Roundup: Did Seth Rich Leak The Garage Files? Plus, Geopolitics

Lots of theories floating around about what’s behind the Garage Gate classified docs scandal. It makes it difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff—or information from gaslighting. Consider, if I’m right that this is a Deep State hit brought about by the realization that Zhou and his team are simply an unacceptable threat to the continued dominance—or even existence—of the American Empire, it stands to reason that they would not want to be doing this in public. Thus, as we saw yesterday, courtesy of Steve Bannon and Kash Patel, there is—if you compare lawyers to crows—a veritable murder of power lawyers surrounding the events as we know them, at every step of the way. But these power lawyers are still facilitators—not prime actors. The prime actors have to be in the government itself, IMO. Outside power players get a say, but the prime actors will ultimately be pulling the levers of government from inside.

Thus, I’m skeptical of explanations like this one at The Hill:

Did Seth Rich leak the Biden ‘filegate’ scandal to the press?

Well, that’s not the actual headline, just me having some fun. But you get the idea—a “Democrat insider” leaked to the press. It’s possible, but I don’t favor it. In the most likely version of this scenario the power lawyers—fronting for the Deep State—were compiling all the evidence, prior to having that heart to heart with Zhou: Go to Deleware and stay there. And take your wife and dogs with you. But before that could happen some insider leaked to the press.

Why leak? That’s the hard part to explain. That requires us to believe that the power lawyers were trying to cover this thing up. But based on what we heard from Bannon and Patel, that seems unlikely. Yes, cover up from the public, and force a resignation—but not cover up and do nothing—and that should have been good enough for the hypothetical leaker. If the leaker was enough of an insider to know about the docs, then he/she should have been enough of an insider to know what the intended use of the docs would be.

So, I still think the evidence points to a coordinated hit. The deployment of the power lawyers months ago surely points toward a coordinated plan. As Bannon and Patel stressed, cleaning out closets just isn’t what you pay a lawyer like Dana Remus $2500 an hour to do. Again, the rapidity of events— including the appointment of a Special Counsel—once the matter went public also suggests pre-planning, as does the failure of the Dem establishment and its MSM proxies to circle the wagons. The problem is, once you set something like this in motion it’s hard to predict what will happen. In an oligarchy like our Deep State there are a lot of moving parts, competing interests and ambitions. Intended surgical strikes can backfire and become very messy. We may be seeing the fallout from something of that sort.

We shall see. I don’t see this genie being stuffed back into a bottle, nor is it likely that the Dems will want this to fester publicly for any length of time. Again, neither is that in the interests of the Deep State. The cards appear to be stacked against Zhou.

UPDATE: Just got back from PT, and I see that Bonchie at Red State is thinking somewhat along the lines I set out above (Dan Bongino Has Two Theories About Biden's Classified Documents, Neither of Them Looks Good). He brings in Dan Bongino to offer alternative theories, none of which involve coincidences or chaotic incompetence:

Clayton Keirns @CKeirns

“Something bigger is going on here”; Dan Bongino offers two bombshell theories about Bidens document scandal One revolves around the well-documented Biden-Obama feud

Now, before pasting in the partial transcripts of Bongino (lifted from RS), I’ll just say that I’m skeptical that this is a strictly Obama on Zhou hit job. Bongino cites ties to Fusion GPS, but that was a previous Clinton shop, and many of the prime players in the Zhou regime are old Clintonistas. Further, because of the constitutional complications involved, I have a very hard time believing that both the Republican establishment and the Deep State agencies aren’t involved. Bongino:

Was this a sabotage hit job by Democrats who want Joe Biden out of the race? Which is likely. Or was this an effort to cover up mistakes Joe Biden made that may be illegal, unlawful, and illicit? Just quickly on the first one, you don’t find it a little bit suspicious that lawyers deeply connected to Barack Obama, who’s got a long going feud with Biden, they do, I worked in the White House, these two men really do not like each other. Obama always thought Biden was a buffoon and Biden was always jealous of Obama. That’s why he’s doing the whole and “I’m the new FDR” thing now. He is a cancer on the coming presidential race…

A couple of clues here. Number one, why was the leak of the second tranche of documents made to Ken Dilanian? Ken Dilanian from NBC has a nickname, Fusion Ken, because he was a mouthpiece for Fusion GPS and the Democrats. Nobody finds it odd that the guy who almost single-handedly promoted the pee-pee hoax for NBC got the leak about the papers? It says to me there may be something bigger, and they needed to massage the story and leak it out slowly.

