This “both sides” BS is spiraling out of control
The only defense Donald Trump has offered against his four indictments on 91 felony counts is a disinformation campaign claiming election interference, which he began almost two years BEFORE the 2024 elections. And Trump knows a lot about election interference.
In 2016, then FBI Director James Comey announced the FBI was reopening an investigation into Hillary Clinton (for using a private email server) just DAYS before the 2016 election. Comey defended his highly unethical move as protecting the FBI’s reputation in the wake of hundreds of leaks from the FBI that benefitted Trump. The Hillary investigation was closed finding no wrongdoing. But Comey effectively handed the 2016 election to Trump.
Yet, in 2017, Trump fired Comey because, in July 2016, the FBI had opened an investigation into the Trump election campaign’s ties to Russia, which Comey FAILED to disclose before the 2016 election!
Trump’s first impeachment was for interfering in the 2020 election by attempting to extort Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy into opening a fake investigation into then Presidential candidate Biden. Last week, Republicans were caught interfering in the November 2024 presidential election by manufacturing evidence for a fake impeachment of President Biden.
Republicans are playing a dangerous game and are now finding out. Last week, Russian President Putin’s longtime political prisoner Alexei Navalny was murdered in prison. The timing accomplished two things. It created a distraction from mounting anti-Republican and anti-Russian sentiment, while also sending a message to Putin’s enemies.
Navalny is one of many murdered Putin dissidents, including Navalny’s mentor Boris Nemtsov assassinated in 2015, and Sergei Magnitsky, whose 2009 torture and death were the impetus for U.S. sanctions against corrupt foreign individuals under the Magnitsky Act. Last week, in response to Navalny’s murder, Lindsey Graham called for Russia to be designated a state sponsor of terrorism, to which Putin officially declared Graham a “terrorist and extremist”.
On Monday, Trump continued to desperately claim political persecution. Meanwhile a judge ordered Russian spy Alexander Smirnov to be held in prison awaiting trial for his manufactured evidence in the sham Republican House impeachment of Biden.
Republicans know the only way they can win is through election interference. Democrats know the only “both sides” is Republicans talking out of both sides of their mouths. Let’s hope the court grants the gag order Alvin Bragg requested yesterday to shut Trump’s big mouth, at least for now.
Chicago native Lorraine Evanoff earned her degree in French from DePaul University then became a Certified Financial Manager. She worked as a finance exec in film production for seven years in Paris, then in Silicon Valley during the dot-com era, and later for various Hollywood production companies, notably as CFO of National Lampoon. She is currently living in Los Angeles with her husband.