After the Florida school shooting last Wednesday, I predicted that it would not be long before 1) the NRA began fundraising on the tragedy and 2) that the right, particularly conservative media and people like Trump Flack former Congressman Jack Kingston (R-Georgia) began attacking any survivor who had the temerity to speak out in criticism of the existing dispensations that allow an active shooter to enter a high school and wantonly take seventeen lives.
As the White House and the right wing eagerly circulate all manner of conspiracy theories to deflect attention from America’s lax gun safety laws, to say nothing of deflecting attention from the numerous scandals swirling about the Trump administration itself, we may legitimately ask whether there does not exist probable cause to believe that there may indeed have been conspiracies occurring with respect to this tragedy.
The conspiracy I suggest may well exist is one designed to protect Donald Trump and his embattled administration. Consider the following facts: first, anywhere that Donald Trump sets up a substantial business operation, be that in Bedminster, New Jersey, or around his Mar-a-Lago country club in Palm Beach, Florida, there almost inevitably arises a substantial community of Russian émigrés and oligarchs looking to shelter flight capital. Second: wherever two or three Russians are gathered together, there is almost certain to be a Russian intelligence apparat presence. It is said in Russia that you cannot speak of Russians in the plural without also implying the presence of Kremlin eyes and ears. Third: the presence of sketchy Russian oligarchs, including Oleg Deripaska and Dmitri Rybolovev, in close proximity to Trump, his campaign appearances, or his properties at highly suspicious times has been documented by both the Western media and by the U.S. Intelligence community.
Add to that the close propinquity in time between the release of the so-called Mueller indictment, with its bombshell charges against 13 Russian individuals and three Russian entities, and the shooting. The Mueller indictment not only created a distinct sense of agita in the embattled Trump White House, but it also sounded clear alarm bells in the Kremlin. Both the Trump White House and the Moskovskiy Kremlin were clearly looking for a “reprieve” from the relentless drumbeat of bad news coming the administration’s way. Indeed, the degree of Muscovite solicitude for the Trump administration only lends further probable cause to believe that a conspiracy is very much underway.
The nexus between Moscow and Parkland, Florida may be inferred from the existence of Moscow’s felt need to protect the Trump administration. It is worth noting that Moscow’s reaction to the indictments of Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and quondam national security advisor Michael Flynn, like their reaction to this most recent True Bill, was composed in equal shares of contempt, defensiveness, dismissiveness, and old-fashioned “shit, we’ve been caught,” apoplexy.
But, one may ask, how does this feed in to the events in Parkland, Florida. Again, consider the presence of that not insubstantial Russian émigré community in Palm Beach, to which they gravitated to be near Donald Trump. The Russian intelligence apparat is fairly sophisticated. Knowing, as we do, that the accused shooter had manifested distinct right-wing tendencies, it is not unreasonable to infer that his existence may very well have become known to one of the Russian intelligence agencies operating in this country, FSB, SVR, or GRU. Any asset of any one of the three Russian intelligence agencies would have known how to acquire the shooter as a potential asset, working on his strengths and weaknesses to compromise him and to turn him into a compliant asset of the Russian State.
The shooter could have been acquired through the kind of tradecraft the intelligence community refers to as MICE, Money, Ideology, Compromise (or Coercion), and Ego. Assets can be turned and acquired through one or a combination of these factors. Certainly, the Florida investigators will want to do careful research into the shooter’s 1) finances, 2) his ideological leanings, 3) the extent to which he had been compromised and was thus subject to being coerced, and 4) the extent to which the shooter may have been driven by his ego. The Florida authorities would be fools not to treat this matter as a counterintelligence investigation.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team should also take cognizance of these events. It is not unreasonable to believe that if the shooter had been turned by one or more of the agencies of the Russian intelligence apparat, that he may well have been encouraged or goaded into shooting up Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and murdering 17 classmates and teachers to distract attention from the Mueller indictment in particular and from the mounting scandals engulfing the Trump White House in general.
Indeed, it is also worth noting that within a matter of hours of the school shooting, Russian botnets were active selling as much dissension and disinformation as possible, most of it intended to defend the Trump administration or to smear the survivors. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/technology/russian-bots-school-shooting.html This Russian botnet activity is too fortuitous to be coincidental. Indeed, the Russian botnet offensive strongly suggests that the shooter had indeed been compromised, turned, and acquired, set in motion by the Kremlin to divert the attention of the American public away from the systematic treason happening in the White House.
If any part of the hypothesis laid out hereinbefore is supported by any data at all, then the investigation of the Florida school shooting needs to become part of the remit of the Mueller investigation. We are under a systematic attack from Russia, and the school shooting bears all the hallmarks of Russian active measures.
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The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author, but if readers find them congenial, readers are welcome to make them their own.
