It’s been a rough 25 years. It feels like ever since that hanging chad election in 2000, we have been at each others’ throats. Mostly this is because we’ve let the hyperbole and the wild conspiracy theories control us on both sides. Now I say that is 80% you and 20% us (because you control the media), and we’ve done our fair share with Birthers and Big Mikers, but the bottom line is that neither side trusts what the other side says.
That’s a shame.
I get why you may not trust us. But you are going to have to on what we are about to tell you. Sometimes objective truths need to be said, and we’re about to say them.
Buckle up Buttercups. What you are about to read is 100%, verifiably true:
1. In the 2016 presidential election, the Hillary Clinton campaign fabricated out of the ether a wholly fictional “dossier” alleging that Donald Trump was an agent of the Russian Federation.
2. This “dossier” was shared with intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the friendly Obama Administration, and treated as reliable intelligence even though those agencies knew it was highly suspect.
3. This wholly-fabricated “dossier” was then used as a legal basis for surveillance and wiretaps on members of the Trump Team before and after the election, and the communications equipment in the Trump Transition Team HQ in New York was in fact wiretapped by the Obama Administration.
4. After the election was over and Trump had won, the intelligence community determined that there was no material Russian interference in the election. Barack Obama directed them to reverse that finding.
5. This new, false finding, coupled with the ongoing concerns regarding the dossier became the bases for a concerted effort by the Obama Administration to prevent Donald Trump from ever taking office, even though the American people had just elected him. The ongoing Potemkin Villages of the dossier and the IC report were the bases for numerous unlawful warrants on the Trump team, the creation of interview traps where Trump members might incriminate themselves by making a false statement to the FBI, and generally encircling the entire Trump transition team via subterfuge and placing them in a public aura of an illegal enterprise and not a validly-elected administration.
6. With the Obama plan unable to prevent Trump from taking office, his loyalists who remained in the new Trump Administration did their very best to work towards removing Trump via scandal, with James Comey being the chief bagman via the bogus dossier.
7. While everything described above was happening, it was all being leaked to the media in an effort to discredit and cripple the Trump Administration. Often bogus information would be fed to a media source, the source would report it, and then the fact that the media reported the bogus information was used by Democrat operatives as a basis for legitimizing it, i.e. “the wrap up smear.”
8. All of the above became such a burden on the new Trump Administration that a special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, was appointed to cut through to the truth. Unfortunately Mueller was relying on the same fake dossier and bogus IC reports, so bogus data led to a bogus investigation that served no other purpose than to cripple the Trump Administration for two years.
9. To summarize points #1 through #8 above, the Obama/Hillary plan had three steps: (i) spread Russia lies so Trump loses the election; (ii) if Trump wins the election, spread Russia lies so he is never inaugurated; and (iii) if he is inaugurated, spread Russia lies to cripple his ability to govern.
10. After Trump lost in 2020 and he started indicating that he would run again, the Obama team, now with Biden installed in the White House as a puppet, knew they could not let him win as he would unravel what they had done, make it public, and potentially cause a bunch of them to end up in prison. So they coordinated lawfare attacks on Trump across the nation using Democrat operatives, thinking that Trump would end up in prison or his reputation would be in such tatters that he could never be elected. That backfired.
11. Trump got elected in 2024.
12. On July 18, 2025, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a treasure trove of heretofore hidden information which, alongside already-public information about the fake dossier, shows that everything we say above is 100%, inarguably, reliably, factually, objectively accurate.
We repeat, everything written above is VERIFIABLY, OBJECTIVELY TRUE.
We know you love to say how much you “love democracy.”
Do you? Do you REALLY “love democracy"?
What is described above is the most undemocratic thing imaginable.
Forget any arguments about whether something was criminal or the statute of limitations or whatever other technicality distractor gets thrown out there, we have a very simple question for you:
HOW CAN YOU TOLERATE THIS?
Please consider this letter a peace offering. If you are willing to acknowledge what transpired and offer an apology, we might be able to begin to trust each just a teeny bit. We are all Americans, after all.
Sincerely,
The American Coalition of Non-Smoothbrained Conservatives
Hey @TheDemocrats: check it out!
