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Russian Infiltration of 'Various Religious Groups' - 'There Has Been a Lot of That'
Fred Clark points out an aspect of the testimony before Congress of Glenn Simpson, the founder of the political research group Fusion GPS:
It appears the Russians, you know, infiltrated the NRA And there is more than one explanation for why. But I would say broadly speaking, it appears that the Russian operation was designed to infiltrate conservative organizations. And they targeted various conservative organizations, religious and otherwise, and they seem to have made a very concerted effort to get in with the NRA.
Thinking through the roster of major players on the religious right, it’s not hard to come up with a list of those who would be susceptible to such infiltration — or to come up with a list of those who would be eagerly receptive.
Of course, “targeted” does not necessarily mean successfully targeted. But I don’t see a lot of religious right organizations displaying either the intellectual or the moral capacity to resist such targeting.
Special counsel Robert Mueller runs a famously tight ship, ensuring that there are no leaks in his ongoing investigation, so if the leaders of some religious right group had, responsibly, contacted the FBI, reporting that they had been subjected to overtures from “Russians … pursuing relationships” in service of Putin’s political aims, then we likely won’t hear about it until Mueller’s ultimate findings are made public. But I have a hard time imagining that this is how any of those groups would have reacted. Their response to Russian overtures, I imagine, would likelier have been as enthusiastically incriminating as the sort of thing we’ve seen from Carter Page and Don Jr.
We need to know the names of those “various religious groups” that were “targeted” and — perhaps — “infiltrated” by Russians representing “banker-slash-Duma member-slash-Mafia” interests. And we need to know how this influenced them.
Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2018/01/23/russian-infiltration-various-religious-groups-lot/#GYJ4iirjD1my3f3e.99
Of course, “targeted” does not necessarily mean successfully targeted. But I don’t see a lot of religious right organizations displaying either the intellectual or the moral capacity to resist such targeting.
Special counsel Robert Mueller runs a famously tight ship, ensuring that there are no leaks in his ongoing investigation, so if the leaders of some religious right group had, responsibly, contacted the FBI, reporting that they had been subjected to overtures from “Russians … pursuing relationships” in service of Putin’s political aims, then we likely won’t hear about it until Mueller’s ultimate findings are made public. But I have a hard time imagining that this is how any of those groups would have reacted. Their response to Russian overtures, I imagine, would likelier have been as enthusiastically incriminating as the sort of thing we’ve seen from Carter Page and Don Jr.
We need to know the names of those “various religious groups” that were “targeted” and — perhaps — “infiltrated” by Russians representing “banker-slash-Duma member-slash-Mafia” interests. And we need to know how this influenced them.
Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2018/01/23/russian-infiltration-various-religious-groups-lot/#GYJ4iirjD1my3f3e.99
The astounding support of the religious right for Trump has, of course, been widely noted. And their astounding predilection for doing anything for money and influence has as well ...
