The so-called House impeachment “inquiry” in November was a little like turning over rocks in a vacant lot. Every time you looked, something ugly crawled off.

Alas, blowback is God’s way of dispensing poetic and political justice.

Since 2016; Beltway apparatchiks, the Intelligence Community, the Justice Department, the State Department, and the Democrat party did more to undermine confidence in American institutions than any foreign power such as Russia or Ukraine could hope to.

The real enemy, Pogo, is still “us.”

The stacked deck of witnesses at the recent impeachment “inquiry” validated Trump’s misgivings about the National Security Council and State Department. Even if you discount arrogant self-important conceit, three of that sorry group still stand out; Alexander Vendman, David Holmes, and Fiona Hill, the former two from State, and the later from the NSC. 

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Vendmen and Holmes are typical effete federal gossips, “kiss and tell” office boys. Both displayed puerile contempt for security, discretion, and executive confidentiality.

Ms. Hill, in contrast, appears to be a patina Trojan, vintage and polished. At the same time, Fiona has more personal history with Christopher Steele (erstwhile dossier forger and chief of the Russian desk at Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6) than James Comey or John Brennan combined. If you read the New Yorker’s “dossier” on Steele, you might conclude that he could have been working for the DNC, SIS, and the Kremlin. The problem with professional, and amateur liars, is the same. The tangled web they weave is often an indiscriminate snare, a trap that zaps the trapper. 

Indeed, Matron Hill’s Mata might know Hari. The English lady protests too much. Fiona may not be a double, but her sentiments and associates, like Steele, are troubling. The big question about Fiona Hill should be; how did this woman ever get a security clearance?

You cannot know her affiliations (MI6 and Brookings) or listen to Ms. Hill and not see the specter of Kim Philby doing a jig at Kuntsevo. The Steele/Hill link suggests that there may have more than just courtesy calls between anti-Trump and anti-Brexit plotters on both sides of the pond.

Clearly, the election of Trump animated establishment liberals, statists and, globalists in Washington and London.

SIS Intelligence has always been left, liberal, and notoriously porous. British canoodling since WWII with Communists, Socialists, and globalists is as English as crumpets and cod. George Blake, at 98, is still a Moscow celebrity to this day.

If there is a Senate trail and the Republicans hire better lawyers, other dicey disclosures should guarantee Trump gets to stir the pot for a second term.

The Ukraine quid pro quo hoax, like the Russian collusion scam, is designed to obscure the reality of Obama era regime change fiascos, DNC meddling in the 2016 US election, and Beltway coup plotting still in progress.

Ukraine Ground Truth

Team Obama sponsored the 2014 Kiev coup that provoked the Russians to take back Crimea, Sevastopol and Donbas. Today, or any day, citizens of those ethnic Russian border enclaves are happy to have Moscow’s protection – especially if the alternative is Kiev fascists and corruption American style.

Symbol of  Azov Battalion, Ukraine

The “Euromaidan” Revolution in Ukraine in 2014 was a joint venture with silent partners: Ukrainian neo-Nazis, the Obama National Security Council, the CIA, the US State Department, USAID, and the Open Society Foundation.

After the 2016 general election in the US, unelected DC mandarins went on suicide watch. If seppuku is the name of the game on the Beltway swamp, why would Vladimir Putin interfere with any divisive meme afloat in Washington?

If Trump is guilty of “bribery” in Ukraine, then Joe Biden & Son should already be doing time in Leavenworth.

Putin is not Mikhail Gorbachev nor is he Boris Yeltsin. Russian pushback in Ukraine is mirror image of American pushback in Cuba. Sevastopol and Guantanamo Bay naval bases are kissing cousins.  

The free fall of late 20th Century Russia stopped with Putin in the second decade of the 21^st Century. If the Red Army ever really “invades” Ukraine, they will be in Kiev in two weeks, Brussels the week after, and looking out at Dover a month later.

Albeit, if America is at “war” with Russia and Russia is at war with Ukraine, then somebody needs to tell Vladimir Putin and Sergey Shoygu. 

Trump is correct. NATO is an innumerate Cold War relic, a paper tiger that writes bad checks. NATO has ballooned from 15 to 29 members, mostly check kiters, since the Berlin Wall fell. Today, only eight nations meet their treaty mandated fiduciary obligations to NATO. Even Berlin is a deadbeat.

If you need to forecast how the EU might manage a real Russian military “invasion,” review any history of European neutrality, appeasement, and collaboration during World War II – then read how Marshall Zhukov saved Western Europe from itself -- and the Nazis.

Trump’s instincts, and common sense, about Russia are similar to those of Ronald Reagan. If you don’t seek war; you visit, you talk, you compromise -- and then you sit down and cut a deal.

No spooks on the planet do more cyber meddling, targeting friend and foe alike, than Uncle Sam’s cowboys at Ft. Meade and Langley. US federal agents are now allied with the largest, need we say liberal and globalist, internet services on the planet.

The threat to the integrity of American elections comes from the DNC, Silicon Valley, and an unelected permanent federal establishment. Big brother thrives in Washington, DC. At best, he has a third cousin in Moscow.

If all the things said about Russian “interference” are true, then you have to believe that those billions spent on US Intelligence and FBI counterintelligence are a waste of money. A handful of Saudi Arab jihadists blew up Manhattan, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC in a single day right under CIA/FBI noses.

Imagine, if you can, what a professional Russian team could do in Brussels if they choose to.

The Russian FSB, like NSA and CIA, makes mischief in cyberspace where they can, every day, all day. That’s what internet spies and trolls get paid to do. If Kremlin operatives are as good, or as bad, as congressional demagogues claim, those “nefarious” Russians must be ten feet tall – again.

The flip side of Russian intelligence success is American failure. NSA and FBI take bows here.

Withal, post-Soviet Russia should be an American ally once again. Good relations with Ukraine may be well and good, but the big dog in that part of the world is still Russia. America has more in common with Moscow than it will ever have with Mecca, Pyongyang, Beijing, or the American Democrat Party. The American left, and by no coincidence the entire clown car running against Trump in 2020, is now more “soviet” than the Kremlin.

Bernie and Elizabeth take bows here.

Trump should accept Putin’s invitation to Red Square for the next Victory Day celebration in 2020, if for no other reason than to poke coup plotters, leftist bigots, and cold warriors in the eye.

Blowback is always served best as a cold, just dessert

The author is the former Director of Research and Russian (nee Soviet) Studies and the Soviet Awareness Program serving under James Clapper at USAF Intelligence.