On Monday morning, Donald Trump‘s former campaign chair Paul Manafort was indicted as part of Robert Mueller’s probe into possible Russian involvement in the 2016 election. The news came to as a shock to many, but not to Louise Mensch, who tweeted over a month ago that it had already happened.
https://twitter.com/LouiseMensch/status/911216542242807808
You could be forgiven for not knowing who Louise Mensch is. Prior to Donald Trump’s unprecedented rise to the presidency, her biggest claim to fame was being a former member of British Parliament. Now, however, Mensch has reinvented herself as the leading expert into the Trump-Russia collusion saga. But Mensch isn’t any old quack doodle on Twitter spouting about how Trump is Putin’s puppet.
No, she is the queen quack, proposing the most inane, asinine, absurd, unrealistic plausibilities that have ever graced your computer screen. They are works of art. Almost nothing seems to be impossible to emanate from Mensch’s frenetic Twitter feed and breathless blog posts. Just take this string of words about Reince Priebus, Trump’s former chief of staff, during the president’s trip to the Middle East.
“I exclusively reported there was a RICO case against the entire GOP as a body; this is because they accepted, via Reince Priebus, washed Russian money, sources say. Saudi Arabian intelligence picked up a voice recording of a panicked Mr. Priebus, fresh off [Air Force One], claiming he would seek asylum, [in Saudi Arabia]. He was under a UFAP [Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution] warrant … and was immediately brought back to America under compulsion by Air Marshals who had been placed on Air Force One.”
That breathless paragraph—about how the president’s chief of staff was responsible for the entire GOP being indicted for using Russian funds, then tried to flee while on a trip to Saudia Arabia but was escorted home by U.S. Air Marshals who had already been placed on Air Force One—was just one part of a July blog post detailing dirt on every member of Trump’s circle. It was just some throwaway line at the end, the 14th revelation in the post.
And Mensch is like this Every. Single. Day. Frankly, it’s an awesome spectacle to watch unfold on Twitter. But there’s just one small problem with treating her theories: Not only does she stridently believe them, she’s been right about them before.
A day before the election, on Nov. 7, Mensch dropped an absolute bombshell: The federal government was granted a warrant from a FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] court to conduct surveillance on Trump’s campaign over its ties to Russia. No one noticed at the time.
Fast forward to last month and CNN’s exclusive: “US government wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman.” Mensch had it long before anyone else.
Of course, she can be wildly wrong just as many times. Take, for instance, the case of Anthony Weiner. In a thorough post introducing her new site Patribotic, titled “Dear Mr. Putin, Let’s Play Chess,” Mensch details in exacting fashion how she believes Putin brought down Hillary Clinton. Are you ready? It involves Russian spies planting a virus on Anthony Weiner’s laptop, which was then activated in the days before the election, placing fake salacious contact with a teen in his inbox. That’s when Russian agents within the New York FBI (which is, she swears, completely infiltrated and overrun by Russian intelligence) faked a case as a means to seize the laptop, convinced former FBI Director James Comey to reopen the Hillary Clinton email investigation, and leaked the news that an indictment of Clinton was pending, thus swinging the election in the last few day to Donald Trump.
Reading Mensch is like chugging a vat of acid-laced moonshine. It’s intense!
After Weiner pled guilty to sexting a child, which is how the new Hillary emails were uncovered, Mensch claimed that he probably was sexting with a teen, but that didn’t mean Russia still wasn’t behind it anyway.
True or not, Mensch claims she’s got sources and scoops for everything she writes. While it’s possible that as a member of Parliament, she made a friend high up in British intelligence who is feeding her intel, she very well could be just making it all up.
Either way, every single thing she writes is amazing. So let’s take a look at her absolutely wildest theories
Note: All of the below quotes are from articles on Mensch’s blog Patribotics or her Twitter account.
Louise Mensch’s wildest Trump-Russia conspiracy theories
1) Edward Snowden is an agent of the Russian government
One overarching aspect of Mensch’s political philosophy is that everyone is an asset of the Russian state. Show Mensch a picture of your dog and if she looks at it long enough, she will become convinced that it is communicating with the Kremlin.
