Comrade Trump

[frank ryan]

Welp, I guess this isn't Benghazi level stuff.

NBC: House Republicans are ready to end their Russia investigation
Senior Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee expect to wrap up their probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election in the coming weeks, according to NBC News.
"We're not a criminal investigation," said Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Fla.
The Republican heading the investigation, Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, declined to offer a timetable.

Senior Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee expect to wrap up their probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election in the coming weeks, NBC News reported Monday.

Conservative lawmakers on the panel told NBC they have completed most of the necessary interviews despite pleas from Democrats to investigate what they say are new leads.

"We're not a criminal investigation," Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Fla., told NBC News. "If I honestly thought that there was fire somewhere we have an obligation constitutionally to look further into, I would have no problem doing that. But when you don't and you've got to the point where you're getting into the fifth and sixth level of people coming in here, then you're spinning your wheels."

The Republican heading the investigation, Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, declined to offer a timetable.

"We're working hard to finish it. But I've got no timeline in mind," he told NBC.

A spokesperson for the committee did not respond to a CNBC request for comment.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., confirmed to The New York Times that he told California Democrat Jackie Speier, who is also on the committee, that the end of the year offered a "natural boundary" for the panel's work.

Democratic lawmakers on the committee have said there is more investigative work to do and have criticized what they've said are attempts to shut the probe down.

"I'm increasingly concerned that pressure from outside the building from the president, from Steve Bannon and their allies to shut us down is having its effect," said the committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California.

"All too often when we interview witnesses and they provide leads that we need to corroborate or that we need to investigate further, my colleagues won't allow those," Schiff told NBC News.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/18/hous...c-reports.html

[frank ryan]

Sounds like he took it very seriously.

FBI warned Trump in 2016 Russians would try to infiltrate his campaign

In the weeks after he became the Republican nominee on July 19, 2016, Donald Trump was warned that foreign adversaries, including Russia, would probably try to spy on and infiltrate his campaign, according to multiple government officials familiar with the matter.

The warning came in the form of a high-level counterintelligence briefing by senior FBI officials, the officials said. A similar briefing was given to Hillary Clinton, they added. They said the briefings, which are commonly provided to presidential nominees, were designed to educate the candidates and their top aides about potential threats from foreign spies.

The candidates were urged to alert the FBI about any suspicious overtures to their campaigns, the officials said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...mpaign-n830596

[Uncle Ted]

Sounds like he took it very seriously.

So did the Drumpf camp let the FBI look at their servers unlike the DNC/Clinton?

[creekster]

Sounds like he took it very seriously.

FBI warned Trump in 2016 Russians would try to infiltrate his campaign



https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...mpaign-n830596

SO Trump and Clinton got similar warnings, although as they are in the process of speculating in the article and calling it news, they also speculate that perhaps the FBI warning to Trump would not have been very specific because the FBI may have already been investigating and did not want its investigation compromised. SO they may not have told him as much as they told Clinton. Of course, between the two, the one who we know had information stolen, perhaps by the Russkies, was Clinton.

[frank ryan]

SO Trump and Clinton got similar warnings, although as they are in the process of speculating in the article and calling it news, they also speculate that perhaps the FBI warning to Trump would not have been very specific because the FBI may have already been investigating and did not want its investigation compromised. SO they may not have told him as much as they told Clinton. Of course, between the two, the one who we know had information stolen, perhaps by the Russkies, was Clinton.

WHY do you put random words in all CAPS?

[creekster]

WHY do you put random words in all CAPS?

Because I am not a good typist. I’m surprised you hadn’t noticed. In that post it’s only the word at the beginning of the sentence. I assume it’s because the caps button didn’t release before I hit the ‘o’ key. I hope this answers your question.

[Lost Student]

Because I am not a good typist. I’m surprised you hadn’t noticed. In that post it’s only the word at the beginning of the sentence. I assume it’s because the caps button didn’t release before I hit the ‘o’ key. I hope this answers your question.

You failed to mention that you capitalized "FBI."

[Uncle Ted]

We need a new thread: Comrade Stein

Senate intel committee investigating Jill Stein campaign for possible collusion with the Russians

The Senate Intelligence Committee is looking at the presidential campaign of the Green Party’s Jill Stein for potential “collusion with the Russians,” a sign that the panel’s probe is far from over, even as allegations swirl that the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation is racing to a close.
[...]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/power...=.0597fa2f823f

Who the hell is Jill Stein?

[frank ryan]

Well, this is disconcerting


House Republicans quietly investigate perceived corruption at DOJ, FBI
The group was born out of frustration over the Justice Department's refusal to explain how it used a disputed dossier.

A subset of the Republican members of the House intelligence committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes of California, has been quietly working parallel to the committee's high-profile inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. They haven't informed Democrats about their plans, but they have consulted with the House's general counsel.

