Where Shakespeare is credited in writing “Much To Do About Nothing,” the Senate may have achieved credit for writing “nothing about much.” It is remarkable about how comparably little can be said in 1000 pages. The Senate Intelligence Committee released report yesterday on its own Russian investigation. I have been plowing through the report but what was most striking thus far is how little really new material the Senate was able to uncover. Indeed, it notes that it did not even look into the basis for the claims of the Steele dossier, which was used and widely cited for the early allegations of collusion. One of the few notable points is that the Report states that Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked closely with a known Russian intelligence officer and that he “represented a grave counterintelligence threat” due to that relationship with Konstantin Kilimnik. Yet, the Report is largely descriptive of known allegations with few concrete conclusions or original disclosures. It confirms and adds details on Russian interference with the election, but it does not materially add new information on key areas where some of us hoped the Committee could gain greater access.
Even on the Manafort issue, the Senate never appears to have secured access to encrypted communications between the two men despite the fact that Special Counsel Robert Mueller presumably did have such access before declaring that he found no evidence of knowing collusion between campaign officials and the Russian operation to influence the election. The Senate does not contest that finding and further states that the Steele dossier, which was funded by the Clinton campaign, was a highly dubious product that did not meet the most basic standards for intelligence collection and analysis.
For some of us, the allegation against Manafort is hardly surprising but we were hoping for new evidence on his conduct. I have been a long critic of Manafort and criticized his selection by the campaign. I both supported his federal prosecution and opposed any presidential pardon or clemency. I also viewed his sentence as far too light. As I previously wrote, Manafort has been long known to be a reckless and corrupting influence in Washington. It does not surprise me at all if Russian intelligence saw him as an easy mark or worse. The role of Kilimnik as a possible Russian asset has been discussed for years, though the House Intelligence Committee seemed to largely ignore his role.
What was interesting to me was the statement that, because the pair used encrypted communications, the Committee could not really determine if there was criminal or collusive conduct. Mueller presumably did get past these encryption walls since Manafort cooperated and did not find any other crime to charge or evidence of knowing collusion. Manafort and Kilimnik were engaged in a variety of business ventures. Yet, the Senate never appeared to get access to this information. That is troubling to me as someone who has long advocated a robust legislative role in oversight.
The report also indicates other areas left largely untouched like the actual validity of the allegations in the Steele dossier that was widely cited in the media and used by the FBI in justifying secret surveillance. Again, the Senate just left those questions unaddressed and unresolved while shredding Steele for his lack of professionalism and questionable practices. It also reaffirmed the concern of American intelligence that the dossier was used by Russian intelligence to spread false information, saying that Steele gave Russian intelligence “several opportunities . . . to insert disinformation.” It dismissed his tradecraft as “generally poor” and relied on unreliable sources and information. Yet, that was also previously known and there was little “value added” after a massive investigation that decided not to look at the specific Steele allegations.
Again and again, I was struck by the gaps in the report which spent over a 1000 pages but contributed little new to the discussion. For example, the Senate indicates that it believes that Trump lied in denying any recollection of speaking to Roger Stone about Wikileaks. That denial also struck me as dubious. Yet, the Senate simply noted that it is clear to the Committee that such a conversation occurred. I was hoping to see new possible interviews of third parties that might support or disprove Trump’s denial. Instead, the report leaves the long-standing allegation as unresolved.
Likewise, the Report notes (as previously alleged) that two participants in the June 9, 2016 meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russians at the Trump Tower had “significant connections to the Russian government, including Russian intelligence services… far more extensive than what had been publicly known.” Specifically, it was referring to Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin as having “significant connections to the Russian government, including the Russian intelligence services.” Yet, again, this was previously alleged and, while noting greater connections to the Russian intelligence, the Report offers little in terms of the purpose of the meeting or whether it was part of an actual Russian intelligence operation. It simply says that the two “may” have hidden their true motives in working in the United States. Again, Mueller found no evidence of knowing collusion with the Russians, but I was hoping that the Senate could drill down further on the allegations rather than noting that it found this particularly disturbing.
The report also repeated what is largely known about Carter Page, Ukrainian theories, and other dimensions to the Russian investigation. As someone who has closely followed this controversy, the report is a disappointment in terms of adding new information. It fulfilled the stereotype of bipartisan commission in Washington that spend hundreds of pages largely restating what is known without reaching meaningful conclusions. The Manafort allegation is the most glaring. It is hard to understand why a Senate Committee could not review such material from an individual who was a cooperating witness on a now closed Special Counsel investigation.
I was critical of the 9-11 Report for its lack of accountability, but the report did produce new and probative information. This report is remarkably pedestrian in its marshaling of evidence and facts. It even fails to adequately address the obvious limits of its own investigation as a matter of concern for oversight investigations.
This is why Marx got it right all along — Groucho, not Karl: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.”
Commit just said: “If we can’t agree on these basic facts, I don’t see the point of discussing the rest of what you wrote.”
You will probably never be able to agree with Commit on basic facts because she shifts them at her convenience.
In “Does Mandatory Mask Enforcement Violate The American Disability Act?” she said [and this is copied and pasted from her remarks}
COMMIT on August 21 at 12:39
“Young, no one here said “Race is a social construct and has no basis in biology.”
COMMIT on August 12, 11:41 pm
“Race is social construct, not a biological one.”
When this contradiction was pointed out to her she went into multiple paragraphs in an attempt to explain away the contradictions. She often does that. Allan noticed it before I did. I was inclined to give her the benefit of a doubt until this.
Don’t expect an honest discussion with “Commit To An Honest Discussion”.
Said to Ron Graf below at 12:43
Is this simple enough for you to understand Young?
“not a biological construct” =/= “has no basis in biology”
Learn the meaning of “biological construct” instead of wallowing in your ignorance.
Commit– Try this one:
“Race is not biological. It is a social construct.” https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/16/how-fluid-is-racial-identity/race-and-racial-identity-are-social-constructs
In most instances, including several of yours, the notion that race is a ‘social construct’ is the equivalent of saying ‘race is not biological’ just as the author in the NYT did..
You are trying to squeeze through space between ‘race is not biological’ or ‘race is not a biological construct’ on one hand and ”race has no basis in biology’ on the other, and there isn’t much space there.
When I Google ‘biological construct’ I generally come up with ‘biology’ on the one hand and ‘social construct’ on the other. The difference is between reality and verbal fantasy. I will not slide down your ‘biological construct’ rat hole.
You are caught in a dishonest contradiction and you are using more dishonesty to get out of it. This is not the first time for you.
As Jay said below, we can’t trust you.
So much for Commit To A Dishonest Discussion.
“Try this one:”
No, Young, I am not the author of your NYT piece, and it has nothing to do with what *I* said and meant, and I’m not going to play your game where you try to substitute your claim for mine, or the NYT claim for mine.
