by William Skink

The premier blog cheerleading for Democrats in Montana, The Montana Post, made an initial stab at damage control after Mueller’s investigation fizzled. Doing the heavy lifting is combat Veteran, Josh Manning.

Before getting to the post I want to highlight Manning’s updated bio:

Josh Manning is a combat veteran who lives in Helena. His writing has appeared in Newsweek and Foreign Policy and he has appeared on MSNBC and CNN. He was a primary researcher to the recently published New York Times bestseller “The Plot to Destroy Democracy” by MSNBC analyst Malcolm Nance. He is part of a growing movement of progressive military veterans working to affect political change You can follow him on Twitter @joshuamanning23

I emphasized the part where Manning touts his role in a book by Malcolm Nance because I want to highlight how people like Manning and Nance have profited from peddling Russiagate. I’m assuming being a “primary researcher” comes with some kind of financial compensation. If Manning didn’t make any money, Nance surely did. And who is Malcolm Nance? Let’s see how Matt Taibbi describes him in his scathing acknowledgment of the Russiagate scam:

Failure to ask follow-up questions happened constantly with this story. One of the first reports that went sideways involved a similar dynamic: the contention that some leaked DNC emails were forgeries.

MSNBC’s “Intelligence commentator” Malcolm Nance, perhaps the most enthusiastic source of questionable #Russiagate news this side of Twitter conspiracist Louise Mensch, tweeted on October 11, 2016: “#PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & #blackpropaganda not even professionally done.”

As noted in The Intercept and elsewhere, this was re-reported by the likes of David Frum (a key member of the club that has now contributed to both the WMD and Russiagate panics) and MSNBC host Joy Reid. The reports didn’t stop until roughly October of 2016, among other things because the Clinton campaign kept suggesting to reporters the emails were fake. This could have been stopped sooner if examples of a forgery had been demanded from the Clinton campaign earlier.

I have written about Manning before because I think he represents a concerning trend of (former?) military intelligence operatives loudly and proudly entering politics to overturn the results of the 2016 presidential election.

Here is an NBC piece about this trend:

They put their lives on the line in foreign war zones, conducted secret missions to collect valuable intelligence and made enormous sacrifices for their country — only to see their former colleagues disrespected by President Donald Trump.

Now, driven by the president’s conduct, they’re taking matters into their own hands and gearing up for a different challenge: running for Congress as Democrats.

Fed up with what they see as Trump’s disdain and distrust of the intelligence community — and his refusal to embrace fully the conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election — an unusually large number of former intelligence officers and operatives are campaigning for office as Democrats in this fall’s midterm elections, according to experts.

For many — like Abigail Spanberger in Virginia’s Richmond-area 7th Congressional District and Elissa Slotkin in Michigan’s Lansing-area 8th Congressional District — it’s a matter of restoring respect for the agencies they gave so much of themselves to.

It’s interesting to read this after the dud Mueller delivered on a Friday during March Madness. Instead of restoring respect, pillars of the intelligence community, like James Clapper and John Brennan, now look like the real treasonous operatives in this sad saga.

For his part in the resistence, Josh Manning tried to get a foothold in electoral politics in 2016, running to represent district 40 in Montana’s State Senate, but he lost his primary race to Hal Jacobson. Will he try again?

If Josh Manning does make another political run I would like to know exactly how much he has benefited from promoting Russiagate. I am also curious how the resistence is planning to pivot into the next stage of distraction. Here’s a peek into Manning’s pathetic pivot:

As many have noted for a year or more, Mueller or any one man or woman, will not save us. Our institutions will help but ultimately may crumble from pressure above. Only we can save ourselves by holding our representatives in DC accountable and demand that we, the voting public, get the best and clearest version of how Trump became president in 2016 and what he has done with his power since then. It is not “Mueller Time” it is “Our Time.” If we abandon the sacrifice and effort the founding fathers made to protect this nation from a threat like Trump then we deserve the fate that awaits us.

Seriously, Manning, give it up. You and the rest of the deluded resistence have actually increased the chances of Trump winning reelection in 2020. And the media platforms you reference contributing to–MSNBC and CNN–won’ be seen as credible by half the country for at least a generation.