Reality is Not a Winner

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

OK, this actually happened-

     The United States accused Maria Butina of being a Russian spy and having ties to the NRA and was also accused of funneling Russian money to Trump through the National Rifle Association. 

     The next day the Treasury Department ended requirements saying the NRA needs to identify their financial contributors.

     Meanwhile, former NRA contractor and whistleblower Reality Winner is serving her 13th month in federal prison and could spend at least four more years under the Kafkaesque Espionage Act.

     If you've forgotten who Reality Winner is, you can be partially forgiven. She was last year's version of Sibel Edmonds, a government whistleblower who'd also fallen in the Mainstream Media Memory Hole (hereafter referred to as the MMMH) because both in 2017 and now don't think she's sexy enough. Virtually unable to defend herself under the kangaroo court Espionage Act, last month Winner had to plead guilty to a lesser charge of felony transmission of national defense information, which was an ironic charge on which to try her.

     Why it was so ironic, to those of you who've forgotten this unsung heroine, was because in the spring of last year, when Vladimir Putin's Vice President began his reign of error from Kremlin-on-the-Potomac, Winner briefly made headlines when she'd been arrested after releasing damning information proving that Russian agents had hacked our last election. Winner not only released documents proving that the US electoral system had been hacked and compromised (especially in the state of Florida) but that the government was covering up this news even as an artificial president was about to move himself and his crime family into the White House.

     Aye, there's the rub. It wasn't so much that Winner had revealed Russian interference in the last election, it was the fact that she had showed up the government yet again for being the mendacious pack of psychopaths that it is. In that respect, she's joined the lengthening list of whistleblowers that got exponentially longer during the Obama years who were incarcerated for telling the truth. We're talking about whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning, Susan Lindauer and John Kiriakou, just for starters.

     So you have two women in orange jumpsuits. One helped hack the electoral system and pollute the NRA and Trump campaign's coffers with Russian roubles and the other released information revealing that. Then the same government that had successfully prosecuted Winner under the Espionage Act, also sought to shield the NRA from scrutiny by telling them they didn't have to reveal their donors' identities. In other words...

America is Open For Business

Winner never had a chance to live up to her colorful name. Under the terms of the Espionage Act, which is clearly perverted by latter-day Congresses to not give defendants a fighting chance, Winner and her lawyers were unable to produce evidence regarding her motives for leaking the documents. In fact, the federal judge had even refused to grant her bail, something even given to Ethan Couch after he got behind his father's car while under the influence and killed four people.

     And you would think that Robert Mueller's endless Russia probe indicting a dozen more Russians for espionage and hacking into our system, which Winner had sought to tell the American people, would give her some legal mitigation and vindication, But there you'd be wrong, comrades. Not even the subsequent arrest of Butina, which showed just how widely she'd extended her tentacles into not just the Trump campaign but also the powerful lobbying arm of the NRA, evangelicals and the Republican Party as a whole gave Winner any relief even in the MSM (They of the aforementioned MMMH.who are too lazy, corrupt or indifferent to connect the dots).

     Butina, we now know, had been instrumental in funneling upwards of $30,000,000 in Russian roubles into the NRA, which happily took the money without questions and not caring if it came with any strings attached. She'd also been seen and photographed attending at least two prayer breakfasts, which is a great back door channel to meeting kingmakers and other power brokers without having to navigate the cumbersome channels of the State Department. Indeed, at Butina's bail hearing (she too was denied bail, being labeled a flight risk), she had more people in that courtroom (two Russian officials) interested in her release than Winner had in her trial.

     Indeed, it seems the sole purpose of the Espionage Act is to aggressively shield Uncle Sam from public embarrassment after committing war crimes. Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning was arrested and served jail time for releasing through Wikileaks videos showing US forces killing Iraqi civilians, including a journalist then laughing about it. Edward Snowden would still be in a Super Max today if he hadn't fled to Russia after releasing a treasure trove of documents proving how much the NSA and its corporate partners such as Verizon were spying on us. Susan Lindauer spent 10 months in Carswell Federal Prison, the only federal maximum security women's prison in the country, for proving the Bush administration lied about Iraq's WMD infrastructure to rationalize its case for going to war (Then she was mysteriously released on January 16th, 2009, four days before the Bush junta scuttled out of the White House with complete impunity).

     And Winner is in prison and likely will remain in prison for the next several years for proving that, once again, Uncle Sam had lied to us about the extent of Russia's meddling in our elections. That's all the Espionage Act is- Whitewashed and glorified ass-covering for the US government. It has absolutely nothing to do with espionage, regardless of the severity of the crimes and coverups that are uncovered.

     To sum up, again: An NSA contractor released documents proving Russia hacked the election and that the US government lied about it and let Trump sleaze his way into the Oval Office. Then, days after a Russian spy was arrested for infiltrating our electoral system and illegally funneling money to that same Donald Trump's campaign coffers, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin quietly repealed the rule requiring the NRA to disclose the identity of its donors. Robert Mueller vindicated Winner by proving the Russians meddled in our last election.

     America is still open for business but the only winners is one sitting in prison in Georgia and the rest in Russia.