If you’re going to make claims about what *I* said and believe, deal honestly with my actual statement, not your substitute.
“You are trying to squeeze through space between ‘race is not biological’ or ‘race is not a biological construct’ on one hand and ”race has no basis in biology’ on the other”
Nope. I don’t have to squeeze at all. Because I only said one of those 3 things, and there’s plenty of room in what I actually said. You’re the one who keeps trying to push me into a space using someone else’s words. I’m resisting YOU pushing me into the space YOU want me to be in, which is not the space I chose for myself.
“You are caught in a dishonest contradiction ”
I’m not. Which is why you have to keep using someone else’s words (yours or the NYT) instead of focusing on what I actually said and what it means.
And I don’t know whether you’re so blind that you don’t see that that’s what you’re doing, or if you know that you’re doing is and are choosing to be dishonest about it for some reason, perhaps to protect yourself from learning more biology and changing your mind. I lean towards the latter. I think that’s why you won’t deal honestly with the definition of subspecies (including the current geographic element), why you run away from listing whatever you believe all of the races to be, … — you don’t want to be confronted with the contradictions in your own beliefs, and you’re projecting contradictions onto me to protect yourself.
“So how did Flynn get convicted with the only two people who could provide the evidence against him conspicuously not providing that evidence? The answer of course is that Flynn supplied the evidence.”
I’m not completely sure if you are saying this was a meritorious prosecution or not, based on your full stated argument above Jinn.
It could be used to support the notion that the interview was entirely designed to induce a process crime. And pressure was later brought on Flynn via charging his son to cop to a plea. (Flynn at first was trying to resist doing so.)
Along with the two agents who interviewed Flynn not believing he lied is of course the FBI’s preponderantly stupid use of 302s — rather than videographed interviews — in the year 2020 — providing opportunities for rank political abuse as this case well demonstrates. Their reconstruction of the 302 — it sounds like it was edited/altered later after original submission — recalls the recovered-memories process of Blasey-Ford.
That for such a high-profile case that deserves extraordinary scrutiny (from all sides) we don’t have the verbatim interview with Flynn is deeply problematic. But of course this would go against also the casual context they were attempting to set up.
Still, the FBI 302 process should generally be reformed as it is rife for abuse.
Also given the high-level corrupt behavior of players like Comey, Sztrok, and McCabe in other Russiagate-related contexts, everything they did here must be reviewed with a fine-tooth comb, as it’s likely the same corruption played a part here. These people aren’t above lying to FISA courts, after all…
“So how did Flynn get convicted with the only two people who could provide the evidence against him conspicuously not providing that evidence? The answer of course is that Flynn supplied the evidence.”
I’m not completely sure if you are saying this was a meritorious prosecution or not, based on your full stated argument above Jinn.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Seriously? You think that statement might indicate the prosecution had merit?
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That for such a high-profile case that deserves extraordinary scrutiny (from all sides) we don’t have the verbatim interview with Flynn is deeply problematic.
_________________________________________________________________________
You don’t need to know anything besides the fact that their are no witnesses or evidence to this alleged crime and add to that their is no motive since Flynn had no reason to lie gratuitously.
And it wasn’t a high-profile case. it was no case at all as far as the FBI was concerned.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/02/16/fbi-michael-flynn-fbi-no-charges-lemon-sot.cnn
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Still, the FBI 302 process should generally be reformed as it is rife for abuse.
_______________________________________________________________________
The 302 indicates that Flynn was not being deceptive.
You are ahead of me on the facts and logic here, and I graciously accede. 🙂
The only reason I raised this scruple is I am so used by now to encountering progressives on this page who would mean to say that DESPITE everything you said “The answer of course is that Flynn supplied the evidence” that I’ve grown a bit too cautious over what I’m seeing with my own eyes, and am not always sure if someone is being sarcastic/ironic, or really means to advance a serious argument.
There is this fantastic ability of leftist apologists to find endless pretexts for any legal Resistance maneuver against anyone Trump, and the Flynn persecution, so dilatory and vehement and corrupt, carried forth now by the demented Judge Sullivan (Ahab to nabbing Flynn), that I am seeing things..
Hence the spying was all on the up and up, with no attendant questions of the numerous FISA abuses, the behavior of McCabe, Brennan, etc… As if we are dealing with intel and legal officials of high probity who were making fine-grained Solomonic calls…
You are ahead of me on the facts and logic here, and I graciously accede
______________________________________________________________
OK what can say in response to that.
_________________________________________________________________________
The only reason I raised this scruple is I am so used by now to encountering progressives on this page who would mean to say that DESPITE everything you said “The answer of course is that Flynn supplied the evidence”
____________________________________________________________________
unfortunately that is the only correct answer available.
But who gave us this answer?
Flynn did.
And why were we given this answer by Flynn?
If you ever catch up on the facts and the logic you might want to tackle that question…
MSNBC has Nicole Wallace on as it’s “Republican voice” to balance out the lefty ideological bent. But there is something really wrong with Nicole Wallace, have you noticed?
She actually thinks Jim Comey should run for office because we need more people like him in public service! Whaaaaat?!!
And…She just said, “Let’s just debunk the lie” the Obama Admin spied on Trump; “Obama was almost famously scandal free.” Say whaaaat Nicole? WTF is wrong with you?
Do you just repeat the Democrat propaganda? Good lord. There is something WRONG with Nicole Wallace. Unwatchable. The outright lies!!! Beyond unwatchable.
Per Robert Stacy McCain, one of the crippling errors John McCain made in 2008 was to put grifters in charge of his campaign. Their names were Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace. Sarah Palin was repelled by Wallace and wanted nothing to do with her.
What I found ridiculous is how much BS Republicans allowed Democrats to throw in there, particularly when it came to Manafort, which allowed the media to try and re-invent the collusion argument even though the reports says there was no eveidence of collusion. This is exactly why we are about to be a one party state. Old Republicans on these committees still think the Senate is actually a legitimate place of compromise and really, Democrats take advantage of them. If roles were reversed none of the nonsense of Manafort possibly “colluding” would have been there and Mueller would have been roundly denounced for appearing to cover for a crooked FBI more than doing a real investigation.
What is appaulling to me is that I do not hear Republicans demanding that Mueller and his team testify and be specifically asked why it wasn’t them alerting the DOJ to what was going on when it came to FISA abuses, and when it came to the prosecution of Flynn. For one. what did McCabe, Comey, Strzok, and the gang tell Mueller and his team that made them prosecute Flynn? Did he know about the little White House Pow wow with Susan Rice, Obama, Biden, and whatever other criminals were in the room? It seems pretty obvious that in order to do their investigation they had to know about all these things. If they didn’t, why the hell not? Why is Weissman trying to obstruct the Durham probe? Why did Mueller have to answer “not in my purview,” so many times when these were clearly avenues he should have had a look at, so why didn’t he, or was he just covering for an agency that he once led, acting with a bias, or will he claim ignorance which would be very suspicious.
