Who Paid For The Russia Hoax?

We did! You and I--Joe taxpayers. We pay the salaries of the bureaucrats at DoJ, the FBI, the CIA, the DoS and the NSC--the bureaucrats who tried to stage a coup.

OK, that's hardly news, but there's another less direct way in which taxpayer funding helped pay for the Russian Hoax: through grants to Non Government Organizations (NGOs). Today at The American Thinker Leo Goldstein discusses one particular such NGO, and his discussion plays into a blog I did back in November: The American Empire And Its Enemies.

Goldstein's article is The Russia Hoax Was Aided by NGOs Peddling Junk Science, but rather than focusing on the junk science angle, I want to point out the political connections, the confluence of persons, organizations, and--of course--MONEY. With that in mind, here's how Goldstein begins:

Some of the most vicious anti-Trump voices have come from US government-funded Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), affiliated with the State Department, Big Tech, and Soros afiliates. Many of these NGOs have existed since the Cold War, with a mandate to promote freedom and democracy abroad. They are forbidden to operate in the US, especially in partisan fashion. 

Note that well. These NGOs were set up to advance the cause of freedom and democracy, but they've been coopted by the international Left and the Democrat Party to advance their own cause--which happens to be what Obama termed the "fundamental transformation" of America. It's subordination to the new Globalist order.

Apparently, they have disregarded that mandate and have instead positioned themselves as pillars or guardians of the “global civil society.” They found a reliable ally in State Secretary Hillary Clinton. They have been interfering in US political campaigns and elections since at least 2016, frequently in coordination with their UN/EU counterparts. 

One such NGO is the National Democratic Institute, headed by Madeleine Albright. It receives federal funding, which it mixes with money and influence from the Open Society Foundation (George Soros), UN agencies, the European Commission, multiple foreign governments, Amazon, Google and others. 

Check out the board members. These are the people that the federal government is shoveling money to.

The day after the 2016 elections, NDI published a piece called: The distributed denial of democracy. Its author expressed dismay at Trump’s victory and blamed it on Russia, bots, Russian troll farms (IRA – the Internet Research Agency), and social media misinformation, all mixed together. 

The day after the 2016 elections the Russia Hoax was being propagated by the NDI. Certainly, having glanced through the NDI's board members you won't be exactly surprised, but this fact is highly suggestive of coordination on a scale that most people would be hard pressed to imagine. And I'm talking about fairly well informed people.

Who wrote that article? Dan Swislow did. Who is Dan Swislow? "Daniel Swislow serves as senior partnerships officer at the National Democratic Institute, leading the Institute's presence in Silicon Valley and supporting programs related to open government and civic innovation."

What is "open government and civic innovation?" I'll leave that to your imagination but if "open government and civic innovation" involve maintaining a presence in Silicon Valley and establishing "senior partnerships" I think you can guess that it all tends toward the Left. Here is what Dan Swislow had to say "[t]he day after the 2016 elections":

     "Social media and the Internet have had a drastic effect on the surprise results of yesterday’s election in the United States, driving the spread of information—and misinformation … Through “troll farms” of professional online provocateurs, automated bots pumping out thousands of comments, or a “Web Brigade” of crowdsourced online abuse, authoritarian regimes are engaged in a long-term and well-resourced program of undermining the democratic rights … Russia that is the most noted offender." 

To get a further idea of the interconnections between persons and organizations just go to the linked Wikpedia page for the NDI and start clicking on links. That could keep you busy through 2020.

That brings me back to The American Empire And Its Enemies. Here's what I wrote about the role of NGOs in our supposed democracy--and please pay attention to the military connection to these NGOs:


Most of us live within what we consider to be a republic. In that republic the citizens vote and elect representives who will pass laws, carry out the executive functions of government, and appoint judges to administer the law. All three of these "branches" of our constitutional order are charged with upholding the Constitution.

Of course, that outline is increasingly seen to be hopelessly simplistic. For conservatives it's an ideal to be restored. For "progressives," it's an instrument of oppression that stands in the way of a fundamental transformation of American society (Obama's words)--this constitutional order is to be resisted and ultimately overthrown.

The Impeachment Theater, flowing from the Ukraine Hoax, has revealed a different America--one that few of us truly feel that we belong to: the American Empire. For most Americans our foreign policy is intended to safeguard our security at home, not to police the world in the name of a non-national ideology of Globalism. And yet, what's being revealed in the Impeachment Theater is that there exists a confederation of interests--both within the government as well as outside (but very much connected with) the government--that view America as an empire. These interests are broadly bi-partisan--think: Uniparty, as sundance at CTH famously says. They are also broadly "progressive," even among the non-Dem members. Their focus on Empire is designed to "fundamentally transform" the world in the interests of a global order of their making, just as the progressive project on the domestic front is to transform American society in fundamental ways. The two projects are, of course, closely related, as we see in the growing effort to bind American domestic life to globalist norms, regulations, and laws. This effort even enjoys significant support within the progressive wing of our legal establishment and judiciary.

