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Post by goldenbucky on Feb 27, 2018 16:01:58 GMT -5
Thanks OB, that's as succinct a summary as I have seen.
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Post by goldenbucky on Feb 27, 2018 16:09:45 GMT -5
Wow! He was lying this month? That's nuts. ...and now Mueller has moved to drop charges. Gates must really have delivered the goods! Quite the conspiracy coming in to focus and yet there are STILL obvious areas that haven't been addressed through public indictments yet. I can safely say I never thought I'd ever see anything like all this - is our president a witting or unwitting asset of a foreign adversary?
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Post by Old Badger on Feb 27, 2018 16:56:54 GMT -5
And now, this: "White House communications director Hope Hicks is the latest close adviser to President Trump to refuse to answer questions about the administration or transition period, posed by House investigators as part of their probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Democrats and Republicans emerging from the House Intelligence Committee’s ongoing interview with Hicks on Tuesday noted that she resisted answering any questions about events and conversations that occurred since Trump won the election, despite the fact that Trump has not formally invoked executive privilege with the panel. 'No one’s asserting privilege; they’re following the orders of the White House not to answer certain questions,' said Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), a committee member. He said the panel should serve Hicks with a subpoena, as it did with former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon last month when he refused to answer similar questions." link The Committee wants to hear from her about that meeting with the Russians at Trump Tower. There are only two bases on which Hicks can refuse to answer questions from Congress: a presidential assertion of executive privilege, or a Fifth Amendment claim against self-incrimination. Since the WH has not claimed executive privilege, these two either are grounding their refusal in the Fifth, or they are in contempt of Congress. If the Dems are in control of the House by this time next year I fully expect them to charge both with contempt, unless the investigation has ended or both have been charged by Mueller.
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Post by Old Badger on Feb 28, 2018 11:48:02 GMT -5
"A federal judge set a Sept. 17 trial date in Washington for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on Wednesday, setting up a potential test of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia probe at the height of U.S. congressional elections this fall. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson scheduled the trial as Manafort appeared in federal court for the first time since co-defendant and longtime deputy Rick Gates pleaded guilty last week to reduced charges, and said he will cooperate in Mueller’s investigation of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election." linkThis trial will take weeks. Trump's predictions that the Mueller investigation would be over before [fill in dates now long past or soon upon us] have proven wishful thinking. Instead, Republicans will be running in congressional and state races against a backdrop of daily revelations about the scope of corruption around Manafort and his involvement in the Trump campaign. Serves them right, of course.
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Post by Old Badger on Feb 28, 2018 20:22:14 GMT -5
Here's a new twist: "Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III has been investigating a period of time last summer when President Trump seemed determined to drive Attorney General Jeff Sessions from his job, according to people familiar with the matter who said that a key area of interest for the inquiry is whether those efforts were part of a months-long pattern of attempted obstruction of justice. In recent months, Mueller’s team has questioned witnesses in detail about Trump’s private comments and state of mind in late July and early August of last year, around the time he issued a series of tweets belittling his 'beleaguered' attorney general, these people said. The thrust of the questions was to determine whether the president’s goal was to oust Sessions in order to pick a replacement who would exercise control over the investigation into possible coordination between Russia and Trump associates during the 2016 election, these people said." link
Of course, any President can demand the resignation of any Cabinet member. After the Civil War, Congress tried to hamstring Andrew Johnson by passing over his veto the Tenure of Office Act requiring Senate approval of any Cabinet firing by the President. Johnson nonetheless fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, one of the Radical Republicans on Reconstruction, and appointing U. S. Grant to replace him. Congress restored Stanton, Grant stepped out, and Stanton barricaded himself inside his office to prevent his removal by force. The House impeached Johnson, but the Senate failed to convict by one vote. Twenty years later the Act was repealed, and the Supreme Court's later decisions seemed to agree with Johnson that it was unconstitutional. So, firing Sessions would not be a crime or an impeachable offense. What Mueller's looking at is whether Trump's efforts to oust Sessions, including several orders to Chiefs of Staff to get a resignation letter and public attacks on the A-G, are designed to quash Mueller's investigation. It's an awkward position for Muller because, in effect, he's investigating possible efforts to fire him: Trump has made clear he thinks the A-G should not have recused himself from the investigation, so he'd likely appoint a replacement who would not do so, and then would end it altogether. (This is a pipedream; there's no way a new A-G would be confirmed, and if an interim appointee tried to kill the investigation he/she would soon be under investigation, too.) The broader concern is what Trump is doing to the DOJ. Jamil Jaffer, founder of the National Security Institute at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, sums up the damage: “The continued drumbeat of overheated attacks on the Justice Department and the FBI, coming from all corners of the Hill, the media, and elsewhere, can’t help but undermine both morale and the legitimacy of institutions themselves, but today’s tweet is just another drop in an already overflowing bucket. Of course, the bigger challenge is that if the concerns aren’t legitimate, then we are playing right into the hands of those abroad who wish to undermine these very critical institutions of our democracy.”
