Well, here’s the thing-it’s not just a series of small events that are totally unrelated. It’s a pattern of behavior. For example, if your husband isn’t wearing his wedding ring, sure maybe he took it off to wash his hands. If he sends text messages that he quickly deletes, maybe it’s an accident. If he drives off in the middle of the night for a few hours and comes back smelling like perfume, maybe he did go to the office and sat next to a coworker with an overwhelming scent.

But enough clues together make a pattern. The Russia thing is a non-stop series of statements and denials that then later get retracted and replaced. If the first denial were truthful and always stayed truthful, then that would be cause for dismissal, but it keeps getting deeper and directly contradicting the previous denial. In many ways, I’m reminded of the Kids in the Hall movie where one of the lead characters continually denies his homosexuality, much to the eyerolls of everyone else who clearly sees it. (I know it. Your family knows it. Dogs know it!)

The most troubling part of this particular piece tho is the author’s own credibility is completely shattered by her past writing about Seth Rich, using exactly the same tactics her strawmen arguments in this article employ. The author ascribes foul play to the limitless power of the “Deep State” that involve dealings in the shadowiest parts of shadows, but refuses to believe that human beings who have shown nothing more than naked self-interest and no hint of patriotism in their long public life would accept aid from hostile foreign powers they’re already chummy with.

If the author applied any of the standards she previously employed spreading the stories about Seth Rich to the standards she’s insisting that everyone else hold about Russia, I’d be inclined to give her some credibility.