But Mensch is certain that Edward Snowden—the infamous National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who revealed the extent of the U.S. government’s data collection and spying efforts—was courted by Russia to hack the NSA.
In Mensch’s own words, Snowden, in his position at the time with the NSA, was not capable of committing such acts.
“Russian moles placed inside the NSA recruited Edward Snowden. A letter between the FSB [Russia’s Federal Security Service] in Cuba and SENAIN [Ecuador’s National Intelligence Secretariat] in Quito held in a file marked ‘Assange’ in London, dated 4th April 2013, the day before Snowden sent his only email on legalities, April 5th 2013, and before Snowden took his uppermost level documents during the rest of the month of April, proves conclusively that Mr. Snowden is a Russian agent who acted on instructions from Moscow. Snowden is a low-level IT idiot. He had help taking what he took from the NSA.”
Well, alright. It is true that Edward Snowden is holed up in Moscow right now, and whether that’s just a big screw you to the U.S. by Putin or if he was in cahoots with the Russian government is unknown. What is known is that no one else has ever reported on the existence of a letter (and Mensch herself doesn’t give any details as to what’s in it, simply saying that it is conclusive proof (UPDATE: Mensch discussed the content of the letter in a post on Heat Street in December 2016, saying that “both Ecuador and Russia knew in advance that Edward Snowden would steal highly classified files from the NSA, using his position as a contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton, before Snowden took them,” going into the contents of the letter. You can read that post here.), but Mensch is certain that Snowden gave Russia access to a program that swayed the entire course of American history.
“Russian hackers are given all of the NSA techniques. Nikulin [a Russian hacker] hacks … Wiener. He plants a virus in his laptop. He waits and wakes it up in October.”
The virus planted that planted sexts onto Weiner’s computer. Edward Snowden, ipso facto, President Trump.
2) Rudy Giuliani is singing to the feds
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani endorsed Donald Trump back in April of 2016, but it was his October actions that bring this theory to light. On Oct. 26, 2016, Giuliani went on Fox News and said the Trump campaign had “a couple things up his sleeve.” At that moment, coupled with debate losses and the Access Hollywood tape, Trump was flailing in the polls and expected by just about everyone to be handily trounced by Hillary Clinton.
Then Giuliani went on Fox and announced that there were some pretty big surprises coming in the next few days. Two days later came the Comey letter.
Did Rudy Giuliani, as mayor, become friendly with Russian agents in the New York bureau of the FBI, who told him they were about to plant evidence on Anthony Weiner’s computer and force an investigation into Weiner and then force Comey to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton?
Yes, says Mensch. And now, he was the first and the fastest to turn on Donald Trump.
Re all the nice pictures of Rudy Giuliani and the Russians yesterday.
— LouiseMensch 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@LouiseMensch) May 10, 2017
Last I heard, he was singing like a bird to @FBI and @AGSchneiderman
But not just that, he begged the FBI for a deal to testify against Trump.
https://twitter.com/LouiseMensch/status/887643963640782848
Despite being told to “pound sand,” he’s still apparently cooperating as one of the best sources of information the Mueller-FBI probe has for its Russia collusion investigation.
That’s right, America’s mayor is now betraying the president (who is himself betraying America). (Stay with us here, it only gets more implausible).
3) #PIMPOTUS
According to Mensch, “Donald Trump is being investigated for trafficking underage girls into the United States for sexual abuse, under the guise of his shell modeling company, Trump Models.”
It’s practically Pizzagate all over again.
4) Trump Tower has already had search warrants executed on it
Back in May, Mensch reported that the former home of the current U.S. president has been raided by the FBI.
“Sources with links to the intelligence community report that Federal Marshals executed two search and seizure warrants at Trump Tower on Friday, May 19. One of the warrants covered an electronic storage space in Trump Tower. Several electronic items were seized as a result of this search.”
In her scoop, Mensch says the raid was related to Trump using stolen voter data to target social media posts.