BTW, I'll let you all know when we have the next annual meeting of The American Coalition of Non-Smoothbrained Conservatives.
Invitation only though, sorry.
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So a lot of my followers have been asking me to explain what Tulsi Gabbard's reveal yesterday means as a practical matter, i.e., what can actually be done about it in the courts?
Well, while I am a lawyer, I’m not a litigator, and I’m not well versed in criminal law, so I’m probably not the right guy to ask. BUT… as a lawyer I do know enough to do basic statutory research, and as a public service I thought I would tie out Gabbard’s allegations against actual federal criminal statutes that MIGHT apply (note I did not say “DO apply”).
(Before I begin, I want to make two things clear because I know I will hear about these in the comments. Yes, the statutes of limitations for these various crimes are important here. But I am not going to get into that, as the very specific, non-public facts matter as to when the last acts in the alleged crimes occurred, and certainly with at least conspiracy it would seem the statute has not yet run. Second, I’m not going to get into “They’ll never win in DC” argument. The DOJ is full of smart lawyers who can figure out how to get these charges into friendlier venues.)
OK, let’s start.
In non-legal, layperson’s terms, Gabbard is alleging that certain elected and appointed federal government officials engaged in the following bad behaviors:
1. Knowingly falsifying classified intelligence reports for political gain.
2. Relying on such knowingly falsified classified intelligence reports as a basis to engage in illegal searches and seizures against political opponents, and otherwise compromising such opponents’ constitutional rights.
3. Releasing classified information to the media.
4. Conspiring with other government officials to accomplish any of the foregoing.
5. Lying about the foregoing to Congress while under oath.
6. Attempting to cover up any of the foregoing.
Hopefully we can agree that these cover all of the bad actions of DeepStateGate (and we’re not even including the media’s willingness to lie about all this).
I’ll now repeat that list and for each entry cite the federal criminal laws that may have been violated:
__________________________________________
“Knowingly falsifying classified intelligence reports for political gain”
18 U.S.C. § 1001, “Statements or entries generally” (Basically this covers knowingly falsifying official documents.)
18 U.S.C. § 1519 , “Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy”
__________________________________________
“Relying on such knowingly falsified classified intelligence reports as a basis to engage in illegal searches and seizures against political opponents, and otherwise compromising such opponents’ constitutional rights”
18 U.S.C. § 241, “Conspiracy against rights”
18 U.S.C. § 242, “Deprivation of rights under color of law”
__________________________________________
“Releasing classified information to the media.”
18 U.S.C. § 793, “Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information”
18 U.S.C. § 798, “Disclosure of classified information”
__________________________________________
“Conspiring with other government officials to accomplish any of the foregoing”
18 U.S.C. § 371, “Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States”
18 U.S.C. § 241, “Conspiracy against rights”
__________________________________________
“Lying about the foregoing to Congress while under oath”
18 U.S.C. § 1621, “Perjury generally”
__________________________________________
“Attempting to cover up any of the foregoing”
18 U.S.C. § 1505, “Obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies, and committees”
18 U.S.C. § 1512, “Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant”
18 U.S.C. § 1519, “Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy”
__________________________________________
OK that’s it.
TO REPEAT: I am not saying anyone will be, can be or should be charged under the code sections I listed above. But they MIGHT be. Ultimately, that will be up to smart DOJ lawyers who have way more information on these matters than any of us do. I posted this merely so laypeople can do their own research, which I encourage.
An informed citizen is a powerful citizen.
Those code section cites above are easy to Google, and you don’t need to be a lawyer to understand the plain language of those laws.
I encourage you to review the actual text of these laws.
I hope this helps inform the public debate.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
(P.S., if you are a litigator or criminal law litigator, please correct me if I said anything wrong, I would appreciate the clarity.)
@shipwreckedcrew, @ProfMJCleveland, @KurtSchlichter, @RonColeman, if so inclined I would love if you could point out anything I might have gotten wrong, or add salient points I missed.
