Secret CIA assessment says Russia intervened in election to help Trump win

anon_de_plume · Mar 9, 2017

M4MPetCock said: ↑

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/treason

"The Treason Clause applies only to disloyal acts committed during times of war. Acts of dis-loyalty during peacetime are not considered treasonous under the Constitution. Nor do acts of Espionage committed on behalf of an ally constitute treason. For example, julius and ethel rosenberg were convicted of espionage, in 1951, for helping the Soviet Union steal atomic secrets from the United States during World War II. The Rosenbergs were not tried for treason because the United States and the Soviet Union were allies during World War II."

http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/law/crime-and-law-enforcement/treason

Treason is the only crime defined in the Constitution, and basic to the treatment of this offense has been a mingling of values protective of government and of individuals. The crime of treason strikes at the foundations of the legal order and deals with the most serious threats to the existence of the state. Congress has reflected this judgment in prescribing penalties that may mount to death or life imprisonment. Where charges have fallen plainly within the bounds of the constitutional definition, judges have firmly applied the law. On the other hand, the limiting language of the Constitution (treason shall consist "only" in the two named forms of the offense), constitutional history, and the responses of judges bear witness to a restrictive approach in marking the outer boundaries of the crime. Thus the treason clause not only protects the security of the legal order but is functionally analogous to the Bill of Rights, protecting the civil liberties of individuals.

The restrictive dimension departs from the main directions of the statute and case law in England and in this country before 1789, which gave clear primacy to the security of government, often to serve the interests of those holding official power at a given time. Into the late eighteenth century, English political history was marked by aggressive resort to charges of treason as weapons of partisan conflict, with much vindictive prosecution and loose use of evidence. Security in the most elemental sense was at stake for the English colonies in North America under the threat of the French and Indian Wars, and in the new states torn through the Revolution by bitter divisions between those loyal to the Crown and those asserting independence. Thus the legislation of the colonies and of the new states in the Revolutionary years was studded with broad and sometimes vague definitions of subversion, in sharp contrast to the limited definition written into the national Constitution.

In the practice of Congress and in decisions of the courts, the constitutional definition of treason has never barred creation of other statutory offenses involving subversion of the legal order. Thus, United States v. Rosenberg, 195 F. 2d 583 (2d Cir. 1952) held that the defendants were validly convicted of conspiracy to violate the federal Espionage Act, 18 U.S.C. § 794 (1976) by communicating protected information to the USSR. However, established doctrine forbids Congress to enlarge beyond the constitutional definition the kinds of conduct that may be punished as treason, and assures the protection of the two-witness requirement where the charged conduct amounts to levy of war or adherence to enemies. Nonetheless, legislators might seek to punish it under another name. Loose use of the epithet treason amid the Cold War emotions of the 1950s showed that there was still potential power in the dread cry as a weapon of partisan or ideological combat. But the limits set by the constitutional definition have curbed resort to treason prosecutions to suppress or harass peaceful, legitimate political competition.
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Not so sure why you're stuck on treason, doesn't matter what you call it, if Trump colluded with any foreign power, that is a crime. I don't care what you call it, we need to find the truth, and the guilty need to be removed from power.

stumbler · Mar 9, 2017

stumbler said: ↑

Who is willing to take an actual test here and see if there is anything new to report. MSNBC had their little deadline clock on most of the day counting down the hours, minutes, and seconds to the next breaking news event And the only other things they have under it is a picture of Rachel Maddow and the words Russian Connection.

So here is your chance to test in all seriousness if Maddow has really uncovered anything new, or is just full of shit.

It would be an easy little reality check. And I will be watching too.

And those not willing to take the test but want to run their mouth about it need not apply
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Now I tried to warn you Trump supporters you should be watching Rachel Maddow tonight. But I'm sure you were too cowardly and blinded parrots to actually do it so I will recap for you.

First there was the recap of the report in Politco about ...

Authorities looked into Manafort protégé
An associate of an ex-Trump campaign chairman is suspected of connections to Russian intelligence.

U.S. and Ukrainian authorities have expressed interestin the activities of a Kiev-based operative with suspected ties to Russian intelligence who consulted regularly with Paul Manafort last year while Manafort was running Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

The operative, Konstantin Kilimnik, came under scrutiny from officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the State Department partly because of at least two trips he took to the U.S. during the presidential campaign, according to three international political operatives familiar with the agencies’ interest in Kilimnik.

Kilimnik, a joint Russian-Ukrainian citizen who trained in the Russian army as a linguist, told operativesin Kiev and Washington that he met with Manafort during an April trip to the United States. And, after a late summer trip to the U.S., Kilimnik suggested that he had played a role in gutting a proposed amendment to the Republican Party platform that would have staked out a more adversarial stance towards Russia, according to a Kiev operative.

The FBI declined to comment on Kilimnik, while the State Department did not respond to a request for comment. It’s unclear whether either agency launched any kind of official inquiry into Kilimnik, nor is it clear whether the interest from the U.S. authorities is ongoing.

The Ukrainian prosecutor general in August did launch a formal investigation into Kilimnik’s suspected ties to Russian intelligence, according to documents obtained by POLITICO. The prosecutor’s office subsequently told POLITICO that it has cleared Kilimnik, though the Ukrainian parliamentarian who requested the investigation questioned its thoroughness and suggested the agency was trying to avoid an investigation that could have had implications in the U.S. presidential race.