At this point it is clear that deep state and actors from the past Admin, were working against Trump. In addition to seeing the text messages of Page, Strzok, and the ode to the Resistance by Clinesmith, every single person that is finally fingered ends up going on amazing tirades against Trump with such venom that there is no way in hell that they were not acting without bias. That even goes farther than the Russia investigation and into the Ukraine nonsense. Democrats tried to play Vindman as some patriotic hero and demanded he be promoted but when he decided to retire he too went on a tirade that showed his true colors. The fact is that Senate Republicans wasted too much time and real information won’t get out before the election which means it will all disappear.
The six Republicans on the committee include Ben Sasse (preening academic), Susan Collins (chronic split-the-difference temporizer) and Richard Burr (capon). See Prof. KC Johnson on Burr many years ago. He’s always been a weak character.
Jonathan: Taking a page from Shakespeare you say the Senate Intelligence Committee report “is remarkable about how comparatively little can be said in 1000 pages”. No doubt you are taking your cue to criticize the report from Donald Trump who called the Russia investigation a “hoax” and your good friend AG Barr who called it a “bogus Russiangate scandal”. What is remarkable is that the redacted report was issued on a mostly bi-partisan basis by a Republican controlled Senate. The report reached the same conclusions as Robert Mueller–that the Russian government attacked our 2016 election to help Trump become president. And members of the Trump campaign (Paul Manafort and Don Jr., etc.) worked with the Russians to accomplish that goal.
What is also remarkable is that both Democrats and Republicans have expressed surprise and outrage that a foreign government would try to influence OUR elections. That’s something WE do to other countries. For a very long time the US has intervened in numerous countries to topple governments we didn’t like or to influence their elections to favor candidates we supported. One such incident occurred recently. Ever since coming to office Trump has attacked Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and said the opposition leader Juan Guaido was the “legitimate” president. Back in May the Trump administration backed a group of mercenaries in a bungled attempt to overthrow Maduro. The plot failed and 13 mercenaries, including two Americans, were captured and spilled their guts. It appears a Florida based cut-out company, Silvercorp USA, was given $213 million to carry out the invasion. After the fiasco Secretary of State Pompeo declared with a straight face: “There was no US government direct involvement in this operation”. Notice the use of the word “direct”. It turns out that Silvercorp USA, on its website, says that it employs “former diplomats, former heads of security for multinational corporations and viable military, law enforcement and intelligence professionals in the industry today”. In an ironic twist this language is plagiarized from other websites–like the US Department of Homeland Security. In 2016 Putin didn’t have to send in mercenaries to invade the US. It found willing accomplices in Trump and his campaign! At least the Venezuela adventure may have caused Trump to the reflect on how President Kennedy felt after the Bay of Pigs disaster. Or maybe not. Maybe Trump has an “October surprise” planned for President Maduro to distract voters from Trump’s many troubles with voters at home.
But I digress. The actual title of Shakespeare’s play is “Much Ado About Nothing”. It’s a comedy. The Senate report is a tragedy–a play about how a foreign power tried to affect the outcome of an election to favor it’s chosen candidate–who would then go on to become King. It’s about intrigue, greed and a willingness to sacrifice democratic principles in the quest for power. Lord Acton comes to mind: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” It is most unlikely that Shakespeare, if he were alive today, would want to write a tragedy about the rise and fall of Donald Trump. The bard liked “tragic” figures–those with some redeeming qualities. They are sorely lacking in the Trumpster..
You are presupposing there will be a fall of Donald J Trump, however, he seems to be rising in the polls. He got a 2 point bump during the Democrat Convention, not Biden-Harris. And, as someone who knows the works of the Bard well, the Bard likes all sorts of characters since he was writing for his actors, who all needed work. No work, no pay.
“He got a 2 point bump during the Democrat Convention”
Maybe on a specific poll, but not on the combined polls: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/?ex_cid=rrpromo
More importantly, throughout his entire presidency, Trump’s approval has been below 50%, and except for a few days, more people have disapproved than approved. The consistent disapproval of Trump is unlike that with previous presidents: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/presidential-job-approval
The only reason that he has any hope of reelection is because the Electoral College gives more weight on average to states with conservative majorities. Trump is both corrupt and inept. The U.S. needs and deserves better.
Had Schiff done the same thing it would be short and inaccurate. This one covered everything to prevent PCrap comments bu the main points were not changed, were supported concerning The DNC/Clinton/Steele etc conspiracy to manufacture a false document. Time for the judicial side to take over and do heir job of bring Clinton Brazille (who gave away he debate questions) and others before these criminals die of old age.
Just in, Steve Bannon arrested for fraud. Another trump supporter going to jail?
SENATE REPORT: TRUMP AND STONE TALKED ABOUT WIKILEAKS
More than 200 pages into a sprawling, 1,000-page report on Russian election interference, the Senate Intelligence Committee made a startling conclusion endorsed by both Republicans and Democrats: Donald J. Trump knew of and discussed stolen Democratic emails at critical points late in his 2016 presidential campaign.
The Republican-led committee rejected Mr. Trump’s statement to prosecutors investigating Russia’s interference that he did not recall conversations with his longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. about the emails, which were later released by WikiLeaks. Senators leveled a blunt assessment: “Despite Trump’s recollection, the committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions.”
The senators did not accuse Mr. Trump of lying in their report, released Tuesday, the fifth and final volume from a three-year investigation that laid out extensive contacts between Trump advisers and Russians. But the report detailed even more of the president’s conversations with Mr. Stone than were previously known, renewing questions about whether Mr. Trump was truthful with investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, or misled them, much as prosecutors convinced jurors that Mr. Stone himself misled congressional investigators about his efforts to contact WikiLeaks.
The committee’s doubts are significant because the stolen emails were one of the major operations in Russia’s 2016 assault on American democracy, and a central question that remains even after years of intense scrutiny is what the Trump campaign knew, if anything, about the Kremlin’s plans. Mr. Stone, a onetime campaign adviser who promoted his connections to WikiLeaks to other Trump aides, has maintained that he did not know Russia was behind the stolen emails.
But the Senate report made clear that WikiLeaks, at least, “very likely” knew the emails were coming from Russian intelligence, and that Mr. Stone knew about the most critical WikiLeaks release before it happened.
Edited From: Trump Phone Calls Add To Lingering Questions About Russian Interference”
The New York Time, 8/19/20
Seth, the Russiagate canard failed and is over.
