Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our name, bitch, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, y'all.
Introducing Aaron Maté, formerly of The Real News and The Nation magazine.
He's still there.
Welcome back to the show.
Aaron, how are you doing?
Hi, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing real good.
And listen, I've long admired your work for your critical take on this whole Russiagate thing.
And I always like arguments that are so-called against interest.
Where here you're a liberal Nation magazine writer who has every reason to detest Donald Trump's policies from A to Z, probably, mostly anyway.
And yet you're not on the bandwagon, which is a huge one, for all the worst accusations against this guy.
That he is somehow an agent of Russia and the Russians.
You've cast doubt even, last I read anyway, on even the Russians had any kind of real campaign for Trump against Hillary in the first place.
You can clarify all this thing.
I don't mean to characterize your statements too much here.
And anyway, so it wouldn't be as useful if you were a right-winger defending Trump.
You're just trying to defend the truth.
And I feel, I'm a libertarian, but I feel the same way as you about Trump overall.
Maybe not on every single issue, but pretty dang much.
I don't like him any better than any other president.
So, but I also ain't into this whole Russia thing.
But there have been recent developments and more charges and accusations that have gone around since we last spoke.
And so, you know, I'm just glad to have you here to tell us what you think or what you found.
And I guess maybe we'll start with, have you changed your mind about any of these things, the narrative surrounding the election of 2016?
No.
I mean, I think, I mean, from the beginning, the idea, this notion that there could have been a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, I just thought it was ludicrous on its face.
I didn't even see the theory of the case.
Like, what did they exactly collude about?
Like the timing of releasing stolen emails, like, and in return for what?
Because Trump has been more hawkish on Russia than even Obama was.
So that part of it hasn't made sense.
I mean, the one part where, you know, I was sort of agnostic is the issue of did the Russian government steal the Democratic Party emails?
I mean, if they did, I don't think it's as big a deal as it's made out to be.
It's not an act of war.
It's a hacking operation.
It's an email hack.
But I've also, I'm certainly not going to accept the claims of the U.S. intelligence community on faith.
I mean, as listeners to your program well know, Scott, there's plenty of reasons to doubt what U.S. intelligence officials tell us.
And what they tell us is often motivated not by the truth or the safety of the country, but by cynical political aims.
And I think we should apply that skepticism here.
Now, the fact that Mueller did indict Russian military intelligence officers and did lay out a pretty detailed indictment accusing them of specific actions around the stealing of emails.
I mean, that's the one case where I think, OK, well, maybe there is something there.
Because for Mueller to put that case forward means either he's lying or he's relying on extremely faulty intelligence.
I don't think he's lying, which must mean that he'd be relying on faulty intelligence.
So it's possible.
And I don't think that, I don't take his word as being the gospel.
But certainly on that issue of whether or not the Russian government or people affiliated with the Russian government stole the emails, I certainly think that Mueller did, in laying out that indictment, did push that case forward and did at least provide us something to consider.
All right, Sean, here's a message for all you Redditors out there.
I quit Twitter and I quit Facebook and all those things, but I am on Reddit.
It's my own private Reddit group for donors only at r slash Scott Horton Show.
And we've got this great new project going on.
Karkampit is organizing it and we're crowdsourcing and having the listeners are going back through the old interviews, taking notes toward the writing of my new book.
We've got a great system set up and you can check out all about that if you want to participate in that.
Those of you who've already signed up for the Reddit group or those of you who wish to do so, check us out at slash r slash Scott Horton Show.
Well, you know, the whole question of the emails there is so prejudiced that it's supposedly, I guess it should be not to me, but to everyone else.
It's beyond the pale to say that, you know, without the Manning like motives, the leak itself, the leaks were Manning like in their revelations of things that the American people have the right to know.
They weren't talking about, you know, Hillary's always hated her aunt and all these kinds of personal things that are nobody's business.
It was, you know, her business as the secretary of state.