The revelations about the authorities' interest in Kilimnik come amid ongoing FBI and congressional investigations into Russia’s alleged meddling in the presidential race, as well as probes into ties between Russia and President Trump’s associates.

Trump, who has downplayed U.S. intelligence findings that Russia, in an effort to help his campaign, engineered cyberhacks of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, has blasted the investigations as a witch hunt. And on Saturday, Trump accused former President Barack Obama, without evidence, of ordering the tapping of the phones at Trump’s New York campaign headquarters.

Manafort summarily rejected questions about whether Kilimnik might be in league with Russian intelligence, declaring Kilimnik “pro-Ukraine,” and casting the inquiries into his associate as politically motivated “smears.”

Kilimnik declined to answer questions about any interest by authorities into his activities. Instead, he attributed scrutiny of him to “a heated political environment [that has] led to exaggerated and out of context reporting in the hope of establishing connections that, to the best of my knowledge, have not yet been proven.”

He added that “Ukraine and Ukrainians are being used as scapegoats in the U.S. political and media battles” — a dynamic that he said has been made “abundantly evident from how my own circumstantial relationships were misrepresented, exaggerated and overblown.”

The White House declined to respond to questions about Manafort’s relationship with Kilimnik, or whether there were any inquiries into it by U.S. authorities.

But two international political consultants who work in Kiev said that U.S. authorities became increasingly interested in Kilimnik after he made a trip to the U.S. in April 2016. Severalpeople said Kilimnik told themthat he met with Manafort during that trip, which came as Manafort was guiding Trump’s campaign through the bitter Republican presidential primaries, and trying to distance himself from his work in Ukraine.

Kilimnik’s relationship with Manafort traces back to 2005. That’s when Manafort hired Kilimnik to work for him in Ukraine after Kilimnik was forced out of a position he held for about a decade in Moscow with the U.S.-based International Republican Institute amid suspicion over his ties to Russia.

Manafort and Kilimnik were part of a group that formed a private equity fund that used millions of dollars contributed by the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to purchase a Ukrainian cable and internet company. And they did work on behalf of the businesses owned by Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.

Their work in Ukraine became political when Akhmetov began funding the political comeback of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. With Manafort’s help, Yanukovych was elected prime minister in 2006 and president in 2010 as the leader of the Russia-aligned Party of Regions. Multiple sources said the party paid millions of dollars a year to Manafort’s firm, for which Kilimnik eventually came to run the Kiev office.

Manafort stressed that his work in Ukraine was intended to steer Yanukovych towards more pro-Western policies and more engagement with the European Union. And Kilimnik told POLITICO that “one thing that was grossly under-reported to date is the effort that Paul Manafort undertook to help Ukrainian leaders defend Ukraine’s interests and move the country towards [a European Union] Free Trade Agreement.”

Yet Yanukovych in 2013 backed away from a commitment to that agreement, and fled Ukraine for Russia under the protection of Russian President Vladimir Putin amid widespread protests over government corruption.

Manafort and Kilimnik started working for a Russia-aligned party that arose from the ashes of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, operatives close to Kilimnik and Manafort told POLITICO. The new party, Opposition Bloc, stopped paying Manafort’s company, and the effort to collect unpaid invoices was part of the reason Manafort and Kilimnik remained in contact during the presidential race, the operatives said.

But Kilimnik last month also told RadioFreeEurope that “every couple months” during the campaign he “was briefing [Manafort] on Ukraine,” though he subsequently clarified his comments, adding that he wasn’t formally advising Manafort.

Manafort told POLITICO that he called Kilimnik to discuss what he called the “the smear campaign against me coming out of Ukraine” — a reference to the publication by Ukrainian investigators and the media of ledgers appearing to show $12.7 million in cash earmarked for him by the Party of Regions. (Manafort has said he never received the cash and has questioned the authenticity of the ledgers, as have some Ukrainian officials).

During their conversations last year, Manafort said he and Kilimnik also discussed an array of subjects related to the presidential campaign, including the hacking of the DNC’s emails, though Manafort stressed that at the time of the conversations, neither he nor other Trump campaign officials knew that Russia was involved in the hacking.

When Kilimnik traveled to the U.S. in late summer, he drew the attention of U.S. authorities, according to a Washington consultant with ties to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

And when Kilimnik returned to Ukraine after that trip, he suggested to Kiev political operatives that he played a role in a move by Trump’s representatives to dilute a proposed amendment to the GOP platform calling for the U.S. to provide “lethal defensive weapons” for Ukraine to defend itself against Russian incursion.

“He led me to believe that he was involved in the platform fight, but not necessarily through Paul,” said a Kiev-based operative who travels in the same circles as Kilimnik. The operative added that Kilimnik could have been “just bullshitting like political consultants do.”

A Trump campaign adviser familiar with the platform debate said he was not aware of Kilimnik playing any role in the proceedings and, in fact, hadn’t even met Kilimnik.

In Kiev, Kilimnik continued representing Opposition Bloc in meetings with international diplomats, according to several people in the international business and diplomat communities in Ukraine’s capital. Kilimnik is regarded there and in some U.S. foreign policy circles as a trustworthy liaison to the party and to an influential oligarch who is helping to fund it.

Several people who’ve worked with Kilimnik told POLITICO he was not particularly ideological and never betrayed either a strong bias toward or against the Kremlin as it grew increasingly hostile to Ukraine under Putin.

But after a POLITICO exposé in August revealed Kilimnik’s suspected ties to Russian intelligence and other media followed the story, Volodymyr Ariev, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, formally requested that the country’s prosecutor general investigate Kilimnik.

