Rachel Maddow just nailed it. Russia is guilty.

I have always been a fan of Rachel Maddow. If for no better reason than for the way that she pinned Rand Paul to the wall a couple of years ago for his civil rights views. He’s never been back since. And as far as I’m concerned, if she is not at least nominated for an Emmy for her uncovering and highlighting the plight of the people of Flint when their Governor cynically tried to poison them, then why bother having Emmy’s for journalism?

But last night, Rachel Maddow nailed the hide to the barn wall. She started off with a rather seemingly disconnected dissertation on Mikhail Gorbachev, and his losing the “cold war”. She then went on to chronicle that after he won the Nobel Peace Prize as a consolation, he used the money to start a brand new, independent newspaper in Russia. The public liked it, but the government, especially Vladimir Putin did not. Reporters were murdered, the papers computers were cyber attacked, almost forcing the paper to shut down. But they persevered.

Earlier this month they broke a breathtaking story. In December, one of the high ranking officials in the Russian security service, in the cyber security department was attending a routine staff meeting when several armed police officers, burst in, threw a hood over his head, and dragged him from the room. That is the last anyone has seen of him, and the State charged him with treason. They then broke the story that another high ranking intelligence official, this time in counter intelligence had been fired. There was sketchy information as to whether or not the official had also been imprisoned and charged. Rachel’s point was simple and concise. Russia has denied involvement all along. OK, fine. That’s your story, and you’re sticking with it. But, if you’re innocent, then as a nation, you don’t need to do anything, there is no fire there, you didn’t do anything, and nobody can prove a negative. But when you have police storm into a routine meeting, bag and wrestle out a senior cyber official, and then cashier a senior counter intelligence official in charge of making sure nobody blabs, you have just waved a giant red flag. It means that Putin has looked at the information in the “dossier” that the ex MI6 intelligence officer compiled on information compromising Trump, and has looked at the information in at least the public release of the combined intelligence assessment of Russian interference in the election, and he has realized that there is actually fire behind that smoke. And Putin is taking aggressive steps to stamp out that fire so that it doesn’t occur again.

I am going to post videos of both segments of her report on this. Combined they are a long view, about 25 minutes, but they are a compelling argument to Russia’s interference, and so necessary at this critical juncture.