Just to make it worse, absolutely no hard verifiable forensic IT evidence has ever been proffered by either the CIA or NSA to prove their allegations that it was Russians who hacked the mail servers. That’s because it doesn’t exist.
But Durham is your problem now, when it comes to all things to do with the seditious attempt at a soft coup that was the Russian Snipe hunt.
Then there is also your current nominee’s Ukraine and China problem. As if his Dementia problem wasn’t already bad enough.
Your beloved political Party has gone completely off the rails.
Well said, Sir.
The farce that was Russiagate is on its way out, and the real spying scandal it was meant to cover for — including taking out Flynn in an absurdly politicized prosecution — is now coming slowly and tantalizingly into view.
There is already 100 times more data out there about shady and serious abuses of spying power, lying to FISA courts, lying to Congress, lying to the public, by power-mad intel apparatchiks weaponized against Trump. These spy chiefs were abetted and complemented by a sinister cabal of lawyers who bent the law to inculpate anyone they ideologically opposed, and exculpate anyone in the bureaucratic Resistance that abused institutional power to bring down first a rival political campaign and then a presidency.
For Durham to even tell the full story will be a stunning edification for our lie-weary country. He has already corrected Horowitz’s famously tendentious “bottom line” as not the final word (Horowitz being an Obama appointee who found numerous serious abuses but could not officially impute political bias in his report, yet under questioning by Occam’s razor suddenly found very other little plausible explanation for the abuses of power). Only a statement by corrupt investigators to the effect of “Now we will attempt to bring down Trump by lying to a FISA court multiple times” would evidently be sufficient evidence for the Resistance. “Now we will attempt to frame Flynn” would also be required, evidently.
Durham has a career-long bipartisan stellar reputation for bulldogged fairness but toughness — though suddenly journalists and politicos have been eager to try to impugn him, as they have absurdly been out to tar Barr, yet always fall on their faces (as did the most recent House hearing). Barr and Durham are slowly and steadily exposing a fact-pattern that has no serious analogue in the Russiagate opera-farce.
And Durham has recently said this is a story the American people are going to need to hear.
Watching DNC convention. Hillary Clinton said she “won by 3 million votes”……let’s ask again….WHO HAS NOT ACCEPTED THE RESULTS of the 2016 election?
Let’s gets the media to begin asking every Democrat if THEY WILL ACCEPT THE RESULTS of the 2020 Election. Or when they lose, again, will they riot in the streets, looting, setting cars on fire, threatening and assaulting Trump supporters?
These Democrats scream all day long about how much Trump lies when every single one of them LIE all day long. About big stuff. Did anyone listen to Barack Obama’s speech full of OUTRAGEOUS LIES? And their media lets them get away with it. These Democrats are freaking sociopathic liars. I can’t even.
You know what undercuts democracy? Not having a peaceful transition of power because one party is conducting a surveillance program on the other.
Hearing the guy who spied on the administration that would replace him talk about our democracy and our values after he broke a 240 plus year tradition of the peaceful transition of power is truly amazing.
The press isn’t the enemy, Obama says. It’s the way we hold officials accountable, says the president whose DoJ spied on both the Associated Press and Fox News.
Obama spied on a Fox journalist — shopping his case to three separate judges, until he found one who let him name reporter James Rosen as a co-conspirator in a crime of reporting the news.
“Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up.” – Barack Obama
The press, rightly, condemns Trump for bullying of reporters. But fellas, if we just let this lecture from Obama slide, it’s an indictment on our profession. -Philip Wegmann
These Democrats keep saying “its not working” how Trump and the states have handled the Covid pandemic. But not one of them says what they would do differently. Other than instituting a national mask mandate. What else would you do Kamala? Joe? You keep saying “we can and must do better.” Like, what? Tell American the policies you would put in place. Why won’t you tell us? Because you know America will NOT vote for your policies. Stop. Lying. To. Americans.
I don’t want to just beat the Democrats in November. I want them crushed. Where no amount of cheating they do would change the outcome.
Remember what coach Yost said to Herman Boone in “Remember the Titans”
Run it up Herman, and leave no doubt!!! -Miles Commodore
What Pence said was based on information fully controlled by McCabe at exactly the time when he was engineering things against Flynn. In light of what has come out since about McCabe, the 7th floor, the Flynn-Kislyak call, the “tech cuts”, and the whole Russia scam generally, the entire Pence-Flynn episode needs to be re-evaluated. The recordings of the calls with Kislyak were never produced and we are left with stories told about those calls told by interested parties with colossal, almost life-or-death level, incentives to maintain the original narrative. The only more closely held aspects of the Mueller investigation are the DNC server and the involvement/exposure of SSCI members.
Flynn was accused but not charged with FARA violations. I don’t remember whether they were listed as uncharged violations in his plea agreement, but they were certainly something the prosecutors held in their pocket for leverage on Flynn. We know this because his partner was charged on FARA, in a case that was thrown out by the judge (after some millions in legal expenses and a few years of the SCO ruining his life). Flynn denies any knowing misrepresentation on the FARA registration. His cooperation agreement with the prosecution went sour when he they asked him to testify that it was a witting misrepresentation in the case against his partner. It would have been very much in Flynn’s interest to so testify, but apparently he considered it a demand to commit perjury, and refused. So we see an example of a bogus charge (bogus enough to be dismissed after trial) that was nonetheless very real as a form of pressure, even if only from the high cost of defending against it.
Obviously this is corruption writ large, even as the DOJ splits the baby, claiming no prosecutorial misconduct while moving to dismiss the Flynn case to remedy the misconduct. The misconduct is documented extensively enough at this point that we are not at all “waiting for the court” on that front. What Sullivan says, if he gets any more chances to say anything, is relevant to judging Sullivan, not Flynn. Flynn was railroaded independent of what Sullivan thinks (and I think we know what Sullivan *wants*, politically, regardless of what he may believe about the facts of the case).
Stone and Manafort had meaningless charges added for extra leverage and pure spite. e.g., what did Manafort’s mortgage, that he paid, have to do with any FARA case or the purview of the SCO? Stone and, especially, Manafort are swamp creatures who got their comeuppance after making many enemies, but were singled out for this and their plight abusively amplified, because of the SCO objective of getting Trump. Had they been further away in the organization chart and done the same things they would have faced lesser sentences.
White House Press Secretary Hints That Trump May ‘Not’ Concede If He Loses Election
Kayleigh McEnany just had this exchange with a member of the media about President Trump’s ongoing attacks on the legitimacy of vote-by-mail:
REPORTER: Is the president saying if he doesn’t win this election, then he will not accept the results unless he wins?
McENANY: The president has always said he’ll see what happens and make a determination in the aftermath.
