International
Russiagate Remnants
Racket News
It would be a crime to abandon investigations into Russiagate, both because it’s ongoing and because of the cost to those of us who were victims of it
We Russia hoax Remnants feel differently about President Donald Trump’s recent landslide victory, and our expectations are diverse. But we all, to some degree, have similar stories and hopes — not for retribution, as delicious as that may be, but for accountability and reform.
And Kash Patel, President Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is the man we need. Like the President elect, he has seen this abuse up close. They are uniquely qualified.
Make no mistake, when we all chose politics as a profession, we knew it was bloodsport. But none of us expected the personal toll that impacted not just careers, but health and families — especially our children.
There are many families like my own, destroyed completely by the Democrats’ illegal zeal to Get Trump at any cost. During Russiagate and the subsequent hoaxes, I screamed at the top of my lungs on television several times each week as my wife and daughters lived in fear in our Buffalo-area home.
Most Remnants stayed silent. They were the smart ones.
Those subjects of the bogus Russian collusion investigations are quietly reassembling their lives today. Just six or seven years ago, some pulled their children from school, bullied by students and teachers alike. Both parents in at least one family were fired, and with no money for tuition their son was forced to drop out of the college he worked tirelessly to attend. I don’t think he ever returned.
These Remnant stories are commonplace. Many families lost their homes; most lost their life savings. I know of older targets living on meager pensions now that their bank accounts were drained by lawfare legal fees. Those still working are earning less than half the income of their peers.
One family left the country, disheartened by what America had become. Another man, once an international business success, was wrongly debased and finally diminished to serve in a bureaucracy.
Then there is the death and near deaths, the suicide attempts readers will never know, the illnesses brought on by stress. When I fell with head and neck cancer, another Remnant struck by the disease called me twice a week to share our battles. After several months, his calls stopped.
My colleague had finally succumbed to the Crossfire Hurricane plague, unfathomable stress that drives cancer. Readers don’t even know his name; his wife and two young children know he was a hero.
He did nothing wrong. He was a Remnant.
The mentally ill, weaponized by brazen Democrat lies, harassed nearly all of us. My frequent media appearances made me more recognizable than the smarter, quieter Remnants. That made my family a target of a local retired mailman who was arrested and prosecuted for harassment.
My youngest daughters, just five and seven years old at the time, were often harassed while playing in our front yard. A local elderly woman, an otherwise benign community museum volunteer, posted dozens of times on social media during her daily walks by our house, including photos showing our address. She screamed at my girls and mocked their safety.
The bitter old lady died recently and the nutty mailman is still creeping around. Our family prays for their souls because, like all the Remnants, we know the banality of evil. Unhinged activists, some neighbors, forced us to leave our beloved hometown forever. We miss it every day — especially after a big, beautiful Buffalo snowfall.
It’s worse for some, like Paul Manafort, Carter Page, and the inimitable Roger Stone. Last year Roger and I had a late lunch a few miles from his home. Out of nowhere, an Antifa activist showed up to threaten him in the empty restaurant. Clearly, these pongos are still tracking Roger closely. He did nothing wrong, yet I still fear for his safety.
I have talked to many of the Remnants since Election Day. Some have high hopes; these patriots still believe in our justice system. Others expect nothing at all after seeing enough corruption to believe justice is dead. Most are somewhere in between.
All of us agree the original Russiagate conspiracy continues even today. The Russia hoax was created by Hillary Clinton aide Jake Sullivan, who carries on with his lies today as President Joe Biden’s national security advisor. Christopher Steele, the British spy hired by Clinton to create the dodgy dossier, and his Fusion GPS co-conspirator Glenn Simpson are still doing the same work for similar clients. Andrew Weissmann, Peter Strzok, John Brennan, and more still peddle their lies. Elements of the original conspiracy were woven into Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 American election, then bogus Trump impeachments, January 6th prosecutions, anti-Trump lawfare, and Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Mar-a-lago raid.
FBI Director Patel can prove the original 2016 conspiracy continues today. Much of the evidence remains in federal and public databases. Preemptive pardons aside, that means Sullivan, Weissmann, Mary McCord, Steele, Simpson, Victoria Nuland, Alexander Vindman, Eric Ciaramella, Smith, and others may still be in the jackpot. We agree with attorney Mike Davis: these perpetrators potentially violated 18 U.S.C. § 241 and 242, federal civil rights statutes that prohibit conspiracies to violate the rights of others.
This is where many Remnants stand: please do not forget the families in the ash tray and simply move on. Investigate the perpetrators now, reach back to the beginning of their Russiagate criminal conspiracy and follow it to today. Prosecute them fully and legally; expose how they illegally crushed us.
But do this only in pursuit of true justice — not for retribution, but for accountability and reform.
Michael Caputo worked at the highest levels of global politics for 40 years. He served as HHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs during the COVID pandemic and as a senior advisor to the 2016 and 2024 Donald Trump for President campaigns. He is the Jeffrey Bell senior fellow at the American Principles Project.