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 5, 2018 16:00:00 GMT -5
"Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg said Monday that he has been subpoenaed to appear in front of a federal grand jury investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election but that he will refuse to go. In an interview with The Washington Post, Nunberg said he was asked to come to Washington to appear before the grand jury on Friday. He also provided a copy of what appears to be his two-page grand jury subpoena seeking documents related to President Trump and nine other people, including emails, correspondence, invoices, telephone logs, calendars and 'records of any kind.'...Among those the subpoena requests information about are departing White House communications director Hope Hicks, former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and adviser Roger Stone." linkFor all those Republicans who swallowed the spin that the guilty pleas on relatively minor charges showed there was "no there there" regarding the investigation, this should come as a bracing splash of ice-cold water. It's quite clear who is the target of this investigation, and it's not Hicks or Bannon, or even Manafort. Nunberg apparently is not acting out of loyalty ("there is nobody who hates him more than me”), so it's unclear why he's taking this position. He does have opinions on the investigation: “The Russians and Trump did not collude. Putin is too smart to collude with Donald Trump.” OUCH! But then, he also suggested that the prosecutor may have evidence against Trump: “I think they may. I think that he may have done something during the election.” Something? Don't leave us in suspense here, Sam. What something? EDIT: OK, this guy is...um, different. Highlights from his CNN interview: "Mueller is not going to send me to prison for this. This is ridiculous...We'll see. I think it's 50-50 what Mueller will do." "[My lawyer] didn't know about any of this [interviews] until I did it." "Maybe I'll just give them my password, my email password, I have no problem complying in itself. ... I have no problem if they get the emails. [But won't testify] if they do not explain to me why I have to go in there." [Burnett said she smelled alcohol on his breath as asked if he'd been drinking]: "My answer is no, I have not." [Drugs?] "Besides my meds, antidepressants, is that OK?" Yeah, he was on something today. Even money he shows up before the grand jury, cuz Mueller's not the kind of guy who's just gonna say, "Oh, well if you don't want to, it's fine."
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 6, 2018 10:15:26 GMT -5
Stephen Colbert's monologue on Nunberg:
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 7, 2018 1:12:22 GMT -5
"An adviser to the United Arab Emirates with ties to current and former aides to President Trump is cooperating with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and gave testimony last week to a grand jury, according to two people familiar with the matter. Mr. Mueller appears to be examining the influence of foreign money on Mr. Trump’s political activities and has asked witnesses about the possibility that the adviser, George Nader, funneled money from the Emirates to the president’s political efforts. It is illegal for foreign entities to contribute to campaigns or for Americans to knowingly accept foreign money for political races. "Mr. Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who advises Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the effective ruler of the Emirates, also attended a January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles that Mr. Mueller’s investigators have examined. The meeting, convened by the crown prince, brought together a Russian investor close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and an informal adviser to Mr. Trump’s team during the presidential transition, according to three people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Nader’s cooperation in the special counsel’s investigation could prompt new legal risks for the Trump administration, and Mr. Nader’s presence at the Seychelles meeting appears to connect him to the primary focus of Mr. Mueller’s investigation: examining Russian interference during the 2016 presidential campaign... "Mr. Nader was first served with search warrants and a grand jury subpoena on Jan. 17, shortly after landing at Washington Dulles International Airport, according to two people familiar with the episode. He had intended to travel on to Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Florida estate, to celebrate the president’s first year in office, but the F.B.I. had other plans, questioning him for more than two hours and seizing his electronics. Since then, Mr. Nader has been questioned numerous times about meetings in New York during the transition, the Seychelles meeting and meetings in the White House with two of Mr. Trump’s senior advisers, Jared Kushner and Stephen K. Bannon, who has since left the administration." linkTick-tock. I notice we're hearing nothing from our resident Defenders of Trump of late. Whatever happened to the Sean Hannity argument that "there's nothing there"?
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 7, 2018 12:40:22 GMT -5
"Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has requested documents and interviewed witnesses about incidents involving Michael Cohen, the longtime lawyer for President Trump whose wide-ranging portfolio has given him a unique vantage point into Trump’s business, campaign and political activities...One area of focus has been negotiations Cohen undertook during the campaign to help the Trump Organization build a tower in Moscow...Another area that Mueller’s team has explored is a Russia-friendly peace proposal for Ukraine that was delivered to Cohen by a Ukrainian lawmaker one week after Trump took office, the people said." linkOK, let's say that Trump's private lawyer would be expected to participate in setting up a real estate transaction, even in Moscow. But what the hell would a private attorney be doing acting as go-between for a Ukrainian parliamentarian trying to broker a peace deal with Russia and the US? Actually, the two are related: "Cohen has said he worked on the [Moscow] deal with Felix Sater, a real estate developer who helped build a number of Trump-branded properties, including Trump SoHo in New York, and had tried to help Trump build in Moscow a decade earlier...Sater and Cohen also figure in the Ukrainian peace proposal...Sater organized a Jan. 27, 2017, meeting at the Loews Regency hotel in New York during which Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii V. Artemenko gave Cohen the proposal, according to interviews last year with the three participants. The back-channel proposal offered a pathway for resolving the Ukrainian dispute that could have led to the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Russia and given Putin a prize he has long sought — undisputed control over Crimea, territory that Russia seized in 2014." Where else have we heard about back-channel deals involving Russia, Ukraine, sanctions, and Trump? Oh, yes: that meeting in Trump Tower, originally cast as a discussion about orphans. BTW, this is the same Cohen who paid off the porn star, and then complained Trump never reimbursed him the $130 K (I assume that's been taken care of recently). The whole mélange is just so Trumpian: sex, sleaze, and near-treason.