“This person, from his biographical details, could be connected to Russian special services, and could possess valuable information about the criminal activities of … former members of the Party of Regions and the government at the time of Yanukovych, who are being investigated by the general prosecutor,” Ariev wrote in a letter to the general prosecutor.

The prosecutor’s office, which is obligated to investigate any inquiry from a member of parliament, for years has been conducting a wide-ranging investigation into government spending under Yanukovych. And, even before Ariev’s letter, it had questioned at least one person about the work of Kilimnik, Manafort and their associates on behalf of Yanukovych, according to a political operative in Kiev briefed on the inquiry.

Ariev’s letter was dated Aug. 19 — a day after POLITICO’s exposé, and the same day as a Financial Times followup that Ariev cited in his letter. Later that day, the general prosecutor’s office responded with a letter of its own, writing Ariev that his requested inquiry related to Kilimnik and Manafort’s company, Davis Manafort International LLC, “has been considered.”

The letter indicated that the Kilimnik matter “has been combined” with the “criminal proceeding” into government spending under Yanukovych. But the press office for the prosecutor on Tuesday told POLITICO that “Kilimnik is not being processed now as a witness, suspect or accused.”

Ariev told POLITICO “This is one of the shortest answers I've received from the general prosecutor's office. I think the reason is that the government did not want to be involved in the U.S. elections.”

Nonetheless, the mounting scrutiny of Manafort’s work in Ukraine, and alleged cash payments from the Party of Regions, forced him to resign from the Trump campaign the same day that the prosecutor general’s office responded to Ariev.
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And of course both Trump and Manfort are on record lying through their teeth about them not having anything to do with platform plank calling to arm Ukraine removed from the GOP platform.

It looks like another Trump adviser has significantly changed his story about the GOP's dramatic shift on Ukraine

The Trump campaign's national-security policy representative for the Republican National Convention, J.D. Gordon, told CNN on Thursday that he pushed to alter an amendment to the GOP's draft policy on Ukraine at the Republican National Convention last year to further align it with President Donald Trump's views.

Gordon's remarks represent a dramatic shift from previous comments, and they come as Attorney General Jeff Sessions faces intense scrutiny over two previously undisclosed meetings with Russia's ambassador to the US — one of which was timed to the convention.

In January, Gordon told Business Insider that he "never left" his "assigned side table" nor spoke publicly at the GOP national security subcommittee meeting, where the amendment — which originally called for "providing lethal defense weapons" to the Ukrainian army to fend off Russian-backed separatists — was read aloud, debated, and ultimately watered down to "providing appropriate assistance" to Ukraine.

According to CNN's Jim Acosta, however, Gordon said that at the RNC he and others "advocated for the GOP platform to include language against arming Ukrainians against pro-Russian rebels" because "this was in line with Trump's views, expressed at a March national security meeting at the unfinished Trump hotel" in Washington, DC.

"Gordon says Trump said at the meeting ... that he didn't want to go to 'World War Three' over Ukraine," Acosta said.

Trump's apparent involvement in steering the language change — Gordon reportedly told CNN that "this was the language Donald Trump himself wanted and advocated for back in March [2016]" — is also at odds with what Gordon told Business Insider in January, when he said "neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Manafort were involved in those sort of details, as they've made clear."

When asked why he told Acosta that Trump did weigh in on the subject, when he told BI in January that neither Trump nor Manafort were involved, Gordon emphasized that he had told BI that Trump was not involved "in the details" of the platform.

"Meaning they weren't part of the process to write, draft, edit the document, or weigh in with the delegates at all," Gordon said in an email. "That said, the overarching thought of better relations with Russia was certainly their strategic position."

Paul Manafort was Trump's campaign manager from April through August. He served as a top adviser to a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine from 2004 to 2012 and helped the Russia-friendly strongman Viktor Yanukovych win the Ukrainian presidency in 2010.

An unverified dossier presented to Trump in January by top US intelligence officials alleges that Trump "agreed to sideline" the issue of Russian intervention in Ukraine during his campaign after Russia promised to feed the emails it stole from prominent Democrats' inboxes to WikiLeaks. The dossier also claims Manafort was receiving "kickback payments" from Yanukovych's associates in Ukraine, where Manafort "had been commercially active ... right up to the time (in March 2016) when he joined campaign team."

Manafort and Trump later denied having anything to do with softening the language of the GOP's platform on Ukraine.

"I wasn't involved in that," Trump said in an interview with ABC after the convention. "Honestly, I was not involved."

But he said his supporters were. "They softened it, I heard, but I was not involved," he said.

'Authority and responsibility to shape the GOP platform'
"There was nothing different in what I told you and Jim," Gordon said in an email, referring to Acosta. "His tweet was an issue of semantics, which I've shared with him just now to ensure we're all on the same page."

"The RNC & Trump Campaign intent @ GOP Platform Week was to 'prevent' adding any glaring contradictions to the draft GOP Platform we brought to Cleveland and previously stated Trump positions," Gordon added. "This included the notion that arming Ukraine would have been contrary to the goal of improved relations with Russia."

"The RNC and Nominee's Campaign have the authority and responsibility to shape the GOP Platform," Gordon said. "Delegates who have their amendments defeated in part and in whole should understand the process."

