Ball of Thread
Independent journalist Marcy Wheeler unwinds the true story of the attack on democracy that's bringing the United States to the brink of fascism.
info_outline
How Russia's 2016 Attack Led Trump to Destroy US Hegemony
09/20/2025
How Russia's 2016 Attack Led Trump to Destroy US Hegemony
The 2016 attack by Russia on the 2016 election helped US abandon rational discourse, created deep polarization, and continues to harm the US Deep State. Get the whole story: Support emptywheel:
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/38290195
info_outline
A Shutdown Must Be Tied to a Strategy to Fight Fascism
09/14/2025
A Shutdown Must Be Tied to a Strategy to Fight Fascism
While much of the left is pushing for a shutdown later this month, almost none are talking about how a shutdown ties to any articulable strategy to fight fascism. Indeed, the hope it will be an "attentional" event simply outsources the agency of fixing the Democrats' attentional problems generally. Watch this episode: Read more: Support emptywheel:
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/38210215
info_outline
A Tale of Two Governors
09/09/2025
A Tale of Two Governors
JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom both gave press conferences showing that Trump's attempts to invade their states is about authoritarianism, not law enforcement. But Newsom's effort more successfully exposed Trump's authoritarian spectacle. Read more: Support emptywheel:
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/38140325
info_outline
Big Balls Has Unfettered Access to Our Social Security Data
08/29/2025
Big Balls Has Unfettered Access to Our Social Security Data
In June, Republicans on the Supreme Court lifted a stay, giving DOGE access to all Americans' Social Security records. Then, DOGE gave Ed "Big Balls" Coristine -- a guy with ties to criminal hackers -- access to that. Read more: Support emptywheel:
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/38016220
info_outline
The Conspiracy Theory that Got NSA's Top Math Whiz Purged
08/23/2025
The Conspiracy Theory that Got NSA's Top Math Whiz Purged
Tulsi Gabbard just stripped the security clearances of 37 intelligence officials, including one of the NSA's top math whizzes. Her excuse for doing so stems from conspiracy theories invented by a disgruntled whistleblower. Watch this: Read more: Support emptywheel:
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/37929440
info_outline
Stop Looking for a F@%king Pee Tape!
08/17/2025
Stop Looking for a F@%king Pee Tape!
We know why Vladimir Putin has leverage over Trump, and it's not the goddamned pee tape. Trump has survived for the last eight years--not just the Russian investigation, but his first impeachment, his second impeachment, January 6, stealing classified documents--by claiming every push for accountability was just a hoax by Hillary Clinton. Russia Russia Russia. But Putin has proof that Trump knows Hillary didn't frame him--instead, Russian spies framed her. And if he released that, it would destroy the very means by which Trump has avoided accountability for eight years.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/37855925
info_outline
How a Batshit Letter May Help Trump Bankrupt America
08/15/2025
How a Batshit Letter May Help Trump Bankrupt America
Solicitor General John Sauer wrote a batshit letter to the appeals court reviewing Trump's tariffs. It's little more than Trump's Truth Social posts slapped on a page -- not even on DOJ letterhead! But here's why it might work with SCOTUS. Read more: Support emptywheel:
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/37833555
info_outline
John Durham's Show Trials: A Preview of Coming Attractions
08/12/2025
John Durham's Show Trials: A Preview of Coming Attractions
The ways in which John Durham sustained his prosecutions of Michael Sussmann and Igor Danchenko even after concluding that the theory of his case was actually Russian disinformation provide a good sense of how Pam Bondi plans to do it going forward. Read more: Support emptywheel:
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/37786980
info_outline
The Secrets Trump's Spies Share with Putin's Spies
08/07/2025
The Secrets Trump's Spies Share with Putin's Spies
Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and John Ratcliffe share a secret with Vladimir Putin's spies: There's an email redacted in the classified Durham appendix that makes it clear that Hillary Clinton didn't frame Trump, Russian spies framed Hillary. Read more: Suport Marcy and emptywheel:
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/37721620
info_outline
John Durham's Crime
08/05/2025
John Durham's Crime
Back in 2021, John Durham discovered that both prongs of his investigation into Hillary Clinton -- that Hillary Clinton had a plan to smear Donald Trump, and that the FBI got notice of that -- were false. He also had to have known that Kash Patel and John Ratcliffe misrepresented what spooks have found. But he continued to investigate for another two years anyway, committing precisely the crime he set out to investigate. Read more: https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/08/03/john-ratcliffe-and-kash-patel-and-durham-himself-committed-the-crime-john-durham-was-hunting/
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/37695780
info_outline
How Trump Wants to Solve His Ghislaine Maxwell Problem
07/22/2025
How Trump Wants to Solve His Ghislaine Maxwell Problem
Marcy Wheeler looks deeper into news that Trump's former defense attorney, now the deputy attorney general, will reach out to Ghislaine Maxwell. She lays out how Trump is orchestrating a cover-up scheme to protect himself from damaging Epstein revelations by getting Ghislaine Maxwell out of prison through a cooperation deal that will target his political opponents instead.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/37508720
info_outline
Trump's Trolls' Turn
06/24/2025
Trump's Trolls' Turn
