More Josh - TPM - on Collusion "Questions To Consider About That WSJ Collusion Article"

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/questions-to-consider-about-that-wsj-collusion-article

By JOSH MARSHALL Published JUNE 30, 2017 12:18 PM

You’ve no doubt seen the Wall Street Journal article about the GOP operative and money man who assembled a team to get a hold of Russia-hacked Clinton emails and claimed he was working in concert with disgraced Trump advisor Mike Flynn. From my read, this is one of those articles which is as interesting for what it doesn’t say as what it does. It raises all sorts of questions, a number of which the Investigations Desk will be digging into today.

Here are some basic questions I had.

First, if I’m understanding the calendar right, the Journal’s interview with Peter W. Smith was almost two months before the article appeared, at some time in very early May. That’s a significant period of time. Obviously, big articles take time. But why the big gap? I suspect there was a lot the reporters were working on that couldn’t be confirmed or hasn’t been confirmed yet that took up that time.

Second, Smith wasn’t some random GOP operative with some time on his hands. He had been deep in the the ‘Arkansas Project’ back in the 90s, the money operation that brought us ‘troopergate’ back in the day and to a great extent brought us ‘Whitewater’. Smith had long histories with a lot of big GOP players who are still very active and a number of people who are now top people in the Trump world.

Third, and counter to a lot of the speculation about the Russia story, if Trump or close Trump associates had some de facto understanding with Russian government officials, why would they need Smith to be hiring computer people to reach out to Russian operatives on hacker forums? I can think of a number potential answers to this. But it’s a pretty important question.

snip - keep reading at the above link

(If Marshall were a baseball player, he would be hitting .400. One of the very few media digging deep and putting it out there for us to read. And read it we must)

[Zoonart]

1. I'm thinking...

On 3:
Third, and counter to a lot of the speculation about the Russia story, if Trump or close Trump associates had some de facto understanding with Russian government officials, why would they need Smith to be hiring computer people to reach out to Russian operatives on hacker forums? I can think of a number potential answers to this. But it’s a pretty important question.

Plausible deniability. Get a "shop" up and running outside of their circle to outsource the dirty work.
They think they're so slick, but seem to forget, as most criminals do, that they are the bullseye inside of all of the concentric circles of complicity they have created.