Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

John Hamler wrote:

*...except to provide the president with a misleading pretext to fire deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein and discredit Robert Mueller’s probe.**

Yup. But what are we gonna do about it? Except get on a forum and complain about if our meager little forum even has the right to exist or contemplate or contextualize or conclude anything...

Go forth, John Hamler, and continue to preach the gospel. Progressives have 9 months to root out and run off the likes of Nunes and Ryan.

We are getting some support from the Right—Republican lawmakers distance themselves from Trump on memo:

Elise Viebeck and Shane Harris wrote:


A fierce partisan battle over the Justice Department and its role in the Russia investigation moves into its second week Monday as Democrats try to persuade the House Intelligence Committee to release a 10-page rebuttal to a controversial Republican memo alleging surveillance abuse.

The panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), is expected to offer a motion to release his party’s response to the Republican document during a committee meeting scheduled for 5p.m.Monday. It was not immediately clear whether Republicans would join Democrats in voting for the document’s release, as some members of the GOP have expressed concerns about its contents.

Speaking Sunday on ABC News, Schiff called the GOP memo a “political hit job on the FBI in service of the president.”

“The goal here really isn’t to find out the answers from the FBI. The goal here is to undermine the FBI, discredit the FBI, discredit the [special counsel] investigation, do the president’s bidding,” Schiff said on “This Week.”

Democrats spent the weekend pushing back against the claim by President Trump and some Republicans that corruption has poisoned the investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin during the 2016 election. Democrats and some Republicans worry that this view, buttressed by the GOP memo, will lead Trump to fire Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees the Russia probe.

Former CIA director John Brennan and lawmakers from both parties on Feb. 4 commented on the release of a GOP memo alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

Calling on Trump not to interfere in Mueller’s investigation, four Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee dismissed on Sunday the idea that the memo’s criticism of how the FBI handled certain surveillance applications undermines the special counsel’s work. Reps. Trey Gowdy (S.C.), Chris Stewart (Utah), Will Hurd (Tex.) and Brad Wenstrup (Ohio) represented the committee on the morning political talk shows.

Gowdy, who helped draft the memo, said Trump should not fire Rosenstein, and he rejected the idea that the document has a bearing on the investigation.

“I actually don’t think it has any impact on the Russia probe,” Gowdy, who also chairs the House Oversight Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Stewart, arguing that the two are “very separate” issues, said Mueller should be allowed to finish his work. “This memo, frankly, has nothing at all to do with the special counsel,” he told “Fox News Sunday.”

The four Republicans walked a careful line on the GOP document, which alleges that the Justice Department abused its powers by obtaining a warrant for surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page using information from a source who was biased against Trump. Their comments echoed those of Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who supported the memo’s release but insists that its findings do not impugn Mueller or Rosenstein.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), whose actions have been at the center of the debate over the memo, did not give interviews Sunday.

Former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)
It remained unclear Sunday whether Trump would use the document as a pretext to fire senior Justice Department officials, a decision that could trigger a constitutional crisis, according to Democrats. Trump advocated the memo’s release, telling advisers it could help him, in part by undercutting Mueller’s investigation and opening the door to firings.
Trump tweeted Sunday that while “the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on,” the Republican memo “totally vindicates” him.

“Their [sic] was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!” he wrote from Florida, where he spent the weekend.

The four-page GOP memo accused current and former senior Justice Department officials of omitting key facts about former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, the source of some of their information, in applications to carry out surveillance on Page. Steele wrote the now-infamous dossier alleging ties between Trump and Kremlin officials; his research was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Republicans say this funding stream should have been disclosed in the surveillance applications, which they argue would not have been approved without the information contained in the dossier. Democrats take issue with both points.

Nunes said Friday that Justice “got a warrant on someone in the Trump campaign using opposition research paid for by the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign.”

“That’s what this is about,” he told Fox News. “And it’s wrong. And it should never be done.”

If the House Intelligence Committee approves the release of the Democratic memo, it is expected to go to the Justice Department for redactions. Even if the motion succeeds, Trump has five days to block it.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) urged the president to support the document’s release in the spirit of fairness.

“A refusal to release the Schiff memo... will confirm the American people’s worst fears that the release of Chairman Nunes’ memo was only intended to undermine Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation,” Schumer wrote Sunday in a letter to Trump.

The Intelligence Committee voted along party lines last week to release the Republican memo despite warnings from national security officials that it would damage U.S. law enforcement.

[Inside the FBI: Anger, worry, work — and fears of lasting damage]

As Sunday’s back-and-forth set the stage for more heated debate this week, Republicans faced questions over whether Trump might fire Mueller or Rosenstein.

Reince Priebus, the former White House chief of staff, said Sunday that he “never felt that the president was going to fire the special counsel,” disputing a report in The Washington Post that he was “incredibly concerned” Trump was moving to fire Mueller last summer.