The people familiar with Nunes' plans said the goal is to highlight what some committee Republicans see as corruption and conspiracy in the upper ranks of federal law enforcement. The group hopes to release a report early next year detailing their concerns about the DOJ and FBI, and they might seek congressional votes to declassify elements of their evidence.

That final product could ultimately be used by Republicans to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether any Trump aides colluded with Russia during the 2016 campaign — or possibly even to justify his dismissal, as some rank-and-file Republicans and Trump allies have demanded. (The president has said he is not currently considering firing Mueller.)

Republicans in the Nunes-led group suspect the FBI and DOJ have worked either to hurt Trump or aid his former campaign rival Hillary Clinton, a sense that has pervaded parts of the president’s inner circle. Trump has long called the investigations into whether Russia meddled in the 2016 election a “witch hunt,” and on Tuesday, his son Donald Trump Jr. told a crowd in Florida the probes were part of a “rigged system” by “people at the highest levels of government” who were working to hurt the president.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said he wasn't aware of the Nunes effort but said it fit with what he sees as an increasingly destructive bent in Republicans’ rhetoric and actions.

"I think what we are seeing in our committee ... is an effort to attack the Department of Justice, an effort to attack the FBI, to attack Bob Mueller, is an effort to undermine the investigations and these institutions out of fear of what they’ll find and try to discredit them in advance," he said. "It’s a pernicious thing to do that will ultimately inflict long-term damage on these institutions."

The Nunes-led group is the latest evidence of an increasingly toxic and bruising confrontation between Republicans on Capitol Hill and the highest ranks of the justice system. Some Hill Republicans are irate about the Justice Department's refusal to provide more details about its investigation of Trump associates' ties to Russia. They're also frothing over the FBI's handling of the Trump-Russia dossier, which GOP lawmakers have openly mocked as "discredited" and "disproven.”

In recent weeks, GOP lawmakers have berated top Justice Department officials and threatened to hold them in contempt of Congress, and a couple of rank-and-file members described ongoing investigations of Trump associates in startling terms — including as a potential "coup" attempt. On Wednesday, Fox News reported that Nunes intends to subpoena senior FBI agents connected to the dossier.

Earlier this week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) called for the FBI's deputy director, Andrew McCabe, to be replaced amid claims by Republicans of anti-Trump bias infecting the bureau. And Gowdy, the chairman of the House oversight committee, joined House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte on Tuesday to request interviews with senior FBI officials as early as Thursday — which some lawmakers say is the precursor to subpoenas.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/...doj-fbi-310121

[falafel]

Is the Washington Times a legit news source? Kinda reminds me of the "Las Vegas Tribune". Anyway, I thought this was interesting.

Christopher Steele, the former British spy who fueled an ongoing investigation into President Trump’s administration, was a lot more confident of his charges when he wrote his now-notorious 2016 dossier than he is today in defending it in a libel lawsuit.

While Mr. Steele stated matter-of-factly in his dossier that collusion between Mr. Trump and the Russian government took place, he called it only “possible” months later in court filings. While he confidently referred to “trusted” sources inside the Kremlin, in court he referred to the dossier’s “limited intelligence.”

Now that Mr. Steele must defend those charges in a London courtroom, his confidence level has shifted down several notches.

In court filings this year, Mr. Steele doesn’t sound as confident as his dossier.

He answered questions through his attorney in a libel complaint brought by a Russian entrepreneur, Aleksej Gubarev. Mr. Steele has accused Mr. Gubarev of being pressured by Russian’s FSB intelligence service to take part in hacking against the Democratic Party.

In one answer, Mr. Steele refers to the intelligence he gathered as “limited.” On the charge of collusion by Mr. Trump and his campaign advisers, he now says there was only “possible coordination.”

In another indication that Mr. Steele was no longer wholeheartedly vouching for his own findings, he said he told journalists that they may not quote his research. He “understood that the information provided might be used for the purpose of further research, but would not be published or attributed,” he said through his attorney.

Mr. Steele also acknowledged that his final December memo, the only one that dealt with Mr. Gubarev, contained information he never vetted.

“The contents of the December memorandum did not represent (and did not purport to represent) verified facts, but were raw intelligence which had identified a range of allegations that warranted investigation given their potential national security implications,” he wrote.

And this is somewhat telling:

Mr. Steele’s libel defense is not truth. He argues that he warned Fusion and reporters against making his memos public and never authorized their disclosure.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...ier-claims-ag/

[frank ryan]

Is the Washington Times a legit news source? Kinda reminds me of the "Las Vegas Tribune". Anyway, I thought this was interesting.







And this is somewhat telling:



https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...ier-claims-ag/

Washington Times is mediocre. It's not breitbart awful. It's owned by the Moonies and has a decidedly right bent. I wouldn't dismiss what they write out of hand.

FWIW Steele has always asserted the dossier was 70 to 80 percent accurate. A lot of the material has already been confirmed.

[Pelado]

Is the Washington Times a legit news source? Kinda reminds me of the "Las Vegas Tribune". Anyway, I thought this was interesting.