Gordon said in January that neither Trump nor Manafort was involved in the platform change, however. He also said his only role as a Trump campaign representative at GOP Committee Week — which took place in the week before the RNC's kickoff — was "to monitor the process and facilitate any questions from delegates."

Campaign representatives are not permitted to publicly debate the merits of an amendment at a subcommittee platform meeting, a member of the subcommittee told Business Insider on the condition of anonymity.

USA Today on Thursday reported that Gordon and another former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, met with Russia's ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, at the RNC. Gordon said he considered it "an informal conversation just like my interactions with dozens of other ambassadors and senior diplomats in Cleveland."

According to CNN, Gordon said he and Kislyak discussed the Trump campaign's "goal to forge a better US relationship with Russia." He added that he briefed Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders about the meetings on Thursday, according to CNN.

Sanders told BI in an email that she and Gordon spoke on Thursday "for about three minutes, mostly about the conference logistics — how many people, who put it on, how many ambassadors, etc. It was far from a briefing and JD was a volunteer on an advisory committee on the campaign."

Gordon insisted in January that his only role as a Trump campaign representative at GOP Committee Week — which took place in the week before the RNC's kickoff — was "to monitor the process and facilitate any questions from delegates."

"This is standard practice," he said, "yet the media unfortunately reported it as something out of the ordinary."

Diana Denman, the GOP delegate who proposed amending the Ukraine platform to include the "lethal weapons" language, contradicted Gordon's version of events in an interview with Business Insider in January. She said Gordon and another Trump campaign representative asked the cochairmen of the subcommittee to table the amendment after she read it aloud.

"Two men sitting over to the side of the room — I had no idea who they were but later found out they were Trump representatives — jumped up and tore over to get behind the three cochairmen," she said.

Gordon then left the room to make a phone call, Denman said. Equal parts confused and angry over her proposal being scuttled, Denman said she confronted Gordon about whom he was calling.

"I'm calling New York," Gordon replied, according to Denman.

"I work for Mr. Trump, and I have to clear it," she recalled him saying, apparently in reference to the amendment.

Gordon said in an email at the time that Denman "sought to significantly elevate the Ukraine-Russia issue beyond the already strong position of RNC and Trump campaign," so the language had to be watered down.

But the committee member present at the meeting, who requested anonymity to discuss the deliberations, said "the language of Diana's original amendment didn't seem strong."

"It was controversial if you hold Donald Trump's express views on Russia, but it wasn't controversial with regard to GOP orthodoxy on the issue," the committee member said."This change definitely came from Trump staffers — not from RNC staffers."
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And then there was the report on why our State Department has been totally gutted by the Trump administration and why Rex Tillerson can even answer questions about global matters.

Its because that's how Putin wanted it and Putin is still calling the shots for our government on foreign policy.

And finally I will have to look it up but there is a congressman who has actually mapped all the Trump/Russian connections on his website from just what is public so far. And told Maddow we ain't seen nothing yet. And what has already come out is just the beginning.

Watch this space.

stumbler · Mar 9, 2017

See above.

M4MPetCock · Mar 9, 2017

stumbler said: ↑

You do not have the faintest idea what you are talking about. Try reading the tread sometime and stop embarrassing yourself.
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I read da tread and I still don't see where Randy said Christoper Steele was dead, like you claim he did. Maybe you can point out where he said it.

stumbler · Mar 9, 2017

Well, well, well what do you know some more belated cover your ass admissions by that great patriot Micheal Flynn

Flynn Finally Registers As Foreign Agent After Raking Half A Million From Turkey

WASHINGTON — President Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn earned $530,000 last fall for consulting work that may have helped benefit the government of Turkey, according to new federal filings.

Flynn, fired last month from his White House post, formally registered as a foreign agent this week with the Justice Department and disclosed the details of his work for Inovo BV, a Dutch consulting firm owned by a Turkish businessman with ties to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Flynn's lawyer Robert Kelner said Flynn shut down his firm last year, but decided to register because his work for Inovo BV "could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey."
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M4MPetCock · Mar 9, 2017

anon_de_plume said: ↑

Not so sure why you're stuck on treason, doesn't matter what you call it, if Trump colluded with any foreign power, that is a crime. I don't care what you call it, we need to find the truth, and the guilty need to be removed from power.
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I'm not "stuck on treason". When I mentioned it in my post...

M4MPetCock said: ↑

Impeachment? Geez, are you guys going soft on us already? Hell, the fact that Trump dares to breathe the same air as His Roiled Heinous Chuck Schumer and CuntAssa Nancy Pelosi is grounds for impeachment. Go back to the books and don't come back with anything less than treason. And call for the death penalty, while you're at it. Sheesh!
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...
I was being sarcastic (in case that isn't painfully obvio0us) because a number of members (like the ones I listed) accused Trump of treason in earlier posts. YOU were the one who felt the need to respond and educate me (or attempt to) on "when it's punishable". So, I thought, surely you'd want to share that knowledge with people who actually seemed serious when they said it. And yet another reply from you, so who's stuck on treason again?

stumbler · Mar 9, 2017

FBI has records of Trump trickster Roger Stone communicating with Russians behind DNC hacks: report

Roger Stone, a Donald Trump confidante and longtime Republican dirty trickster, communicated privately with a Russian hacking group identified by U.S. intelligence officials as the culprit in the theft of emails related to the Democratic presidential campaign.

Stone, who is under FBI investigation for his alleged ties to Russia, communicated through private Twitter messages with the “hacktivist” known as Guccifer 2.0 during the presidential campaign, reported The Smoking Gun.