And it was, you know, really dirty inside dirt inside her campaign from the Podesta leak there about, you know, Donna Brazil cheating in the debate and the Pied Piper strategy of let's ask our liberal media friends to promote Trump because he'll be the easiest to beat in the fall and all this kind of stuff.
I mean, this is the kind of thing where regardless of the source from a purely journalistic or media consumer point of view, American citizen point of view, this is great stuff that we absolutely have the right to know.
Now, that supposedly somehow ranks me among, you know, dupes of the Russians or that kind of thing.
But there's another example right when the Russians posted their intercepted phone call of Victoria Newland and Gregory Piat helping, you know, conspiring and talking about their plans to help overthrow the government of Ukraine in 2014.
Presumably that was the Russians, but great leak, Putin.
I don't care.
Why am I supposed to care that it was the Russians who leaked that thing?
It's our fault that we didn't take advantage of that leak in order to stop that coup before it was too late.
Look at the consequences.
Thousands killed in the war in Ukraine since then.
It's just another, you know, side point.
Hillary's appointee, you know, Victoria Newland in that case.
She was already out by that time, but still.
So I kind of say, you know, first of all, I agree with you that they still don't show that the GRU did this.
They only accused them of doing it.
But I got to say that like overall, meh.
How upset about that am I supposed to be?
And how could anyone equate that to an attack on our country?
And then sometimes like Pearl Harbor or September 11th, an act of war by H-bomb armed Russia when all you're talking about is leaking.
You know what I mean?
It gets a little carried away with some of this stuff.
Well, yeah, and that speaks to the real reason why this whole so-called scandal exists.
It's not about defending the country from a Russian quote-unquote attack.
It's about, well, it's about scaring the population for the purposes, for the interest and the service of the interest of the various elite groups who are pushing this whole narrative.
So Democratic elites, they have a stake in this because they lost to Donald Trump, you know, a very unqualified candidate, former reality TV host.
They really screwed up that election.
So they have an incentive to blame Russia.
U.S. intelligence officials who oppose Trump's call to improve relations with Russia, they have an incentive to scapegoat Russia.
The whole military-industrial complex, which thrives off of tensions with Russia, they have a buy-in, too, because if the population can be kept scared of this massive Russian threat, then it justifies their existence, justifies their jobs, the contracts they get for the military, their think tanks, their huge studies that they get to study Russian propaganda.
Like we just got recently from the Senate these two reports accusing Russian social media operations of doing things like suppressing the black vote.
One of the most condescending and ridiculous things I've heard so far in this whole scandal, this idea that these like stupid Russian clickbait memes could have changed the mind of a single black voter, given all the very real issues out there and just given anyone's basic intelligence.
It's just like it's so condescending.
Like I saw David Axelrod say that, you know, wondering if the Russian effort made the difference in Wisconsin and Michigan because he noted that minority turnout there was at a 20-year low.
Well, would David Axelrod say that his vote could have possibly been swayed by looking at a stupid clickbait post on Instagram?
And if he wouldn't say that those dumb posts could influence his vote, then what is he saying about all those quote-unquote minority voters who he's suggesting were swayed by the Russians?
I mean, so the whole thing is a joke and the whole thing exists because it serves the interests of elites who have every reason to try to distract us with, again, with so far has been a really underwhelming scandal.
Right.
And of course, the black vote on coming down from Barack Obama, the first black president who gave them something to believe in back in 2008 and who they're certainly willing to go along with still in 2012.
I don't think that was a fair base standard to measure their turnout for Hillary Clinton.
Maybe if you compare their turnout against John Kerry or for John Kerry back in 2004 and use that as your baseline, maybe her numbers weren't so bad.
But Barack Obama was something altogether different for them, wasn't he?
You know, obviously.
Come on.
It doesn't also help that Hillary Clinton referred to African-American teenagers as super predators, that Bill Clinton totally dog whistled back when he was a candidate, executing a mentally ill black man in Arkansas, dissing Sister Soulja, the rapper, signing the crime bill, overseeing an expansion of imprisoning African-Americans disproportionately, gutting welfare reform.
