Thread by @SethAbramson

I've been interviewed by Russell Brand. I think Brand is generally smart and well-intended. I’m also certain that the sum total of his knowledge about the Trump-Russia scandal is dogshit.

All that’s happened here is that Glenn Greenwald found another mark for his disinformation.

I’m proud to be one of the top Trump-Russia experts out there, having written three bestsellers on the subject. I haven’t seen Glenn Greenwald type an accurate sentence about the Trump-Russia scandal in over 4 years—but he can sound very convincing to Brits who don’t know better.

I want to reassure those of you startled by the disinformation campaign intended to transform our understanding of the Trump-Russia scandal just 48 months after the federal investigation of it concluded that history will get it right. Those lying now will be forgotten by history.

It took years of my life to fully research and understand the Trump-Russia scandal. It’s not a topic you can parachute into, and it also happens to be one whose attendant discourse is rife with scoundrels like Glenn Greenwald. In other words, it’s a minefield for the uninitiated.

The Sussmann indictment is the single biggest nothingburger in the history of the Trump-Russia scandal and the response to it. It was a grimy, meatless bone thrown to Donald Trump and his cult that they eagerly treated like a five-course meal—and convinced some others to as well.

The digital chatter between Alfa Bank and Trump Tower happened. From Day 1, no one claimed to know what it was or what it meant. The FBI investigated and likewise found it happened but that its meaning was unclear. Sussmann was wholly correct to at least inform the FBI about it.

The first words Glenn Greenwald ever uttered about the Sussmann indictment were a lie. He wrote that the Alfa Bank story was “fraudulent.” I don’t even know what he means by that—the communication happened, no one ever figured out what it was, and the FBI rightly investigated it.

If you want a sense of how little Brand knows about the Trump-Russia scandal, understand that his recent video on it is predicated on having read Greenwald and nothing else. He *literally believes* a lawyer at the firm that was representing Clinton *manufactured* digital traffic.

But that’s not anything like what the indictment says or is about. The only allegation in the indictment is that Sussmann didn’t make clear whether he was representing a client or not in going to the FBI. It doesn’t say that he made up the Alfa Bank story, or that it wasn't true.

If you want to get a sense of how utterly unimportant the Alfa Bank story was to the Trump-Russia scandal, consider this: I wrote a 2,500-page trilogy on the scandal, and if I’m not mistaken, the Alfa Bank story merited one sentence—which simply noted that it was never explained.

My 4-year-old rescue hound Scout, who’s an actual angel but also the least intelligent dog I’ve ever been in a family with, knows more about the Trump-Russia scandal than Greenwald—because she knows absolutely nothing about it, whereas everything Greenwald “knows” is 100% false.

PS/ Sorry for the typo—I meant 24 months, not 48. I also hope you’ll excuse the expletive; I just think it’s important that I underscore how *considerably* less than nothing Brand knows about the Trump-Russia story, and how sad it is that Trumpists are pretending otherwise today.