‘Reality vs The Unprincipled’ — My Latest Report in Byline Supplement is a Tale of ‘Convictions’
My latest in Byline Supplement probes the root causes for the different responses to Trump’s 34 felony convictions, indicating a fusion of of Russia’s mental invasion and good-old fashioned greed
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Thank you to everyone who joined Bette’s Happy Hour to hear from Adam Syberra, an analyst and journalist documenting war crimes in Ukraine. I learned so much from his perspective, and I am looking forward to sharing my findings with you. Our new RadPod Ep99 interview with him is now available to view.
He gave me the great gift of these words — Mental Invasion — and I used that term in my latest report in Byline Supplement. And thank you as well to those of you who are donating to help the ‘Peaky Blinders’ drone unit raise $500 to repair broken equipment. I have already heard from their crew that donations are coming in and they are grateful. More on that here:
While in DC over the weekend at Dave Troy’s TedX MidAtlantic event, my ‘Reality’ report dropped in Byline, and I’m just now flagging it for you to read.
As always, if you can afford to take out a subscription to Byline Supplement to help support a small global team of independent investigative reporters, please do so. If you are unable to do so at this time, I am happy to send the full report upon request to bettedangerous/gmail.
Here is an excerpt:
Reality vs The Unprincipled: A Tale of ‘Convictions’
Heidi Siegmund Cuda probes the causes for the different responses to Trump’s 34 felony convictions, indicating a possible fusion of Russia’s ‘mental invasion’ and good-old fashioned greed
"It was a strategic mistake of some Western institutions to think they could live without principles.”—Catherine Belton, author of Putin’s People
Let’s start with reality: on 30 May, Donald J. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts for knowingly falsifying financial records in an election interference case colloquially known as New York’s ‘hush money’ trial.
Trump joins other convicted felons in his midst — his 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort; his former national security advisor Mike Flynn; his longtime advisor Roger Stone; the CEO of his company Allen Weisselberg; his former attorney Michael Cohen; his chief strategist Stephen Bannon, who is due to report to prison on 1 July for contempt of Congress.
That’s the short list — there are many more.
But to be clear: that is reality. Trump is at the center of a criminal syndicate, with a long list of prosecutions and convictions.
Trump, who was aided into office in 2016 by a multi-faceted Russian military attack, according to 17 US intelligence agencies and a Republican led Senate Intelligence Report, is now an adjudicated sexual assaulter and convicted felon.
That is fact.
On 31 May, protesting and cheering outside Trump Tower, New York activist Julie DeLaurier joined her colleagues in holding up GUILTY and LOSER signs, while Trump gave a rambling and semi-coherent press conference.
“I was asked by reporters, was I happy about the outcome — was I celebrating? Their tone was gently scolding,” DeLaurier told Byline Supplement. “I was being cued to respond that, ‘Oh no, this is a somber day for America. A former president has been convicted of crimes! This is a grave occasion — it's unbecoming to celebrate’. I said without apology, ‘Yes, I am celebrating!’
“For eight years, our country has been hijacked by a traitorous criminal demagogue. Trump violently disrupted and seriously endangered the peaceful transfer of power. Even out of office he holds a grip on a spineless Republican party and contorts our democratic process. Trump — assisted by Fox News and Putin's troll farms — has poisoned the minds of nearly one-third of Americans, stoking them with blind fear and rage.”
While DeLaurier was celebrating, along with millions of other Americans — the New York trial being an indication the rule of law is still alive in the US — Trump allies mobilized with talking points so Orwellian, they could have been scripted by George Orwell himself.
Red-faced and sunken, Trump raised his fist at his Trump Tower press conference in primo Mussolini style calling the trial “rigged” and “disgraceful”.
“I’m a very innocent man,” he lied.
Having reported on criminals for four decades, interviewing many people behind bars, it’s safe to say a declaration of innocence is status quo for those caught and prosecuted. In fact, I have never interviewed anyone behind bars, who did not declare their innocence. But it’s the response from his allies that is most revealing. The unified responses are what fascism historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat calls “MAGA leader cult damage control talking points”.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson called it a “shameful day”, declaring the “weaponization of our justice system” and vowing to take on the justice system.
