(After Seth’s first tweet I used a Twitter thread unroll to make the diary more readable. I made one exception when he linked to the BBC News article. Seth asked for his work to be widely disseminated, so I thought he’d want it here. Enjoy)
It doesn't require proof of criminality beyond a reasonable doubt to impeach a POTUS, though we have that now as to obstruction—an impeachable crime that can't be indicted because Trump is president—and campaign finance felonies (ditto). A national security risk is sufficient.
Counterintelligence investigations of Trump remain outstanding—their findings haven't yet been disclosed, though they eventually will be to the House and Senate intelligence committees—but Mueller's report does include corroborated information that is *central* to those cases.
A president *must* be impeached if—in counterintelligence terms—there's "high confidence" intel that he is "compromised" by a foreign power, meaning not that he is necessarily an agent of any foreign power, but that he cannot uphold his Oath of Office (and loyalty) to America.
Almost immediately thereafter, I passed on this internationally available BBC report to the American public because—as a curatorial journalist—that's one of the main things I do: find reliable international reporting that links up to domestic stories in a way that's critical.
To the extent you've ever heard me called a "conspiracy theorist," it was this *BBC* reporting—which American media for some reason attributed to me—that earned me that erroneous title. So I wrote a book, PROOF OF COLLUSION, with all the British reporting on Kremlin kompromat.
PROOF OF COLLUSION has an entire chapter on Kremlin kompromat called "Kompromat," and it amasses a wealth of internationally reported information on Trump being blackmailed by the Kremlin that was *all* from the reliable overseas major media outlets that many of us read daily.
These outlets found ten witnesses (inclusive of—but not limited to—dossier witnesses) who could confirm the brief section of Steele's dossier that indicated the Kremlin was holding video blackmail material ("kompromat") over Trump's head. Most Americans never saw the evidence.
The evidence included BBC-confirmed witnesses from the Ritz Moscow who saw a "row" in the lobby of the Ritz on the night in question—as a group of women argued with the hotel staff about whether they would need to sign in or give their names in order to go up to Trump's room.
The evidence included a whistle-blower from within Trump Org who confirmed the events, as well as multiple Ritz staff members besides the American staying at the Ritz who saw the row. The evidence included contradictory stories given by Trump and his bodyguard, Keith Schiller.
The evidence included the fact that the best friend of a key member of Trump's Moscow entourage runs Moscow's largest "dark web" brothel; the evidence included actual dollar-amounted payoffs to Trump's bodyguard Schiller and much more—including spy craft evidence—of the event.
The presumption of *all* these stories was that the blackmail had been coordinated by Trump's Kremlin-connected Moscow business partner, Aras Agalarov, the man who runs the "Crocus Group" (a Russian business entity) and is known for being Putin's favorite real estate builder.
Vladimir Putin had *personally* given Agalarov Russia's highest civilian honor just 10 days before Trump arrived in Moscow to be surreptitiously taped by Agalarov. (NOTE: major-media citations for all these statements are in PROOF OF COLLUSION, which I here merely summarize.)
One of the witnesses who spoke to British media said it was Agalarov's son who arranged for the women to go to Trump's room—a Ritz Moscow room often used for surveillance of foreigners that Trump himself (quite oddly, very *publicly*) *admitted* was wired for sound and audio.
Emin Agalarov is close with—and was in Trump's entourage with—Artem Klyushin, whose best friend, Konstantin Rykov, runs Moscow's largest dark-web brothel and has boasted of being involved in a conspiracy with Klyushin whose details he wouldn't reveal but which involved Trump.
We know that, in fall 2016, Trump's fixer for video, audio, or (well) *women* who could harm Trump was Michael Cohen. And we know that after the Access Hollywood tape, many Republicans wanted to withdraw their support from Trump. A Kremlin tape would have ended his candidacy.
We know that in October 2016, Trump was lying to America about whether he had any ties to the Kremlin—even as he was planning the unilateral removal of all sanctions on Russia for its illegal annexation of Crimea—a policy whose basis or utility to the U.S. he never explained.
Trump's foreign policy in October 2016 was a *trillions*-of-dollars giveaway to Putin that'd *bless* its unilateral European military aggression, too. So if the Kremlin held *blackmail* on Trump in October 2016—and could end his candidacy—he was a fully compromised candidate.
Here's what Mueller found:
>The videos the CIA, BBC, and this writer said existed *did exist*;
>Trump *knew* they existed;
>Trump's "blackmail fixer"—Cohen—negotiated with a Kremlin agent their suppression in October 2016, when they could have ended Trump's candidacy.
This is *the* top story in America, indeed the *most significant story* in U.S. political history: a President of the United States with a historically pro-Russia foreign policy was being actively and knowingly blackmailed by Russia in the lead-up to his election—and*still*.
That Trump and Cohen *discussed these tapes* suggests *they believed*—as did the Kremlin agent they were dealing with—that they existed, and that the Kremlin was (through an intermediary) reassuring Trump that the Agalarov-held (Kremlin agent-held) tapes would be suppressed.
So Trump was being blackmailed; *knew* he was being accurately blackmailed; knew that blackmail could—at that moment—*end his candidacy*; *hid* that blackmail from the country; and was secretly advancing a plan to benefit the Kremlin to the tune of *trillions* at that moment.
And all of this *confirms* that Trump *believed the tapes to be damaging enough that he needed to keep them suppressed*—which means he is *being blackmailed right now by the Kremlin*, as all Rtskhiladze did was stop the *flow* of those videos. They *still exist fully intact*.
Mueller *only* put "high confidence" intel in his Report—so we *know* US law enforcement holds that Rtskhiladze was *telling the truth* about the videos. And *no* US president can stay in power—avoid impeachment—if they are compromised. So impeachment is *mandated* here. /end
NOTE/ "Rumored" appears in the story twice:
FROM CNN, as they're worried about being attacked for reporting CIA, BBC and SCO intel just as I was;
FROM RTSKHILADZE, but in a way that makes no sense—i.e. he may have said "rumored," but he also *acknowledged* the tapes exist.
NOTE2/ In other words, RTSKHILADZE was saying that he "stopped the flow" of the *actual tapes* which had been (at that point) "rumored" to exist—by which statement Rtskhiladze, acting as a Kremlin agent (which Agalarov also is) was confirming the tapes to be authentic and extant.
NOTE3/ There's *not one revelation in the Mueller Report* as important as this one, as it *confirms* Trump was compromised by the Kremlin not just by his lies about the Trump Tower Moscow deal (themselves blackmail material), but *hard evidence* that would've ended his candidacy.
NOTE4/ I'm ultimately OK with the fact that my reputation took a hit for two years because, unlike me, US media refused to acknowledge a BBC report, but now that Special Counsel Mueller—whose work even Trump has called "honorable" in the past—has said it, media *must* report it.
NOTE5/ What you can do—as reader and citizen—is (a) RETWEET my pinned tweet, so that media can no longer ignore this top-line result of the Mueller Report, and (b) TWEET AT MEDIA the name "Rtskhiladze" and ask them if they only reason they won't say it is they can't pronounce it.
PS/ The term "national security impeachment" should be on the lips of *every voter and politician*. We do have other crimes—at least two—now confirmed to add to any articles of impeachment, but *national security* is more important than all else. Impeachment is *mandatory* now.
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[cross-posted to PolitiZoom]