwork on a refrigerator.
You are perfectly right, Jordan.
In a two dimensional world.
But there are many more dimensions than just two.
Here’s another one to chew on:
If one can only see the most commonly perceived, finite possibilities, my sig makes no sense.
That is what is happening in the RussiaGate foofaraw.
But it is simultaneously all of those things, none of them and something entirely diferent.
The theory of indeterminacy in subatomic physics comes very close to this Zen angle.
Schrödinger’s cat and all…
Schrödinger wrote:
And there is also a difference between a snapshot of clouds and fog banks and one’s perception of them live, in real time. And one’s own perception at a given site…even in real time…is bound to be different than anyone else’s perception of them.
It is all indeterminacy, all of the time.
Surprisingly, Secretary of Defense (and unconscious poet) Donald Rumsfeld expressed this many times in many different ways during his term in office.
Here is my favorite:
The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.
–Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
Here are some more:
Glass Box
You know, it’s the old glass box at the–
At the gas station,
Where you’re using those little things
Trying to pick up the prize,
And you can’t find it.
It’s–
And it’s all these arms are going down in there,
And so you keep dropping it ;
And picking it up again and moving it,
But–
Some of you are probably too young to remember those–
Those glass boxes,
But–
But they used to have them
At all the gas stations
When I was a kid.
–Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing
A Confession
Once in a while,
I’m standing here, doing something.
And I think,
“What in the world am I doing here?”
It’s a big surprise.
–May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times
Happenings
You’re going to be told lots of things.
You get told things every day that don’t happen.
It doesn’t seem to bother people, they don’t–
It’s printed in the press.
The world thinks all these things happen.
They never happened.
Everyone’s so eager to get the story
Before in fact the story’s there
That the world is constantly being fed
Things that haven’t happened.
All I can tell you is,
It hasn’t happened.
It’s going to happen.
–Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing
The Situation
Things will not be necessarily continuous.
The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous
Ought not to be characterized as a pause.
There will be some things that people will see.
There will be some things that people won’t see.
And life goes on.
–Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing
Clarity
I think what you’ll find,
I think what you’ll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity
As to what it is.
And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,
But it will be known.
–Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing
Go ahead.
Gorge yourself on some indeterminacy.
It’s not fattening.
In fact…it doesn’t really even exist.
(See my sig again for more on the subject.)
Later…
AG
AG, I’m actually a Zen practitioner. It’s a spiritual practice of some rigor. The sort of peculiar, cutesy “Zen” you invoke is something else, about as pertinent to the actual Buddhist practice as stuff like “moment of Zen”, or commercial products with “Zen” in their names.
So am I.
Let’s have an enlightenment battle!!!
I spend a couple of hours a day in one particular meditational system. Every day. And that’s not counting the deepest meditation…musical practice.
Ooops!!!
I szenrender!!!
You win.
Be well…
AG
None of this makes any sense at all. It’s just re-cooked drivel.
appetizing even on the first go-round, pre-re-cooking.
(Full disclosure: that’s merely presumption on my part. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve been willing to waste many unreliveable seconds of my precious time to wading through ag’s redundant babble.)
I was thinking “inadequate halfway house bullshit” was an apt descriptor, but yours is nicer.
Arthur is quite desperate to try to control the discussion at the Frog Pond these days. His frequency of his work product here this year has gone up as its quality has gone down.
He is showing a particular interest in turning the community away from any critique of Trump which he does not control. Even here, in the one area which has been in Arthur’s wheelhouse, Trump’s ties to Mafia-type criminals, he wants to distract us with preposterous Both Siderism now.
Use your common sense in trying to determine why Arthur is behaving as he is.
It’s just plain bullying, at least in part. Hence the call-out diaries, the insults, the condescension. What seems to be lacking is coherence. Once upon a time, they guy’s rants at least made a certain kind of sense. Not any more. Might as well be word salad these days. And any more there’s no falling back on the whole jazz artist using the blog space as a form of performance art. Each post is just one big mess. Okay. That’s enough meta for a good long while.
You write:
Yes.
Please do.
It’s not possible that I might think that the Democratic Party as it now stands is an important part of that “vast right wing conspiracy” that HRC so stirringly branded as she sought to continue her own career as a political hustler, right? It’s not possible that I might think that lacking a true “progressive” party, the U.S. is going to freefall right into a new age, digitally enforced fascism?
Riiiiight…
I must be some sort of closet Trumpist.
Grow the fuck up.
AG
P.S. I do not want to “control” this site…I simply want to be free to continue to point out the absolute stupidity of posters like you, people who continue to support a totally wasted party. I could very well accuse you of nefarious motives as well, but I don’t. I think that you are totally sincere. And totally wrong.
Deal wid it.
Or not.
I don’t really care.
