Keep Up wit the Muck-Heap of Corruption

Here are the Twitter accounts you must follow to be up to mach speed on the Trump-Russia muck-heap of corruption and possibly worse.

Louise Mensch. Former Tory MP and whizbang author, Mensch, the subject of a recent Guardian profile, moved to New York in 2012 and we are the better for it. Relentless, dauntless, irreverent, and locked-in-on-target, her open letter “Dear Mr. Putin, Let’s Play Chess” is a must-read primer and prescient as hell. Her Twitter feed is like Sherlock Holmes on jet-boots and infused with James Bond elan; also humor, which always helps.

Malcolm Nance. A retired naval officer, cryptologist, and, I quote from Wikipedia, “expert in the history, personalities and organization of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL); jihadi radicalization, Islamic extremism in Middle East, Southwest Asian and African terror groups, as well as counterinsurgency and asymmetric warfare,” Nance is the author of The Plot to Hack America: How Putin’s Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election. As if those credentials weren’t inducement enough to justify following his Twitter feed, he told alt-right hate-harlequin Milo Yannipoulos to fuck off on Bill Maher’s show this week, earning him and fellow guest Larry Willmore the Medal of Candor.

John Schindler. He describes himself in his Twitter bio as a “security consultant, author, provocateur, bon vivant, polyglot, counterintelligencer, cat guardian,” and for me there are few nobler callings than cat guardian. He also likes to enjoy a refreshing beverage in the hot tub, which is what I would do if Herself would let me move a hot tub into my office, but no dice. His report, “The Spy Revolt Against Trump Begins,” should get your juices flowing.

Jester Actual. His actual Twitter handle is more complicated than that but I’m unable to duplicate it on my Commodore 64, which I use for all my hush-hush top-secret work down here in the laundry room. The hacker extraordinaire Jester issued an alarm titled “Russian Infiltration of the U.S. Government,” which raises the spectre that the real aim of enabling the election of Trump was Putin’s quest to become oil king of the world. Putin may have overplayed his hand, the gloating of Russian hackers and the ham-head performance of Trump in office his first month making the lifting of sanctions against Russia a trickier proposition now that Republican senators McCain and Graham are paying sharp attention. But the plotting will continue, and the Jester will be there to tinkle his bells of steel.

Susan Hennessey. Lawfare managing editor and Brookings fellow, Hennessey adds a note of sobriety to this all-star list, her title and perhaps temperament not lending themselves to the escapading manner of Mensch and company. But she too is connecting the threads on the evidence board as the matrix of Kremlingate becomes ever more sinister and the threat level to our republic escalates, especially with a patsy and sponge occupying the presidency.