Marcy Wheeler digs deeper into the Catturd Deficit that allows white supremacists to use Xitter to rig the news. Then she looks at how Trump's illegal war on Iran has created unprecedented fractures in his base, from Russian useful idiots like Marjorie Taylor Greene to anti-Semitic voices like Candace Owens, and even convicted January 6th participants like Joe Biggs. She explores how to exploit these cracks using the same tactics that got Trump elected, turning his own troll army's playbook against them.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/37131835
info_outline
The Catturd Deficit
06/17/2025
The Catturd Deficit
Marcy discusses how Twitter became Elon's Machine for Fascism and how we can use it against the fascists.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/37045135
info_outline
AGENT MUSK: The Best Legal Hope to Take Down DOGE
03/19/2025
AGENT MUSK: The Best Legal Hope to Take Down DOGE
A quick update from Marcy. Get the whole story at
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/35777775
info_outline
Ball of Ka$h — A Conclusion
02/17/2025
Ball of Ka$h — A Conclusion
Marcy Wheeler ties it all together. In this last bonus episode of Ball of Thread, Marcy explains how the confirmation of Ka$h Patel and the Trump administration’s abandonment of Ukraine confirm the big ideas behind Ball of Thread. Eight years ago, Kash Patel helped Trump turn a legitimate investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia into a grievance narrative. Over and over, Kash added to the tale: with Ukraine, with January 6, with the stolen documents. And now, as Kash prepares to turn the FBI into an instrument of Trump’s vengeance while gutting the agency’s ability to counter Russian operations and crime, Trump has all but fully capitulated to Vladimir Putin. For eight years, Kash and Trump have worked together to turn every effort to hold Trump accountable into a grievance fantasy to sell, to slowly train Republicans to eschew rule of law. Along the way, Trump delivered everything Vladimir Putin might have sought in 2016: a divided America, the end of the Western Order, and a world bartering corruption. Ball of Thread hoped to help avoid the exact reality we now face. We failed, but we will persist. Marcy carries on, as always, at , where you can follow and support her work. Thanks to everyone who supported us in creating this document. Hopefully, we’ve shown that some of us were very, very aware of the risks our democracy faced from Donald Trump in real-time. May the lessons in these episodes help us defend our nation as we try to limit the misery of the biggest mistake this country's voters were ever lured into making.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/35318665
info_outline
13| The Grievance Myth
01/20/2025
13| The Grievance Myth
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."
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/34923110
info_outline
12 | The Meaning of January 6th
01/06/2025
12 | The Meaning of January 6th
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 against his opponent. And when he lost in 2020, he unleashed it to unite fringe right-wing groups and mainstream Republicans in a shared revenge fantasy. Thus, he was able to raise a ragtag army to sack the nation’s Capitol briefly, and in the process, savagely battered hundreds of police officers and ended America’s tradition of a peaceful transfer of power. Though the attack ultimately failed by only delaying the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, the bets Trump and many of his biggest fans made on January 6, 2021 are now paying off in ways that were inconceivable on January 6, 2025.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/34730610
info_outline
What You Miss About Hunter's Pardon If You Sniff Dick Pics
12/16/2024
What You Miss About Hunter's Pardon If You Sniff Dick Pics
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 of Thread has made clear is that whatever the right-wing media fixates on will be what Republicans in power fixate on. And House Republicans will need a perceived enemy to distract from the actual oversight they won’t be doing.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/34468670
info_outline
11 | The Packaging of Hunter
12/10/2024
11 | The Packaging of Hunter
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 around the time of Trump’s first trial in the US Senate and then reappeared the following year, just in time to be the election year October Surprise. At first, the laptop, with its endless supply of digital proof of the depravity to which Hunter Biden had descended before he got sober the year before, didn’t work out the way John Podesta’s emails had. At first, journalists actually demanded proof the files were authentic and also tested whether they proved what Rudy Giuliani or NY Post claimed they did. But over the years, egged on by Fox News and enticed by the promise of easy sensation, they came to chase the dick pics because they were there, just as Murdoch’s propagandists had done. And the process by which icky dick pics came to stand in for unsubstantiated claims that Joe Biden was corrupt sucked all the air out of DC reporting for years … and laid the groundwork for Trump’s reelection. For the first time, Marcy Wheeler ties together the story of what is actually known about Hunter’s laptop(s) and hard drives and the baffling characters who got their hands on them. She explains how the shameless leaking of the private data of the son of a former vice president and future president to his father’s political opponents was never really treated as a crime. She also exposes how Trump’s plot succeeded in sucking all the air out of Joe Biden’s presidency and fueled problematic political prosecutions that haunt America and still twist our discourse today. This Ball of Thread also attempts to do what almost no one has. It shows how the press joined in an effort to dehumanize Joe Biden’s kid and, in the process, abdicated their primary job.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/34363460
info_outline
10 | Selling Justice
11/27/2024
10 | Selling Justice
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 Russian spies. It’s a story that only Marcy has told and will now likely fade into history. But the abuse of the Department of Justice as a plaything for Donald Trump to deploy against his perceived enemies will continue for at least the next four years.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/34177380