The minute I read the chat my very first thought was that Goldberg was specifically and deliberately included so that he would leak what he saw to the public. The idea was to let Europe know just how unhappy American leadership is with Europe's unwillingness to pull its weight militarily. The backchannel, seemingly accidental nature of that reveal was powerful and I believe intentional.
Also, as someone who has read his fair share of Top Secret/SCI war plans, this ain't it.
I also envision Trump, JD and Hegseth laughing their a$$es off as they set up Goldberg.
Note what a National Security Council spokesperson said when asked about the chat:
""The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials."
If you were going to write a Hollywood script that contained a contemporary, giga-conspiracy theme, you could do no better than what we're seeing right now play out before us regarding Master Sergeant Matthew Livelsberger.
Think of all the contemporary/conspiracy theory elements:
-Trump Tower.
-Cybertruck (Elon).
-Special Forces Afghanistan vet, one year from retirement, whose family and teammates say he could not have done any of this.
-Worked in cutting-edge, military drone tech.
-Emails to whistleblowers about super-secret anti-gravity tech, Chinese forces attacking the East Coast, wartime cover-ups about killing civilians, and the Deep State hunting him as he tries to cross the border into Mexico.
-A MAGA Manifesto that millions of Americans could have mostly truthfully written without blowing themselves up (i.e., a scriptwriter theme, MAGA = crazy suicide bomber).
The story even has a MacGuffin--a Desert Eagle handgun suicide weapon that no self-respecting SF operator would ever actually carry. It's like the scriptwriters threw that little detail in there just to troll us.
Honestly, it all just feels to on-the-nose for me.
"Grok, write me a treatment for a movie about a paranoid anti-hero that includes a deep, dark conspiracy theory regarding the US government, and make it rotate around all of the biggest news issues of the past 6 months."
Too perfect.
Too much like we're living in a simulation.
At this point I have zero idea what is true or untrue about Livelsberger, or what is missing from his story.
I know Occam's razor says that the most logical scenario is that the guy snapped and had some sort of psychotic break, but my spidey sense is nevertheless tingling big time.
Something is off.
...and if you followed me for a while, you know I am almost always the one stomping on conspiracy theories and reverting to Occam's Razor. But this just feels too much like this:
Last point:
A key character in the movie Wag the Dog goes by the nickname "Shoe."
-also-
A key character in the unfolding Livelsberger story goes by the nickname "Shoe."
Sometimes the universe has a good laugh at it itself.
Over the 2024 election season and after, I have been astonished to learn that so many conservatives are almost completely unaware of how politics and persuasion work in the USA.
A governing coalition must learn to rule as a group, with internal compromise being necessary at every turn. It is quite literally an impossibility for a governing coalition to accomplish ANY of its goals if it is unwilling to compromise on SOME of its goals.
This is not an opinion, it's a basic and immutable natural law.
This is particularly true under the Constitution, with its deliberate checks and balances designed to neuter the ability of any one branch to dominate.
The Democrats know this rule, which is why they are always able to push through radical agendas with only the slimmest of majorities. Republicans? It's like we WANT to be neutered and ineffective.
Moreover, this GOP ignorance extends to not understanding public "persuasion," as Scott Adams calls it.
A governing coalition that shows public-facing unity is able to persuade its weaker opponents that resistance is futile, and therefore it is far easier for the coalition to achieve its goals.
OTOH, a governing coalition that is publicly fractured and openly dispirited persuades a weaker opposition to be optimistic and work towards cracking open the coalition along those lines of fracture, and as a result the coalition is far less able to achieve its goals.
I wish more people understood these realities.
(And please spare me the "CP just wants us to shut up and do what he says" garbage. Also, you can say all you want that "we are conservatives, we are not lock-step like the left" because none of that changes the objectively true statements I made above.)
Conservatives need to learn how to govern.
To be abundantly clear, I am talking ONLY about compromise INSIDE our ruling coalition.
I am not talking about compromise with Democrats.
As far as I'm concerned, at this moment in time we should compromise with Democrats on NOTHING and tell them to suck eggs.
...and one more thing.
What I wrote above applies to EVERYONE in the coalition.
It applies to Vivek and Elon just as much as it applies to the rando crazies calling me "Pubilicious" in the comments.