I mean, on and on and on.
I mean, these people have a horrible record, and now they're going to go and try to blame clickbait Russian Instagram posts.
I mean, it's really — the whole thing is laughable, and that's why it's amazing two years in, we're still taking this whole issue seriously.
And that includes the issue of collusion.
Well, let me say about that to set you up here, because I was hoping you could kind of walk us through, because I think I'm trying to be charitable to the side who believes in this, right?
They're all shocked that Trump could possibly beat Hillary, and what could it be?
And the CIA says it was the Russians what did it, and so it's in their interest to keep believing that, never mind all the cynical interests you've mentioned, but just believers in this thing.
And then the accusations come real fast.
Papadopoulos, Page, Sessions, Flynn, all these unauthorized contacts, Jr. in the Trump Tower, all these things.
I read in Slate there was a secret server sending messages back and forth to Moscow, and at the very surface of it, an idiot might believe in that.
They're like, OK, that's a lot to run with.
That doesn't seem like — maybe there was collusion.
Maybe there was a Russian operation here.
But then what happens is somebody like you goes and exams these — oh, I left out Manafort, of course, the dastardly foreign lobbyist.
You go through and examine these one at a time and see what they really amount to and what it all amounts to, and that's a whole different way of going about it than just sort of feeling the impression.
And after all, if you really want to believe that, and the CIA and the FBI and all them say it's true, too, and even Trump had to admit it a couple of times, so to speak, then what else is there to argue about?
That's right.
So on the surface, you might look at all these things and the fact that we're just bombarded constantly with reporting, leaks, developments that all — any attempt that can point someone in the Trump circle to someone with a Russian passport is treated as big news.
But if you look at exactly the cases individually, they all collapse under scrutiny.
Unfortunately, they've been pushed by credulous liberals, of which, by the way, Scott, I'm not a liberal.
I'm a progressive.
There's a big difference.
But credulous liberals who have bought into this conspiracy theory, I think to make themselves feel better because Trump's victory was a — was both disheartening for them, which I personally understand because I was very scared by Trump's victory.
But it also was a repudiation of the agenda of leaders who liberals revere, like Hillary Clinton and also Barack Obama.
And so the way to deal with it has been, I think, partly to buy into this comforting conspiracy theory that Trump got in because of the Russians and that St. Robert Mueller is going to figure it all out and end our nightmare.
But that's just not how reality works.
Reality works with reality.
And the facts show in all these cases that there's just nothing there.
I mean, we can talk about whichever one you want.
There are so many, and all of them collapse under scrutiny.
All right.
Well, I mean, I don't know.
Pick your favorite ones, the ones that really stick out.
I mean, Page is really important.
I mean, did he really cut a deal to get a $20 billion profit off of an oil company sale or something like that?
Yeah.
So Carter Page.
Sorry.
I didn't mean to be too silly.
And I'm sorry I called people idiots.
I shouldn't get so bent out of shape about this.
Go ahead.
Carter Page.
I think by the time he went to Russia, he wasn't even with the Trump campaign anymore.
I have to look that up.
But I'm pretty sure he, in July 2016, he was already not even working with Trump.
But anyway, whether he was or not, he went to, he was a low-level campaign volunteer aid advisor, went to Russia, gave a speech, met with some Russians.
It was reported in the media.
And it turns up in the Steele dossier that Carter Page discussed, exactly as you say, some sort of deal in which he would get, he would broker the U.S. to lift sanctions on Russia.
In return, he'd get like an $18 billion stake in the Russian oil company.
I mean, the whole thing is a joke.
And of course, and then the funniest part about that is that a few months later, the FBI takes that dossier, goes to a FISA court, and says that we have reason to believe that Page is coordinating contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, and their top source is the Steele dossier.
And that's what they used to get a FISA warrant on Carter Page.
Carter Page, by the way, who had previously assisted the FBI in getting some Russians convicted and deported, some Russians who were accused of espionage, who had tried to recruit him, Page testified for the FBI.