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 7, 2018 20:32:22 GMT -5
Mueller gathers evidence that 2017 Seychelles meeting was effort to establish back channel to Kremlin"Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has gathered evidence that a secret meeting in the Seychelles just before the inauguration of Donald Trump was an effort to establish a back channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin — apparently contradicting statements made to lawmakers by one of its participants, according to people familiar with the matter. "In January 2017, Erik Prince, the founder of the private security company Blackwater, met with a Russian official close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and later described the meeting to congressional investigators as a chance encounter that was not a planned discussion of U.S.-Russia relations. A witness cooperating with Mueller has told investigators the meeting was set up in advance so that a representative of the Trump transition could meet with an emissary from Moscow to discuss future relations between the countries, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. "Last year, Prince told lawmakers — and the news media — that his Seychelles meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of a Russian government-controlled wealth fund, was an unplanned, unimportant encounter that came about by chance because he happened to be at a luxury hotel in the Indian Ocean island nation with officials from the United Arab Emirates. In his statements, Prince has specifically denied reporting by The Washington Post that said the Seychelles meeting, which took place about a week before Trump’s inauguration, was described by U.S., European and Arab officials as part of an effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and the incoming administration." linkOK, we knew these guys were lying, and now we're getting confirmation. Did anyone really believe that this guy went to the Seychelles, remote islands in the Indian Ocean, and just happened to run into some guy close to Putin the way he testified: “At the end, one of the entourage says, ‘Hey, by the way, there’s this Russian guy that we’ve dealt with in the past. He’s here also to see someone from the Emirati delegation. And you should meet him, he’d be an interesting guy for you to know, since you’re doing a lot in the oil and gas and mineral space.” Geezus, that sounds like bad dialog from a "Homeland" episode, not anything that would happen in real life. And on "Homeland" you'd know damn well this was no accident. The noose is tightening.
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 7, 2018 23:32:35 GMT -5
"The special counsel in the Russia investigation has learned of two conversations in recent months in which President Trump asked key witnesses about matters they discussed with investigators, according to three people familiar with the encounters. In one episode, the president told an aide that the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, should issue a statement denying a New York Times article in January. The article said Mr. McGahn told investigators that the president once asked him to fire the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Mr. McGahn never released a statement and later had to remind the president that he had indeed asked Mr. McGahn to see that Mr. Mueller was dismissed, the people said. In the other episode, Mr. Trump asked his former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, how his interview had gone with the special counsel’s investigators and whether they had been 'nice,' according to two people familiar with the discussion. "The episodes demonstrate that even as the special counsel investigation appears to be intensifying, the president has ignored his lawyers’ advice to avoid doing anything publicly or privately that could create the appearance of interfering with it. Legal experts said Mr. Trump’s contact with the men most likely did not rise to the level of witness tampering. But witnesses and lawyers who learned about the conversations viewed them as potentially a problem and shared them with Mr. Mueller. " linkYou know if he's done this twice he's almost certainly done it a lot more, though those involved haven't (yet) told Mueller. But there's a "tell" that's familiar with Trump: when he knows he's done something wrong he cannot let it go. He actually did try to get McGahn to lie about trying to get Mueller fired (which could be the basis for a charge of obstruction, of course). He's a blunderbuss of a dope so he can't help making these guilty gestures. If he were just President of Trump, Inc. it would be humorous.
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 10, 2018 22:40:35 GMT -5
Remember how Trump's lawyers were assuring everyone the Mueller probe was almost over and nothing much would come of it? Well... "President Trump is in discussions with a veteran Washington lawyer who represented Bill Clinton during the impeachment process about joining the White House to help deal with the special counsel inquiry, according to four people familiar with the matter. The lawyer, Emmet T. Flood, met with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office this past week to discuss the possibility, according to the people. No final decision has been made, according to two of the people. Should Mr. Flood come on board, the two people said, his main duties would be a day-to-day role helping the president navigate his dealings with the Justice Department. Two people close to the president said that the overture to Mr. Flood did not indicate any new concerns about the inquiry. Still, it appears, at the least, to be an acknowledgment that the investigation is unlikely to end anytime soon." linkYeah, it isn't going to end soon at all. With the Manafort prosecution scheduled for mid-September and likely to drag on until at least the end of the year, with Mueller apparently opening new and complicated lines of inquiry (such as money laundering), and with a good chance Democrats will control at least the House during 2019-20, allowing them to insulate the Mueller probe from WH interference, there's no reason to think that this is going to end for at least another year, probably longer. And the fact that he's hiring a lawyer with the rare experience of having worked on a presidential impeachment signals that Trump is preparing for that possibility, especially if there's a Dem House. Well, at least that's a more realistic expectation than the one his current lawyers have been trying to sell.