McEnany went on to claim that Trump wants “a free election, a fair election,” note that extensive vote-by-mail might undermine public confidence in the results, and insist that this is Trump’s real concern.
This exchange on Wednesday afternoon came after another one in which a reporter asked McEnany about Trump’s recent claim that “the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”
That reporter asked: “Does the president believe there is any circumstance under which he could lose the election fairly?” McEnany declined to answer, mumbling some nonsense about voter fraud and Trump’s towering popularity.
At risk of sounding overly earnest, can we just point out that all this is particularly heinous coming from the White House press secretary at an official briefing of the White House press corps?
“There’s no more direct attack on democracy than saying you’re not going to respect the outcome of an election,” Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told me.
But as Bookbinder noted, in this case, the White House itself is being used to project such an “anti-democratic” message, in a quasi-official way.
“It’s the People’s House,” Bookbinder said. “Saying there that you might not respect the result of the election does seem particularly galling.”
It is often pointed out that we don’t know how serious Trump is about declaring the election illegitimate if he loses — he’s just trolling the elite liberal media! — or whether Trump will have a hard time getting away with saying that if he does lose. That sort of claim is of a piece with a larger tendency to claim that Trump rarely ends up accomplishing his authoritarian designs.
All of that is debatable at best. But it’s in many ways beside the point. As noted above, Trump is openly declaring right now that the outcome cannot be legitimate if he doesn’t win. He has explicitly said mail balloting, which will be amply employed amid pandemic conditions, will inevitably mean a rigged outcome. He hasn’t bothered to conceal his intention to dismiss ballots arriving after Election Day as illegitimate.
Whatever Trump’s seriousness about carrying this through — and whatever practical success he might be likely to have if he tries — it nonetheless sends a terrible message to his supporters, i.e., that they shouldn’t see our elections as capable of delivering a fair or legitimate outcome in which they come out on the losing side.
Edited from: “Did Kayleigh McEnany Really Just Say That From The White House?”
Today’s Washington Post
I really think this is overstrenuous, with all due respect…
The media spends 90% of all press conferences with gotcha when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife type questions the other side would never get, and at some point it becomes insulting to sink to the literalism of filling in the blanks on the pro forma press insults…
It’s also logically and constitutionally absurd. The generals already publicly hate Trump, for chissakes… They are not about to subvert the Constitution and aid Trump in remaining in power after an electoral defeat. Nor does the White House have any more control over the individual electoral processes in the various 50 states than the local governments themselves have to ensure every vote is counted fairly…
The left has also spent the better part of the last 4 years attempting to nullify the prior election by various (often absurd) means… There’s more than a little hypocrisy in their lecturing Trump and the right about not accepting an election result, when that has been particularly the specialty of such as HRC for a long time now. It’s always Russia, or Comey, or any reason but a fair electoral college loss explaining 2016…
We’ve seen this high-level Resistance at every level of the bureaucracy, throughout the media, Hollywood, academia, and there is no shortage of how half the country does not view Trump as a legitimate president — a rejection unprecedented in American history.
John, we never heard of you. And your comments are a stilted effort to sound reasonable. But you’re obviously a Trump sympathizer. And you’re simply dismissing what’s going to be a very tense election. Democrats know that unless they win a landslide blowout, Trump will claim ‘fraud’.
Just painful watching you do this to yourself, JT. You’ve taken the political talking point jockeying and accepted it as truth, even over the wording of the reports you’re citing. I suspect that when you say you were against the hiring of Manafort as campaign manager that you took these objections directly to your own handlers? Either way, you’re a really bright guy who got contracted into playing devils advocate for the a wildly corrupt administration. Intrigued by how you’re going to bounce out of it, post trump.
Turley made up his mind when he jumped into the swamp, of course they will do like they did Dubya, what? never heard of the guy routine.
@CTHD — my reply was posted but not threaded. See following comment page. As to this,
>> “And if people don’t want to have to defend themselves for process crimes, they shouldn’t commit them. They’re still crimes.”
It doesn’t look like there was any crime at all with Flynn (either on FARA or lying to FBI, probably no lie to Pence). With the others, oreviously unenforced (FARA) or never used (Logan act) statutes aggressively brought into play, attorney client privilege eliminated (Cohen), pre-dawn raids on old men (Stone, Manafort) convicted of meaningless charges to increase sentence, cases thrown out of court (Flynn’s partner, Flynn too if not for activist judge) or Mueller team humiliated when case when to court (Concord). Has there been a single virtuous and untainted prosecution on non-bogus charges among all the SCO cases, of people connected to Trump? It certainly looks like the massive political hit-job that it was, which is clearly OK with you, but some of us find it pretty disturbing when the vendetta can continue through prosecutions rather than mere reports and news stories.
Pence said that Flynn lied to him (“I knew that he lied to me” — https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pence-i-knew-flynn-lied-to-me-about-russian-contacts-when-he-was-fired/ ), but I agree that that’s not a crime.
We’ll have to wait and see what the courts decide re: the DOJ’s motion to dismiss Flynn’s case; CADC oral arguments on the writ of mandamus were last week, and we don’t know when they’ll rule or how they’ll rule. FARA wasn’t part of his false statements charge itself, and I’m curious to see what will come out in the Covington materials where privilege was waived.
Neither Stone nor Manafort were “convicted of meaningless charges.” If you think the charges are meaningless and no one can legitimately be charged with those crimes, you’d be calling for those laws to be take off the books and everyone convicted of them to be freed.
“Has there been a single virtuous and untainted prosecution …?”
That’s a matter of opinion, and people clearly have different opinions about it.
I find this a reasonable and even generous response…
I did not mean to say Stone and Manafort should pay a fair penalty for breaking the law — though reasonable people may differ as to sentencing — but rather to say by way of poor synecdoche en passant that this was not campaign collusion of the sort promised.
I will offer a bipartisan theory I’ve developed that in high-voltage legal cases of lower magnitude (Clinton’s “gross negligence” in mishandling emails or Trump’s campaign finance violations or possibly his taxes) we may need to settle for a lower-resolution legal sieve to preserve the general stability of our system because — I don’t think anyone has really thought about this — while major party heads are not above the law, there is so much voltage surrounding their prosecution that there likely needs to be a higher radius before statutes are applied, as there are always prosecutors willing to expand or contract statutes when the stakes about who has power are this high. (Nor did I mean to say that Trump cannot obstruct justice ever, just that it seems eminently reasonable that it would be very hard for him to do so in exercising core Article II powers versus some other sort of ancillary graft or abuse that might prove impeachable. I don’t think it wise that the House or Senate should inspect the presidential motive sans an actus reus, because ill motive is forever imputed by partisans of all sides. Similarly from this you might infer I think it reasonable to hold one must impeach before indicting a president, for profound reasons of system stability…)
More generally I think a great deal of media attention has been lavished on the Russiagate view of reality, with an inverse suppression (except in right-wing media) of the profound questions about surveillance — even if the legal threshold for opening a counter-intel probe is next to zero. It is munificently obvious that such a power is rife for abuse in political contexts, precisely for some of the reasons adduced above.