So that's why when Page was named to Trump's campaign, that's why they got the FBI's attention.
But it didn't clue into James Comey and his circle that, oh, Carter Page helped us get these Russians out of the country.
Now he joins the Trump campaign, and because he had expressed views favorable to Russian policies, and because he had some ties to Russia, all of a sudden that was deemed worthy of suspicion.
I mean, it's a joke.
I mean, look at the, look at the predicate for the entire Trump-Russia investigation.
It's been resolved.
George Papadopoulos.
George Papadopoulos, another campaign volunteer, word gets to the FBI that he was told, or possibly told, about the Russians having Hillary Clinton's emails before they were publicly released.
And the word is that he was told this by a London-based professor who claimed to have contacts with the Russian government.
So, if that were true, that Papadopoulos was told about the emails before they came out, that would mean that the Trump campaign might have known about them, and that they might have heard about them if this professor, Joseph Massoud, was in fact connected to the Russian government, that they might have heard about them from the Russian government, right?
So, okay.
So they investigated that in July 2016.
That's the founding incident of the whole Trump-Russia investigation.
That's the investigation that Mueller has inherited.
But it's been resolved.
I mean, we know the result there.
We know that it turns out that Papadopoulos was speaking to this guy, Joseph Massoud.
But it turns out Massoud has no connections to the Russian government, as far as we know.
The suspicion actually is that he's tied to Western intelligence.
The FBI itself interviewed Massoud in February 2017, after they spoke to Papadopoulos.
So, Massoud was in Washington, D.C.
Curiously enough, he was speaking at a State Department conference.
And the FBI talked to him then, and let him go.
And they haven't indicted him for anything, or accused him of having any Russia ties.
All they say is that Papadopoulos himself thought that Massoud had Russian ties.
But that's just what Papadopoulos thought.
There's no evidence that Papadopoulos even told anybody on the campaign about what he had heard.
And what he probably heard, if Massoud even told him this, there's some debate about it, was that Massoud was basically going off a public talking point at that time, which was about Hillary Clinton's State Department emails.
And whatever it was, the case was resolved with Papadopoulos being indicted for lying to the FBI.
Not about meeting Massoud, but just about the timing of his contacts with Massoud.
And Papadopoulos spent 12 days in jail.
So what does it tell you that the founding case, the inciting incident of the entire Trump-Russia investigation, ends up with nothing on collusion, it ends up with a shadowy professor who the FBI interviewed themselves, and the grand total result is Papadopoulos getting just 12 days in jail on a process crime.
Hey guys, Scott Horton here.
Let me tell you a bit about Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc.
They've been around longer than I have, since the mid-1970s, and they run a great business there, helping you arrange the purchase of platinum, palladium, gold, or silver.
And you know, when you buy with Bitcoin, they charge no premium at all.
That's Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc.
They're at rrbi.co. rrbi.co.
And now on Sessions, along those same lines, it was brought up that he had met twice with the Russian ambassador, but then I think no one ever even really finished accusing him of anything.
He recused himself from the investigation because he had been brought up, but no one really even officially, certainly not officially, but I don't even think it was really part of the narrative that he had made some corrupt deal with Kislyak in his Senate office, or something like that, was it?
That was one of the earliest incidents.
And you know what, Scott?
Actually, I'm remembering now.
That was one of the first cases where I was looking at how this whole big scandal was being manufactured by totally disregarding the facts.
And it was pretty obvious, because Sessions was accused of lying when he told the Senate that he didn't speak to any Russians on behalf of the campaign, during the campaign.
And that was true.
I mean, if you look at the question he was answering, it was from Senator Al Franken.
And Franken asked him very specifically about, it was about contacts with Russians in the context of the campaign, because Sessions was a surrogate for the Trump campaign.
He wasn't a big part of it, but he was an early supporter of Donald Trump.
And so Sessions said no.
He wasn't asked, did you speak to any Russian officials or Russian nationals at all during 2016?
It was, did you speak to anyone in the context of the campaign?
And Sessions said no.