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Post by badgerjon66 on Mar 11, 2018 19:13:22 GMT -5
¨complicated lines of inquiry ¨ Ah, yes. Perhaps Trumpś SIL's cousin failed to pay a parking ticket 10 years ago........ Of course Mueller will not voluntarily end the witch hunt, though he may well come to wish he had never signed on for it. We do not yet know if Sessions is the man he claims to be and, if so, will restore the rule of law to DOJ. Not sure, but there is strong potential for a very serious reaction from the America outside the leftist bubble if Mueller tries to destroy a Presidency via the usual special prosecutor tactic of trivial perjury entrapment. a coup failure can become very ugly, and I wonder if Mueller is really comfortable fronting for Comey/Clapper/Brennan/Obama et al. No person with intelligence and any integrity at all would be................
Dems to take control of Congress? Maybe---anything is possible but right now I would say ~10-1 no. More likely that we will see some return of justice to DOJ and dems---particularly those in & close to Obama admin are going to be very very embarrassed, if not incarcerated, for their blatant defiance of the law & the Constitution.
What we do not hear in media is often more significant than what we do hear. These days we no longer hear the daily media drumbeat of Russia, Russia, Russia. ( I don't watch it but I am told SNL is even laughing at it). we hear little from Obama & his minions. Debbie Wasserman? Bill Clinton? Adam Schiff seems to have gone quiet too, among others. A prelude to a victory lap? I think not. OTOH media has ignored that Sessions tells of assigning a non-DC prosecutor to look at FISA Ct. crimes. And credible reports that FBI has convened a G Jury re: Clinton Foundation. without leaks. But hell, OB dream on re: stuttering Nancy coming back to power. What an amusing treat that would be. Meantime the Trump Presidency continues making America Great Again---for Americans.
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 11, 2018 19:58:23 GMT -5
¨complicated lines of inquiry ¨ Ah, yes. Perhaps Trumpś SIL's cousin failed to pay a parking ticket 10 years ago........ Of course Mueller will not voluntarily end the witch hunt, though he may well come to wish he had never signed on for it. We do not yet know if Sessions is the man he claims to be and, if so, will restore the rule of law to DOJ. Not sure, but there is strong potential for a very serious reaction from the America outside the leftist bubble if Mueller tries to destroy a Presidency via the usual special prosecutor tactic of trivial perjury entrapment. a coup failure can become very ugly, and I wonder if Mueller is really comfortable fronting for Comey/Clapper/Brennan/Obama et al. No person with intelligence and any integrity at all would be................ Dems to take control of Congress? Maybe---anything is possible but right now I would say ~10-1 no. More likely that we will see some return of justice to DOJ and dems---particularly those in & close to Obama admin are going to be very very embarrassed, if not incarcerated, for their blatant defiance of the law & the Constitution. What we do not hear in media is often more significant than what we do hear. These days we no longer hear the daily media drumbeat of Russia, Russia, Russia. ( I don't watch it but I am told SNL is even laughing at it). we hear little from Obama & his minions. Debbie Wasserman? Bill Clinton? Adam Schiff seems to have gone quiet too, among others. A prelude to a victory lap? I think not. OTOH media has ignored that Sessions tells of assigning a non-DC prosecutor to look at FISA Ct. crimes. And credible reports that FBI has convened a G Jury re: Clinton Foundation. without leaks. But hell, OB dream on re: stuttering Nancy coming back to power. What an amusing treat that would be. Meantime the Trump Presidency continues making America Great Again---for Americans. LOL, this is desperation, isn't it jon? "Failed to pay a parking ticket"? You miss the part about money-laundering millions? SNL is laughing at Russia in the sense that they're laughing about Trump's obvious subservience to Putin, and insistence on denying Russian interference in our election. No one is laughing at Mueller. Of course, you admit you don't watch, so we can excuse your ignorance. But the rest of your post shows you are becoming more ignorant as you've limited your sources of information. Obama has said almost nothing since he left office; that's not new. Wasserman-Schultz issued a statement when Mueller issued his Russia indictments ( link), but given that she's not on any relevant committee you wouldn't expect her to comment much. Schiff has commented almost daily on this; I have no idea why you think otherwise, except for your deficient news sources. Hey, when you gonna discuss Florida's new gun laws?
