Ball of Thread

On March 22, 2017, Devin Nunes went to the White House to announce his “concerns” about intelligence gathering on the Trump transition team. This began a multi-year scandal that saw House Republicans picking up Paul Manafort’s plan to discredit the Russian investigation. In this Ball of Thread, Marcy Wheeler explains how the dueling reports produced by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence helped polarize the nation. She also reveals how Democrats' reliance on the dossier helped play into Manafort’s trap. Plus, Marcy explains how Vladimir Putin probably helped spark the Russia investigation. Finally, she deconstructs the “collusion” canard. To this day, the purposely distracting focus on this non-crime was used to cloud undeniable evidence of a conspiracy involving Trump’s associates and Russia. Want to know more? Join the Ball of Thread Patreon for bonus episodes and to ask your questions, which could be answered in a bonus episode. For as little as $1 a month, you can support us and help spread the word.

You may have watched Donald Trump speak directly into a camera and ask Russia for some specific help to win the 2016 election and wondered, “What the hell is going on here?”  So did Australian diplomat Alexander Downer. That’s because Downer knew that at least one member of the Trump campaign had advance knowledge Russia might have a lot of emails incriminating Hillary Clinton. The Australians reached out to the FBI. The investigation into Trump's campaign ties to Russia began. And what the FBI found was a bunch of guys trying to rip off Donald Trump. But Donald Trump’s narcissism turned those guys trying to rip him off into something else. As Marcy Wheeler shows in this Ball of Thread, Trump’s narcissism turned the FBI’s investigation into people trying to monetize their access to Trump into an attack on him personally. Thus was born the conspiracy theory that has become a defining theme of Trump’s 2024 campaign and life–war on the “deep state.” ************** Want to know more? Join the Ball of Thread Patreon for bonus episodes on breaking news and to ask your questions, which could be answered in a bonus episode. For as little as $1 a month, you can support us and help spread the word.

Paul Manafort was in Spain in January 2017 when the “Trump dossier” was published. He was there to “re-establish” his relationship with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch to whom he owed millions. When the former chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign returned to the United States, he presented Republicans with a plan to discredit the entire Trump/Russia investigation.  In the second episode of Ball of Thread, Marcy Wheeler unwinds how the dossier collected by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele came together and blew up. She also reveals the untold story of Steele’s relationship with Deripaska and Deripaska’s absolutely brutal double-game.  Find out how Russian disinformation helped shape the stories about the dossier, blurring the Trump campaign’s relationship with the Kremlin and strategically polarizing the United States. Want to know more? Join the Ball of Thread Patreon for bonus episodes on breaking news and to ask your questions, which could be answered in a bonus Q&A episode coming soon. For as little as $1 a month, you can support us and help spread the word.    

You remember “Russia, if you’re listening” and the flood of social media disinformation. But you’ve never heard the strands of Putin’s attack on the 2016 election tied together like this.  Want to know more? Join https://www.patreon.com/BallofThread to ask your questions, which could be answered in a bonus Q&A episode coming soon. For as little as $1 a month, you can support us and help spread the word.

If there is an exact date when Americans should have known their democracy was doomed, it could be April 25, 2024. That’s when the Supreme Court entertained arguments that Donald Trump, as an ex-president, enjoys “absolute immunity” for his actions while in office.  The Republican-appointed men on the court made it clear that they not only wanted to delay the trial against Donald Trump related to his actions around January 6th, but at least three of them seemed eager to throw out the charges entirely. Marcy Wheeler explains how the arguments implicit in the questions from Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh reveal their terrifying view of the presidency’s powers, at least Republican presidents. Especially ones named Donald Trump. Want to know more? Join https://www.patreon.com/BallofThread to ask your questions, which could be answered in a bonus Q&A episode coming soon. For as little as $1 a month, you can support us and help spread the word.