FTR, that was my guess BEFORE I clicked on your link, shift ~

Sooz

This is a bomb if it's accurate.

Better if it was Pence, though.

I have never heard that man say a single word.

Not one.

Now that's just spooky.

Truer words were never spoken ...

Forget Fake, This News Is Certifiably Insane

So this silly bitch Jim Comey starts investigating Hillary Clinton for her shitty handling of emails back in summer 2016. Just before the election rolls into town, he decides to send a letter to Congress saying, "Oh shit, son, we got a pantload of new emails to look at!" Then three days before the election, he shrugs that shit off with "Eh, we just found some cat GIFs and pics of Anthony Weiner's dick, which is sad but not illegal." But it doesn't matter -- everyone thinks Hillary Clinton is the Baba Yaga of emails at this point. Trump wins the election.

Word spreads pretty quick that Trump may have some ties to Russia, whom we now suspect meddled in the election worse than Scooby and the gang meddled in the day-to-day business affairs of your average haunted amusement park. And by "some ties," I mean everyone Trump has appointed, worked with, met, or looked at is probably a sleeper Russian agent who, when given the signal, will together form Mecha-Putin. So Comey heads up an investigation into the Trump/Russia ties, and along the way Sally Yates gets fired, and so does Preet Bharara -- both of whom are looking into Team Trump's connections to Russia. Well ain't that a bitch?

Then in comes Trump out of the blue with the firing of Comey, claiming it was because of how he dealt with the emails months previously -- something which Trump publicly praised Comey for at the time.



What in the merciful fuck is going on? Trump fired the guy investigating Russia's interference with the election (which Trump won). And Trump gets to pick the replacement FBI director, who will take over the investigation. Trump firing Comey is like you shitting on your neighbor's lawn, then having the ability to kick them out of their house for complaining you shit on their lawn. In fact, it's like being able to fire the detective investigating your mass shitting spree across the entire country. Who the hell is OK with this? Sure, Comey seems as competent as a one-armed man in a clapping competition, but could there be any more suspect timing for canning him? Just days before, he asked for more funding for the investigation into Russia's meddling in the election. Even villains in Disney movies would call this a little too on the nose.

This story gets more and more ludicrous with each passing detail. If you pitched this as a political thriller to Hollywood executives, they'd usher you out of the building before you hit paragraph four of your synopsis, because it's dumb as shit and, by extension, so are you.

Look at the details here. Jeff Sessions ...



... had to recuse himself from any potential Russia investigation because of his own dealings with Russians. He's the one who recommended that the president fire Comey. The guy who's supposed to not be involved in the Russia investigation helped fire the head of the Russia investigation.

Rex Tillerson, also up to his old man balls in vodka and suspicious business dealings, met with Russian Minister Sergey Lavrov along with Trump the very next day at the White House, and Lavrov blatantly joked about Comey being fired. He then proceeded to have a private meeting which only Russian media was permitted to attend. In the fucking White House. The American one.

Everyone -- all the intelligence agencies, and from the look of things, Congress too -- is on board with the idea that Russia tried to influence the 2016 election. They might have just tried to do the same thing in France, too. Trump, meanwhile, continually calls the Russia investigation shit like "fake" and a waste of time. Sarah Huckabee Sanders went on TV after Comey was fired and said it's time to leave the investigation behind us. But it's ongoing, you unbelievable mind slug! The FBI issued subpoenas for General Flynn's business associates the same day Comey was fired. This is a real thing. There's real evidence.

You don't even have to lean left to see that this is a thing. No one, right now, is saying Trump is personally involved. It's heavily inferred, sure, but there's no evidence yet. But there sure as shit is evidence that people around him are involved, despite the dumb shit Kellyanne Conway told Anderson Cooper that made him roll his eyes so hard that the inside of his skull must have gotten a friction burn.



People in the administration, people with ties to the White House, have clearly been involved in shady ways with the Russian government. Embrace that shit. Deal with it. No one likes it, but it's not like a kid on the schoolyard telling everyone you shit your pants when it didn't really happen. This shit really happened. And it's spiraling out of control in the most unbelievable way, made all the more unbelievable by the fact that every time someone hits political rock bottom, they pull out a goddamn shovel and dig just a little bit deeper, while the sane people in the world keep shaking their heads and hoping an adult shows up soon to make this all better. Well hold on to your butts, because there are no adults left in this fucking building.