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 12, 2018 10:01:29 GMT -5
"Jewish groups and U.S. lawmakers condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that the 2016 U.S. presidential election may have been manipulated by Russian Jews. Putin’s remarks came during a long and occasionally surreal interview with NBC News on Saturday, in which he speculated that nearly anyone other than the Russian government could have been behind a program to disrupt the election. U.S. intelligence agencies believe Putin ordered the effort to undermine faith in the U.S. election and help elect Donald Trump as president. ' Maybe they’re not even Russians,' Putin told Megyn Kelly, referring to who might have been behind the election interference. 'Maybe they’re Ukrainian, Tatars, Jews — just with Russian citizenship.'” link
See that distinction between being "Russian" and having "Russian citizenship"? That's the Ethno-Nationalist distinction we see in most of today's so-called "populist" movements, whether the Alternative for Germany, Five-Star Movement in Italy, Fidesz in Hungary, Law and Justice in Poland, the National Front of France, UK Independence Party, or the Trump faction of the GOP: there's an in-group of "real" Germans, Italians, Hungarians, Poles, Frenchmen, Englishmen, or Americans, and then "outsiders" who only live here or carry our citizenship, but really aren't German, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, French, English, or American. In this country, the in-group is white and Christian; everyone else is merely tolerated (oh, and "white" has a moveable definition, which may or may not include southern or eastern European groups). Putin's comment reflects the long history of European, and especially Russian, anti-Semitism. It's remarkable to me that a small but influential faction of the US Jewish community has aligned with the Trumpists, given his penchant for aligning himself with Putin and the "populists" across Europe, as if they've forgotten the anti-Semitism almost always found among such movements. Of course, there were some Jews who actively supported Hitler in the 1930s, too, but that didn't save them when the Holocaust came. But you'd think they'd have learned by now.
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 13, 2018 9:15:48 GMT -5
You cannot make this up: see the juxtaposition of two headlines on the WP front page right now: Republicans on House panel, excluding Democrats’ input, say there’s no evidence of Russia collusionHouse Intelligence Committee Republicans say they have found no evidence that President Trump and his affiliates colluded with Russian officials to sway the 2016 election or that the Kremlin sought to help him, a conclusion at odds with Democrats’ takeaways from the congressional panel’s year-long probe and the apparent trajectory of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation...Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.), who oversees the committee’s Russia probe, announced on Monday. It will probably be weeks before the document is made public. “We’ve found no evidence of collusion,” Conaway told reporters Monday. He noted that the worst the panel uncovered was “perhaps some bad judgment, inappropriate meetings, inappropriate judgment at taking meetings” — such as a June 2016 gathering at Trump Tower in New York City between members of the Trump campaign and a Russian lawyer. Conaway said that meeting “shouldn’t have happened, no doubt about that. “But only Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn or someone else like that could take this series of inadvertent contacts with each other, meetings, whatever, and weave that into some sort of a fiction, page-turner spy thriller,” Conaway said. “We’re not dealing in fiction, we’re dealing in facts, and we found no evidence of any collusion.” linkRoger Stone claimed contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2016, according to two associates
In the spring of 2016, longtime political operative Roger Stone had a phone conversation that would later seem prophetic, according to the person on the other end of the line. Stone, an informal adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump, said he had learned from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that his organization had obtained emails that would torment senior Democrats such as John Podesta, then campaign chairman for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The conversation occurred before it was publicly known that hackers had obtained the emails of Podesta and of the Democratic National Committee, documents that WikiLeaks released in late July and October. The U.S. intelligence community later concluded the hackers were working for Russia...Potential contacts with WikiLeaks have been probed by federal investigators examining whether allies of President Trump coordinated with Russians seeking to tilt the 2016 race. linkHouse Republicans continue to play Trump's Toadies. Of course, if the Democrats win a House majority this year we can expect Chairman Schiff to re-open the investigation in January. Bank on it.
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 13, 2018 9:22:28 GMT -5
Catherine Rampell: "Don't blame us!" So allow me to chime in instead. I can’t speak for Ukrainians or Tatars. But as a Jew, I find Putin’s attempt to implicate my people to be disgusting, offensive, obviously false. Because let’s be frank: If Jews had rigged the election, it would have had a way different outcome...And can you blame us? Trump has clearly been Bad For The Jews...throughout the campaign and subsequent presidency, Trump has given American Jewry more significant reasons to be fearful for its place in this country. Trump has regularly played footsie with white supremacists. There was the tweet showing a Star of David (sorry, I mean “sheriff’s star”) superimposed on an image of Hillary Clinton and $100 bills. Also his hesitation to denounce an endorsement from white supremacist David Duke. Also his closing Elders of Zion-style election ad, featuring famous Jews such as George Soros and Janet Yellen alongside dark narration about a “global power structure” that has “robbed our working class.” That dog whistle, invoking centuries-old conspiracy theories about a shadowy international Jewish cabal, was quite audible to human ears. And who could forget Trump’s reluctance to condemn the tiki-torch-bearing, “Jews will not replace us”-chanting neo-Nazis in Charlottesville? Instead, Trump declared, there were “very fine people” among the attendees of the far-right rally, which ended with the killing of a peaceful protester. The incident nearly cost him his National Economic Council director, Gary Cohn. When last week Cohn finally did resign — in response to Trump’s bigoted comments toward aluminum, not Jews — Trump referred to Cohn as a “globalist.” For those unfamiliar, the term (like the triple-parentheses “echo”) is often used in far-right corners of the Internet as a euphemism for “Jewish.”... Such rhetoric has consequences. Here in America, the number of anti-Semitic incidents has been rising. From 2016 to 2017 they spiked 57 percent, the largest single-year increase on record and the second highest number reported since the Anti-Defamation League began keeping track in 1979. Schools and cemeteries have been among the prime targets. As have journalists; in fact as I type this, I’m mentally preparing myself for the torrent of anti-Semitic abuse that likely awaits. I don’t often talk publicly about my religion, but when I do, I usually confront a digital parade of Pepe the frogs, ethnic slurs and gas-chamber memes.