But that would turn into this huge thing, accusing him of lying, when actually he was answering the question truthfully.
And yes, I mean, senators meet with foreign officials all the time.
It's totally natural.
So that was one of the first things that was spun into a big deal.
But on the face of it, it was baseless.
Right.
And I think someone had reported at the time, too, that all of his staff were former Army officers.
So the idea that they were all standing around while he was committing treason with this ambassador somehow, and that this, they just, it just happened like that.
Don't worry about it.
That was going nowhere.
And never really did go anywhere.
It was brought up.
They didn't really pursue that part too bad.
But now, so I'm really sorry to do this to you, because I'm in a real hurry.
But also, I really want to know what you have to say about Flynn, Facebook, and the Tower meeting.
OK.
So the Michael Flynn case, I mean, it's complicated.
I've always suspected that Flynn did not actually lie to the FBI.
I think that the recent documents that come out in that case corroborate that.
The problem, though, is that he has admitted to lying to the FBI.
He's pled guilty to it.
So it's tough.
I mean, my theory, I'm not the only one to speculate this, was that he pled guilty to lying to the FBI because Mueller was threatening to get him on much more serious charges related to his lobbying for Turkey.
In his initial indictment, Flynn's Turkish lobbying is mentioned, but he's not indicted for it.
He was only indicted for lying to the FBI.
But basically, whatever happened, there are transcripts of that call that he was questioned about, transcripts of his call between himself and the Russian ambassador, Kislyak.
And the FBI agents who interviewed him had those transcripts, which raises questions about what exactly they were trying to accomplish in interviewing him and whether he was properly informed, what they were even looking into.
And whether he lied or not, to me, it doesn't even really matter at this point.
I mean, it's an interesting question.
But the most important thing is that those transcripts exist.
The FBI knows exactly what Flynn said to Kislyak, and nothing improper has come up.
Flynn said to—the only possible way it's improper is if the U.S. wants to charge him under the Logan Act, which has never been successfully prosecuted.
And some legal experts say it's even unconstitutional, which may be why no one's ever brought charges under it.
So we know what the transcripts are of Flynn's phone calls with Kislyak.
He hasn't been charged for doing anything there.
He's just been charged with lying to the FBI about it.
And the reason why there's grounds to doubt that he actually lied is because he wasn't— it doesn't seem clear he was properly informed what they were looking for, whether it was part of an investigation.
And also, the FBI agents who interviewed him initially concluded that he wasn't lying.
He only got charged with lying after Mueller took over.
So there's a lot of questions there.
And certainly the fact that the calls were recorded, you know, but nothing has resulted from them in terms of charges about those actual conversations, shows us that there was no treason, no collusion, no quid pro quo going on there.
All Flynn said to him was, don't escalate the situation in response to the sanctions that Obama put on you.
He also asked the Russian ambassador to not vote for a U.N. resolution critical of Israel, but we don't even talk about that because we're not supposed to focus on Israel's role in U.S. politics.
And that was a case where actually the Trump campaign had colluded with Israel because Israel asked the Trump campaign to undermine that vote.
And that's what Flynn was doing.
But, of course, that's not even mentioned anymore because it's all about Russia.
And just right there, it's the dog that didn't bark kind of thing, where he's talking with Kislyak.
And rather than getting secret orders from the Russian spymaster and passing them on to his boss, the president, he's asking a favor of this Russian ambassador who's telling him, nyet.
So it amounted to nothing.
Doesn't sound like the Trump guy, and this is the brand newly elected Trump administration coming in.
It didn't sound like the Russians felt the need to do a big favor for Trump right now by helping to scotch this resolution.
They went ahead and voted for it anyway.
Exactly right.
Exactly right.
All right.
And now Facebook, because, you know, you mentioned a little bit about Facebook brainwashing people.
But wasn't it true, though, that the Russians had an operation to use this company to put these ads out there to make people go to Black Lives Matter protests and to like Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary Clinton and nefarious stuff like that?