info_outline
9 | Durham Descends
11/05/2024
9 | Durham Descends
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 evicted from the White House. This episode provides the first attempt to construct the history of a ridiculous investigation that had no crime, no predicate, and no point–except feeding the fantasies of Bill Barr and Donald Trump. It also explores how Trump uses conspiracy theories to turn elections into battles between good and evil. Finally, this episode reminds us of how Donald Trump has already weaponized the Department of Justice. He did it once in a way that led Republicans to believe the exact inverse of the truth. And he is undoubtedly ready to do so again but with no guardrails this time. Want to know more? 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.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/33787122
info_outline
8| Zombie Mueller
10/22/2024
8| Zombie Mueller
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 little as $1 a month, you can support us and help spread the word.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/33573287
info_outline
7| Barr’s Butchery
10/11/2024
7| Barr’s Butchery
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 covering up Republican high crimes, an authoritarian worldview, and a view of executive power that resembles monarchy, Barr “reluctantly” returned to government with two goals. He wanted to kill the Mueller investigation. He then launched a counter-investigation that he hoped would reverse the special counsel’s extensive record of convictions. Those plans, which he withheld from Congress during his confirmation hearings, were exacerbated by Rudy Guliani. The president’s lawyer led the effort to transform the backlash to the Russia investigation into a “harebrained” counter-scandal of his own, based on Russian disinformation and Donald Trump’s opportunistic persecution fantasies. In this Ball of Thread, Marcy Wheeler untangles the lies Bill Barr used to preempt a Congressional decision about the Trump conduct laid out in the Mueller Report, lies that freed Donald Trump up to continue his relationship with Vladimir Putin to this day.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/33413782
info_outline
6| The Mueller Referral
09/13/2024
6| The Mueller Referral
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. Episode 6 of Ball of Threads explains how all that happened. Want to know more? 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.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/33041007
info_outline
Bonus Episode: Endangering Trump
08/20/2024
Bonus Episode: Endangering Trump
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 efforts have mostly been ignored outside the MAGA Cinematic Universe, flaming out completely when House Republicans couldn’t find the votes to impeach and effectively being rendered null by Joe Biden swiftly passing the baton to Kamala Harris. But Jordan and Comer have succeeded in a way only Marcy has seemed to notice. They have made Donald Trump less safe. The threats to Trump’s life are genuine, as we saw in Butler, Pennsylvania. However, the most aggressive targeting of the former president may be from Iran. Marcy notes the Islamic Republic has been running influence operations targeting MAGA since 2020. The Intelligence Community has accessed that Iran hacked the Trump team after targeting both campaigns in 2024. In this Ball of Thread bonus, Marcy connects the attacks on the FBI covered in Episode 5 to developments of the last few weeks to unspool the hidden dangers of the backlash to the Russia investigation, which became the Twitter Files, which now may leave law enforcement hampered in the effort to contain the risks to Donald Trump.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/32658077
info_outline
5| Taking Out the FBI
08/16/2024
5| Taking Out the FBI
We don’t need to guess how Project 2025 could wreck the government. We just need to look at what Donald Trump has already done to pervert and decimate the FBI. In this Ball of Thread, Marcy ties together a vast net of threads to explain how the ex-president targeted everyone in the Federal Bureau of Investigation who had the gall to investigate him. That, conveniently, also allowed him to gut some of the Bureau’s Russian expertise. The story begins with a legal settlement with two former FBI employees who Trump has made an object lesson by making them star villains in his “Deep State” conspiracy theory. For the first time, Marcy walks through a litany of public servants who faced Trump and his allies' wrath. She also reveals how this attack on our nation’s most important law enforcement agency has already resulted in a general panic that, at least, slowed key investigative steps from being taken both before and after January 6th. 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.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/32605447
info_outline
4| Devin Nunes' “Collusion"
07/23/2024
4| Devin Nunes' “Collusion"
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? 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.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/32264577
info_outline
3| The birth of Trump's Deep State obsession
07/05/2024
3| The birth of Trump's Deep State obsession
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? 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.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/32021842
info_outline
2| The dossier that broke America
06/19/2024
2| The dossier that broke America
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 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.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/31807017
info_outline
1| By the nuts: Russia's attack on the 2016 election
05/30/2024
1| By the nuts: Russia's attack on the 2016 election
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 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.
/episode/index/show/f43f71b8-6bd5-43a5-8401-81fb89b8ba8f/id/31523492