And this is somewhat telling:



https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...ier-claims-ag/

Legit news source? I'd say they are more of a right-wing opinion generator. Similar to National Review, but not as high-brow. But I think they may also have an actual daily printed newspaper.

[Moliere]

Well, this is disconcerting


House Republicans quietly investigate perceived corruption at DOJ, FBI
The group was born out of frustration over the Justice Department's refusal to explain how it used a disputed dossier.




https://www.politico.com/story/2017/...doj-fbi-310121

tl;dr


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Walter Sobchak]

tl;dr


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'll sum it up for you. The Clinton campaign and DNC both paid Fusion for opposition research, political gossip dressed up as “intelligence”. Fusion paid Steele, and Steele in turn paid Russians. What they produced was exactly what Clinton and the DNC ordered, slime and propaganda. The dossier feeds the hysteria of Dems like Frank who could care less than to give a second thought to its troubled provenance.

[frank ryan]

PUTIN’S MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE? REAL TRUMP RUSSIA SCANDAL IS NOT MERE COLLUSION, U.S. COUNTERSPIES SAY

Last May, a top White House national security official met in Washington with senior Russian officials and handed over details of a secret operation Israel had shared with its U.S. counterparts. The meeting shocked veteran U.S. counterspies. The American official was not arrested, and he continues to work in the White House today, albeit under close scrutiny.

That official, of course, was Donald Trump. The president’s Oval Office meeting with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and its then-ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak—which only Russian photographers were permitted to record—sparked a media brushfire that was quickly overtaken by more revelations of secret contacts between Trump associates and Kremlin agents. But the incident was not forgotten by American and Israeli security officials, or by longtime foreign intelligence allies of the U.S., who now wonder if the president can be trusted to protect their most guarded secrets.

For over a year, the question of collusion has driven various investigations into what’s become known as Russiagate. Special counsel Robert Mueller has been pursuing questions of whether Team Trump, which included the president’s son Donald Jr. and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, actively coordinated the Trump campaign with the Kremlin to hurt Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. That suspicion was bad enough, but now a far more grim consensus is developing in the topmost circles of the U.S. national security establishment: The president has become a pawn of America’s adversary, Russian President Vladimir Putin. It’s a nightmare scenario even the writers of House of Cards would have discarded as implausible.

Some veteran intelligence operators think it’s well past time to shift the narrative on Trump’s disturbing affinity for Putin, which the president insists is innocent and good for world peace. “Everyone continues to dance around a clear assessment of what’s going on,” says Glenn Carle, a former CIA national intelligence officer responsible for evaluating foreign threats. “My assessment,” he tells Newsweek, “is that Trump is actually working directly for the Russians.”

The Israelis can’t say they weren’t warned. In January 2017, a few weeks before Trump’s inauguration, top U.S. intelligence officials welcomed a delegation of their Israeli counterparts to Washington. The meeting proceeded uneventfully, according to veteran Israeli intelligence journalist Ronen Bergman, although the Americans vented their dismay over a president who had loudly disparaged their past work. “Just as their meeting was wrapping up,” according to Bergman and a later report in Vanity Fair, “an American spymaster solemnly announced there was one more thing: They believed that Putin had ‘leverages of pressure’ over Trump.” His advice: “Be careful.”

Five months later, the Israelis came to rue what they had shared with Trump’s new CIA director, former Republican Representative Mike Pompeo. They were astonished to read media reports that Trump had told the Russian foreign minister and ambassador about their top secret operation in Syria to penetrate a cell of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS). U.S. intelligence experts assumed the Russians had shared the information with their allies in Iran, Israel’s mortal enemy .

Clapper, now writing a book about his intelligence career, told Newsweek by email that “the Israelis were/are upset about it, since it proves once again we can’t be trusted to keep the secrets we share with them.”

Some of America’s closest intelligence allies were also upset by Trump’s leak, a top former national security official tells Newsweek, on the condition he not be identified when discussing such sensitive issues. “I hear the Brits are reluctant to share” intelligence on Russian subversion, he says, “not as much for security reasons as for political—they don’t wish to get crosswise with [Trump].”

Another analyst, Joseph Fitsanakis, co-editor of the Intel News blog, said relations between the U.K.’s spy chiefs and the Trump administration “are extremely tense.” During the 2016 campaign, he recalled, Trump riled London with an unsubstantiated claim that its version of the National Security Agency, the Government Communication Headquarters (better known as GCHQ), had eavesdropped on his communications. He refused to apologize.

Lower-level U.S. and foreign intelligence officials customarily find ways to deal with such high-level friction. But Trump’s repeated attacks on NATO have not only frustrated Washington’s closest allies but also raised questions as to whether the president has been duped into facilitating Putin’s long-range objective of undermining the European Union. “Some Western European colleagues are saying that sharing has been strictly limited to [counterterrorism] and some maritime [intelligence],” Fitsanakis says. “There's almost no sharing on Russia.

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-putin-...kremlin-755321