13| The Grievance Myth
Ball of Thread
The final Ball of Thread answers how Donald Trump won and defeated the rule of law, for now. His grievance myth. That’s how he got here. That’s why we must expect retribution next. The series will conclude with a final bonus episode, "So Let's Talk About Merrick Garland."
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12 | The Meaning of January 6th
Ball of Thread
Donald Trump will never accept losing anything – whether an election or a bet. But that wouldn’t matter if he didn’t convince millions of Americans to make his grievances their own. This Ball of Thread unwinds what made the pincer attack that overran the Capitol on January 6th possible. Donald Trump’s grievance narratives gave disaffected Americans meaning, and in that meaning, he convinced thousands of people to throw their lives away in his name. The thing is, it’s all the same con. That con defeated the Russia investigation and weaponized the Department of Justice...
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What You Miss About Hunter's Pardon If You Sniff Dick Pics
Ball of Thread
In this bonus episode, Marcy saves reporters a lot of work by explaining more than a half dozen direct political interventions into Hunter’s prosecutions. The reporting on Hunter Biden’s pardon shows just how badly Ball of Thread is needed—especially the last two episodes on the and the . While the pardon story has died down and the former FBI informant who tried to frame the Bidens has now pled guilty, the Republicans in the House who kept this targeted abuse of power alive for the last two years have vowed to continue hounding the soon-to-be-former president’s family. One thing Ball...
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11 | The Packaging of Hunter
Ball of Thread
After Bill Barr buried the Mueller Report and went to work suffocating the remaining prosecutions in the Russia investigation, Donald Trump and his “lawyer,“ Rudy Giuliani, shifted their main narrative focus from Hillary Clinton to Hunter Biden—also with the help of Bill Barr. The first flailing attempts to smear Joe Biden with his son’s connections to a corrupt Ukrainian business resulted in Donald Trump’s impeachment and the arrests of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. But MAGA hit paydirt with the “discovery” of Hunter Biden’s “laptop,” which first appeared mysteriously right...
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10 | Selling Justice
Ball of Thread
What if the President of the United States was framed with the help of the Attorney General of the president he defeated, and nobody cared? In this Ball of Thread, Marcy Wheeler reveals how Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Guiliani, spent more than a year trying to trade access to or leniency from the Department of Justice for dirt on Hunter Biden. And while that disgraceful abuse of power eventually erupted into Trump’s first impeachment, it essentially continued for another four years, only fading away after a key player in the conspiracy was indicted for feeding the FBI lies from...
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9 | Durham Descends
Ball of Thread
John Durham was given an impossible job. Even before the Mueller Report was ready, Bill Barr hired the once-respected US Attorney to investigate how the investigation into the Trump Campaign’s ties to Russia started. After the Inspector General failed to find a conspiracy against Trump inside the FBI against Trump, Barr and Durham tried their best to invent one. They followed every available George Papadaopulus conspiracy, hoping to turn Hillary Clinton, a victim of the Russian attack on the 2016 elections, into the villain. And that fumbling effort continued long after Trump was...
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8| Zombie Mueller
Ball of Thread
Bill Barr killed the Mueller Report. He made sure Congress would not take it as an impeachment referral, which is what appears to have been. But he wasn’t done. That’s because the suspected crimes the Mueller team found wouldn’t stay dead. Join us as we dig deeper into Bill Barr’s malfeasance as Attorney General. Whether it was Roger Stone or Mike Flynn, Barr’s effort to kill Zombie Mueller paved the way for January 6. Want to know more? Join for bonus episodes on breaking news and to ask your questions, which could be answered in a bonus episode. For as...
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7| Barr’s Butchery
Ball of Thread
Want to know more? Join 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. Most people think of Bill Barr’s interference in the Mueller Report in a very limited sense – a letter to Congress and a press conference. But it was far deeper and more deliberate than that. Bill Barr turned out to be the ideal consumer for the spin Paul Manafort, Devin Nunes, and Fox News spewed to cloak Donald Trump’s vast connections to Russia. Armed with a passion for...
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6| The Mueller Referral
Ball of Thread
Robert Mueller had just 22 months to persuade Trump’s aides to cooperate against him. Just 22 months to learn whether Russia had asked for sanctions relief and to carve up Ukraine in exchange for help getting Trump elected. Had the House used Volume II of the Mueller Report as an impeachment referral, the investigation might have proceeded further into the truth of what Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and Trump’s closest allies had done in 2016 and beyond. Instead, Trump outlasted Jeff Sessions’ tenure and installed an Attorney General – Bill Barr – who would shut everything down....
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Bonus Episode: Endangering Trump
Ball of Thread
This is a special free bonus episode of Ball of Thread related to the hack of Donald Trump's campaign and the genuine threats to his life. To get your questions answered, support this podcast, and access all of the bonus episodes related to the series and current threats, . ****************** Check out "," the this accompanies. Read the on emptywheel. *********** Jim Jordan and James Comer have spent the last year and a half running their House Committees as Super PACs designed to frame the Bidens while attacking the FBI for ever having the gall to investigate Donald Trump. These...
info_outlineYou 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.”
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