If you need the perfect image of just how fucking bull-goose loony this is, how utterly baffling and beyond surreal, you have but to look at Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Sean "Are You Fucking Kidding?" Spicer dealt with this situation by hiding in some goddamn shrubs like he was a bush pig trying to lay low while a coyote ran past. There he stayed until reporters turned their lights and cameras off so he could venture out like a timid little chipmunk eager to eat your peanut but fearful of your heady man-stench. This is the White House press secretary, who required the cover of darkness and the safety of woodlands to address a pressing issue. Can you imagine what would happen if we ever went to war with North Korea? You'll have to dig to the bottom of a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit to find Spicer, sitting in a tepid pool of urine and cheese with a snorkel on.

Not crazy enough for you? No worries, CBS news caught up with Vladimir Putin himself, in full hockey gear, at a hockey game, and asked his thoughts on Comey being fired. Putin offered an empty bag of shits to give about this, and explained Trump was following the Constitution and the law and fuck that, let's play hockey!



This madness is a daily occurrence now. How is no one with any degree of authority not sick of this shit yet? How can this be the longest presidency in the history of time after barely 100 days? If this was a Twilight Zone episode, you'd skip to the next one because it's too long, too stupid, and too frustrating to make whatever hamfisted point it was trying to make. You'd also yell at the screen and call all the characters stupid the whole time. But this shit isn't The Twilight Zone or a bad movie script or a terrible novel. This is the bullshit dragging everyone down, every day, on every side of the aisle, and I have $5 that say it gets a whole lot worse -- and, more specifically, stupider -- before it gets better.

Live links at source ...

http://www.cracked.com/blog/what-hell-g ... y-20170517

"hold on to your butts, because there are no adults left in this fucking building..."

And THAT is the real problem America faces right now.

What man, Sid? ~ Pence? ~ just another one who spews "alternative facts" as he feels is necessary ~ and he only has 2 facial expressions: a kinda half-grin or a scowl ~

Sooz

Mueller is the perfect guy to dig down to what matters now ~ so of course the WH is looking for ways to "defang" him ~ ~ as I've posted a number of times, I trust Josh Marshall's political acumen and instincts ~ emphasis/bolding below is in the original ~ Sooz

TPM EDITOR'S BLOG
“Financial Crimes” And Why Trump is Right to Worry
By Josh Marshall Published May 21, 2017 4:52 pm

The main takeaway from Friday’s Washington Post story on Trump/Russia was that the investigation has now expanded to include a current White House official who is close to the President as a “significant person of interest.” That’s a big deal not least because the description (1. current White House official, 2. present during the campaign and 3. “close to the president”) matches up so closely with the President’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. But to me that wasn’t the most noteworthy revelation.

What jumped out to me was that the authors twice invoked investigators’ focus on “financial crimes.”

Here are the two passages.


And then later …


We know – and this article confirms – that Paul Manafort is a significant focus of the probe. Even apart from his political work in Ukraine, Manafort appears to have a series of real estate deals, loans, etc. that investigators are looking at. So perhaps it’s something as mundane as stumbling across some kind of crooked, small-bore real estate ventures Manafort participated in while examining his business ties to people in Ukraine.

But my hunch is that it’s a bit more than that.

As you’ve seen, what I’ve been focused on in recent months are a series of business ventures over the last couple decades – either involving President Trump or his close associates – which seemed to rely on capital from people from the former Soviet Union or recent emigres from those countries. Trump himself, Felix Sater, Michael Cohen and many others figure into this as well as Manafort, Trump’s children, the Kushners and still others. My interest of course is to understand the roots of Trump’s affinity with the post-Soviet oligarch world and whatever financial ties or dependence he has on it. But even if you take the Russia/Former Soviet Union connection with its geopolitical dynamics out of the equation, you simply can’t read over these deals and not see that Trump and his crew just play way out on the outer fringe of legality at best. At best. People who have done or subsequently did time in the US or other countries repeatedly appear in the picture. So do people from organized crime. A lot.