The Flynn case is very interesting, if also I find depressing, and I can only say from a civil liberties standpoint I’m much more inclined to defend a lie that’s less-than-material by a defendant than one used to further what seems to me a preposterously vehement and gray-predicated prosecution. An incoming NSA would obviously be making calls to help stabilize relations, letting countries know that 62+ million voters had just ratified a shift of policy and not to do anything precipitous — this is a commonplace across time. There are so many irregularities with Flynn’s case, so many exculpatory info withheld, questions about the 302s, what the verbatim lie was, what the lie’s magnitude was, what the intent of the interviewers were, Comey’s strange behavior setting it up with faux casualness against a new incoming NSA, Sullivan’s oddly personal ad hominem that he later walked back, Sullivan’s vehemence in pursuing this even after there are many reasonable concerns with the case’s predicates and with the DOJ’s charging authority expressing the electable Executive in a courtroom — I was rather hoping for a more earnest dismissal or an upholding of the mandamus. Not least because I’m not clear that just the amicus brief is a very bad idea vis-a-vis the rights of defendants across the country in such situations, but because it’s not even clear that would be the end of it, as Sullivan might hyper-extend the trial in other ways, going beyond what seems like a fairly curt statutory admonition to grant a pro forma dismissal. (Nor is it Sullivan’s job to review the DOJ’s practices.)
There are many questions there, including even the interesting one of whether the FBI should have full access to everything an incoming NSA might be saying — or to full forthrightness on all questions — precisely because the FBI does not normally superintend policy, and there may be international questions of import that fall not fully in its purview.
The reason they interviewed Flynn is because of public statements by Pence and Spicer about what Flynn told them re: his conversations with Kislyak — statements that the FBI knew to be false. They wanted to know why Flynn was lying to the VP-Elect about what he’d said to a foreign adversary. For ex., on 1/15/17, Pence stated on TV that “I talked to General Flynn about that conversation [with Kislyak on 12/29] …. They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia.” That’s false, and it was appropriate for the FBI to investigate whether the incoming NSA is compromised.
If the 302 from Flynn’s1/24 interview is accurate, then Flynn definitely made material false statements. The DOJ originally stated that they were materially false, and Sullivan already ruled on them being materially false. In its motion to dismiss, the DOJ claimed that they weren’t material, but they failed to explain why their stance on that has changed, and even after they filed the motion, they continue to claim that no one working on the case had engaged in prosecutorial misconduct. I’m not sure why you think they’re not material: if Flynn had accurately reported the content of the calls, they would have asked follow-up questions (e.g., why didn’t he tell Pence the truth about the calls?).
There’s still plenty of relevant material that hasn’t been made public. For example, when they released the phone call transcripts, they didn’t include the 12/22 call about the UN vote, only the 12/23 follow-up. They didn’t release McFarland’s 302s about her discussions with Flynn before and after his 12/29 discussion with Kislyak. They didn’t release 302s from Flynn’s subsequent interviews, where — according to the Mueller report — Flynn made statements that conflict with his 1/24 interview and with the personal declaration he filed in Jan. of this year (submitted under penalty of perjury). If his personal declaration is true, then was he lying to the FBI in the additional interviews? Or did he lie in his personal declaration, despite submitting it under penalty of perjury?
To be clear: the trial is over. They were already in the sentencing phase when the DOJ submitted the motion to dismiss. The question now is whether that motion is granted through a writ or if Sullivan can move ahead with a hearing (e.g., to question the DOJ about it’s shift on whether the false statements were material) prior to ruling on the motion. I think it’s entirely appropriate for Sullivan to question the DOJ about conflicting statements submitted by the DOJ, especially since the DOJ is maintaining that there was no prosecutorial misconduct.
Ultimately, our opinions are legally moot. This is in the hands of the CADC and — depending on their ruling — perhaps Sullivan or another judge. For us, it’s more a political issue.
@CommitToHonestDiscussion, Pence saying Flynn told him he didn’t talk about sanctions or expulsions was in the context that Flynn didn’t negotiate any deal or make or promises. Of course, there had to be mention of sanctions or expulsions since that was the reason Kislyak was calling Flynn on his vacation in Caribbean. We see from the transcript that Flynn’s only response to Kislyak’s points on sanctions were acknowledging “yeps and uh huhs.” Regarding expulsions Flynn only asked that they respond reciprocally, not escalate and “let cooler heads prevail.”
So you are missing the forest for the trees.
1) Flynn had a perfectly appropriate communication and did not lie or have any need to lie.
2) The FBI had no legitimate reason to be investigating Flynn or to hold open their investigation after they made sure there was no reason to investigate, as shown in the Jan 4 Strzok texts.
3) IF Flynn had made a promise to Kislyak or lied it would have been none of the FBI’s business as a policy matter (unless Flynn was deemed acting on behalf of Russia or another country.)
4) The lies and deceptions of the FBI and Obama WH were extremely serious violations of policy, law and public trust. Bill Priestap’s handwritten notes reveal damning evidence of proprietorial bad faith.
5) Leaking the content of the Flynn-Kislyak discussion was criminal and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law if the FBI if we want comfort the FBI succeeded in cleaning its own house.
6) All of the Flynn case was motivated to neutralize the person that might expose a larger conspiracy to interfere the peaceful transition of power that this country has never seen before and must never see again. Watergate, a botched burglary, is not even a blip compared to this.
“Pence saying Flynn told him he didn’t talk about sanctions or expulsions was in the context that Flynn didn’t negotiate any deal or make or promises.”
Nope. Here’s the transcript: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-transcript-january-15-2017-pence-manchin-gingrich/
“there had to be mention of sanctions or expulsions since that was the reason Kislyak was calling Flynn on his vacation in Caribbean.”
But Pence and Spicer publicly stated that Flynn said he hadn’t discussed this.
“The FBI had no legitimate reason to be investigating Flynn”
Flynn lying to Pence about his conversations with Kislyak — a rep. of a foreign adversary — is a totally legitimate reason to interview Flynn.
If we can’t agree on these basic facts, I don’t see the point of discussing the rest of what you wrote.
Commit just said to Ron Graf: “If we can’t agree on these basic facts, I don’t see the point of discussing the rest of what you wrote.”
You will probably never be able to agree with Commit on basic facts because she shifts them at her convenience.
In “Does Mandatory Mask Enforcement Violate The American Disability Act?” she said [and this is copied and pasted from her remarks}
COMMIT on August 21 at 12:39
“Young, no one here said “Race is a social construct and has no basis in biology.”
