Today in the NY Times, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch of Fusion GPS hit back at congressional Republicans attacking them and selectively leaking their testimony to far right propaganda outlets.   Who’s Fusion GPS?  They are a political research firm who engaged former British spy Christopher Steele to research Trump’s business ties.  The principals of this firm have become the punching bag of right wing media and congressional Republicans, and they’ve now had enough of it.  In their op-ed today, Simpson and Fritsch are demanding that Congress release their testimony to the public.

In the piece, they talk about how they testified that Steele ran across multiple occasions of Trump’s ties to dubious Russian characters that likely involved money laundering.  They also talk about how Congress has ignored their advice to subpoena Deutschbank records of Trump’s transactions, but the only bank records that have been subpoenaed are their own.  Congress has done nothing to advance an investigation of Trump and have only sought to shoot the messenger, seek to discredit Fusion GPS.

They claim their testimony to Congress included details of Paul Manafort’s cozy relationship with the Russians and evidence they discovered of the Trump campaign’s coordination with Russian to get His Orangeness elected as president.  The fact that the Republican controlled houses of Congress have not released this testimony is all you need to know about the content of those transcripts.

Republicans have been actively covering up the reality of Trump’s collusion with the Russians and clear corruption.  Clearly they are putting party and self-interest before the needs of the American people, and their actions have destabilized our own government and damaged our reputation worldwide.

Congress must release these transcripts immediately.  Our democracy, or what’s left of it, hangs in the balance.

UPDATED FOR COMMENTS ABOUT BERNIE NOT BEING A DEMOCRAT:

Note: My usual warning…If you are a strong Hillary supporter, and believe her political loss in 2016 was purely the result of misogynist pigs denying her her birthright, please, please, please DON’T read this.  You will hate it, guaranteed.  However, if you want a little inconvenient truth, buckle up.  This one is a bumpy ride, but there is something to learn here…

Remember how all you Hillary supporters dismissed everyone who criticized her during the 2016 election?  Remember the way you unfriended people like me on social media and labeled us misogynist pigs who were being too hard on her?  Remember insulting Bernie supporters and libeling him at every opportunity?  Well, I do, and I have something to say about that and more.

Yesterday, Donna Brazile, who is a really good person, above board, honest, and a loyal Democrat published an excerpt from her new book, Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House.  The excerpt described what she discovered when she took over the DNC after Debbie Wasserman Schultz was ousted during the Democratic Convention in the summer of 2016.  Her revelations about the state of the DNC is nothing short of shocking, but even worse, virtually all of the fears anti-Hillary folks had about how the nomination process was run were well founded. Hillary and her operatives HAD taken over the DNC and then proceeded to destroy every reform that had been implemented by Howard Dean and President Obama.

After Brazile took over the party, she first discovered that it had been deep in debt since the 2012 election and had been starved for cash since.  Worse, in September, she found the smoking gun.  She unearthed a document known as the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.  The document, negotiated between Robby Mook, Hillary’s campaign manager and the DNC,  handed FULL CONTROL of the DNC over to Hillary’s campaign office in August of 2015.  You read that correctly.  Hillary took full control of the DNC FIVE MONTHS before the primaries even started.  The DNC could do nothing without Hillary’s approval, including fund raising, staff hiring decisions, even press releases.

And file this under It Gets Even Worse; the money laundering charge that was asserted by Politico in May of 2016 was true.  We’ll let Brazile describe it herself –

“Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund—that figure represented $10,000 to each of the 32 states’ parties who were part of the Victory Fund agreement—$320,000—and $33,400 to the DNC. The money would be deposited in the states first, and transferred to the DNC shortly after that. Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn.”

Money from the lavish fundraisers Hillary was holding all over the country for the DNC was actually laundered from the states, then to the DNC, and then to her own campaign coffers.  The state parties got less than ONE HALF OF ONE PERCENT.  So all you suckers donating in Texas to rebuild the party were actually backdoor funding Hillary’s campaign.  The party sucked wind. As Brazile describes this shameful scheme, the operation wasn’t illegal, but it was certainly unethical.

So let’s recap.  The charge that Hillary controlled the party during the primaries is true.  She controlled the DNC from the summer of 2015, controlling the primaries, party strategy, fund raising, management, and all other aspects of the DNC’s operation. Her people ran it, including the moron who ignored the FBI’s warning that the DNC’s email system was compromised.  The board of the DNC was sidelined.  The primaries WERE RIGGED.  Debbie Wasserman Schultz was nothing more than a tool for Hillary’s campaign, since she was installed to get Hillary elected.  The entire DNC effort from 2015 on had one goal – getting Hillary elected.

This shameful corruption does more damage than even Brazile described; it not only “compromised the party’s integrity” as she said, this documented and incontrovertible evidence of corruption plays directly into the stereotype of the Clintons running right on the edge of ethics and even legality.  While Hillary spoke loudly about campaign finance reform, blah, blah, blah, she was doing exactly, no, precisely the opposite.

You wanna know what really pisses me off?  These revelations of Hillary’s behavior adds fuel to the “lock her up” fire. It’s going from a bonfire to a 10,000 acre blaze that’s going to rage for months. Trump is already playing with the matches, tweet raging this morning that the FBI should investigate her criminality.  Here we go.

Hey, Hillary folks – hate Trump?  Well, goddamit, go buy a mirror.  Hang it on the wall, and then look into it for a long time.  Thanks.  For nothing.

UPDATE:  Let’s summarize comments from our hardcore Hillary supporters:

1. Nothing to see here.  Move along.
2. So?  Doesn’t everybody do it?
3. She won by 3 million votes!
4. It wasn’t criminal, so it’s OK.
5. Bernie’s not a Democrat and wouldn’t have won anyway.
6. El Jefe is an asshole.
7. Brazile is a LIAR!
8. Nuh Uh!