Guccifer 2.0 claimed to be a lone activist committed to “fight all those illuminati,” and Stone promoted those claims, but U.S. intelligence officials believe with “high confidence” that Russia’s intelligence service, GRU, operated the hacker’s Twitter, WordPress and “burner” emails used to communicate with the media — including The Smoking Gun — and other individuals.

A source told the website that Stone, who admitted over the weekend to back-channel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, exchanged private direct messages with Guccifer 2.0, in addition to exchanges on their public Twitter accounts.

Stone said, in a series of profane and combative tweets defending Trump’s baseless claims that Barack Obama had wiretapped his campaign, that he had “never denied perfectly legal back channel to Assange who indeed had the goods on #CrookedHillary.”

He made a similar claim in August to a group of Florida Republicans and in October to CBS News, and he seemed to know ahead of time that WikiLeaks would release emails stolen from John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.

Last week, Stone denied any having “direct conversations” with Assange and advance knowledge of hacked data dumped online by WikLeaks.

The Smoking Gun, which has reported extensively on its own communications with the hackers, asked Stone whether he had exchanged private messages with Guccifer 2.0, to which he replied via text: “don’t recall.”

Stone, who was paid $50,000 for two months of work at the start of the Trump campaign, told the website that “numerous people who work for me have access to my twitter feed.”

The FBI is reportedly investigating Stone, as well as former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former adviser Carter Page and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, for alleged contacts with Russian officials during the presidential campaign.

The Smoking Gun revealed that investigation was being run out of the FBI’s San Francisco office, and two sources told the website reported that agents had obtained detailed records for the Guccifer 2.0 Twitter and WordPress accounts.

The sources did not say whether the records were obtained through a search warrant or grand jury subpoena, and the sources weren’t sure whether investigators had gathered enough evidence to seek an indictment against anyone connected to the Guccifer 2.0 hacks.

Both Twitter and WordPress are based in San Francisco, and any records obtained by FBI agents would include IP addresses, which The Smoking Gun reported would not likely identify where Guccifer 2.0 was based because the hackers took steps to cover their tracks.

But agents would have obtained tweets and direct messages sent by the Guccifer 2.0 account, which would include any private communications with Stone — who has known Trump for decades and is connected with both Breitbart News and Alex Jones’ InfoWars website.

Stone claimed recently on the pro-Kremlin RT network that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had approved a wiretap of his phone calls and monitoring of his email accounts.

He told the Russian network that he wasn’t sure if that was true, but he also claimed that a grand jury had been convened.

Stone, who has a reputation for dishonesty and exaggeration, did not say where he’d gotten that information.
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stumbler · Mar 9, 2017

Justice Dept. refuses to back up Sean Spicer’s claim that Trump is not under investigation

The U.S. Department of Justice declined to confirm Sean Spicer’s claims that President Donald Trump was not under investigation.

Trump claimed last weekend that former President Barack Obama had ordered a wiretap on his campaign, but has thus far not offered any proof, and the president has asked the U.S. Congress to investigate his own allegations.

Spicer, the White House press secretary, told reporters Wednesday that “there is no reason we have to think that the president is the target of any investigation whatsoever,” although some of his campaign aides remain under investigation for their alleged ties to Russia.

A Justice Department official told the New York Times that there was no indication that anyone in the federal agency had offered that assurance to the White House, but the official declined to comment on whether Trump was the target of an investigation.

“No comment,” said the official, who was speaking on condition of anonymity.

FBI Director James Comey asked the Justice Department to publicly refute Trump’s claims of being wiretapped by Obama, but the agency has so far declined to do so.

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus asked Comey and FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe last month to walk back reports of alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Russia, but both law enforcement officials refused.

Spicer, the press secretary, personally connected reporters from the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal with CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr (R-NC) to discredit reports about those alleged communications.

He also gave reporters’ phone numbers to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, who agreed to make the calls but was too busy to do so.

Trump’s tweets, and his ignorance of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that could have been used to secure a wiretap warrant, prompted Comey and James Clapper, who served as Obama’s last director of national intelligence, to dispute some reporting on Russian ties.

Clapper said no evidence existed when he left his post in January of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and Comey said no FISA warrants had been issued against Trump or his campaign.

John Brennan, who served as Obama’s CIA director, declined to answer questions Sunday about evidence of the Trump campaigns ties to Russia.
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stumbler · Mar 10, 2017

Now this is some serious shit folks and Trump, his campaign, and his administration are in it up to their necks. But that doesn't mean that something can't come along that is just fucking hilarious.

Congress wants answers on Trump's deleted tweets

The two top lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee want to know how the Trump administration preserves electronic records. Their requests to White House Counsel Don McGahn — detailed in a letter sent Wednesday — and federal agencies were triggered by two issues:

Keep reading 238 words

President Trump's use of "at least two Twitter accounts" (the official @POTUS and his longtime handle, @realDonaldTrump) and his penchant for deleting some tweets. The lawmakers said that if those deleted tweets "were not archived it could pose a violation of the Presidential Records Act."

The reported use by federal employees of encrypted chat apps "that could result in the creation of presidential or federal records that would be unlikely or impossible to preserve." Confide, Signal and WhatsApp in particular get mentions in the letters. "The need for data security ... does not justify circumventing requirements established by federal recordkeeping and transparency laws," the lawmakers said.

