Russia-gate Grand Wizard Deceives Audience About Assange
March 6, 2019
Obsessed Russia-gaters just can't accept that the Assange indictment has
nothing to do with the 2016 election, writes Caitlin Johnstone.
By Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlinjohnstone.com
When it was first revealed in November that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
is under secret charges by the Trump administration, I spent the next few
days being told by Russia-gaters that this was proof that I have been wrong
about their demented cold war cult all along, because #MuellerTime is fast
approaching. At long last, they vehemently assured me, Assange was going to
prison for working with Russia to deprive Queen Hillary of her rightful
throne.
None of those people have come back to apologize or admit that they were
wrong when subsequent evidence disproved their claims. None of them ever do.
As it turns out, whistleblower Chelsea Manning has been subpoenaed to
testify before a grand jury in a secret case investigating Assange for his
2010 role in the WikiLeaks publication of military war logs and diplomatic
cables. Manning served seven years in prison for leaking those documents to
the transparency advocacy outlet before her sentence was commuted by
President Obama, meaning, obviously, that this sealed case has nothing to do
with the 2016 leaks Russiagaters have been fiendishly obsessing over.
Indeed, The Washington Post reported Tuesday that "U.S. officials, speaking
on the condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, say the case is
based on [Assange's] pre-2016 conduct, not the election hacks that drew the
attention of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III."
So there you have it. Democrats like Center for American Progress president
Neera Tanden who have been cheering for Assange's arrest have actually been
cheering on the Trump administration's prosecution of a journalist for
publishing facts about Bush administration war crimes. They thought they
were supporting the agenda to punish Assange for publishing leaks that hurt
the Hillary campaign, but in reality they were defending two Republican
administrations while helping to manufacture support for a prosecution that
would set a devastating precedent for press freedoms throughout the entire
world.
If you are unfamiliar with the work of Russia-gate Grand Wizard Rachel
Maddow, you might think she would report the revelation that an unfounded
belief held by many of her acolytes has been completely and thoroughly
disproven once and for all. If you are a bit more familiar with her, you
might assume that she would completely ignore this revelation like she
normally does when her conspiratorial ramblings are disproven by facts and
evidence. But if you know Rachel really, really well, you might guess what
she actually did on her show last night.
That's right, she flat out lied about it.
On Tuesday night's episode of MSNBC's most popular show, Maddow blatantly
deceived her audience by weaving this story about the Chelsea Manning
subpoena into her conspiratorial Russia-gate ramblings about Roger Stone,
despite those stories having absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with one
another.
Maddow began by gushing about investigations into Roger Stone's alleged
connections to WikiLeaks, of course not mentioning the fact that the only
known interactions between Stone and WikiLeaks consist of WikiLeaks telling
Stone to stop lying about having connections to them. Maddow smoothly weaved
this into the news that the House Judiciary Committee has formally requested
documents pertaining to WikiLeaks (among many other things) from dozens of
Trump associates, with a gigantic grin on her face and a tone of immense
significance in her voice. Then, without pausing, Maddow began talking about
the sealed case against Assange and the Manning subpoena, falsely suggesting
that these had something to do with the things she'd just been speaking
about.
"And because of the criminal case against Roger Stone, you should also know
that today, in federal court in Virginia, little bit of drama," Maddow said.
"Today in federal court in Virginia, the U.S. attorney himself, the top of
that prosecutor's office, the EDVA U.S. attorney himself, personally turned
up in court for a sealed hearing today that appears to be about some sort of
legal case potentially involving WikiLeaks and/or Julian Assange."
Maddow then went on to describe November's revelation via court filing error
about Assange's sealed criminal complaint with her trademarked
conspiratorial "you can't tell me this is a coincidence" histrionics. She
then cited a Daily Beast report that former WikiLeaks volunteer David House
had accepted an immunity deal in exchange for his testimony before this
grand jury, completely omitting the fact that the report explicitly states
that this testimony pertained to the 2010 leak drop and not anything to do
with 2016.
"Late Thursday, Manning revealed that she's fighting a subpoena to testify
before a grand jury that's been investigating Julian Assange for nearly nine
years," the Daily Beast article reads in its second paragraph. "But Manning
isn't the only one being dragged into the aging probe of WikiLeaks' first
big haul. A former WikiLeaks volunteer who was also personal friends with
Manning was subpoenaed last May."
Maddow knew this, and willfully distorted it to fit her narrative.
"So, all of this to say between that court filing error in November, the
reporting around that error that suggested that it was weird that he was in
that case and it was a mistake but the information was true, and then what
we saw today in Virginia, something appears to be happening in federal court
that pertains to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. And this is happening as the
president's longtime advisor Roger Stone goes to trial for lying to Congress
and witness tampering, allegedly, about his supposed communications with
WikiLeaks during the campaign. It happens potentially as he's going to jail
for violating the gag order in that case. It happens as tons of people
associated with the president and his campaign are being asked detailed
questions by the Judiciary Committee about their interactions with
WikiLeaks, including during the campaign, and it happens within a week of
Trump's longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen testifying before Congress
that the president, himself, was personally notified by phone in advance
about WikiLeaks' plans to dump stolen material that Russia hacked from the
Democrats during the campaign."
So she just plain lied. By suggesting that the Virginia grand jury has
anything at all to do with Roger Stone's walking clickbait shenanigans, the
House Judiciary Committee's investigations into possible Trump malfeasance,
and Cohen's testimony that Trump had advance knowledge of the (already
publicly announced) upcoming WikiLeaks drops, Maddow knowingly deceived her
tinfoil pussyhat-wearing audience into holding out hope that legal
proceedings will soon be vindicating their cult.
Maddow then kicked it up into ultra-mega-Super-Saiyan-galaxy-brain
Russiavaping by telling her audience not to Google any of the things she was
telling them, because they'll get computer viruses if they try.
"Now I will warn you," Maddow said with a laugh, "if you are an interested
news consumer who is interested in following this part of the story, I will
warn you: just about everything that pertains to WikiLeaks, Julian Assange
and Roger Stone is basically un-Googleable. All the online trash that
relates to these characters, put your virus protection on. But something
does appear to be happening there in federal court."
Needless to say, this also is completely false. Google algorithms are
slanted in favor of mainstream news media, not toward websites that will
give you a "virus", so the top results you get when you type in WikiLeaks or
Assange's name will always be news stories from conventional sites, many of
which today refute Maddow's claim that the Manning subpoena and grand jury
have anything to do with the 2016 Trump campaign.
And of course, that's the point. Narrative management is Rachel Maddow's
job, for which she is extremely well-compensated, and the more isolated she
can keep her audience within a tight, narrow echo chamber, the better she
can do that job. Rachel Maddow is nothing other than a cold war
propagandist, rewarded like all her colleagues for promoting falsehoods to
keep mainstream liberals supporting longstanding U.S. government agendas
against noncompliant nations while still letting them feel like rebels.
In today's media landscape, powerful and opaque government agencies are
scrutinized and criticized far, far less than a lone political prisoner in
an embassy who revealed inconvenient facts about those agencies. The
campaign to smear, silence and imprison Assange tells you all you need to
know about the governments that WikiLeaks has exposed, and the mass media's
complicity in that campaign tells you all you need to know about them as
well.
Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who
publishes regularly at Medium. Follow her work on Facebook, Twitter, or her
website. She has a podcast and a new book "Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia
Preppers." This article was re-published with permission.