One thing you find looking through Trump’s history is that after his fall from financial grace a quarter century ago this pattern seemed to become part of the business model. Cut off from capital from the big banks and most people interested in not losing their money, he had to do business with people with decidedly sketchier reputations. Those people, often looking for places to park wealth in real estate, had to accept much higher levels of risk than people with clean reputations. Even apart from big bad acts and corrupt deals, look at the stuff David Fahrenthold dug up on the Trump Foundation and his Potemkin charitable giving. Beyond issues of possible illegality, the big takeaway is that Trump operates with a seemingly almost total disregard for rule-following or even a lot of elementary record keeping. So on top of substantively shady deals things are executed in really slapdash and hazard ways. In other words, the Trump Organization sounds a lot like the Trump White House. Only it’s a private company, surrounded by a moat of NDAs, all examined by little more than the thin scrutiny of the New York tabloids.

Here are just a couple examples of some color from the kinds of associations and business dealings I’m talking about: one and two.

A forensic accountant would obviously be able to make more sense of the details and, in an investigative context, have access to a vastly greater number of those details. But even with a basic investigative reporting background, you can’t work through even part of Trump’s business history without finding numerous ventures that look like they would not survive first contact with real prosecutorial scrutiny. A key element, perhaps the key element, of the counter-intelligence probe is examining the financial ties between Trump, members of his entourage and people from the Russian business and intelligence worlds. So a close examination of those ventures isn’t some fishing expedition. It’s at the heart of the investigation. A close look at what is available in public records, court filings and news reporting makes me think that that kind of scrutiny would not end well for any of the people involved.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/financial-crimes-and-why-trump-is-right-to-worry

So what are investigative reporters waiting for?

Takes a very long time to amass the info that makes sure every "i" is dotted and every "t" is crossed ~

Sooz

"Everyone -- all the intelligence agencies, and from the look of things, Congress too -- is on board with the idea that Russia tried to influence the 2016 election. They might have just tried to do the same thing in France, too. (NOTE: There's evidence Canadians were also involved ~ Sidartha) Trump, meanwhile, continually calls the Russia investigation shit like "fake" and a waste of time. Sarah Huckabee Sanders went on TV after Comey was fired and said it's time to leave the investigation behind us. But it's ongoing, you unbelievable mind slug! The FBI issued subpoenas for General Flynn's business associates the same day Comey was fired. This is a real thing. There's real evidence."

Their cover-up isn't going to be worse than their crimes. All of this is tantamount to high treason.

Kushner

Thanks, Sid ~ as I posted above about Kushner, "he's as dirty a player as his own father AND his father-in-law" ~

Sooz

No one can be both "in" and "out" at the same time ~ I'd be exceptionally surprised if Pence were not at least apprised of everything in real time ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

What Did The Vice President Not Know And When Did He Not Know It?


By Allegra Kirkland and Alice Ollstein Published May 22, 2017 6:00 am

As wave after wave of scandal has broken over the Trump administration, one man has stayed suspiciously dry—Vice President Mike Pence.

Pence and his allies have repeatedly asserted that was not in the loop, not informed, not present, or otherwise not implicated in the various controversies—everything from former national security adviser Mike Flynn’s unauthorized lobbying for Turkey and conversations with Russian officials to the decision to fire FBI Director James Comey.

An anonymous source close to the administration complained to NBC on Friday about a “pattern … vis a vis Pence, that he was never, either intentionally or unintentionally, made aware of the facts.”

“It has to be intentional,” the source said of Pence’s repeated exclusion.

But the narrative that Pence’s hands are clean strains credulity. In some cases, it is contradicted outright by reports and documents establishing that the Vice President was in fact involved in the key moments that have defined the first four months of the Trump administration.

Last to learn that Flynn talked sanctions with Kislyak

Pence’s debut as chief White House know-nothing arrived just a few weeks after Trump’s inauguration. During the transition, he publicly, fervently defended national security adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, saying they merely exchanged “Christmas wishes.”

“They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia,” Pence told CBS.

The Washington Post revealed on Feb. 9 that Flynn and Kislyak had, in fact, discussed loosening U.S. sanctions.

“I was disappointed to learn that … the facts that had been conveyed to me by Gen. Flynn were inaccurate,” Pence said in a news conference shortly after Flynn was dismissed for misleading him and other senior administration officials. “But we honor Gen. Flynn’s long service to the United States of America, and I fully support the President’s decision to ask for his resignation.”

As it turns out, the President and other White House insiders knew about the nature of those conversations long before the vice president did, but inexplicably chose to keep him in the dark.

Pence’s press secretary told NBC that he did not learn about the inappropriate communications until the day the Post story was published. Nor did he know about an urgent warning delivered by acting Attorney General Sally Yates that Flynn was “compromised with respect to the Russians” and was lying to the administration.