Why this matters: The White House and the federal government are required to preserve records under the law, and new technology raises questions about how those laws should keep up with the times. The Oversight Committee has also been under pressure from liberals to investigate Trump with the same fervor with which it pursued the Obama administration

What's next: The lawmakers, Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz and ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, ask several questions in their letter to McGahn. Their inquiries focus both on what the White House's policies are for electronic messages and which senior officials who fall under the records law "have used an alias email account to conduct official business since January 20, 2017." They want a response from the White House and the agencies by March 22.
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Now this just cracks me right the fuck up. Trump's inability to stop tweeting is actually a symptom of his mental illness. And so it almost certain he is going to tweet something, realize he fucked up, and try to delete it.

And the second he does he is in violation of federal law. You know a felony. And we all know how emails get deleted and/or lost accidentally or on purpose. And that is really hard to prove let alone prosecute.

But there is no fucking way the President of the United States of America can tweet something even for a second without it being copied and screen grabbed by probably 100's of people. And Trump and his mentally ill impulsiveness will not be able to remember that.

Trump really does remind me of one of those animals they find in the La Brea tar pits. Most of them started out by touching just one paw on the tar and got it stuck. Then to get free they stuck another paw to the tar. Then all four paws. And the harder they struggled and fought the deeper in the tar they sank until the end.

stumbler · Mar 10, 2017

Uh oh. More bad news.

FBI probing server connection between Trump Organization and Russian bank first reported in October

The FBI and a group of computer scientists is examining whether a computer server connection exists or existed between the Trump Organization and a Russian bank, a charge originally levied—and widely dismissed—back in October 2016.

CNN reports that the FBI is continuing to look into a potential connection, as part of its ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, with one U.S. official telling the outlet the server relationship is “odd,” though they declined to say whether investigators consider it significant.

The story first surfaced in an Oct. 31, 2016 article published in Slate, asking, “Was a Trump server communicating with Russia?” That story—widely panned by critics, including a team of journalists writing for the Intercept, who called Slate’s reporting “dramatic”—traces “a community of malware hunters” who, after discovering that Russian hackers infiltrated the Democratic National Committee, decided to test out whether Russia was also attempting to hack the Republican National Committee and the Donald Trump campaign.

“We wanted to help defend both campaigns, because we wanted to preserve the integrity of the election,” one of the computer scientists told Slate at the time.

As Slate’s Franklin Foer reports, a scientist who goes by the pseudonym “Tea Leaves,” flagged malware coming from Russia that appeared to connect to a domain with Trump in its name. After a group of computer researchers began logging the communications, it became apparent the communication was not a malware attack, but rather “resembled the patter of human conversation.” The researchers discovered “a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank.”

As CNN notes, Alfa—a Russian Bank—“looked up the address to a Trump corporate server [registered to the Trump Organization] 2,820 times—more lookups than the Trump server received from any other source.”

In a statement after the October Slate report, Alfa bank maintained that any “supposed connection between Alfa and Trump is false,” adding the “working hypothesis is that the activity … was caused by a spam attack targeting Alfa Bank by a marketing server.” The statement further suggested the activity may “have been initiated by someone for the purpose of discrediting” Trump and Alfa Bank.

But L. Jean Camp, a computer scientist at Indiana University, cast doubts on Alfa’s explanation. “If it were spam, then a lot of other organizations would be doing DNS lookups. There would be evidence of widespread connectivity with devices,” Camp told CNN.

The server recently resurfaced in the same Breitbart article that prompted Trump to levy his unsubstantiated claim that former president Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 election. According to CNN, no FISA warrant has been issued for the server.

Alfa maintains that the bank had no connection to Trump or the Trump Organization, telling CNN the bank’s owners “have never met Mr. Trump nor have they or Alfa Bank had any business dealings with him.”

“Neither Alfa Bank nor its officers have sent Mr. Trump or his organization any emails, information or money,” the bank told CNN. “Alfa Bank does not have and has never had any special or exclusive internet connection with Mr. Trump or his entities.”
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ace's n 8's · Mar 10, 2017

stumbler said: ↑

Now I tried to warn you Trump supporters you should be watching Rachel Maddow tonight. But I'm sure you were too cowardly and blinded parrots to actually do it so I will recap for you.

First there was the recap of the report in Politco about ...

Authorities looked into Manafort protégé
An associate of an ex-Trump campaign chairman is suspected of connections to Russian intelligence.

And of course both Trump and Manfort are on record lying through their teeth about them not having anything to do with platform plank calling to arm Ukraine removed from the GOP platform.

It looks like another Trump adviser has significantly changed his story about the GOP's dramatic shift on Ukraine

And then there was the report on why our State Department has been totally gutted by the Trump administration and why Rex Tillerson can even answer questions about global matters.

Its because that's how Putin wanted it and Putin is still calling the shots for our government on foreign policy.

And finally I will have to look it up but there is a congressman who has actually mapped all the Trump/Russian connections on his website from just what is public so far. And told Maddow we ain't seen nothing yet. And what has already come out is just the beginning.

Watch this space.
Click to expand...

stumbler said: ↑

Well, well, well what do you know some more belated cover your ass admissions by that great patriot Micheal Flynn

Flynn Finally Registers As Foreign Agent After Raking Half A Million From Turkey
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stumbler said: ↑

Justice Dept. refuses to back up Sean Spicer’s claim that Trump is not under investigation
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stumbler said: ↑

Now this is some serious shit folks and Trump, his campaign, and his administration are in it up to their necks. But that doesn't mean that something can't come along that is just fucking hilarious.