You know, again, as I've said, how much contempt do liberal elites have for average people that they think that stupid memes on social media that no one saw could, you know, convince someone to do anything besides maybe clicking on the link?
I mean, like, does social media, especially social media ads that are so microscopic, have that kind of impact?
I mean, it's a joke to even talk about.
We know from these latest reports that the reach of them was not nearly as big as they're made out to be.
So, for example, the reports repeat this line that the Russian posts reach 126 million people on Facebook.
OK, that's and that's a line that figure 126 million is repeated everywhere, every single outlet.
But what it actually comes from is a, it's a spin on Facebook's own estimate.
And I'll quote for you exactly what Facebook's Colin Stretch testified in October 2017.
He said, our best estimate is that approximately 126 million people may have been served one of these Internet Research Agency stories at some time during a two-year period.
OK, so in that two-year period is between 2015 and 2017.
So he's saying that 126 people might have seen one Russian clickbait story at some time over two years.
So the idea that, like, that, like, 126 million people were bombarded with constant Russian propaganda, even if you think the Russian propaganda was effective, which it's not, it was just clickbait trash.
I mean, it's a joke.
It's a joke.
It's a joke.
I mean, Stretch also said that.
It doesn't really seem to illustrate, and there may be more to this that I don't know, but it doesn't seem to really illustrate on the supply side here that the Russians were, the Russians were actually trying to do anything with this other than maybe get some clicks with that bait.
I think by every indication, it was a clickbait factory.
Now, whether these clickbait workers favored Donald Trump or not, I mean, it looks like they did because they had more negative stuff about Trump.
It also might mean that they thought— Not Hillary, you mean, but yeah.
Sorry.
Yes.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Hillary.
But it also might mean that they just thought that they could target right-leaning audiences more and get more clicks from that.
You know, it's like— Which is smart, actually.
That's what clickbait operations do, you know?
And the thing is they, like, the idea that this was some sophisticated propaganda campaign.
Mueller even acknowledges in his indictment of these trolls that they sold advertisements on their pages for up to $50 a pop.
And we also learn now from these new reports that they sold merchandise, including sex toys.
You know?
So it's like what this looks like is just clickbait capitalism.
But we're supposed to believe it was an effective— You're accusing these people of being greedy instead of being patriotic servants of their country?
Okay.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
All right.
Okay.
So one more, and this is really the big one, right, is the Trump Tower meeting.
There was Junior.
Trump knew all about it.
And they're colluding with the intelligence services there to rig the election somehow or something, right?
Wrong.
Wrong.
At least—I mean, unless all of the available facts on it are complete lies, then wrong.
What it is is you have a publicist named Rob Goldstone who works for this Russian billionaire, Agalarov, and his son, who's a pop star.
And they have ties to Trump because they put on the Miss Universe pageant together.
And so the Agalarovs come, go to Goldstone and say that some of their Russian friends want to meet with the Trumps in a bid because they want to—they have something important to talk to them about.
Like they want to get them—their backing for a campaign to lift these Magnitsky Act sanctions on Russia.
And the Agalarovs don't give Goldstone very much information.
So by his own telling, as he told the Senate in testimony, by the way, and for which he has not been indicted for lying, unlike Michael Cohen who was indicted for lying about the failed Trump Tower deal.
So by Rob Goldstone's own telling, he didn't have much information, so he decided to use what he calls, quote, publicist puff, unquote.
And that was basically his attempt to get the meeting for his client.
So he writes Don Jr. an email and says that the Russians have compromising information on Hillary Clinton and her dealings with the Russian government.
And that all this is a part of the Russian government's support for Trump and his candidacy.
So when that email gets leaked, it gets turned into like proof that the Russian government is supporting the Trump campaign.
And really, that's just what a publicist by his own telling was writing in order to do his job and get the meeting for his client.
By all accounts, the meeting goes nowhere.
The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, she doesn't have any dirt to give.
She's only talking about the Magnitsky sanctions and wanting them lifted.
It's totally plausible that that was her agenda because that issue has been something she's been working on for many years.