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Post by goldenbucky on Mar 13, 2018 12:47:44 GMT -5
You cannot make this up: see the juxtaposition of two headlines on the WP front page right now: Republicans on House panel, excluding Democrats’ input, say there’s no evidence of Russia collusion I think they kind of showed their hand with that stupid Nunes memo fiasco. Launching futile investigations (regardless of guilt or innocence) appears to be the calling card of this sorry lot. I look forward to reading the committee's minority report which will be like the trailer for the Mueller movie coming soon.
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 13, 2018 13:12:04 GMT -5
I look forward to reading the committee's minority report which will be like the trailer for the Mueller movie coming soon. Great simile, gb!
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 14, 2018 15:23:16 GMT -5
"There's one finding in particular from House Republicans' just-closed Russia inquiry that has critics and legal experts openly questioning the entire investigation's credibility: In their 150-page report, Republicans said they could find no conclusive evidence that Russia interfered in the presidential campaign to help Donald Trump win. That's despite the CIA declaring more than a year ago that Russia actively tried to help him...So it's notable that the House Intelligence Committee's GOP report just took another credibility hit, this time from within the party's ranks. A key Republican sided with the CIA on Tuesday about Russia's intentions for Trump. In a statement, Rep. Trey Gowdy (S.C.) said it was 'clear based on the evidence' that Russia wanted Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to lose. Russia wanting Clinton to lose is the same thing as wanting Trump to win, a Gowdy aide clarified." linkLOL, even BEN-GHA-ZEE Trey can't stomach this whitewash. And Gowdy's apostasy is important because "Gowdy is the only Republican who read the classified surveillance from the CIA on Russia and Trump...As House Republicans were writing a memo alleging FBI bias when the bureau got a warrant to spy on former Trump campaign official Carter Page, it was Gowdy who read the secret warrant put together by the FBI. That means Gowdy had access to intelligence material that no other Republican on the committee did, and thus, ostensibly, has more insight into that intelligence." With Gowdy refusing to back this ludicrous claim, others are backing off, too, including the guy who lead the writing of the report: The lead of the Russia investigation, Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.), told reporters Tuesday that 'it's clear [Russians] were trying to hurt Hillary,' and that 'everybody gets to make up their own mind whether they were trying to hurt Hillary, help Trump. It's kind of glass half full, glass half empty.'” Yeah, meaning Putin was trying to hurt Hillary by helping Trump, just as we've been hearing for more than a year now.
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 14, 2018 15:59:01 GMT -5
Dana Milbank explains how Tillerson's firing fits into the Trump-Russia story: On Tuesday, it was Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s turn to be purged...It’s already legal for Trump to purge from his government anybody who has the temerity to display independent thought. And Tillerson did that, differing with Trump over the Paris climate accord, neo-Nazis in Charlottesville and dealing with Qatar, Venezuela, Afghanistan and Iran. Tillerson, who never exactly denied that he had called Trump a “moron,” drew a public rebuke from Trump for “trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man” Kim Jong Un...Their most consequential disagreement was surely about Russia. Tillerson was reportedly stunned that Trump took Putin’s denials of election meddling at face value (“when he tells me that, he means it”). A common thread among Trump’s purge victims: discomfort with his abiding affection for Vladimir Putin. It’s probably no mere coincidence that Tillerson’s last significant action before his firing was to issue a statement calling Russia “an irresponsible force of instability in the world, acting with open disregard for the sovereignty of other states.” Tillerson concurred with Britain’s assessment of a nerve-agent attack, telling reporters the attack on British soil “clearly came from Russia.” The White House had avoided blaming Russia, asserting Britain was still “working through . . . some of the details.” The Trump White House similarly shied from criticizing Putin for saying, in an interview broadcast over the weekend, that the election interference may have been done by “Jews” who have Russian citizenship but “are not even Russians.” Likewise, the Trump administration has resisted imposing sanctions on Russia or spending money designated for countering Russia’s election interference. Each baffling capitulation to Putin revives the long-standing question: Does Russia have some leverage over Trump? Tillerson’s designated successor, Mike Pompeo, won’t give Trump such grief. The CIA director auditioned for the new job on “Fox News Sunday,” saying “the Russians attempted to interfere” in the election, but this was part of a “long history” of such things also done by “other actors.” Pompeo assured viewers that “there’s not been a single indication” Russia succeeded. Ignore that guy who just called Russia “an irresponsible force of instability in the world.” He doesn’t work here anymore. Russia is harmless. Putin is benign.
