2016 ELECTION ATTACK: Traitors! Ratf**kers! Spies!

My first four investigations into 2016 US election interference by Russian military intelligence and the network of US white supremacists — central characters in the greatest crime in American history

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If only the elite terrorists in the US had kept their mouths shut.

If only they hadn’t breathed a word about Douglass Mackey’s seven-month sentence for interfering in the 2016 election, I would likely have accepted it as some kind of justice.

But instead, Trump, Jr., Vance, Musk, Carlson, Jones, D’Souza, Kirk — the usual suspects — all tried to pretend Mackey was just an anti-Hillary meme guy, ‘a shit poster’, rather than part of a white supremacist network of cells linked to Roger Stone, Mike Flynn, Peter Thiel, and of course, Donald Trump. That network trafficked stolen goods and promoted Russian lies — superspreaders of Russian propaganda and conspiracies. That network is still promoting Kremlin lies and conspiracies.

To be sure, their defense of Mackey exposed an area of vulnerability, and this series investigates those vulnerabilities — finding myriad links between Russian military intelligence and US traitors.

But what I found most shocking is that these criminals are all central figures in the greatest crime in American history, and surely the greatest failure of US intelligence.

Traitors! Ratfuckers! Spies!

As I study each prosecution relating to 2016 election interference, it all feels more and more like a limited hangout.

Lying to the FBI here, lying to Congress there. But what were they really doing?

This series answers that question.

Below are the first four in the series so far, as well as the first 13 profiles in my American Monster series. Each report is accompanied by a podcast version.

I’ll leave you with a few quotes from the 2016 series:

“I think a full investigation would show that Trump didn't actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.”—Fmr President Jimmy Carter, June 28, 2019

"It's pretty clear you won't admit the Russians have engaged in cyber attacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do and that you continue to get help from him because he has a very clear favorite in this race. So I think that this is such an unprecedented situation. We’ve never had a foreign government trying to interfere in our election.”—Hillary Clinton, Oct. 19, 2016

“(Roger Stone) remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.”—Robert Mueller, July 11, 2020

“All these assholes got together in MAGA3X and got organized and went out in teams and literally coordinated with Russian intelligence — with the IRA accounts like the most famous being Ten_GOP — and hundreds of other ones — and they created propaganda with emails hacked by the Russians,” disinformation researcher Jim Stewartson said on RadPod live. “It’s not a mystery what happened. One of the biggest problems that we collectively have is we have not grappled with the situation of 2016.”

Grappling with the situation of 2016 is what I intend to do with this series.

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To read the first four in the series on the 2016 election attacks, please go here:

To read the first 13 in the American Monsters series, please go here:

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More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.

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Begin each day with a grateful heart.

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