2024 Election Campaign MEGATHREAD

[Jersey Girl]

Excerpt. Go, Joe, Go.

CNN
—
President Joe Biden personally directed his senior campaign aides in recent days to focus more aggressively on former President Donald Trump’s inflammatory comments, according to two sources familiar with the president’s edict.

The thrust of Biden’s direction, delivered to his senior-most staff, was to significantly ramp up the campaign’s efforts to highlight the “crazy sh*t” that Trump says in public, according to those sources.

The previously unreported instruction from the president appears to demonstrate that Biden himself believes it is critical to paint his presumptive Republican opponent as unhinged and unfit for office. For weeks, his campaign has said they are fully prepared for Trump to emerge as the GOP nominee.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/20/politics ... index.html

[Dr. Shades]

Navalny is dead.

Yulia will step forward and take up the cause.

Why would Yulia Nova want to oppose Putin?

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/20/politics ... index.html

tl;dr - Russian disinfo op

A little more in the FBI informant who admitted to peddling lies about Hunter Biden:

The former FBI informant charged with lying about the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine told investigators after his arrest that Russian intelligence officials were involved in passing information to him about Hunter Biden, prosecutors said Tuesday in a new court filing, noting that the information was false.

Prosecutors also said Alexander Smirnov has been “actively peddling new lies that could impact US elections” after meeting with Russian spies late last year and that the fallout from his previous false bribery accusations about the Bidens “continue to be felt to this day.”

Smirnov claims to have “extensive and extremely recent” contacts with foreign intelligence officials, prosecutors said in the filing. They said he previously told the FBI that he has longstanding and extensive contacts with Russian spies, including individuals he said were high-level intelligence officers or command Russian assassins abroad.

Prosecutors with special counsel David Weiss’ team said Tuesday that Smirnov has maintained those ties and noted that, in a post-arrest interview last week, “Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about Businessperson 1,” referring to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

The revelations about Smirnov’s alleged foreign contacts were disclosed as part of prosecutors’ arguments to keep him jailed ahead of trial – though a federal judge later granted Smirnov’s release with several conditions, including GPS monitoring and the surrender of his two passports. Smirnov declined to answer questions as he left the courthouse Tuesday evening.

Prosecutors alleged that Smirnov “claims to have contacts with multiple foreign intelligence agencies,” including in Russia, and that he could use those contacts to flee the United States.

The explosive revelation comes amid backlash over how Smirnov’s now-debunked allegations played into House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into the president.

Smirnov has been charged with lying to the FBI and creating false records. He has not yet entered a formal plea, and his lawyers told CNN in a statement, “Mr. Smirnov is presumed innocent.”

According to the new court filing, Smirnov told investigators he was in contact with “four different Russian officials,” all of whom are “top officials” and two of whom “are the heads of the entities they represent.” Prosecutors did not independently verify in the filing whether Smirnov’s reported contacts are legitimate, nor whether the Russians provided him with disinformation about the Bidens.

The false information that Smirnov reported “was not trivial,” prosecutors wrote.

“It targeted the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties in the United States. The effects of Smirnov’s false statements and fabricated information continue to be felt to this day,” prosecutors said, making an apparent reference to the turmoil in Congress over the discredited bribery allegations – which were a key element of the GOP impeachment probe.

Of particular note is a story Smirnov allegedly told the FBI in September 2023, alleging that Hunter Biden was recorded making phone calls in a Kyiv hotel that is “wired” and “under the control of the Russians.” Federal agents said they knew Smirnov’s story was false because Hunter Biden has “never travelled to Ukraine.”

Smirnov told investigators Russian intelligence officers would use the hotel to intercept cell phone calls made by “prominent US persons,” prosecutors said, which the Russian government could use as “‘kompromat’ in the 2024 election, depending on who the candidates will be.” Kompromat is a Russian term that refers to compromising information used for blackmail.

The story, prosecutors noted, matches the story Smirnov told his handler about Hunter Biden being recorded in a foreign hotel.

“Thus, Smirnov’s efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the two major parties in the United States continues,” prosecutors wrote.

And, prosecutors wrote, Smirnov claims to have met with Russian intelligence officials as recently as November and December 2023.

“What this shows is that the misinformation he is spreading is not confined to 2020,” they wrote. “He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November. In light of that fact there is a serious risk he will flee in order to avoid accountability for his actions.”

Weiss’ team argued in court Tuesday that Smirnov could use his foreign contacts, including those in Russia, to flee the country and resettle abroad out of reach from the US government. The judge pushed back on the prosecutors’ assertion, and sternly warned Smirnov while granting his release: “Do not make a mockery of me.”

[Res Ipsa]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/20/politics ... index.html

tl;dr - Russian disinfo op

A little more in the FBI informant who admitted to peddling lies about Hunter Biden:

[SNIP!]

Yeah, perhaps Congressional Republicans should launch an investigation into how they came to conduct an impeachment inquiry based on a Russian disinformation operation. GOP=Gofers Of Putin.

[Gunnar]

Encouraging news! Biden Soars Ahead in New Poll as Trump Stumbles.

A new poll released by Quinnipiac has President Biden leading a head-to-head matchup with former President Donald Trump by four points.

In the latest poll, Biden leads Trump, earning 49% of the hypothetical vote compared to 45% for Trump. The poll targeted 1,421 registered voters nationwide and had a margin of error at 2.6 percentage points, meaning that Biden's lead falls outside of the margin. When the poll added hypothetical third party candidates, Biden's lead fell to just one point, with the President earning 38 percent of the vote, compared to 37 percent for Trump and 15 percent for independent candidate RFK Jr.

Some other top lines from the poll include President Biden running far ahead of Trump on who voters think is more ethical. 49 percent of voters believe President Biden is ethical, compared to 47 percent who answered no. When asked about Trump, just 28 percent believe he is ethical and 68 percent believe he is not.

In the same poll, 49 percent of respondents said that President Biden has the temperament to effectively serve as President of the United States compared to just 37 percent of respondents who answered in the affirmative for Donald Trump.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Apparently IVF is now an election issue. Jesus.



- Doc

[Jersey Girl]

Apparently IVF is now an election issue. Jesus.



- Doc

I don't disagree with what the pic is trying to demonstrate but can I just say this? His son was not a PRODUCT of IVF. His son was conceived via IVF.

And that my friends is why some well meaning males should just shut it before they stir up yet another hornet's nest.

A product. How screwed up is that.

[Vēritās]

40% of all Republicans in the blood red state of South Carolina voted against Trump and for Nikki Haley.

Among those Haley voters, 59% of them said they would not support Trump in the general election and 82% said he would be unfit for office if he were convicted of a crime prior.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I just watched a clip of a freshman Republican Senator, complaining on the floor of the Senate about the bipartisan immigration bill he worked on and was signed off by the Senate, that he was told to his face by REPUBLICAN colleagues, that it’s the wrong time to solve this problem.

He was pissed, obviously.

The GOP jumped the shark with this MAGA thing.

- Doc

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

The architect behind Trump’s Big Lie was caught lying about having burner accounts pushing the fake elector strategy:

https://newrepublic.com/post/179302/one ... ht-big-lie

tl;dc:

Chesebro used the account to make arguments that he would later disavow when interviewed by Michigan prosecutors, including claims that Republican legislatures could override the electoral system and that former Vice President Mike Pence could be leveraged to throw the election for Trump—the last of which he posted about more than 50 times.

Twitter blurb:

https://Twitter.com/MarshallCohen/statu ... ht-big-lie

Put these assholes in jail, already.

- Doc