As if.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and disgraced former Trump advisor Mike Flynn posted upside down American flags on their X/Twitter accounts — a weird flex for a retired Lieutenant general.
Rep. Matt Gaetz and Governor Ron DeSantis worked off a similar script — with Gaetz calling the trial a “corrupt result” by a “corrupt judge” and a “corrupt DA”.
Both Putin and his stenographer Tucker Carlson called the conviction politically motivated, with Carlson suggesting it marked the “end of the fairest justice system” in the world.
Elon Musk got in on the action, deriding the 34 felony convictions as a “trivial matter.”
All of these responses by those in Trump’s orbit aren’t simply induced by an alternate reality — these are comments by an unprincipled group that also happens to be incredibly pro-Kremlin, and that is also a fact.
As I reported in my Unmusked article, Russian analyst Fiona Hill cautioned that Musk was passing messages for Putin on his platform, and geopolitical analyst Michael MacKay warned that Musk would turn X/Twitter into a Russian propaganda platform similar to Vkontakte.
Rather than be confused by the coordinated response from right-wing extremists, it appears to be part of a larger strategy by an unprincipled and wealthy group who continue to back an unprincipled felon.
In an interview with Adam Sybera, a Czech-born analyst and journalist who has spent the last two years documenting war crimes by the Russian invaders in Ukraine, he told me that the biggest problem facing the world today is the West’s inability to admit it made a mistake when it began doing business with Russia in the 1990s.
He is right — we crawled into bed with a fascist dictatorship mafia state, and until we admit that mistake, and disentangle ourselves and our finances, tech, government, academia, etc, completely from that mafia state, we will continue to be sucked into their fascist undertow.
Even now, a video is circulating of Trump declaring he will get Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich released from prison in Russia.
“Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, will do that for me… when I get elected,” declares convicted felon Trump, committing yet another crime — this one a violation of the Logan Act.
The outlandish behaviors of America’s right-wing party indicates that they have been entirely corrupted. How else to explain the unprincipled responses to felony convictions of the GOP’s top candidate?
In our report on Project 2025, we explained that violence is now Trump’s brand, and that, too, meshes with the pro-Kremlin attitude.
“The Kremlin operates with the premise that there is no objective truth, and no one can be trusted, and will is implemented by violence,” said Sybera. “Inhumanity, violence and death are old tools of Russian tactics in their aspiration to control and subdue people.”
Despite documenting a thousand war crimes in his time in Ukraine, he said the biggest crime is the “mental invasion”.
“The most insidious attacks come from the deliberate disinformation campaigns of the Kremlin into which Russia invests over $1.9 billion dollars annually,” he explained.
There lies, too, another bridge beyond the mental invasion and that is the oldest vice in history — pure greed.
As Timothy Synder noted in his vital tome, On Tyranny, to understand why billionaires and the uber-wealthy support a convicted criminal such as Trump, it’s simply because they believe he will funnel the country’s spoils to them should he return to power.
But these Trump sycophants don’t say that directly, rather they dress it up in fealty to the leader, who basks in the glow of their flattery.
Yet, maybe this is where the rubber meets the road — maybe the mental invasion and pure greed have fused, and what would in any other era in US history be unfathomable, becomes crystal clear in the Trumpocene. We are a decade into a mind war, and clearly, no one is immune to the impacts — not even the uber-wealthy…
As with everything in the Trumpocene, the fog of mind-war gives us a perpetually cloudy forecast.
And yet, those who still believe in the rule of law, who remain rooted in reality — feet firmly planted on terra firma — continue to be hopeful that a man with 34 felony convictions does not become a presidential candidate.
“On to November,” said Julie DeLaurier. “May we get to the other side of our national nightmare. May we keep our democracy, live up to America's promise, and celebrate together.”
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