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Alberta
Why U.S. tariffs on Canadian energy would cause damage on both sides of the border
Marathon Petroleum’s Detroit refinery in the U.S. Midwest, the largest processing area for Canadian crude imports. Photo courtesy Marathon Petroleum
From the Canadian Energy Centre
More than 450,000 kilometres of pipelines link Canada and the U.S. – enough to circle the Earth 11 times
As U.S. imports of Canadian oil barrel through another new all-time high, leaders on both sides of the border are warning of the threat to energy security should the incoming Trump administration apply tariffs on Canadian oil and gas.
“We would hope any future tariffs would exclude these critical feedstocks and refined products,” Chet Thompson, CEO of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), told Politico’s E&E News.
AFPM’s members manufacture everything from gasoline to plastic, dominating a sector with nearly 500 operating refineries and petrochemical plants across the United States.
“American refiners depend on crude oil from Canada and Mexico to produce the affordable, reliable fuels consumers count on every day,” Thompson said.
The United States is now the world’s largest oil producer, but continues to require substantial imports – to the tune of more than six million barrels per day this January, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Nearly 70 per cent of that oil came from Canada.
Many U.S. refineries are set up to process “heavy” crude like what comes from Canada and not “light” crude like what basins in the United States produce.
“New tariffs on [Canadian] crude oil, natural gas, refined products, or critical input materials that cannot be sourced domestically…would directly undermine energy affordability and availability for consumers,” the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s largest trade association, wrote in a recent letter to the United States Trade Representative.
More than 450,000 kilometres of oil and gas pipelines link Canada and the United States – enough to circle the Earth 11 times.
The scale of this vast, interconnected energy system does not exist anywhere else. It’s “a powerful card to play” in increasingly unstable times, researchers with S&P Global said last year.
Twenty-five years from now, the United States will import virtually exactly the same amount of oil as it does today (7.0 million barrels per day in 2050 compared to 6.98 million barrels per day in 2023), according to the EIA’s latest outlook.
“We are interdependent on energy. Americans cutting off Canadian energy would be like cutting off their own arm,” said Heather Exner-Pirot, a special advisor to the Business Council of Canada.
Trump’s threat to apply a 25 per cent tariff on imports from Canada, including energy, would likely “result in lower production in Canada and higher gasoline and energy costs to American consumers while threatening North American energy security,” Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers CEO Lisa Baiton said in a statement.
“We must do everything in our power to protect and preserve this energy partnership.”
Energy products are Canada’s single largest export to the United States, accounting for about a third of total Canadian exports to the U.S., energy analysts Rory Johnston and Joe Calnan noted in a November report for the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
The impact of applying tariffs to Canadian oil would likely be spread across Canada and the United States, they wrote: higher pump prices for U.S. consumers, weaker business for U.S. refiners and reduced returns for Canadian producers.
“It is vitally important for Canada to underline that it is not just another trade partner, but rather an indispensable part of the economic and security apparatus of the United States,” Johnston and Calnan wrote.
Business
Google Rejects Eurocrats’ Push For More Censorship
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Ireland Owens
Google soundly rejected the European Union’s push for the platform to censor content Thursday, declaring that it would not implement so-called “fact-checks.”
The tech giant told the EU that it would not incorporate fact checks into its search results and YouTube videos, Axios first reported. Google’s President of Global Affairs Kent Walker wrote a letter to Renate Nikolay, deputy director-general for Communications Networks, Content and Technology at the European Commission, stating the fact-checking required by the law “simply isn’t appropriate or effective for our services.”
The European Commission’s Code of Practice on Disinformation, which was introduced in 2022, would require Google to incorporate fact-check results alongside its search results and YouTube videos and would also require it to incorporate fact-checking into its ranking systems and algorithms, Axios reported.
Axios’ report comes after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Jan. 7 that his company was ending its third-party fact-checking program in favor of implementing community notes. Meta’s announcement states that Meta’s platforms are “built to be places where people can express themselves freely.” Zuckerberg said that his company’s approach to content moderation often resulted in “censorship,” NPR reported.
Zuckerberg recently criticized the European Union’s data laws as “censoring” social media. The EU has rejected his claims as “misleading.”
Some people have criticized some major tech companies, claiming that they have censored conservative speech. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced in October the launch of an investigation into Google for allegedly censoring conservatives.
Zuckerberg criticized Biden officials for pushing Meta to remove content that the Biden-Harris administration alleged to be disinformation during a recent appearance on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.
President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to combat social media censorship.
In December, Trump announced that he was nominating Andrew Ferguson to lead the Federal Trade Commission, stating that Ferguson “has a proven record of standing up to Big Tech censorship, and protecting Freedom of Speech in our Great Country.”
Minnesota Republican Rep. Tom Emmer said in a post on X that Google’s decision was a “step in the right direction,” adding “Kudos to @Google.”
A source with knowledge of the matter confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation that the content of Google’s letter as reported by Axios was accurate.
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