With the recent revelations brought forth by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard regarding “Russia Russia Russia,” (here and here), all eyes in MAGA-world have been on Obama, and justifiably so: the fish rots from the head, after all. But let’s not forget Joe Biden. We know he was in on the Obama-era meetings which hatched the plot to invent the fake intel to frame Trump. But he was also in the Oval Office as president when the second impeachment took place, and when his DOJ was weaponized against Trump for the lawfare that followed. As Joe himself said in an October 2017 interview, “silence is complicity.” Well, he stood silently by, except when he didn’t. When he was talking, he was doubling and tripling down.
What was Joe Biden saying about “Russia Russia Russia” during the immediate aftermath of the launch of this nefarious information operation? What was on his mind in 2017 as he watched President Trump beset and beleaguered at every turn? One thing that emerged was his association with Vice President Mike Pence. Many in MAGA-world have pointed to him as a major source of the many and voluminous leaks during that period and what do you know? It appears there may be some proof of that.
From a November 2017 Joe Biden interview (emphasis added):
[Biden] reached out to his successor, Vice President Pence, with memos outlining his [foreign policy] concerns. Now the two men remain in occasional touch.
‘There are a number of world leaders who have contacted me,’ Biden says. ‘I’d always call Mike and say, ‘Mike, King Hussein (of Jordan) wants to meet with me, or the prime minister of Serbia wants to meet with me. Is there any message you want me to deliver or anything you want to find out?’
[snip]
‘I felt like Mike was a much more traditional Republican,’ Biden says. ‘Not that that was his expertise, but if you did the Rorschach test’ on, say, Moscow, he predicts Pence’s response would meet a minimal threshold: ‘Russia: Bad.’
How cozy.
But rewind a bit. That was November 2017. Let’s head back to January 2017. Literally the day of the infamous January 5, 2017 Obama Oval Office meeting in which they formally launched the “Russia, Russia, Russia” operation, Joe Biden went to Judy Woodruff for a PBS interview (emphasis added):
[Biden] said he was more concerned about Trump’s foreign policy than any changes the next president might make on domestic issues.
Biden said it was ‘worrisome’ that President-elect Trump has continued to question the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia interfered with the election in an effort to undermine Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee.
[snip]
‘There is overwhelming consensus in the [intelligence] community, and overwhelming evidence supplied by the community, that Russia did engage in an effort to impact’ the race, Biden told Woodruff.’
We know now, thanks to Gabbard, that there was nothing of the sort. No “overwhelming” anything.
Of course, “Russia, Russia, Russia” exploded into a worldwide news phenomenon and The Guardian got in on the fun January 6, 2017 with a lengthy article:
Trump restated his doubts [about the ICA, the Intelligence Community Assessment] in a series of tweets on Thursday evening suggesting the FBI investigation was flawed.
The Guardian article included these two Trump tweets and they’re worth remembering:
So Trump had very good reason to doubt the ICA. But not according to ol’ Joe and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (emphasis added):
The US vice-president, Joe Biden, has said it is ‘absolutely mindless’ for Donald Trump not to have confidence in the intelligence community, as the heads of the US agencies prepared to present their findings on Russian election interference to the president-elect.
The unprecedented dispute between Trump and the intelligence services he will soon control broke into the open at a congressional hearing on Thursday as the head of US intelligence [Clapper] publicly defended his analysts, who he said ‘stand more resolutely’ than ever behind their conclusion of ‘Russian interference in our electoral process’.
[snip]
‘For a president not to have confidence in, not to be prepared to listen to, the myriad intelligence agencies, from defence intelligence to the CIA, is absolutely mindless,’ he said in an interview with PBS.
‘The idea that you may know more than the intelligence community knows – it’s like saying I know more about physics than my professor. I didn’t read the book, I just know I know more.’
Gotta love the irony, right? It’s “mindless” according to Joe Biden to question the very intel Joe Biden and his malicious compatriots questioned, big-footed, overruled, and corrupted.
On June 15, 2017 Biden went back to NPR, this time to Terry Gross, in furtherance of the lie, the conspiracy to undermine the sitting president:
I know Russia is deeply involved and was deeply involved …in trying to alter our electoral process and undermine our democracy… Now, this is not hyperbole. This is a fact.
And just in case it weren’t absolutely clear his goal was furthering the conspiracy, he admits to this in October of 2017:
Biden said he had urged holdovers from the Obama administration still in government to ‘please stay’, in an attempt to provide stability.
In November of 2017, he added this:
[Biden is] keeping tabs on how other people are hitting the president, reaching out to members of Congress whom he sees on TV to cheer them on.
By December 2017, his conscience seemed to be bothering him. He began projecting about “abuse of power.” From Vanity Fair magazine:
[Trump is] a threat to the very foundations of America. ‘This sounds corny,’ he said, ‘but everything the founders did was to erect institutions that made it more difficult to abuse power. That’s why they have three different branches of government. And what really worries me about this administration is the frontal attack on those institutions that, if they were lost, makes the abuse of power so much more available.’
Of course, this (below) is what they were really worried about. And continue to be vexed by: they can’t predict Trump because he’s not one of them. From The New York Times, January 17, 2017:
‘It’s like a Rubik’s cube trying to figure this guy out,’ Biden sighed. ‘We have no freakin’ idea what he’s gonna do.’
Never let them see you coming, right? Attorney General Pam Bondi has set up a “Strike Force” to investigate everything Gabbard has sent to the DOJ One can only hope she doesn’t let them see her coming.
Image from Grok.