“These same sources have confirmed my April reporting that the Russian Alfa Bank server, with an IP address in Trump Tower, was communicating with Russia … and that it was ‘washing’ hacked U.S. State voter database information with the social media ‘fake news’ botnet for micro-targeting to voters.”
Gotcha. Whatever that means. You may think this one is utter rubbish, except now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Trump’s head of social media on the campaign, Brad Parscale, is under investigation, and Congress is calling him to testify about whether he collaborated with Russians in basically the same fashion Mensch called Parscale out for in in her post.
“Investigators will be seeking to establish if Parscale shared voter data with Russia, which then bombarded potential Trump supporters with fake news, propaganda and conspiracy theories.”
“Brad Parscale,” Mensch wrote, “formed a go-between for Kushner and the Russian Ambassador.”
5) Trump’s Scotland trip in 2016 was to meet directly with Russia
It’s not completely unprecedented for a candidate to leave the country during a presidential election. Barack Obama, in July 2008, went to Germany and delivered a speech in Berlin that was met with massive approval. And in June of 2016, while running for president, Donald Trump went to Scotland. But this time, it was not to bring a message of hope and change to an ally of the U.S. in the midst of a global economic panic. No, this was to DIRECTLY MEET WITH RUSSIAN AGENTS SO THEY COULD IMPROVE UPON THEIR ELECTION COLLUDING.
“June 24th, in Scotland, the day after the Brexit vote, Donald Trump, members of his family and various press barons and Russian actors met in Scotland at Trump’s golf course.”
This according to Mensch, swung the election.
“After this meeting, Trump’s fortunes changed rapidly. He arrived in Scotland broke, with his campaign deep in debt, and his polling numbers an embarrassment. Just days after he departed, the Trump campaign was flooded with money – and Russian bots, previously dedicated to Brexit, began to retarget themselves to Trump.”
This was the day after Brexit, so you know, the bots finally had some free time, which is not really how bots work. Doesn’t this seems just a little suspect? You know, leaving the country to meet with your spy team to discuss your mission to collude with a foreign power to undermine U.S. democracy while the entire U.S. press corps is hounding your every move. It’s like Mugatu attempting to assassinate the prime minister of Malaysia at the Derelicte show or Reese Feldman distributing cars filled with cocaine at his charity event for the Nearly There Foundation.
6) Trump recorded a tape of himself asking Russia for help in the election, which was delivered to Moscow by Carter Page
In this guaranteed-to-have-happened situation (guaranteed by Mensch, that is), Trump literally recorded himself on videotape saying “I would like to do some collusion with you” and gave it to an associate to give to Russia, which when you think about it, isn’t all that wild, given that that he once said, “Russia, if you are listening,” hack Hilary Clinton’s emails.
But, according to Mensch, Carter Page delivered this tape directly to Russia sometime in early July, which would be… after Russian agents already met with Trump and agreed to help him in June, so I don’t know. It has been confirmed that Page did travel to Russia, ostensibly to give a speech at the New Economic School.
“Sources with links to the intelligence community say it is believed that Carter Page went to Moscow in early July carrying with him a pre-recorded tape of Donald Trump offering to change American policy if he were to be elected, to make it more favorable to Putin. In exchange, Page was authorized directly by Trump to request the help of the Russian government in hacking the election.”
Apparently, even better, this tape is already in possession of Western intelligence officers, which, you would think might be some sort of smoking gun, given that it would be video evidence of the president agreeing to commit treason.
“Sources say that this tape was played in meetings with Russian intelligence officers in Moscow, and that several Western intelligence sources have recordings of the meetings and the tape which they supplied to US intelligence.”
The FBI did have a surveillance warrant out on Carter Page after, according to the Washington Post, “convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power.”
So this one too isn’t even all that improbable.
7) Republicans threw was a collusion convention party
How do you celebrate an agent of the Russia state successful maneuvering his way to the top of your party, becoming your nominee for president?
Well, according to Mensch, you get together with even more Russians and accept even more money. Because why not? Call it the Cleveland Convention Collusion Party (or CCCP).
After Trump won the nomination, and after he decided to team up with Putin, interested parties met with leading Republicans in town for the convention.
