What Set Me Off

So with that out of the way, I must admit what got me started.  It was some wildly irresponsible speculation about Paul Manafort's notes from the infamous Trump Tower meeting.  Taken out of context, the notes are rather cryptic.  They say:

Bill browder
Offshore — Cyprus
133m shares
Companies
Not invest — loan
Value in Cyprus as inter
Illici
Active sponsors of RNC
Browder hired Joanna Glover
Tied into Cheney
Russian adoption by American families

Perhaps it was inevitable that this would lead to wild speculations.  Some have connected it with a passage from the Steele Memorandums which provides:

At least one part of this memo is definitely true.  A 19% share of Rosneft was definitely sold to a mystery purchaser.  There was some speculation that the purchaser might be Trump or the Trump camp, but the purchaser has since been determined to be Qatar.  But that leaves suspicious minds to speculate that, although Trump enterprises did not receive a 19% share of Rosneft, they might have received the brokerage fee, which would be quite substantial.

This has led to wild speculations that the 133 million shares are the commission on the sale of about 2 billion shares of the total 10.6 billion Rosneft shares.  References to "Cyrus," "offshore," "not invest -- loan," and "illic" are plans to launder the proceeds.  The "active sponsors of RNC" is taken to mean illicit donations by Russia to the RNC.

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but this is paranoia, plain, pure and simple.  It reminds me of nothing so much as the central plot premise of Foucault's Pendulum.  Three editors are publishing a bunch of outlandish conspiracy theory works of zero literary merit.  Among the authors is an unreconstructed Fascist who found a mysterious and cryptic note in an archeological excavation of a 14th Century French city, full of strange codes and secret items transported to mysterious destinations.  He develops the note into an elaborate, centuries-old conspiracy.  The editors weave their own conspiracies around it.  They get a rather deflating insight from the girlfriend of one of the editors, who does a little historical research and discovers that the place excavated was an account house for merchants, the codes were common abbreviations of the day, the items were frequently traded articles of merchandise, and the places were landmarks around town.

Such is the case with Manafort's notes.  First of all experienced intelligence professionals agree that first meetings do not immediately jump into criminal conspiracies.  First meetings are innocuous, allowing all parties plausible deniability so that if (for instance) Junior had gone to the FBI, the participants could claim the whole meeting was innocent.  In this case, Natalia Veselnitskaya, the head of the Russian delegation focused on having the Magnitsky sanctions against Russian oligarchs repealed.  She presented extensive dirt on Bill Browder, sponsor of the sanctions, but no dirt on Hillary Clinton, except that some of Browder's investors were major contributors to the Democratic Party and may have contributed to Hillary as well. 

Veselnitskaya made available a memo of what she claims to have discussed at the meeting.  Manafort's notes track the memo.  He begins with "Bill browder," the main subject of the memo.  The 133 million shares refer to 133 million shares of Gazprom (a Russian gas company) that Browder supposedly illegally bought, laundered through three Cypriot companies (hence the reference to offshore, Cyprus and companies).  It is not clear what "Not invest -- loan" means, but presumably part of the alleged scheme, along with the second reference to Cyprus and "illici[t]."  "Joanna Glover" is not mentioned in the memo, but apparently Juleanna Glover worked with Browder to promote the Magnitsky sanctions and also worked for Cheney in the past.  The reference to adoptions is not in the memo, but was clearly raised at the meeting as a reason to lift the sanctions.  The only odd thing in the notes is "Active sponsors of RNC (Republican National Committee)," when Veselniskaya actually called Browder and his investors supporters of the DNC (Democratic National Committee).  This article speculates that "RNC" may have been a typo or autocorrect from DNC. 

None of this means, by that way, that we should accept claims that the meeting was simply a lobbying attempt and that the belief that the Russians had damaging information on Hillary was all a misunderstanding.  Veselnitskaya has been caught recruiting others to serve as Russian agents.  The planners of the meeting took great care not to have any direct electronic communications with the Trump campaign, but to either meet in person or communicate through someone who would not attract suspicion.  The general style resembled the early stages of recruitment. 

But can we please not go drawing connections that don't exist, not invent elaborate plots where a simple explanation is at hand and, in short, not give way to paranoia.  Reality is bad enough.