Congress wants answers on Trump's deleted tweets

Now this just cracks me right the fuck up. Trump's inability to stop tweeting is actually a symptom of his mental illness. And so it almost certain he is going to tweet something, realize he fucked up, and try to delete it.

And the second he does he is in violation of federal law. You know a felony. And we all know how emails get deleted and/or lost accidentally or on purpose. And that is really hard to prove let alone prosecute.

But there is no fucking way the President of the United States of America can tweet something even for a second without it being copied and screen grabbed by probably 100's of people. And Trump and his mentally ill impulsiveness will not be able to remember that.

Trump really does remind me of one of those animals they find in the La Brea tar pits. Most of them started out by touching just one paw on the tar and got it stuck. Then to get free they stuck another paw to the tar. Then all four paws. And the harder they struggled and fought the deeper in the tar they sank until the end.
Click to expand...

stumbler said: ↑

Uh oh. More bad news.

FBI probing server connection between Trump Organization and Russian bank first reported in October
Click to expand...

More empirical evidence that the leftists are still incapable of accepting the loss during the last election season, as the entire world had pinned Clinton the the POTUS win.

Poll after poll had Clinton the victor, BY HIGH MARGINS, oh, the overwhelming gratification the leftists are feeling....then , 'wham with the right hand', TRUMP WON.

So, know, it's time to vilify, discredit, de-legitimize, create a atmosphere by the activist courts to hinder orders illegal, although they dont order on substance or legal standing, just on what was said by the media.

The leftists have lost over 1200 seats...since 2010, NATION WIDE, while using these same smear tactics. I would have to claim, yes, you leftist keep up the good work...it's been working so well for you.

RandyKnight · Mar 10, 2017

ace's n 8's said: ↑

More empirical evidence that the leftists are still incapable of accepting the loss during the last election season, as the entire world had pinned Clinton the the POTUS win.

Poll after poll had Clinton the victor, BY HIGH MARGINS, oh, the overwhelming gratification the leftists are feeling....then , 'wham with the right hand', TRUMP WON.

So, know, it's time to vilify, discredit, de-legitimize, create a atmosphere by the activist courts to hinder orders illegal, although they dont order on substance or legal standing, just on what was said by the media.

The leftists have lost over 1200 seats...since 2010, NATION WIDE, while using these same smear tactics. I would have to claim, yes, you leftist keep up the good work...it's been working so well for you.
Click to expand...

At this point the left is terrified not what Trump might have done but that he will succeed at what he is doing now....

They are so busy trying make up what happened they can not see what is currently happening....

The country had been lulled into "the new normal" .....
(2% growth-wealth redistribution-you didn't build that- part time jobs-govt control-massive regulations-globalization-NWO)

In less that two months peoples spirits have changed - people are coming back into the workforce - ideas of possibly being able to
do things they had dreamed of doing where back on the plate again.

RandyKnight · Mar 10, 2017

ace's n 8's said: ↑

More empirical evidence that the leftists are still incapable of accepting the loss during the last election season, as the entire world had pinned Clinton the the POTUS win.

Poll after poll had Clinton the victor, BY HIGH MARGINS, oh, the overwhelming gratification the leftists are feeling....then , 'wham with the right hand', TRUMP WON.

So, know, it's time to vilify, discredit, de-legitimize, create a atmosphere by the activist courts to hinder orders illegal, although they dont order on substance or legal standing, just on what was said by the media.

The leftists have lost over 1200 seats...since 2010, NATION WIDE, while using these same smear tactics. I would have to claim, yes, you leftist keep up the good work...it's been working so well for you.
Click to expand...

At this point the left is terrified not what Trump might have done but that he will succeed at what he is doing now....

They are so busy trying make up what happened they can not see what is currently happening....

The country had been lulled into "the new normal" .....
(2% growth-wealth redistribution-you didn't build that- part time jobs-govt control-massive regulations-globalization-NWO)

In less that two months peoples spirits have changed - people are coming back into the workforce - ideas of possibly being able to
do things they had dreamed of doing where back on the plate again.

RandyKnight · Mar 10, 2017

ace's n 8's said: ↑

More empirical evidence that the leftists are still incapable of accepting the loss during the last election season, as the entire world had pinned Clinton the the POTUS win.

Poll after poll had Clinton the victor, BY HIGH MARGINS, oh, the overwhelming gratification the leftists are feeling....then , 'wham with the right hand', TRUMP WON.

So, know, it's time to vilify, discredit, de-legitimize, create a atmosphere by the activist courts to hinder orders illegal, although they dont order on substance or legal standing, just on what was said by the media.

The leftists have lost over 1200 seats...since 2010, NATION WIDE, while using these same smear tactics. I would have to claim, yes, you leftist keep up the good work...it's been working so well for you.
Click to expand...

At this point the left is terrified not what Trump might have done but that he will succeed at what he is doing now....

They are so busy trying make up what happened they can not see what is currently happening....

The country had been lulled into "the new normal" .....
(2% growth-wealth redistribution-you didn't build that- part time jobs-govt control-massive regulations-globalization-NWO)

In less that two months peoples spirits have changed - people are coming back into the workforce - ideas of possibly being able to
do things they had dreamed of doing where back on the plate again.

stumbler · Mar 10, 2017

OMG!!!! Is Fox News now fake news too? I have always maintained it is. But now the Trump supporters can either accept what Fox is saying or join me.