Continue to point fingers at me.
They don’t do a goddamned thing other that point right back at your own stupidity and blindness.
Nope. It’s never about what I’m writing about.
It’s always an effort to deflect.
Yes, let’s go to absurd lengths to make this about anything but Donald Trump.
Josh Marshall has been all over this for sometime. His explanation for how it came about is plausible. Trump needed money and it came from the Russian underworld because nobody legit would take a deal with him. The former-Soviet mobsters either parked their cash with Trump in realestate or laundered it. And Trump probably didn’t care to ask to many questions. This is probably the origin of Trumps feelings toward Russia: They give me money, they do business with me. They good. Stuff that gives them a hard time gives me a hard time. That bad.
Not saying there’s not other stuff there but the innocent Trump explanation at least seems to be the start of the association.
What I am ready to do is call for hackers to find out just WHAT Felix Sater did for our country as Bush and Obama admins have gone to crazy lengths to cover for him.
Sater looks like a guy who played both sides to stay alive and out of jail.
The donald took money from the Russians like little girls sell lemonade from the end of their driveway. It maybe he was just dumb….or was he that desperate?
Actually, what Trump did was probably more like what bad little girls sell for money.
And it ain’t selling lemonade, although it does have something to do with selling from the end of some sort of driveway.
The question remains…is he just a semi-amateur whore who is being busted by the pimps who run the bigtime games?
Looks that way to me…
AG
word choice for what you describe.
My first question was “innocent” in what way?
criminal” (which is yet to be seen).
But, of course, even if that proved true, it’s not the same as “innocent”.
Not really, it’s just shorthand for the idea that Trump’s pro-Russian stance emerges from his doing business with Russians and absorbing their attitudes (as he tends to do) rather than a specific plot to gain power or destroy his enemies.
That is, he’s innocent of colluding with a foreign power, he’s just easily manipulated (by the people like Sater or Flynn or Manafort who ARE colluding) and stupid. This explanation is plausible for MOST but not ALL of the Trump-Russia stuff which is why I think it started this way but may not be this way anymore. And regardless, it still merits an investigation to determine which.
Even better (in my view) stated here.
The most, as well as the least, that we can do is turn up the heat, turn up the heat, turn up the heat, every day, on every actor in the whole ugly business. Soon or late, someone is going to crack, but probably not before people start turning up dead.
Somewhere down in the bowels of the FBI wiretapping center there’s got to be more than one guy who has made the comment that Trump has been caught on more surveillance taped conversations than anyone, ever. Hard part for Comey has to be which conversation and which investigation will bear fruit first in the overview of Trump’s dark side. Sessions will scream for blanket recusal before long.
Hard part for Comey is going against some longtime friends and colleagues in Congress. Will Comey behave toward Sessions as if he is John Mitchell, Richard Kleindienst, Elliot Richardson, or Robert Bork?
Will Comey himself behave like J. Edgar Hoover, L. Patrick Gray, William Ruckelshaus, or Clarence M. Kelly?
Comey has not shown a white hat or a black hat yet.
My reading of BooMan’s key point:
Who was the FBI using Sater to pursue? The behavior of the FBI (or at least, Comey) indicates that it likely was neither Trump nor Putin.
That raises the question about the FBI as to whether it should have been both Trump and Putin and how Sater fits into those relationships. Or is holding Trump harmless netting some bigger fish for the FBI? Or is Sater playing both the FBI and Trump?
What seems clear is that the FBI in the best case has the stance of not being interested in either Sater or Trump because they want to protect Sater as an informant. In the current political environment, that puts the FBI in a difficult situation. Primarily because Congress has collapse all real oversight and is using oversight committees politically.
The article posits that the main FBI target was Semion Mogilevich :
“US authorities came to see Mogilevich, who is described as close with Putin, as not only a danger to the financial system but a potential threat to world peace. He had access to stockpiles of military weapons and even fissionable material, snapped up as the Soviet Union fell apart.”
This was in my news feed:
Watching the hearings, I learned my “Bernie bro” harassers may have been Russian bots
Being a white male, I rarely received quite the level of vitriol from supposed “Bernie Bros,” but I did notice a tendency for several of these individual Twitter accounts to respond almost identically within a very short time period (often within a couple minutes) with some “clever” 140 character insult. Typically those would be launched when I had either retweeted or replied to a female Twitter user with whom I might have had some familiarity. In hindsight I realize that the bizarre behavior I was experiencing wasn’t that of some crazed cultists (which was the initial conclusion I drew) but rather algorithms, and nothing else. Regardless, the swarm of identical or near-identical attacks made it clear a conversation was not to be had. But the reason why a conversation was not possible was simply because one cannot truly have a conversation with bots – in this case programmed thanks to our “friends” in Russia.