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 15, 2018 13:10:10 GMT -5
"The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has subpoenaed the Trump Organization to turn over documents, including some related to Russia, according to two people briefed on the matter. The order is the first known time that the special counsel demanded documents directly related to President Trump’s businesses, bringing the investigation closer to the president...The subpoena is the latest indication that the investigation, which Mr. Trump’s lawyers once regularly assured him would be completed by now, will drag on for at least several more months. Word of the subpoena comes as Mr. Mueller appears to be broadening his investigation to examine the role foreign money may have played in funding Mr. Trump’s political activities. In recent weeks, Mr. Mueller’s investigators have questioned witnesses, including an adviser to the United Arab Emirates, about the flow of Emirati money into the United States." linkFollow the money!
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 16, 2018 22:20:32 GMT -5
"Attorney General Jeff Sessions late Friday night fired former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a little more than 24 hours before McCabe was set to retire. Sessions announced the decision in a statement just before 10 p.m., noting that both the Justice Department Inspector General and the FBI office that handles discipline had found 'that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions.' "He said based on those findings and the recommendation of the department’s senior career official, 'I have terminated the employment of Andrew McCabe effective immediately.' The move will likely cost McCabe a significant portion of his retirement benefits, though it is possible he could bring a legal challenge. McCabe has been fighting vigorously to keep his job, and on Thursday, he spent nearly four hours inside the Justice Department pleading his case." linkEveryone knows this was engineered by the WH as part of a campaign to discredit the investigation into Trump's ties to Russia. After 20 years as a fast-rising star in the FBI this is the shabby treatment he gets. Well, he's already been giving interviews, and likely will more than make up for any lost pension money with book royalties and speaking fees. But it's a dispiriting message to anyone in or thinking of joining the Civil Service, certainly while this bunch of dangerous clowns is in place.
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 16, 2018 22:56:42 GMT -5
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Post by badgerjon66 on Mar 16, 2018 23:12:41 GMT -5
It may be a tad ¨dispiriting¨ to other corrupt political hacks in the swamp. But I expect thousands of honest FBI employees are very happy to see a return of at least some justice to DOJ. Maybe the coup is not working out quite like the elitists expected?
Now let's see some prosecution of McCabe, Comey, Ohr, and many others who have tried to overthrow our legitimate government.
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 16, 2018 23:20:10 GMT -5
It may be a tad ¨dispiriting¨ to other corrupt political hacks in the swamp. But I expect thousands of honest FBI employees are very happy to see a return of at least some justice to DOJ. Maybe the coup is not working out quite like the elitists expected? Now let's see some prosecution of McCabe, Comey, Ohr, and many others who have tried to overthrow our legitimate government. Quit watching Fox, lol! Let's see why Trump actually wanted McCabe fired: To deter future leaks - Trump has railed against leaks to the media but has had little success stopping them. Firing McCabe could be a scare tactic to deter others from talking to reporters. [McCabe's "crime" was allowing two agents to answer Wall Street Journal reporters' questions.] To chill critics in law enforcement - It is far from clear that McCabe exhibited anti-Trump bias in his work at the FBI...However unfair Trump's attack on McCabe might be, firing McCabe could be a warning to others that if the president thinks you are his enemy, he might come after you. To show power over Sessions - Sessions's firing of McCabe could be a sign that the president's bullying has worked, to some degree, and made Sessions more likely to do Trump's bidding. To tarnish the special counsel's Russia investigation - McCabe was acting director of the FBI during the first few months of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election — a period in which Mueller removed FBI agent Peter Strzok from the case for bashing Trump in text messages to a bureau attorney with whom he was having an extramarital affair...the Office of Professional Responsibility's recommendation to fire McCabe is based on his alleged role in a leak related to the Clinton email investigation, not anything to do with the Russia probe. But with a little muddying of the waters, McCabe's firing could be used to further impugn the integrity of the special counsel's work. [DING! DING! DING! We have a winner here, jon!] To look like a champion of the working class - During an appearance on “Fox & Friends” on Thursday, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway said that Trump, in Missouri a day earlier, had met “a tearful cafeteria worker ... saying thank you for my tax cut. Host Ainsley Earhardt then drew a line to McCabe: “He gets to live on a pension that that hard-working lady has to pay for, for the rest of his life? It's just — it doesn't seem fair." [Never mind the looting of the Treasury by Trump appointees at HUD, EPA, Interior, HHS, etc., nor the $1.5 trillion in new debt our kids will be paying for thanks to that tax cut, lol.] link
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 17, 2018 13:37:54 GMT -5