Trump and other unnamed senior officials learned 15 days earlier, on Jan. 26, hours after Yates first briefed White House Counsel Don McGahn about her concerns.

As Yates testified before the Senate, a core part of her concern was that “the Vice President was unknowingly making false statements to the public” and going on the record with statements about Flynn’s contacts with Russia “that we knew to be untrue.”

Never heard of this widely-reported Flynn Turkey lobbying business

One of the least plausible denials made by Pence is that he was completely unaware that Flynn was receiving a hefty paycheck as a lobbyist for Turkey while working for the Trump campaign.

A flurry of press reports about Flynn’s lobbying work for Inovo BV, a Dutch firm run by a Turkish businessman with close ties to Russia, first started appearing immediately after the November election. Pence, who was serving as chairman of the Trump transition team, was sent a letter on Nov. 18 by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, warning him about the potential conflicts of interest posed by Flynn’s lobbying.

“Flynn was receiving classified briefings during the presidential campaign while his consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group, Inc., was being paid to lobby the U.S. Government on behalf of a foreign government’s interests,” Cummings wrote.

“I’m not sure we saw the letter,” a source close to the administration told NBC on Thursday. The House Oversight Democrats answered by tweeting out the receipts proving this was false.

“Thank you very much for your letters,” the transition team’s office of legislative affairs wrote to Cummings, pledging to “carefully” review them, according to a copy of their email posted on Twitter.


Cummings alleged Friday that Pence was either lying about what he knew or “running a sloppy shop.”

In a March interview, after Flynn belatedly registered as a foreign agent for his Inovo lobbying, Pence told Fox News that the news reports on Flynn’s registration were “the first I’d heard of it.”

Kept out of loop as transition chief about Flynn probe tipoff

Pence stuck to this same line after The New York Times reported that Flynn informed the transition team in January that he was under federal investigation for his lobbying work for Turkey. Though Pence was the chairman of the transition team at the time, weighing in on key cabinet appointments and coordinating with the outgoing Obama administration, he apparently was not told the news.

Pence’s office issued a statement Thursday insisting that he “stands by his comments in March upon first hearing the news regarding General Flynn’s ties to Turkey and fully supports the president’s decision to ask for General Flynn’s resignation.”

Who knew what and when is still unclear.

The New York Times reported that Flynn briefed McGahn on the investigation on Jan. 4 and Flynn’s lawyers provided additional information to transition lawyers on Jan. 6. The White House called this account “flat wrong” in an anonymous statement 22 hours after the Times report appeared.

In the dark (or not) on Comey’s ouster

Additional questions remain about Pence’s role—or lack thereof—in the decision to fire FBI Director James Comey.

This week, amid a cascade of revelations and developments, the world learned that Trump asked Pence to leave the room before his fateful conversation with Comey in which he asked the FBI director to drop its investigation of Flynn.

After Trump fired Comey, Pence told CNN that the decision stemmed from a desire to “restore trust and confidence of the American people in the Federal Bureau of Investigation” and was based solely on “the recommendation of the Deputy Attorney General and the Attorney General.

It was not, Pence emphasized, motivated by Comey’s investigation into ties between the Trump administration and Russia.

“He is not under investigation and there is no evidence of collusion,” he said. “So that’s not what this is about.”

But even as Pence said this, he was apparently well aware Trump had long been mulling a plan to push Comey out. The New York Times reported on May 10, the same day as Pence’s statement, that Trump had been “venting his anger” about Comey to a small circle that included Pence. Pence and the others in that clique reportedly “all told him they generally backed dismissing Mr. Comey.”

Later that same week, Trump revealed in a TV interview that Comey’s firing was indeed related to the Russia investigation, completely undercutting Pence’s public insistence that it was not.

“In fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story,’” Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt.

On Friday, the New York Times published an account of the White House’s internal notes from that Oval Office meeting, in which Trump told the visiting Russian officials that he decided to fire Comey because “he was crazy, a real nut job.”

“I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off,” Trump said.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/what-did-the-vice-president-not-know-and-when-did-he-not-know-it

Kushner evokes uneasy sentiments in me even though I still haven't heard a word from him. Not a peep. What is he? A Dark Wizard? Wormtongue? Does he have a speech impediment? What gives?

