Ball of Thread: Devin Nunes’ Collusion

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While we were distracted over the week, LOLGOP released the fourth installment of our Ball of Thread podcast, in which we explain how the House Intelligence Committee helped Trump deflect from his Russian entanglement.

LOLGOP is also doing a Patreon for this effort (which is separate from my own Patreon), where we’re doing bonus releases. The Steve Bannon one associated with this — in which I lay out how Trump scripted Bannon to deny talking about sanction relief, after the inauguration but not before, incorporates Nixon talking about his own limited hangout.

You can also listen to the podcast itself on these outlets:

Listen on Apple

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Audible

Listen on Podcast Addict

 

 

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26 replies
  1. Fancy Chicken says:

    Thanks for reminding about the Bannon piece on Patreon. I’m terrible about checking there for stuff but will do!

    Love this series btw, have recommended it to a few folks.

  2. Clare Kelly says:

    Thank you, as always.

    It still astounds me that not only have these guys profited from this and are still walking around freely, some of them are in Congress, and one is somehow taken seriously despite all the evidence to the contrary… as a fit candidate to lead the United States of America’s Executive branch.

    Support independent journalism.

    https://www.emptywheel.net/about/support/
    https://www.patreon.com/emptywheel

    GOTV, contribute, and vote like you mean it.

    We’re not going back.

    • Clare Kelly says:

      PS
      Since Schiff was mentioned, I wish to share my disgust that the Senior Editor for KQED’s Politics and Government desk just gave Schiff roughly 30 minutes to white wash his duplicitous behavior.

      KQED is one of the most listened to public radio stations in the nation.

  4. zscoreUSA says:

    Interesting quote here.

    Marcy Wheeler: And then in the summer, they secretly arrest George Papadopoulos. In July of 2017, he, they secretly arrested him and they also think that they might be able to get him for being an unregistered agent of Israel, but you can never charge anyone in the United States for being an unregistered, because everyone is, right?

    An impossible charge because everyone is.

  5. Clare Kelly says:

    Replying to Rayne
    July 30, 2024 at 12:37 pm

    Rayne wrote:
    “Only surprised Nunes’ collusion wasn’t listed in the Wikipedia entry under the Streisand effect. How many more people learned about his treacherous Trump-ery because of @DevinCow being sued by Nunes?”

    💡[lightbulb emoji]

    Also, it can’t happen, but “treacherous Trump-ery” should be trade marked.

    Band name? Board game?

    • ExRacerX says:

      “Also, it can’t happen, but ‘treacherous Trump-ery’ should be trade marked.”

      Lose the hyphen & deny all knowledge of any other meaning of “trump,” and you might stand a chance.

      [Welcome back to emptywheel. Please use the same username and email address each time you comment so that community members get to know you. I’ve fixed the username on this comment because you used your email address instead. Check your browser’s cache and autofill. /~Rayne]

        • Sandor Raven says:

          The graciousness in this call (from Rayne) and response (from the commenter) is what makes emptywheel so great.

          “Kindess is free, so it doesn’t cost us anything to give it away.”

          Thanks to all.

  6. CovariantTensor says:

    Didn’t Nunes get exercised over being asked at a restaurant if he wanted a straw, instead of just being given one? Talk about straw man attacks!

  7. Savage Librarian says:

    Kudos on the content, narrative and remarkable editing work. Very impressive. Loved that it was in black & white.

    I took an Experimental Filmmaking class when I was a graduate student in Library Science. Super-8. My prof told me I did more edits than anyone else. Loved it.

    Then when I retired, I did a PowerPoint of 972 slides illustrating library and local history from 1865-2015. With music.

    This is just to say I know a great deal of work goes into a project like this. Quite extraordinary. And the captioning was superb.

    • harpie says:

      I agree, SL! This is really great work…and Marcy’s steel-trap mind is unbelievable. There’s always so much more to learn.

      * * * * *
      When I first opened up the front page this morning…bleary eyed, I read:

      BALL OF
      COLLUSION

      So, I’ve had this song in my head all day (NOT a bad thing!]:

      The Temptations – Ball Of Confusion (Live)
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5P7x4vh_ts

      The first closed caption is “(groovy music”) which is hilarious.

    • Clare Kelly says:

      “The spokesperson [for Trump Media] also suggested that the company might take legal action in response to this article: “The assertions and insinuations in this story, including of any ethical improprieties whatsoever or any material omissions from TMTG’s disclosures, are false, defamatory and a textbook example of a fake news story that will land the left-wing shills at ProPublica in court.”

      Sure. That’s normal. /s

  9. Alda Earnest Goodpeople says:

    Rayne, thank you for the link to the hundreds of pages regarding the Nunes reporting, good stuff. All of the same helps explain why Nunes bailed from Congress to go work for Trump’s media company, and why Kash Patel keeps threatening to prosecute and sue journalists who reveal this sort of brilliant work.

    UPR News has an interesting “insider” perspective with respect to the lead up to Crossfire Hurricane worth considering.

    Briefly, UPR News has argued that when Trump specified on 03/30/2023 that he knew of an investigation into him, Russia, and/or the GOP BEFORE he declared he was running for office 06/16/2015 — which he spun as a singular “witch-hunt” linked to the crimes he had been and was being investigated for — that this investigation Trump knew about was a 2013-2015 Russian Federation, Alfa Bank, and California/Sacramento GOP-stalked and unlawfully-seized pro se relator qui tam of the Editor of UpRights News.

    UPR News further specified that the 2013-2015 qui tam civil action, which was never filed, involved an investigation into Trump Organization, Trump Tower tenant families, the GOP, Russia, oligarchs operating in Russia, Rosneft’s Alfa Bank, and others BEFORE Trump ran for office and thus before the alleged Trump-Alfa server connections.

    The pro se relator investigation that was stalked and unlawfully-seized by Russia and the CA GOP (which included Nunes at the time) occurred a full year before Crossfire Hurricane began — followed by the late CA Senator Dianne Feinstein, G.W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Harland Crow, Chris Christie, and Trump’s H.R. McMaster meeting with the family of the Editor of UpRights News, but not with the Editor.

    Could be a nothing burger, but I wanted to share with anyone interested in some possible missing pieces of the broader puzzle, because enormous patterns of evidence make for exceptionally poor random circumstances.

    https://www.uprightsnews.com/crossfire-hurricane-origins

  10. gertibird says:

    OT a bit but Harris supporters have implemented a sunami against Trump and his project 2025 on the wapo and wsj comments. Its astounding , amazing and incredibly awesome.

  11. mattsircely says:

    I composed a song about the Nunes Memo shortly after it was released. It first aired on the Bradcast (Brad and Desi) in March, 2018. Ari Berman was on the show that day, the song was at the end of the episode: https://bradblog.com/?p=12526

    Here’s the song itself as heard on the BradBlog — https://soundcloud.com/matt-sircely/memo-about-the-warrant-as-heard-on-the-bradcast-3-28-18

    Later, in April 2019 I performed it with a backing band for an NPR radio program: https://soundcloud.com/matt-sircely/memo-about-the-warrant-live-on-says-you-radio

    Figrure

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