Shep Smith apoplectic after latest Flynn revelations: ‘It’s too much lying, and too much smoke!’

ox News host Shep Smith on Thursday erupted over reports that Michael Flynn, former national security adviser to Donald Trump retroactively registered as a foreign agent working on behalf of the Turkish government. Noting Flynn is the same person who “lied to the Vice President about his conversation with Russian leaders, and was forced to resign after 24 days on the job,” Smith reported that Flynn also helped “the Turkish leader as a lobbyist during the U.S. presidential campaign,” earning $530,000 for his work.

Smith played footage of Flynn “on the campaign trail with Donald Trump complaining about pay-for-play, as he was paid to play by a businessman that supported the Turkish leader who’s voting base is Islamic voters.”

“There’s been a lot of lying,” Smith said. “There’s been lying about who you talked to—and, by lots of people—and almost inevitable and invariably, they were lying about talking to the Russians about something.”

“It’s too much lying, and too much Russia, and too much smoke!” Smith exclaimed.
Click to expand...

RandyKnight · Mar 10, 2017

stumbler said: ↑

OMG!!!! Is Fox News now fake news too? I have always maintained it is. But now the Trump supporters can either accept what Fox is saying or join me.

Shep Smith apoplectic after latest Flynn revelations: ‘It’s too much lying, and too much smoke!’
Click to expand...

yepper Shep on Fox is one of the reasons Fox balances their coverage on Trump....

That guy Flynn always seemed a little creepy to me....

Trump should have never Trusted anyone who worked for Obama

Flynn maintains President Obama fired him from the Defense Intelligence Agency two years ago because he took a stand against “radical Islamism,” and claimed Al-Qaeda was expanding its ranks around the globe.

Lieutenant General Micheal Flynn may be among the individuals Donald Trump is considering for a running mate, according to a Newsmax report.

In a recent column for the New York Post, the retired Lt. Gen. referenced his bestselling book, Fields of Flight, when describing how the intelligence gathering arena has become way too “politicized.”

stumbler · Mar 10, 2017

‘The hypocrisy is staggering’: Morning Joe panel scorches Trump team over Mike Flynn’s work for Turkey

“Morning Joe” panel was flabbergasted by that Michael Flynn was working as a paid agent of Turkey during the presidential campaign. “That man was a foreign agent of Turkey, who has been hostile towards U.S. interests for a good part of the Syrian civil war, and was getting paid at the same time he was delivering a speech trashing Hillary Clinton at the Republican National Convention,” said host Joe Scarborough.

Co-host Mika Brzezinski reminded the panel that Flynn had led a chant of “lock her up” at the GOP convention.

It’s shocking,” Scarborough said. “I guess it shouldn’t be shocking. This is the sort of thing that would not happen in past administrations, but apparently, everything goes ethically.”

The MSNBC host hopes the White House will clarify whether Trump fired Flynn for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, or whether Flynn resigned.

“It is a confusing situation,” Scarborough said. “Donald Trump and all of his public comments has basically acted as if Michael Flynn was persecuted — a good man driven from office by the hounds in the mass media — and Mike Pence trying to put a nice gloss and saying that vindicates the president’s decision to fire him. This guy was not only acting as a foreign agent, literally as a foreign agent, not metaphorically while he was traveling with Donald Trump and close to Donald Trump as anybody. He was the person who became the national security adviser, and somehow the president and others right now, at least the official explanation, they had no idea that he was acting as a foreign agent when he was appointed to be national security adviser. That is one of the most extraordinarily — if it’s true, they did not know — one of the most extraordinary failures of vetting I’ve ever heard of.”

Scarborough pointed out that Islamic State militants had used Turkey to get into Syria in recent years, and Brezinski expressed her amazement that the Trump administration had appointed Flynn to his position.

“They have made a joke of the entire transition process, and this presidency has no credibility where we stand right now,” she said. “I don’t say that with hysteria, I say that with a deep sense of concern, how we often cover this story because there are people who believe Trump from start to finish and he’s not telling the truth.”

MSNBC’s Willie Geist reminded the panelists that Flynn had advocated on behalf of Turkey from August until November, during the heat of the campaign, and panelist John Heilemann slammed the administration’s integrity.

“This is a time when Donald Trump was going around railing as Hillary Clinton practicing pay-to-play in the State Department, and while Michael Flynn was yelling how Hillary Clinton should be locked up,” Heilemann said. “The hypocrisy of it is staggering, if they knew and if they didn’t know.”
Click to expand...

shootersa · Mar 10, 2017

Inbreeding in Washington?
This is news?
Jesus

stumbler · Mar 10, 2017

Whoa!! Holy Fuck. After another bunch of denials and condemnations of Gen Flynn Sean Spicer just admitted the Trump transition team knew that Flynn was raking in a half million bucks BEFORE he was named National Security advisor.

stumbler · Mar 10, 2017

Yeah, this just took a much more serious tone. Spicer's admission that the transition team was contacted by Flynn's lawyer and they didn't do anything about it and Trump didn't know about it makes no sense at all. And it is flying over like a lead balloon. The press is connecting the dots and pointing out this is a very distinct pattern that has become a daily occurrence.

And OMG Rep Steve King in trying to make up phony excuses and denials for Trump just told another outrageous lie that is also just going to blow the fuck up right in their lying faces.

And now King is advocating for an illegal purge of government employees.

And bless Joy Reed. She is gutting King like a fish.

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Secret CIA assessment says Russia intervened in election to help Trump win

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