Michael Flynn expected to invoke Fifth Amendment, source says

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/politics/michael-flynn-pleads-fifth/index.html

(CNN) President Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn won't provide records to the Senate intelligence committee and will invoke his Fifth Amendment rights in response to a subpoena from the committee, according to a source close to Flynn.

Flynn's refusal to cooperate comes as he faces scrutiny in several inquiries, including on Capitol Hill and a federal grand jury that has issued subpoenas to associates of the ex-national security adviser.

Flynn's refusal to cooperate will also intensify scrutiny over Trump's decision to hire him initially for the job and his decision to keep him on staff for 18 days after the President was warned by former acting Attorney General Sally Yates that Flynn may have been compromised by the Russians.

The Senate committee had asked Flynn earlier this month to produce all records over his communications with Russian officials by this Wednesday. But Flynn is expected to send a letter later Monday invoking his Fifth Amendment rights.

The source close to Flynn said it would be "highly imprudent for him not to exercise his Fifth Amendment rights" given that several members of Congress have called for his prosecution.
The Associated Press first reported Flynn's plans to invoke the Fifth Amendment.

Flynn's decision to decline the subpoena does not come as a surprise to Senate intelligence leaders, as Flynn's lawyer, Robert Kelner, also told the panel last month he would not provide documents in response to an April request.

Flynn was back in the news last week following the revelation that former FBI Director James Comey wrote in a memo that Trump had asked Comey in a meeting to end his investigation into the former national security adviser.

Flynn resigned from the Trump White House in February after it was revealed he'd misled White House officials over his conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, which included communication about sanctions.

Flynn previously sought immunity from the Senate committee in exchange for his testimony. Leaders of both the Senate and House panels, which are conducting separate investigations into Russia's election-year meddling, rejected that request.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump blasted aides to Hillary Clinton for taking the Fifth Amendment in relation to the investigation of her use of a private email server while secretary of state. He said at a September Iowa rally: "So there are five people taking the Fifth Amendment, like you see on the mob, right? You see the mob takes the Fifth. If you're innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?"

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/politics/michael-flynn-pleads-fifth/index.html

The Latest: Dems alarmed by report on Trump, intel bosses
The Latest on ongoing investigations into Russia's alleged interference with the U.S. election (all times local): 8:15 p.m. Democrats are expressing alarm at a report alleging that President Donald Trump asked two top intelligence officials to publicly deny collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign in the 2016 election.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, says The Washington Post's report that Trump tried to enlist the head of the National Security Agency and the national intelligence director to push the White House narrative is a "disturbing allegation" that Trump is interfering with the FBI probe.

Schiff says the officials involved should testify before Congress and lawmakers must request any memos documenting the conversations. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says the newspaper's report Monday is an indication that Trump is trying to impede the investigation.

5:55 p.m.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz says he will postpone a hearing scheduled for Wednesday after speaking with former FBI Director James Comey.

Chaffetz said in a tweet Monday that Comey "wants to speak with Special Counsel (Robert Mueller) prior to public testimony."

Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, has requested that the FBI turn over all documents and recordings that detail communications between Comey and President Donald Trump.

Chaffetz says he wants to determine whether the president attempted to influence or impede the FBI's investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Chaffetz had invited Comey to speak at Wednesday's hearing. The former FBI head has agreed to testify before the Senate intelligence committee after Memorial Day.

5:10 p.m.

The top two members of the Senate intelligence committee say they will "vigorously pursue" the testimony of President Donald Trump's first national security adviser, even though Michael Flynn has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina and Mark Warner of Virginia say they are disappointed that Flynn has decided to ignore the committee's subpoena. Earlier this month, the committee asked Flynn and other Trump associates for lists of meetings and notes taken during the presidential campaign.

The Senate intelligence committee is among the congressional panels investigating Russia's election meddling and possible ties with the Trump campaign. The FBI is also investigating.

5 p.m.

The top Democrat on a House oversight committee says documents he's reviewed suggest that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn lied to federal security clearance investigators about the source of payments Flynn received from a Russian state-sponsored television network.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland says Flynn told the investigators during an early 2016 security clearance review that a trip to Moscow was "funded by U.S. companies." Cummings says the actual source of the funds was "the Russian media propaganda arm, RT."

Cummings made the statements in a letter to Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the Utah Republican and chairman of the House oversight committee. Cummings' letter came the same day Flynn declined to provide documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing his Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination.

2:20 p.m.

