Behind the Fusion GPS Russian collusion story

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If taking money from repressive kleptocracies is an ugly business, an even uglier story emerges when you start connecting the dots. Add Fusion GPS’s contracts with Russian and Russian-linked entities together with the company’s role in compiling and distributing a defamatory dossier sourced to the Kremlin, and the idea that the Trump Dossier was a Kremlin information operation becomes quite plausible—with much of the U.S. media serving as the delivery mechanism for a poison dart aimed at the legitimacy of the American democratic system.

But wait: How could the Kremlin be targeting Donald Trump, at the same time as it was trying to elect Trump by hacking John Podesta’s emails and spreading them on Wikileaks, and running anti-Hillary Clinton conspiracy stories on Russia Today? The answer is that the purpose of Russia’s interventions in the 2016 election wasn’t to elect either Clinton or Trump, for a traditional quid pro quo. Information operations don’t work that way; they’re hammers, not scalpels. You can sow distrust and confusion, and pit groups against each other—but you can’t move swing voters in Wisconsin from one column to another with any kind of reliability, and efforts to achieve such a straightforward aim are more likely than not to backfire.

No, the point of the Kremlin’s assault on the American election of 2016 was to defame both candidates, and sow chaos, and thereby to discredit the American system of government, which rests on the consent of the governed. By any measure you care to use, the Kremlin has succeeded, and Fusion GPS was one of its most useful instruments.
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There is much more including the Fusion ties to the corrupt Venezuelan regime.

Ironically it was the emails from the Donald Trump, Jr. meeting that tipped me off to the totality of this scam and the fact that the Democrats were being played by Russia and had fallen for their scheme pretty hard.  Some are still pushing their collusion theories despite the evidence.  But it really demonstrates just how desperate Democrats are that they attach themselves to such nefarious narratives.