Sunday, February 18, 2018

A Question About Russiagate

So Robert Mueller has finally procured indictments against some Russians, for "election meddling" of the same type/variety as the weird "Help Jesus Beat Hillary" Facebook ads. This time it's stuff like having someone dress up as Hillary Clinton in a prison uniform and pose in a fake jail cell. Still not seeing any there there on the whole Trump campaign collusion thing, but ...

... purely for the sake of argument, let's suppose that the Russian government actually did take an active interest in the outcome of the 2016 presidential election and that, the lack of evidence for the claim aside, did in fact make a serious effort to influence that election's outcome in Donald Trump's favor.

My question is ... why?

Yes, Clinton made some anti-Russia noises as US Secretary of State, but presumably those noises were obligatory, seeing as how she made them at the same time she was raking in millions of dollars in Russian bribes to e.g. shepherd the Uranium One deal through the US regulatory approval process and whatever else the Russians would expect such a well-paid mole in such a high position to do for them. It's hard to imagine that the Kremlin would take such cover maintenance noises so seriously as to intervene against putting one of their own agents in the Oval Office.

Did her Kremlin handlers ask her to do something beyond the pale even for her, and take umbrage at her refusal?

Did she not deliver all the goods she was getting paid to deliver?

Or did she perhaps actively double-cross them and actually thwart some design she'd been ordered to advance?

It seems to me that it would have to be something pretty big for Vladimir Putin decide he'd give up on putting a highly compromised SVR asset in the White House and settle for a loose cannon like Donald Trump instead.

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