Attorneys for Michael Flynn say that a daily "escalating public frenzy against him" and the Justice Department's appointment of a special counsel have created a legally dangerous environment for him to cooperate with a Senate investigation.

That's according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press that was written on behalf of the former national security adviser under President Donald Trump. The letter, sent Monday by Flynn's legal team to the Senate Intelligence committee, lays out the case for Flynn to invoke his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination and his decision not to produce documents in response to a congressional subpoena.

The letter says that the current context of the Senate's investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election threatens that "any testimony he provides could be used against him."

2 p.m.

A Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee says "we will get to the truth one way or another" even though former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is citing Fifth Amendment protections in the panel's investigation into Russia.

Sen. James Lankford tweeted that it is Flynn's right to invoke his constitutional right against self-incrimination as part of the probe into interference in the 2016 elections.

The Oklahoma lawmaker tweeted: "We need facts, not speculation & anonymous sources."

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Flynn's move was "unfortunate but not unexpected" and the committee would gain information in other ways.

A person with direct knowledge of the matter says Flynn is citing Fifth Amendment protections. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to publicly discuss private interactions.

9:30 a.m.

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn will invoke his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination on Monday as he notifies the Senate Intelligence committee that he will not comply with a subpoena seeking documents.

That's according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private interactions between Flynn and the committee.

Flynn's decision comes less than two weeks after the committee issued a subpoena for Flynn's documents as part of the panel's investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election.

Legal experts have said Flynn was unlikely to turn over the personal documents without immunity because he would be waiving some of his constitutional protections by doing so. Flynn has previously sought immunity from "unfair prosecution" to cooperate with the committee.

https://www.mail.com/int/news/world/521 ... ge-hero1-5

This is the bombshell report WaPo published late yesterday ~ this report certainly "outs" the DiC's ignorant assumption that he can do/say/ask/demand anything from others, whether legal/illegal or moral/immoral, with no reprisals ~ FTR, the interactive graphic, live-linked below, sets out all the layers of deceit ~ Sooz

Trump asked intelligence chiefs to push back against FBI collusion probe after Comey revealed its existence

[Video accessible via the end link.]

By Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima May 22 at 6:23 PM

President Trump asked two of the nation’s top intelligence officials in March to help him push back against an FBI investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and the Russian government, according to current and former officials.

Trump made separate appeals to the director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and to Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, urging them to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election.

Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the requests, which they both deemed to be inappropriate, according to two current and two former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private communications with the president.

Trump sought the assistance of Coats and Rogers after FBI Director James B. Comey told the House Intelligence Committee on March 20 that the FBI was investigating “the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”

Trump’s conversation with Rogers was documented contemporaneously in an internal memo written by a senior NSA official, according to the officials. It is unclear if a similar memo was prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to document Trump’s conversation with Coats. Officials said such memos could be made available to both the special counsel now overseeing the Russia investigation and congressional investigators, who might explore whether Trump sought to impede the FBI’s work.

[Interactive graphic, Team Trump's ties to Russian interests, accessible via end link.]

White House officials say Comey’s testimony about the scope of the FBI investigation upset Trump, who has dismissed the FBI and congressional investigations as a “witch hunt.” The president has repeatedly said there was no collusion.

Current and former senior intelligence officials viewed Trump’s requests as an attempt by the president to tarnish the credibility of the agency leading the Russia investigation.

A senior intelligence official said Trump’s goal was to “muddy the waters” about the scope of the FBI probe at a time when Democrats were ramping up their calls for the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel, a step announced last week.

Senior intelligence officials also saw the March requests as a threat to the independence of U.S. spy agencies, which are supposed to remain insulated from partisan issues.

“The problem wasn’t so much asking them to issue statements, it was asking them to issue false statements about an ongoing investigation,” a former senior intelligence official said of the request to Coats.

The NSA and Brian Hale, a spokesman for Coats, declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation.

[Video accessible via the end link.]

“The White House does not confirm or deny unsubstantiated claims based on illegal leaks from anonymous individuals,” a White House spokesman said. “The president will continue to focus on his agenda that he was elected to pursue by the American people.”

In addition to the requests to Coats and Rogers, senior White House officials sounded out top intelligence officials about the possibility of intervening directly with Comey to encourage the FBI to drop its probe of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, according to people familiar with the matter. The officials said the White House appeared uncertain about its power to influence the FBI.