First, I didn’t believe Bernie would win the general, but I voted for him in the Texas primary.  What’s more important, and most Clintonistas IGNORE, is that the wall of money Hillary had erected scared off really good candidates like Joe Biden.  No one can deny that if Biden had run he would have decisively won.

Second, I’m always amazed at the prevarication and excuses from Hillary supporters.  Since when is corruption OK?  Trump and other Republicans are excoriated for this kind of conduct.  When it’s a Clinton, its like, “What? That’s a problem?”  I personally find it shocking the lengths Clintonistas reach defending her Highness, no matter the scale of the offense.

I personally witnessed the lengths that Howard Dean went to in 2006 and 2008 to make it clear that the DNC supported ALL candidates and was diligently neutral in partisan races.  He steadfastly defended neutrality and honesty.  Hillary poured kerosene all over those principles and struck the match herself.  Those who dismiss this kind of conduct are nothing short of radical hypocrites, and are no better than the hypocrites on the other side.

So there.

UPDATE 2: Lets talk about Bernie not being a Democrat.

This is the stupidest argument forwarded by Clintonistas.  “Bernie’s not a Democrat!” “He should have run on his own!”  “He should have not been allowed to run!”  And other BS.  OK, let’s settle this – BERNIE RAN UNDER THE RULES OF THE DNC.  HE QUALIFIED UNDER THE RULES OF THE DNC.  Period, end of story.  YOU may not like it, but he ran under the rules and qualified for the primaries.  He had EVERY RIGHT to run, even though YOU want to deny him that right.  The laws of the United States are stacked against independent runs.  It’s virtually impossible for an independent to qualify in all 50 states.  The state governments even pay for the major party primaries.  An independent run is virtually impossible to pull off.  You may hate him, but Bernie ran under the only rules that allowed him to run, AND HE QUALIFIED.  Don’t like that?  Then get all 50 states to make it easier for independent runs.  Until then, get over yourself and stop making stupid, irrelevant arguments.

In May, two days before trial, Jeff Session’s DOJ abruptly settled a $230 million Russian money laundering case for a measly $6 million.  The case, United States v. Prevezon Holdings Ltd, alleged that Russians were using New York real estate to launder Russian money into the US.  To add just a little intrigue, the Russian attorney who discovered the fraud, Sergei Magnitsky, died in a Russian prison under mysterious circumstances.  Even more important, though, was that one of the attorneys representing Prevezon in the case was none other than Natalia Veselnitskaya…that’s right, that Natalia Veselnitskaya, who met with DJT Jr last summer promising dirt on Hillary.

But that’s not all.  The US attorney in New York who was going after Prevezon?  Correct. Preet Bharara, who Trump summarily fired earlier this year.  In describing the case before he was fired, Bharara said,

In 2007, a Russian criminal organization engaged in an elaborate tax refund fraud scheme resulting in a fraudulently-obtained tax refund of approximately $230 million  from the Russian treasury….

Members of the criminal organization, and associates of those members, have also engaged in a broad pattern of money laundering in order to conceal the proceeds of the fraud scheme. In a complex series of transfers through shell corporations, the $230 million from the Russian treasury was laundered into numerous accounts in Russia and other countries ….

PREVEZON HOLDINGS laundered these fraud proceeds into its real estate holdings, including investment in multiple units of high-end commercial space and luxury apartments in Manhattan, and created multiple other corporations, also subject to the forfeiture action, to hold these properties.

Why was Bharara fired?  We’ll never really know, but he was hot after Trump’s Russia connections and other cases involving him and his companies.

This case received little attention in May when the settlement happened, but in the wake of the firestorm around DJT Jr’s emails and meeting with Veselnitskaya last summer, Democrats in Congress are beginning to connect the dots and have now demanded disclosure from Jeff Sessions about this case and its connections to both Trump and DJT Jr.  Are all of these Trump/Russia intersections simply coinkidink?  I think not, but it will take persistence of the press and honest prosecutors to uncover it, for sure.

Drip, drip, drip.

Last week, beginning in the 24 blazing hours following Trump’s sacking of James Comey, the nature of Trump’s incumbency markedly shifted.  It started with the free flowing lies coming from every single one of his surrogates, then continued when the Big Cheeto threw that very same crew under the bus by contradicting his own talking points the next day after the firing.   Also, that same day, all of the networks, including Fox Noise, started using the word “lie”.  The words “chaos”, “turmoil”, and a dozen other descriptors of the Trump WH are now a regular part of network reporting.

Trump then threatened Comey with “tapes” of their conversations, and that was the moment mainstream GOP leadership started to part ways.  The Senate Intelligence committee has now asked the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to turn over documents related to Trump’s businesses.  Why is that significant?  FinCen enforces laws against MONEY LAUNDERING.  Over the years before Trump’s Atlantic City casino finally closed, it was caught several times money laundering.  This shift into serious investigation into his actually business dealings marks a change in emphasis from dark figures like Manafort, Stone, and Flynn to Trump.  That’s not insignificant. Referring to the request, Mark Warner, the ranking member on the committee, said, “[is] our effort to try to follow the intel no matter where it leads.”

There is now talk of Trump cleaning house and “rebooting” his administration.  Apparently, he’s furious with his staff for doing exactly what he’s told them to do, so the rumble is that he’s going to blow up the West Wing and start over.  Even if he does that, his problems are far from being over.  Money laundering? No one, including Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan can ignore that.  Mix in Russian money with that story, and Trump will finally be toast.

Fingers crossed here, but there is a clear shift of support away from Trump.  It can’t come too soon.