Couple more things though, notice the appointment letters, right? The appointment letters for Special Counsel Hur in the Biden case and Jack Smith in the Trump case. Special counsel Hur in the Biden case has a very limited scope of duty, while Jack Smith in the Trump case gets to rock and roll and find out everything. My suspicion here is that they did that to isolate and silo off Joe Biden from Hunter Biden and that investigation, and never cross those streams. One of those theories is true. I’m just not sure which.

Again, though, there are complications—and I can’t say I have the answers. For example, why silo Zhou off from Hunter? After all, if I had to bet I’d say that the Hunter investigation long ago turned up criminal evidence against Zhou. Wouldn’t all that be powerful pressure against Zhou? One explanation would be that the Hunter case implicates too many other DC power players. Pelosi tops that list. She was very involved in Ukraine, and so was Hillary. Maybe Obama? Those are guesses.

---

Moving right along.

Last night we briefly discussed reports that Russia appears to be deploying highly capable radar jamming techniques ahead of the expected major offensive. Along those lines, Zerohedge reports on the beginning of Russian - Belarus “aeriel drills”. Now, these were announced some time ago, and one aspect of these drills that raised eyebrows is that they’re intended to bring about closer coordination between the two air forces. But, it was also specifically announced that the Russians would be training Belarus pilots in the use of airplane borne “unconventional weapons”, i.e., nuclear weapons. You can bet that caught the attention of people in Warsaw.

However, we now learn that the drills will also include working on close air support for ground troops. Is this preparation for a ground offensive from Belarus into Ukraine? Or maybe just a bit of misdirection? The Russians aren’t saying, of course.

Belarus, Russia Launch 2-Weeks Of Joint Aerial Drills, Making Western Allies Nervous

That 2-week duration gets us right up to the beginning of February—the most recent projected date for the start of the big Russian offensive. One way or another, these “drills” do appear to be a sign of impending big events.

M. K. Bhadrakumar has a new article out that is worth reading:

Syria’s power dynamic is shifting

Here’s the point of this. If Russia wants to cause the US major problems, Syria is good place to do it. The US is entrenched in the Kurdistan part of Syria, and the Kurds are our current allies of convenience. There has been an increase in rocket attacks on US bases there in recent weeks, and the power dynamics are all working against the Kurds and/or the US—even though Turkey is a NATO member. Complicated enough yet? Here’s an excerpt:

Plainly put, Iran’s role is a factor of stability in the Syrian situation lest an empowered Turkey feels tempted to expand its presence in Syria. Equally, Russia also plays a trapeze act, leveraging its presence in Syria to encourage a conflicted Israel to navigate a precarious balance between its interests in Syria and its support for Ukraine and the West. 

The bottomline is that in the wake of the Ukraine conflict, the Syrian conflict’s power dynamic is dramatically shifting. On the one hand, there is a strategic “pull” toward a greater possibility of Damascus, Moscow, Tehran and Ankara working together to push US forces out of northeast Syria. 

On the other hand, the power dynamic with Russia may be shifting in Ankara’s favour lately. Erdogan’s capacity to hold Swedish and Finnish accession to NATO hostage; Erdogan’s intensified threats to launch another incursion into northeast Syria; Turkiye’s role as the sole custodian of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits which regulate the access to the Black Sea — these are factors that may encourage Erdogan to press his demands more forcefully once the Turkish elections slated for June get over and Russia’s primary leverage on Turkiye, which is economic rather than military, loses its potency. 

Why? Russia’s leverage over Turkey is economic—yes—and it’s massive.

Make no mistake that Erdogan’s top priority will be the dismantling of the Kurdish project in northeast Syria. How Erdogan goes about it is the whole point. It may not be a bad thing for Russia since any such shift in the Syrian conflict landscape would ultimately cut down the Kurds, threaten the viability of the US-Kurdish partnership and eventually pressure the US to pull out of Syria. 

But the catch is, it may entail another limited Turkish invasion of Syria. Should Erdogan believe that his victory in the forthcoming election depends on another Syrian incursion, Russia will be unlikely to prevent the attack. Hence Moscow’s positive attitude toward Erdogan’s proposal on a trilateral meeting between Turkey, Russia, and Syria to address Turkiye’s security concerns. 

Any aggressive Iranian tactics at this point may weaken Russia’s capacity in fostering a Turkish-Syrian rapprochement. But then, the mitigating factor here is that in the present conditions under sanctions, Russia and Iran also have deepened their strategic ties well beyond their cooperation in Syria. 

This is a world war. There’s a Ukraine/Europe front, but there’s also a China front and a broad Middle East to Central Asia front.