“Can we ask him to shut down the investigation? Are you able to assist in this matter?” one official said of the line of questioning from the White House.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said the report is “yet another disturbing allegation that the President was interfering in the FBI probe.” Schiff said in a statement that Congress “will need to bring the relevant officials back to testify on these matters, and obtain any memoranda that reflect such conversations.”

The new revelations add to a growing body of evidence that Trump sought to co-opt and then undermine Comey before he fired him May 9. According to notes kept by Comey, Trump first asked for his loyalty at a dinner in January and then, at a meeting the next month, asked him to drop the probe into Flynn. Trump disputes those accounts.

Current and former officials said that Trump either lacks an understanding of the FBI’s role as an independent law enforcement agency or does not care about maintaining such boundaries.

Trump’s effort to use the director of national intelligence and the NSA director to dispute Comey’s statement and to say there was no evidence of collusion echoes President Richard Nixon’s “unsuccessful efforts to use the CIA to shut down the FBI’s investigation of the Watergate break-in on national security grounds,” said Jeffrey H. Smith, a former general counsel at the CIA. Smith called Trump’s actions “an appalling abuse of power.”

Trump made his appeal to Coats days after Comey’s testimony, according to officials.

That same week, Trump telephoned Rogers to make a similar appeal.

In his call with Rogers, Trump urged the NSA director to speak out publicly if there was no evidence of collusion, according to officials briefed on the exchange.

Rogers was taken aback but tried to respectfully explain why he could not do so, the officials said. For one thing, he could not comment on an ongoing investigation. Rogers added that he would not talk about classified matters in public.

While relations between Trump and Comey were strained by the Russia probe, ties between the president and the other intelligence chiefs, including Rogers, Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, appear to be less contentious, according to officials.

Rogers met with Trump in New York shortly after the election, and Trump’s advisers at the time held him out as the leading candidate to be the next director of national intelligence.

The Washington Post subsequently reported that President Barack Obama’s defense secretary and director of national intelligence had recommended that Rogers be removed as head of the NSA.

Ultimately, Trump decided to nominate Coats, rather than Rogers. Coats was sworn in just days before the president made his request.

In February, the Trump White House also sought to enlist senior members of the intelligence community and Congress to push back against suggestions that Trump associates were in frequent contact with Russian officials. But in that case, the White House effort was designed to refute news accounts, not the testimony of a sitting FBI director who was leading an open investigation.

Trump and his allies in Congress have similarly sought to deflect scrutiny over Russia by attempting to pit U.S. intelligence agencies against one another.

In December, Trump’s congressional allies falsely claimed that the FBI did not concur with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump win the White House. Comey and then-CIA Director John Brennan later said that the bureau and the agency were in full agreement on Moscow’s intentions.

As the director of national intelligence, Coats leads the vast U.S. intelligence community, which includes the FBI. But that does not mean he has full visibility into the FBI probe. Coats’s predecessor in the job, James R. Clapper Jr., recently acknowledged that Comey did not brief him on the scope of the Russia investigation. Similarly, it is unclear to what extent the FBI has brought Coats up to speed on the probe’s most sensitive findings.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-asked-intelligence-chiefs-to-push-back-against-fbi-collusion-probe-after-comey-revealed-its-existence/2017/05/22/394933bc-3f10-11e7-9869-bac8b446820a_story.html?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.b15c6f2d1fc3

The Obstruction of Justice Case Against the Trump White House Just Got a Lot Stronger

The Washington Post delivered yet another bombshell about the Russia investigation on Monday night, with Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima reporting that at some point before the May 9 firing of James Comey, senior White House officials “sounded out top intelligence officials about the possibility of intervening directly with Comey to encourage the FBI to drop its probe of Michael Flynn.” One official told the Post that the line of questioning from the White House amounted to, “Can we ask him to shut down the investigation? Are you able to assist in this matter?”

etc ...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... b07d40d40a

A quick over-view of Brennan's testimony today ~ Sooz

Shannon Vavra / 7 hrs ago
Former CIA director defends FBI investigation on Russia

Former CIA Director John Brennan told the House Intel Committee Tuesday he believes he was the first U.S. official to engage with Russia on the issue of interfering in the U.S. elections when he warned his Russian counterpart on August 4, 2016 that if Russia interfered in the U.S. elections it would "undermine constructive engagement even on matters of mutual interest" for Russia and the U.S. Brennan reported that his counterpart denied any interference and said he would relay Brennan's warning to Putin.

