MAGA is a ‘Russian intel op’: Experts respond to allegation GOP using Kremlin propaganda

Legal and political experts are responding to Special Counsel David Weiss' allegations that a former top FBI informant, now under federal indictment, had, as one reporter explained, "high-level contact with Russian intelligence operatives," and fed Republicans falsehoods from the Kremlin which they used to attack the Biden family and to try to build a case to impeach President Joe Biden.

"How many intel and legal findings and counter-espionage cases before people are willing to accept that the entire MAGA movement is a Russian intel op?" asks David Rothkopf, the noted foreign policy, national security, and political affairs analyst and author.

The bombshell allegations from the Special Counsel, a U.S. Attorney nominated by then-President Donald Trump, were published in his legal memo asking a judge to detain Alexander Smirnov, the defendant and former FBI confidential human source.

"Russia has fully infiltrated the Republican party. Nice going traitors," alleged Richard Signorelli, a former Asst. U.S. Attorney at the Southern District of New York office. He added: "Trump & @SpeakerJohnson et al are Putin's 'useful idiots.'"

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U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), an attorney who served as the lead counsel for the first Trump impeachment, wrote: "The Comer/Jordan impeachment sham appears to have been a Russian intelligence operation from the start. The only remaining question is whether Rs were witting or unwitting agents of Putin in their desperate quest to get Trump reelected. Will the GOP continue to work for Putin?"

The Comer/Jordan impeachment sham appears to have been a Russian intelligence operation from the start.
The only remaining question is whether Rs were witting or unwitting agents of Putin in their desperate quest to get Trump reelected. Will the GOP continue to work for Putin? pic.twitter.com/erzG7b54sU — Daniel Goldman (@danielsgoldman) February 21, 2024

Former U.S. Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman, a frequent MSNBC commentator, points to a passage from the DOJ's memo: "More from DOJ motion re Smirnov: 'the misinformation he is spreading is not confined to 2020 ...He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in Nov.'"

"This guy made be the sole reason for R's Burisma obsessions," Litman says.

Litman continues: "DOJ to court: 'Smirnov transformed his routine & unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [Joe Biden] and [Hunter Biden], after expressing bias against Joe Biden.' Was the entire R Burisma obsession based on phony intel?"

He adds: "And the big plot point to the Smirnov revelations from [Special Counsel David Weiss] is that the misinformation that Republicans have gone running -- in fact galloping with --originates with, you guessed it, Russian intelligence. i.e part of overall Putin misinformation campaign that so distorted 2016."

Attorney Blake Rutherford, in a social media post "retweeted" by attorney George Conway, wrote: "At what point will the broader American press, and I mean producers, editors, and publishers, wake up to very real fact that Russian propaganda is being normalized in today's @GOP. They are all useful idiots. Putin knows it."

Republican turned independent Tim Miller, a political strategist and author at The Bulwark, takes a look at recent events:

"To sum up: RUS/Putin have invaded their neighbor, assassinated the biggest domestic political threat, coopted one of the right's biggest media stars, and seeded a fabricated story about the US President that was echoed by GOP congressional leadership & rightwing media en masse."

But even before the Special Counsel's allegations against the indicted former FBI informant, some were growning increasingly aware of Russia's alleged penetration into the GOP.

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Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on "The View," last week wrote: "It’s becoming increasingly clear that Russia is winning the information war within the US. GOP politicians - who know better - are amplifying Kremlin garbage. We are in deep, deep trouble."

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