And by the way, she's been working on it with none other than Fusion GPS, the firm that also put out the Steele dossier, alleged conspiracy.
OK, but now help me steel man this thing because I'm doing my best here, but maybe I'm not coming up with the best stuff for you to debunk.
Is there what am I missing here?
Well, OK, so is that the best case for the kukri that I just made?
The best case is definitely, I think, the Trump Tower thing, because you have an email in which someone says the Russian government supports Trump.
Right.
And we're promising you compromising information on Hillary Clinton.
So you put those together.
Well, my God, the Russian government compromising information.
On the surface, it does look damning.
But then you look at it again.
It's a publicist and and it's and it's a publicist by his own account trying to do his job.
Now, possibly Rob Goldstone, this kooky guy, is a Kremlin cutout and he's lying.
And that's all possible and it's possible.
But all the available facts tell us, including, by the way, the fact that the Trump administration has imposed new sanctions on Russia, that that that all this has been way overblown and spun into something that it's not.
You have also now this thing about Trump Tower in Moscow, which Michael Cohen got indicted for lying about, you know.
But the important thing to remember there is that, A, we've known about this for a long time.
Trump even tweeted about it in 2013.
He tweeted to the Agalarovs, actually, that they're going to make Trump Tower Moscow happen.
He was really excited.
So it's been out in the open.
Don Jr. and Michael Cohen testified to Congress a while ago that that Donald Trump signed a letter of intent.
So this notion of the Trump campaign has been covering this up is is false.
Michael Cohen did lie about it to Congress, but he didn't deny it fully.
He just minimized he just didn't reveal the full story.
And the way he tells it, he was trying to protect his boss when he did that.
But if you look at the facts, there's not much to protect him from, because the key thing here is that the deal didn't happen.
It didn't come close to happening.
And if you look at the and we know this because this has been reported on for a long time ago by BuzzFeed, who got Michael Cohen's internal emails where he's fighting with his associate, Felix Sater, saying that, like, what's going on?
Like, you're not getting me any meetings.
Like, like, you know, these Russians you got me are like third tier or third tier guys.
Like, you're making me look bad in front of the boss, i.e., Donald Trump.
And and and the deal ultimately goes nowhere.
It just so happens that him and Felix Sater talk about it longer than Cohen admitted acknowledged to Congress.
And they had planned to go to this St. Petersburg Economic Forum thing in June 2016, which they didn't even go to after the news of the email hacks got released.
But the idea that we're supposed to find incriminating that Trump tried to build a tower when it went nowhere, had no government, Russian government approval and no financing.
And that's supposed to be incriminating is just strange.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I guess we'll see what happens when that report comes out.
But so far, I'm in complete agreement with you.
It seems to all add up to nothing.
Reminds me of the case against Iraq.
You know, 100 accusations.
None of them add up to a thing at the end of the day.
But there you go.
Thank you again so much for your time.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks, Scott.
By the way, some of the same people are now involved in making that same case.
You know, John Brennan, James Clapper.
Absolutely.
Absolutely correct.
Especially Clapper on that.
Yeah.
All right.
I'm sorry.
I'm running so late, but I really appreciate your time today.
Thanks, Scott.
Thank you.
OK, that's Aaron Maté.
He is at The Nation magazine, thenation.com.
Hey, guys, this is Bert and Car from the Friends Against Government podcast here.
And you've probably heard Scott talk about the crowdsourcing effort on Reddit about his upcoming book.
All you got to do to get in is to donate $5 a month to Scott's Patreon and request to join the private Reddit group.
In Scott's Reddit group, you will find a pin post outlining the details for how you can help find source material for Scott's upcoming book by listening to archived interviews and taking a few notes.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to either myself at Bertarkist or Car at CarCampIt on Twitter, and we'll be happy to help.
We look forward to seeing you in there.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at LibertarianInstitute.org, at ScottHorton.org, AntiWar.com, and Reddit.com slash ScottHortonShow.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at FoolsErrand.us.