Who knew about Brennan's concerns on the Hill: Brennan also said he briefed the "full details" to Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, Dianne Feinstein, Richard Burr, Paul Ryan, Devin Nunes, Adam Schiff, and the Gang of Eight between August 11 and September 6 of last year.

Trump's disclosure to the Russian officials in the Oval violated two protocols if the reports are true; first that such classified information is not shared with visiting Ambassadors or foreign officials — it must go through established channels — and second that before sharing any classified intel, the originating agency must verify no sources or methods will be revealed.

On collusion with Russia: Brennan said when he left office January 20 this year he had "unresolved questions" in his mind about whether U.S. persons may have been unwittingly or wittingly helping Russia. He would not reveal if this was Trump, campaign aides to Trump, or just people associated with Trump.


On the Trump-Russia Steele dossier: "It wasn't part of the corpus of intel information we had…it was not used in any way as a basis." Why didn't the CIA use it? "Because we didn't."

On what Russia's doing right now: "I believe the Russians are trying to actively exploit what is going on in Washington right now to their benefit and to our detriment."

https://www.axios.com/fmr-cia-dir-brennan-warned-russians-to-not-interfere-in-elections-last-2419098269.html

Democrat on Federal Election Commission Wants to Investigate if Russia Illegally Paid for Pro-Trump Facebook Ads
Could Be Serious Criminal Violation of Law

There's no question Russia interfered in the U.S. election. And while there's no evidence they managed to change votes at the ballot box, a generally accepted theory is that through fake news and social media postings, Russian hackers changed minds, which resulted in changed votes at the ballot box.

"In one case last year," TIME reports, citing senior intelligence officials, "a Russian soldier based in Ukraine successfully infiltrated a U.S. social media group by pretending to be a 42-year-old American housewife and weighing in on political debates with specially tailored messages. In another case, officials say, Russia created a fake Facebook account to spread stories on political issues like refugee resettlement to targeted reporters they believed were susceptible to influence."

And now, Ellen Weintraub, one of two Democrats on the Federal Election Commission, wants the agency to investigate if Russia illegally paid for pro-Trump or anti-Clinton Facebook ads, according to a report out today in Politico. Doing so would be a criminal violation of law.

But there's a catch. Actually, several.

First, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) is effectively supposed to be comprised of three Republicans and three Democrats, and it takes four votes to pass anything. That includes a decision to investigate a major crime, as this could be. There's one open spot, so there are three Republicans and just two Democrats. (Sidenote: All five commissioners' terms have long expired and they are serving until they are replaced. Weintraub's term expired in 2007.)

“I think there is potential there for finding a violation, but I don’t want to suggest that I have prejudged anything that could potentially come before me,” Weintraub told Politico.

Weintraub apparently was tipped off by a report last week in TIME magazine, (the one with the illustration showing the White House turning into an iconic church in Moscow's Red Square,) that "revealed intelligence officials had evidence that Russian agents bought Facebook ads to disseminate election-themed stories," Politico notes. "It also indicated that congressional investigators were examining whether Russian efforts to spread such content were boosted by two U.S. companies with deep ties to Trump — Breitbart News and Cambridge Analytica."

At issue could be money spent on anti-Clinton or pro-Trump ads paid for by Russia, or "news" articles, perhaps from Russia's propaganda networks or elsewhere, promoted with Russian funds, that would help Trump win the White House. The latter might be harder to prove.

"One Republican campaign finance lawyer said that if it could be proven that Russia bought Facebook ads with the intent of boosting Trump, 'it would be a serious DOJ criminal issue, and not an FEC administrative issue,'" Politico reports.

"Foreign nationals are prohibited under the law from making expenditures to influence U.S. elections, and campaigns are barred from coordinating with outside entities," Raw Story explains.

The question now becomes, will the Republicans on the Commission eschew party politics and do the right thing for their country, and if so, will the FEC be able to investigate appropriately without any pushback or obstruction, say, from one White House resident in particular?

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.co ... tsmovement

IMO, it'll all fizzle out with rather little to show for all the media hype.

I don't think so. It's getting hotter by the minute.

i don't either. it has too much light on it, now.

If there wasn't a fire in the midst of all the smoke over the past few months - there is now.

I am referring to charges being filed, people being prosecuted and criminals going to jail. My apologies for the incomplete comment.