I suppose that, in some ways, politics is a lot like football. If you find a play that works, you work it.

In 2016, the Democrats, then in control of the Executive Branch, created a narrative that Donald Trump was Vladimir Putin’s favored candidate as a hook for the Clinton campaign. The Clinton campaign was in on the scam, hiring retired Britsh spy Christopher Steele (were the Russians really so f***ed up that we won the Cold War with assclowns like Steele running intelligence agencies? Scary thought, that). This is from August 2016:

Once Clinton lost, Vladimir Putin became the reason for the loss never mind that his outlays would barely have kept Bill Clinton’s mistresses clothed.

Now they are back at it. And we see the same familiar players. Adam Schiff, pencil neck that he is, is using his perch as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to create the predicate that the Russians want Trump to win really, really bad and the Trump administration is not acting but, given enough information, Schiff will have Eric Ciaramella and Alexander Vindman break out the capes and man-tights and save the day. He is assisted by no less a tough guy than Joe Biden:

“Today, I am putting the Kremlin and other foreign governments on notice. If elected president, I will treat foreign interference in our election as an adversarial act that significantly affects the relationship between the United States and the interfering nation’s government,” Biden said on Monday, adding, “Russia is not the only foreign actor seeking to interfere in our democracy. Increasingly, other states have shown an interest in copying Russia’s tactics.”

Hours earlier, congressional Democrats revealed that on July 13 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California, and Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner of Virginia sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray requesting that the FBI “provide a defensive counterintelligence briefing to all Members of the House of Representatives and the Senate regarding foreign efforts to interfere in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.” The Democrats claimed, “Congress appears to be the target of a concerted foreign interference campaign” related to the 2020 election.

Natasha Bertrand, also known as Fusion Natasha for her fealty to Fusion GPS and her willingness to take dictation during the Russia Hoax, has now been enlisted. After giving a big sloppy kiss to the outstanding job Biden and Schiff are doing in warning the devious Russkis to steer clear of our politics, she has this:

The former vice president’s comments reflect a growing concern not only about President Donald Trump’s unwillingness to commit to not accepting foreign help in the election, but also about what the former vice president’s campaign and bipartisan members of Congress see as an escalating disinformation campaign emerging out of Ukraine, said people familiar with his thinking.

They point to late last month, when a former student of a top Russian spy academy convened a press conference to unveil what he called “facts of international corruption and treason at the highest state level.”

In a well-choreographed, 75-minute presentation set against the logo of Russian news agency Interfax—and overlaid with English subtitles by the time it was posted on YouTube—Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach accused Biden, his son and members of his team of an elaborate conspiracy to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from Ukraine through bribery and extortion.

Many of the misconduct accusations against Biden, which were examined during President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial last year, have been debunked; others remain unsubstantiated. But the former vice president’s advisers are bracing for an onslaught of accusations that, they say, recall Russia’s efforts to damage Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in 2016.

Debunked does not mean what she thinks it means. Not believing in gravity does not mean gravity has been debunked, it just means you are an idiot. Denying the obvious and blatant corruption by Biden in his dealings with Russia doesn’t mean the facts have changed, it just means you are a partisan hack trying to gaslight your readers.

The real target of the exercise appears later in the story:

Two days after the June 22 press conference, a Senate committee led by Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) demanded transcribed interviews and documents from former Obama administration officials—including Hochstein, who has been one of Derkach’s main targets, and Blinken, now a senior foreign policy adviser to Biden’s campaign—as part of a Republican-led probe into Biden and his son.

The committee’s interviews with Hochstein and Blinken have not yet been scheduled, and the committee will seek to compel their testimony through a subpoena if need be, according to people familiar with the matter.

Among the subjects Johnson wants to discuss: a memorandum of understanding signed in 2014 between Burisma—the Ukrainian gas company whose board included Hunter Biden—and USAID, which does not mention either Joe Biden or his son.

Democratic leaders on Monday asked the FBI for an urgent briefing arising out of concern that members of Congress are being targeted by a foreign operation intended to influence the 2020 presidential election. Among their concerns is that the Johnson probe has become a vehicle for “laundering” a foreign operation to damage Biden.

What the Democrats, in collusion with the press, are doing is trying to create a narrative where any question at all about Biden using his position to enrich his drug-addled, stripper-impregnating son is actually an attack on our elections by Russia.

This is nonsense. But, having learned that the mainstream American press will happily eat baby poop if the Democrats tell them it is butterscotch during the Russia Hoax, the Democrats would be stupid not to continue to work this tactic.

Adam Schiff is already setting up his next set of lies about “Russia collusion” so House Democrats will have an insurance plan when @realDoanTrump wins reelection.
https://t.co/2qyYNcnHKj

— Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (@GReschenthaler) July 21, 2020