“Sources with links to US intelligence confirmed, as I exclusively reported on Patribotics, that Speaker Paul Ryan was taped speaking to [ambassador] Sergei Kislyak at the GOP Convention, as was Reince Priebus, agreeing to accept laundered or ‘dark’ Russian funds for the GOP. Sources with links to the Justice Department earlier confirmed that a RICO case is being prepared against the entire Republican party on the basis of Russian money and intelligence, in the form of Wikileaks stories.”
Interestingly enough, Mensch reported on May 11 of this year that there was a tape of Paul Ryan discussing laundering Russian funds. Six days later, the Washington Post ran a story where there was a tape of Kevin McCarthy talking to Pual Ryan, saying “Trump accepts money from Putin” with Paul Ryan then interjecting, saying, “No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.”
Makes. You. Think.
8) There is a sealed indictment against Trump
By now, you are wondering, if this is all true, Donald Trump should probably be indicted for treason. If this is all really went down, why isn’t our government doing not doing anything?
“Separate sources with links to the intelligence and justice communities have stated that a sealed indictment has been granted against Donald Trump.”
I wish I could add more, but that’s like all that’s reported in that post.
9) Orrin Hatch is pretty much already president
“Several sources familiar with the matter say that Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah is being given security briefings to prepare him for the Presidency. Sources close to the legal community indicate that matters are proceeding rapidly in the forthcoming proceedings to remove Donald Trump from office, and to indict the co-conspirators around him.”
Mensch argues that Trump’s presidency ended on May 9. When he dismissed former FBI Director James Comey, the government immediately began impeachment proceedings, notice of which were directly delivered to Donald Trump (news to you and me) and the government moved to ensure a smooth succession, because Trump is (assuredly) guilty (in Mensch’s mind). To that end, they began treating Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) as though he were the president.
But Hatch is third in line to succeed Trump. Why him? Well, because, Pence, according to Mensch, lied about the Comey firing, which means he’s done. And as you know, Paul Ryan already admitted to accepting dirty Russian money on tape! He can’t be president.
Mensch even says the FBI is plotting to ensure a successful transition of power from Trump to Hatch, to help with a scenario where Trump is impeached, Pence takes over then is impeached, the Ryan takes over and is impeached.
Because that’s a thing that would happen, according to Mensch. Three straight impeachments in the span of six months.
“They [Mensch’s sources] do not, for the sake of clarity, insist that it will absolutely be Hatch right away; were Trump to resign today, Pence would be President; even if impeached or his election later invalidated there would not be time to do it all in 24 hours. However, sources believe it is the intent of the FBI and the Justice Department to move so that there is a smooth transition of power from Trump to Hatch.”
Thus, the Republican senator from Utah and the president pro tempore of the Senate would take over. Of course, Hatch is also part of the same GOP that Mensch mentioned was possibly going to be indicted in a RICO case because they accepted laundered Russian money, so please do take this one with a truckload of salt.
10) Steve Bannon is getting the death penalty
That’s correct. Bannon, executed! In a completely baffling tweetstorm in mid-July, Mensch insisted that Steve Bannon is also an agent of the Russian government and that he is going to be convicted of capital crimes. Bannon and Breitbart, you see, have long been agents of the Russian state.
https://twitter.com/LouiseMensch/status/887641703817121793
https://twitter.com/LouiseMensch/status/887642681660383232
Mensch says that Trump’s confidante and svengali, who came onto the campaign after all the Russia people were let go (Page, Manafort), was already part of the the Russian conspiracy, which basically makes Trump the most fungible marionette of a foreign power the world has ever seen, having picked campaign manager after campaign manager who were all basically groomed by Russian foreign services. Wild, right?
Mensch said she would be reporting out that story the very same day, then curiously never wrote anything about it.
But she did manage to sneak out one other tweet about her story.
https://twitter.com/LouiseMensch/status/887646544853434369
So will the president of the United States be executed for treason? I don’t know. But I do know Mensch has been right before.
Mensch declined to comment on this story. “I might do some [interviews] after they get indicted,” she wrote. “Right now it needs to be on Trump Russia not on me.”
This post has been updated.