COMMIT on August 12, 11:41 pm
“Race is social construct, not a biological one.”
When this contradiction was pointed out to her she went into multiple paragraphs in an attempt to explain away the contradictions. She often does that. Allan noticed it before I did. I was inclined to give her the benefit of a doubt until this.
Don’t expect an honest discussion with “Commit To An Honest Discussion”.
Young, you keep showing that you prefer to project your ignorance onto me instead of learning.
What *I* said,”Race is social construct, not a biological one” does not mean the same as *your* characterization, “Race is a social construct and has no basis in biology.”
You apparently don’t want to learn what a “biological construct” means, despite my having explained it to you: https://jonathanturley.org/2020/08/11/does-mandatory-mask-enforcement-violate-the-american-disability-act/comment-page-2/#comment-1992744
You apparently prefer to wallow in your ignorance and pretend that your misunderstanding is a problem on my end.
You could choose to learn what “construct” actually means. You demonstrated a similar misunderstanding earlier with “social construct,” bizarrely pretending that social constructs have “no basis in reality”: https://jonathanturley.org/2020/08/16/mueller-aide-weissmann-calls-on-doj-attorneys-not-to-help-on-investigations/comment-page-3/#comment-1990741
It’s truly sad that your mind is so closed to learning.
I prefer to wallow rather than have a discussion with someone who is dishonest.
This is not the first instance of your contradicting yourself and then writing diatribes to get out of it.
You don’t have to have a discussion with *me* to learn, Young.
Learn from somewhere/someone else!!
If your attention span is too short, perhaps this is simple enough for you to understand:
“not a biological construct” =/= “has no basis in biology”
Again: learn the meaning of “biological construct” instead of wallowing in your ignorance. Choose someone who you *are* willing to learn from.
“your contradicting yourself”
I didn’t. Though your ignorance of the meaning of “biological construct” lets you continue believing your garbage.
BTW, Young, maybe you’re willing to learn from This is absurd:
He told you “I have a suspicion that if you poll systematic biologists you would not find many who would say that any subset of humanity is a subspecies according to the analyses systematic biologists commonly use.” His claim was about “subspecies,” not “race,” but you attempted to turn it into a claim about race. And he responded to you with “The problem with your thesis is that you wouldn’t have seen [biologists] using the term ‘subspecies’ [for H. sapiens] 50 years ago, either. Zoologists and botanists don’t just wing it in composing these taxonomies, though there are disputes among them.”
So maybe the way for you to learn is to stop focusing on “race” for a bit and learn why biologists for many decades have said that there’s only one extant subspecies.
But you’re clearly unwilling to learn from me, so choose to learn from someone you actually will learn from.
Commit, he’s trying to not look like a complete fool while you lap him again.
BtB, it’s actually sad. He’s not a stupid person. But he’d rather be ignorant than learn from me, and he’d also rather be ignorant than find someone else to help him get past his misunderstandings. I believe that it’s willful not-learning rather than inability to learn.
Reminds me of a good essay on teaching and learning by Herbert Kohl: “I won’t learn from you!”
https://wikieducator.org/images/5/59/Kohl_I_Won%27t_Learn_from_You.pdf
While we have watched Turley bend himself into pretzels protecting Trump and Barr at all costs, this article should provide proof to anyone to see how far he’s willing to go.
Well yes. They kept the politically relevant part, about Russia collusion or lack thereof, for last, giving themselves an option to release close to the election, or as other developments warranted.
The SSCI material and investigative resources are a small subset of what Mueller had, so there’s no question of finding previously undiscovered collusion. It only can and does provide yet another (however belated and almost irrelevant) confirmation that there was no there, there. So on the substance is this meaningless. The question is what it accomplishes, by design, politically.
The point, virtually the only point, of constructing and releasing such a massive tome that very few people will read, let alone together with the other volumes (plus Mueller and HPSCIx2), is to insert authoritative sound bites into media reports as a political weapon. Narrative engineering. Key members of the SSCI have massive exposure to the Durham investigation as they were personally involved (Graham, Warner, Feinstein…) in pushing the Russia scam. Republicans on the committee are no friends of Trump and heavily invested in “protecting the institutions”, i.e., the IC-industrial complex, as well as themselves. What are the engineered narratives?
1. SSCI blames FBI with an out for the FBI to blame Christopher Steele (who will blame “Russians”). Of course this exposes the outsourcing to Steele as a designed cover story, but the media don’t care, so it’s all good.
2. Fudge the difference between criminal and counterintelligence investigations. It’s Schroedinger’s investigation; the more politically damaging alternative disappears when you open the box! This will be, and already is, the cover story for Clinesmith and his bosses.
COMMITTEE FOUND NO FAULT WITH CROWD-STRIKE ANALYSIS
Report: “The committee notes that using forensic images of compromised systems is standard protocol in cyber investigations, because it removes the chance that information on the compromised systems could be altered or deleted by mistake. … Ultimately, the F.B.I. got what it needed, including the forensic images from CrowdStrike.”
The president and his supporters have stoked conspiracy theories that the Russians were not responsible for hacking Democratic emails after all. They have suggested that there was something nefarious about the fact that the Democratic National Committee, working with the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, provided the F.B.I. with forensic images — an exact duplicate of the digital information — from its hacked server rather than the original device. The bipartisan report endorsed computer experts’ view that forensic images were a standard and correct approach.
Edited from: “8 Takeaways From The Senate Committee Report On Russian Interference”
The New York Times, 8/18/20
NYT is still lying then too. Because anybody who does crim law 101 or has passing knowledge of standard protocols for FBI forensic analysis knows: THEY ALWAYS TAKE POSSESSION OF HARD DRIVES AND MAKE THE COPIES THEMSELVES. this is STANDARD PROCEDURE. from little investigations like seizing a drug dealer’s phone, or a pedo’s computer, to big ones like securities fraud criminal investigations,. the warrants are served, servers seized, boxed and transported to where the FBI makes their own mirror image copies of hard drives, not a private company like Crowdstrike.
and in a foreign intelligence investigation, why would they do LESS? make zero sense and it still does.
unless you consider what the former NSA systems analyst and designer Bill Binney concluded: “it was a leak not a hack”
and the FBI was covering it up.
now one may say, wait what about what such and such said, that in this case, there were a lot of hard drives networked, so they had to take Crowdstrike’s word for it. Well. of course, there were many storage units, server farms, offshore devices, and it was all networked. It would have been a lot of work. it was complicated forensic analysis. But if Crowdstrike could do it then it was also possible for FBI.
So if the FBI made a choice to defy their own well known SOPs and do it differently. this taints every socalled result which comes after, casts it all in a bad light.
they knew it might, but they also knew the newspapers and folks like you, Seth, would cover for them.