In these terms, Impeachment Theater is all about waging a scorched earth war against the enemies of the progressive transformation of America. Those enemies are personified in Donald Trump. Because Trump's rise and governance has been strictly in conformity with our recognized constitutional order, the forces of progressivism have obtained little traction in their "resistance" to Trump and to his conservative vision. Thus, we have--in contrast all previous impeachments--the remarkable spectacle of serial coup attempts being run against a president, based in foreign policy rather than in domestic politics. This dynamic is what has forced this confederation of globalist interests to emerge into the open.

To identify and fully describe this confederation of interests that acts on the international level would be the work of a book, and far beyond my abilities. Nevertheless, the unprecedented scope of their claims is on full display--witness after witness has attempted to convince the American public that they, unelected bureaucrats of what Alexander Vindman calls "the Interagency", should be running American foreign policy, not the president. For this reason, it's well worth our while to take at least a cursory look at some of the interests that are behind this.

My launching pad in this regard is a longish article by Aaron Klein at Breitbart that focuses on the connections between one of the key players in the latest coup attempt--Eric Ciaramella, a CIA analyst--and one of the major non-government players on the international stage, George Soros and his Open Society Foundation:

Emails: Open Society Kept Alleged ‘Whistleblower’ Eric Ciaramella Updated on George Soros’s Personal Ukraine Activities

On the domestic American front Soros has been a key funder not only of progressive politicians (his current focus has been on district attorney races) but on a wide range of "social justice" causes, including groups that fomented civil strife in the wake of the Trayvon Martin and of Michael Brown deaths. However, Soros has been extremely active in Ukraine--indeed, Joe diGenova has recently stated that Soros' goal is to basically "run" Ukraine, for his own benefit. Given the centrality of Ukraine to the whole range of attempted coups against Trump, that alone should raise red flags. Read Klein for the details, but the point here is the close connection between Soros and globalist operatives within the US government.

How does this work? Klein provides a very insightful example. He points us to Ciaramella's complaint, which repeatedly cites a non-government organization, without identifying this organization in terms of its support:

One key section of the so-called whistleblower’s document claims that “multiple U.S. officials told me that Mr. Giuliani had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of other Zelensky advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov.” 

... 

Even though the statement was written in first person – “multiple U.S. officials told me” – it contains a footnote referencing a report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

What is this OCCRP, and who funds it?

The OCCRP is a self-described investigative journalism organization. It is funded by, among others, Google, Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Fund, and an agency of the State Department. Moreover, the actual OCCRP report cited in Ciaramella's footnote is to a “joint investigation by the OCCRP and BuzzFeed News ...” BuzzFeed, of course, was the chosen "news" organization for the leaking of the Steele "dossier." So this is what our taxpayer dollars are used for--to jointly fund progressive investigative projects that target the POTUS. Because he's an enemy of the globalist progressives' plans to leverage the American Empire for their own ends.

Klein goes on to note that Ciaramella has, in the past, worked closely not only with John Brennan but with two other significant players in the Russia Hoax: Victoria Nuland and Susan Rice. Space won't allow a full examination of Nuland's and Rice's backgrounds and activities, however ...

Let's start with the fact that they are both alumnae of The Atlantic Council. In fact, they are only two of quite a few former associates of The Atlantic Council who have shuttled in and out of US government positions and among other NGOs. The Atlantic Council is a key organization in advancing the globalist agenda. Its openly avowed aim is to influence policy, and to that end it "creates a meeting place for heads of state, military leaders, and international leaders from both sides of the Atlantic." Yes, note that well: military leaders.  The Atlantic Council derives its funding from "many military, financial, and corporate concerns." Military concerns support the Atlantic Council? That means, like, governments, right? Yep. So, presumably those militaries that are involved--and count on it, that includes the US military--are involved in the Atlantic Council's stated goal of influencing policy. So, the Atlantic Council's "meeting place" for "heads of state, military leaders, and [various but unidentified] international leaders" is a place for leaders of the global Deep State to get together out of the public eye and shape policy. What? You thought that happened in open debate in Congress and political campaigns?

I hope you noticed what's going on here. The US government is helping to fund the people who wish to influence its policies. What's the point in that? This is one point: This lavish funding of an international lobbying organization for globalist interests provides jobs for members of that club.

Readers probably won't be surprised to learn that among other financial supporters of the Atlantic Council are ... Burisma and George Soros. Which kinda explains why Soros has ready access to our State Department--and very much so to Victoria Nuland. Here's Klein:

Besides Burisma funding, the Atlantic Council is also financed by Soros’s Open Society Foundations, Google, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc., and the U.S. State Department.

In one of several instances, Breitbart News reported, itinerary for a trip to Ukraine in August organized by the Atlantic Council reveals that a staffer on Rep. Adam Schiff’s House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a meeting during the trip with Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, now a key witness for Democrats pursuing impeachment. The Schiff staffer is also an Atlantic Council fellow, while Taylor has evidenced a close relationship with the Atlantic Council.

Son of a gun! Talk about a globalist, progressive rogues' gallery!

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Etcetera. Etcetera. Etcetera.