"As the upstart voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica prepared to wade into the 2014 American midterm elections, it had a problem. The firm had secured a $15 million investment from Robert Mercer, the wealthy Republican donor, and wooed his political adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, with the promise of tools that could identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behavior. But it did not have the data to make its new products work. "So the firm harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission, according to former Cambridge employees, associates and documents, making it one of the largest data leaks in the social network’s history. The breach allowed the company to exploit the private social media activity of a huge swath of the American electorate, developing techniques that underpinned its work on President Trump’s campaign in 2016. An examination by The New York Times and The Observer of London reveals how Cambridge Analytica’s drive to bring to market a potentially powerful new weapon put the firm — and wealthy conservative investors seeking to reshape politics — under scrutiny from investigators and lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic... "Interviews with a half-dozen former employees and contractors, and a review of the firm’s emails and documents, have revealed that Cambridge not only relied on the private Facebook data but still possesses most or all of the trove. Cambridge paid to acquire the personal information through an outside researcher who, Facebook says, claimed to be collecting it for academic purposes. "During a week of inquiries from The Times, Facebook downplayed the scope of the leak and questioned whether any of the data still remained out of its control. But on Friday, the company posted a statement expressing alarm and promising to take action. 'This was a scam — and a fraud,' Paul Grewal, a vice president and deputy general counsel at the social network, said in a statement to The Times earlier on Friday. He added that the company was suspending Cambridge Analytica, Mr. Wylie and the researcher, Aleksandr Kogan, a Russian-American academic, from Facebook." linkSo here in a nutshell we have the whole panoply of Trump-Russian criminality: *the Trump campaign *Steve Bannon *fraudulent acquisition of personal information *and, naturally, a Russian agent.
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 17, 2018 14:14:34 GMT -5
As I predicted: "President Trump’s lawyer called on the Justice Department to immediately shut down the special counsel probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, in the wake of the firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Attorney John Dowd said in a statement that the investigation, now led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, was fatally flawed early on and “corrupted” by political bias. He called on Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees that probe, to shut it down. 'I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier,' Dowd said in an emailed statement." link
Of course this was why McCabe was fired, why Comey was fired, and why Trump has spent more than a year attacking the US national security agencies. It confirms what anyone with a working brain cell has known all along: Trump is guilty of criminal activity and wants it covered up, or at least wants to so muddy the waters that he can convince most of his most stupid supporters that black is white. It's long been known that the Trump Organization is basically a criminal enterprise little different from The Mob, and so it's no surprise to see Trump acting like a latter-day Carlo Gambino. There are some flaws in his strategy, of course. If Rothenstein were to close down the investigation at this point it would create a constitutional crisis worse than that surrounding Nixon. Politically, it would boost Democratic turnout in November, virtually ensuring a Dem House (and possibly Senate) and the reopening of the investigation outside the DOJ's oversight. And then there's this: "Former FBI official Andrew McCabe memorialized his interactions with President Trump in contemporaneous memos, a person familiar with the case said, and they could become a key piece of evidence in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe. Mueller has been investigating, among other things, whether Trump obstructed justice in his interactions with top law enforcement officials, including McCabe and his former boss, FBI Director James B. Comey. Comey also kept memos documenting his interactions with Trump, which Mueller already was reviewing. The memos could help bolster McCabe’s credibility, insulating him from allegations that he misstated or misremembered his interactions with Trump. In January, The Washington Post reported that Trump, during an Oval Office meeting in May, had asked McCabe who he voted for in the 2016 election, then vented about hundreds of thousands of dollars in political donations that McCabe’s wife had received...Mueller has shown interest in McCabe’s interactions with the president, though Comey’s might more squarely fit into a possible obstruction of justice case. Comey alleges the president asked him for a pledge of loyalty, and asked if he could let go an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn has since pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI as a part of Mueller’s ongoing investigation." link
Trump apparently still doesn't understand that seasoned bureaucrats do not work the way he does. They don't shoot from the hip, make promises of action, and then forget about it all once they leave the room. They keep records. Lots of records. Records of everything. It's been that way since the Egyptians invented bureaucracy more than 5,000 years ago. And that's especially true of bureaucrats in the national security agencies. It's unfathomable that Trump would fail to understand that ,collectively, the 17 or so agencies that make up the national security community likely know more about him than he knows about himself. If he closes down the Mueller probe, the leaks that have so frustrated him are likely to turn into a flood. I have heard from former members of these agencies who still have good contacts that many people working in them are prepared to take Trump down precisely that way. Of course, crooks often are both arrogant and stupid; the Greeks would have said he suffers from hubris. We all know how that ends.
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 17, 2018 14:26:44 GMT -5
Life imitates my post: Former CIA Director John Brennan responded Saturday to President Donald Trump's tweet about the firing of former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe: "When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America...America will triumph over you." link
You think Brennan's reference to "the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption" was just a guess? The guy is the former Director of the FBI. You think he hasn't discussed this with people who know what the FBI and its cousins have on Trump?
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 17, 2018 14:49:02 GMT -5
McCabe isn't going to go quietly:
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