Lawyers who have even modest small experience with this, I do, but not much, understood this was bogus then and it still is. FBI ALWAYS SEIZES THE EVIDENCE. They don’t take some company’s word for it. Especially not in such a weighty matter.
Am I saying FBI lied? Yes, that is the only reasonable conclusion. And, guess what., they do it every day. Usually I think, for legitimate purposes of investigation. In this instance, I feel it was a cover up.
I am not surprised important Senate Republicans have gone along with the cover up. My opinion of most Republican elected officials is low. It’s the exceptions I like such as TRUMP and I doubt any of the exceptions signed off on this one. Show me a list and I will let you know.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/readers-respond/bs-ed-rr-russian-hack-elections-letter-20190429-story.html
There are many embarrassing skeletons in the closet for every great nation, America included.
The “leak not a hack” reality of this situation is like a skeleton out of the closet that we pretend it still inside hiding.
Kurtz, get back to me when you ‘can’ explain why Senate Republicans were content with this ‘massive breach of protocol’.
Simple. The Republicans wanted Trump gone just as much as the Democrats did. The SSCI along with the Gang of 8, is corrupt and plotted with the FBI and DOJ to try to a) push Trump out, B) get Trump on a process crime they could impeach on. Mark Warner and Bill Burr conspired to leak the FISA warrant through James Wolfe to Ali Watkins. Then gave James Wolfe a slap on the wrist for taking classified information out of a SCIF because he threatened to subpoena the SSCI members if they prosecuted him. Because he did under their orders.
Kevin Clinesmith just got the same sweetheart deal for the same damnable reason.
Barr covered up Ruby Ridge and Waco and Iran Contra.
Durham found nothing wrong with CIA torture.
Our Justice system is corrupt and cancerous and if not corrected will lead to war in the country.
ROFL that you think “The Republicans [on the SSCI] wanted Trump gone just as much as the Democrats did” while all voting against both witnesses and removal in the Senate impeachment trial.
CTHD, I agree that probably upwards of 1/3 to 2/3 of Republican Senators hate Trump’s guts, want him gone, and would stab him in the back in a second in a dark closet if no one saw them go in. Their constraint is the GOP base which has proven itself stupid or cynical, or a combination of both. The Senators are just cynical.
The FBI let Crwodstrike give them images of something. This would be the equivalent of the FBI going to the mob and asking their accountant for a copy of the books, the accountant giving them a set of books and the FBI just accepting it without looking any further or actually auditing the books.
What they gave the FBI would not be admissible in a Court of Law, or would be shredded as manufactured because there was no chain of evidence.
Fact, given enough prep time, a few days, I can set up a server network and make it look like santa clause accessed the system in 1940. What Crowdstrike was allowed to do was as gross of a lie as the IRS saying they couldnt get Louis Lerner’s emails. It’s absurdly insulting to anyone with any knowledge of IT.
COMMITTEE FOUND CARTER PAGE ‘EVASIVE’
Report: “While there were several problems with the F.B.I.’s FISA renewals for Page, the committee assesses that Page’s previous ties to Russian intelligence officers, coupled with his Russian travel, justified the F.B.I.’s initial concerns about Page.”
The scrutiny of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser, as part of the Trump-Russia investigation has taken on political significance because an inspector general uncovered errors and omissions in applications to wiretap him under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. While finding that he played an insignificant role in the Trump campaign, the report concluded that the Russians may have thought he was more important than he was. The committee also expressed frustration at Mr. Page’s evasiveness, saying that he was unable to account for his time during visits to Moscow and altered documents, and that his “responses to basic questions were meandering, avoidant and involved several long diversions.” Both parties concluded that despite the later problems with the wiretap applications, the F.B.I. was justified in having counterintelligence concerns about him.
Edited from: “8 Takeaways From The Senate Committee Report On Russian Interference”
The New York Times, 8/18/20
Carter Page was a CIA asset while John Brennan was Head of the CIA. Then Carter Page gets invited to a meeting with Halper, another asset, in which he is purportedly dirtied up enough to get a warrant to spy on him. This was contrived and planned and executed by the CIA to then put Carter in range of Trump to spy on him. Carter page was part of the coup attempt, he was a mole.
WIKILEAKS KNEW PUTIN WAS BEHIND HACKS
TRUMP CAMPAIGN TOLD WIKILEAKS WHEN TO PUBLISH
The committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally behind the hack and leak operation that published stolen Democratic Party emails, and that WikiLeaks — the website that published them — played a key role and “very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort.”
The Trump campaign sought to take advantage of those leaks by asking for advance notice of the WikiLeaks disclosures, crafting public relations strategies around them, and even encouraging “further theft of information and continued leaks.”
This took place at critical moments of the 2016 campaign, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded.
For example, when the Trump campaign was made aware that The Washington Post would be publishing a copy of the now-infamous Access Hollywood tape, word got to Trump confidant Roger Stone — who tried to get a message to WikiLeaks through an intermediary so that it would publish hacked Democratic Party emails immediately.
WikiLeaks ultimately published stolen emails approximately 30 minutes after the Access Hollywood story was put online.
The Trump campaign responded to the report by saying it was evidence that “there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign,” adding its contention that the “Russia Collusion Hoax is the greatest political scandal in the history of this country.”
The report also found fault with the FBI: With regard to the hacking of Democratic Party emails, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the bureau did not act aggressively enough to warn the Democratic National Committee about the hacking operation.
But it also said that the DNC did not take these warnings seriously enough, and that there was poor communication on both sides.
Edited from: “Senate Report: Former Trump Aide Paul Manafort Shared Campaign Info With Russia”
NPR, 8/19/20
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
KEY PASSAGE FROM ARTICLE:
The Trump campaign was made aware that The Washington Post would be publishing a copy of the now-infamous Access Hollywood tape, word got to Trump confidant Roger Stone — who tried to get a message to WikiLeaks through an intermediary so that it would publish hacked Democratic Party emails immediately.
WikiLeaks ultimately published stolen emails approximately 30 minutes after the Access Hollywood story was put online.
Wikileaks had already made it public knowledge before Roger Stone contacted them, that’s why he contacted them.
THe FBI warned the DNC as early as September 2015..not a typo…2015 of Nation States attempting to access their networks and offered to assist the DNC with hardening of their networks. The DNC absolutely refused and /warned/?!? the FBI to stay away from their networks and not to attempt to access them.
Think about that for a moment. The FBI tells one of the major political parties they are being targeted by Nation States and their response is to ban the FBI from their systems.
Do you think if Boeing was being targeted by the Chinese, they would be allowed to tell the FBI to sod enough in the interest of National Security? But that is what happened with the DNC.