“I never heard that,” Priebus said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Pressed on whether he was aware of the president’s views on the issue, Priebus said Trump was clear about what he saw as Mueller’s conflicts of interest in the job, and he allowed that others may have “interpreted that” as Trump’s desire to fire Mueller.

Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that Trump should not fire Rosenstein.

“I would tell the president, if I was in his presence, ‘Do not fire him,” he said. “He’ll be fair and impartial. You may be upset about the politicization of what happened, but I don’t think it came from him. Give him a chance to sort this out with the rest of the department.’”

Memphis Trace

Quote Post 26

27 Reply by Memphis Trace (edited by Memphis Trace 2018-02-05 08:21:49)

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

John Hamler wrote:

And, furthermore, Tom Brady and the Patriots just lost the Superb Owl. Why can't we debate the veracity of that result?

¿Or to excite your emotions we could reprise your Seahawks' convincing first Superb Owl win over the 2nd best QB in NFL history?

Ben Shpigel wrote:

So will the Eagles, whose demeanor in the past week evoked the 2013 Seattle Seahawks, who knew how good they were — and couldn’t wait to prove as much against Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos. Jeffery spoke last week in definite terms: when, not if, the Eagles won the Super Bowl. Of Brady, he said Sunday night, “I respect him, a great player, probably one of the greatest ever, but hey, he had not played the Eagles yet.”

Memphis Trace

PS After your Superb Owl, I will never be able to call this annual bacchanalium the Super Bowl again.

Quote Post 27

28 Reply by njc

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

http://rasmussenreports.com/public_cont … presidency

Gonna get worse.  Gonna get a lot worse--if any revelation could be worse than the cancerous corruption being exposed.

Quote Post 28

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

njc wrote:

http://rasmussenreports.com/public_cont … presidency

Gonna get worse.  Gonna get a lot worse--if any revelation could be worse than the cancerous corruption being exposed.

You talking about the president’s administration? Can’t happen soon enough.

Quote Post 29

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

njc wrote:

http://rasmussenreports.com/public_cont … presidency

Gonna get worse.  Gonna get a lot worse--if any revelation could be worse than the cancerous corruption being exposed.

You are right on; the cancerous corruption will get a lot worse for Lord Trump and his flock once the Russia investigation and all the sidebars of collusion, conspiracy, money laundering, etc. is over. Not hard to believe that 50% of the Rasmussen poll think the FBI meddled in the investigation to hurt Trump. Let's face it, they stupidly withheld info of the Russians trying to help Trump and at the same time opened up new inquiries into Clinton emails which were proven erroneous for the umpteenth time after the damage was done. To paraphrase, you can fool all the people some of the time and with enough lies you can fool the majority of Trump's flock all the time. When Trump says his shit don't stink, they hold their noses and say you're right, can't smell a thing. Take care. Vern

Quote Post 30

31 Reply by njc

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

So far Mueller has come up empty except for except for charging someone based on  criminalizing faulty memory--the same thing they got Conrad Black on.  But Mueller hiimself has come under doubt.. He'll walk away--if he walks away--with his reputation badly soiled.  Meanwhile, FEC charges for the HRC campaign--if not for herself--grow more plausible.

Quote Post 31

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

njc wrote:

So far Mueller has come up empty except for except for charging someone based on  criminalizing faulty memory--the same thing they got Conrad Black on.  But Mueller hiimself has come under doubt.. He'll walk away--if he walks away--with his reputation badly soiled.  Meanwhile, FEC charges for the HRC campaign--if not for herself--grow more plausible.

President Trump, if You’re Innocent, Why Act So Guilty?
By Nicholas Kristof

Feb. 7, 2018
President Trump and Devin Nunes have been muddying the waters of the Russia investigation, so let’s try to clarify those waters so that they’re as clear as vodka.

Here are a dozen things we know.

1. Russia interfered in the U.S. election. The U.S. intelligence community concluded that President Vladimir Putin had “a clear preference” for Trump and “ordered an influence campaign” to hurt Hillary Clinton. The Department of Homeland Security notified 21 states that Russian hackers (mostly unsuccessfully) had targeted their election systems before the 2016 election.

Russia oversaw an online campaign using fake American accounts to spread anti-Clinton messages. Twitter found that 50,000 Russian accounts fired off 2.1 million election-related tweets in the fall of 2016, and in the final weeks around the election accounted for 4.25 percent of retweets of Trump’s own account.

2. Trump has longstanding business interests in Russia. The Times has explored these, beginning with a trip to Moscow in 1987 to try to build a hotel there. As recently as 2013 on another Moscow visit he was still optimistic, tweeting “TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next,” but the buildings have never come to fruition.More successfully, Trump has attracted murky investments from Russia, raising speculation that Russia might have gained some leverage over him. A Russian oligarch paid Trump an eyebrow-raising $95 million for one Florida property. A Reuters investigation found that people with Russian addresses or passports had invested nearly $100 million in seven Trump properties in southern Florida.

“I know the Russians better than anybody,” Trump boasted in 2014.

3. Trump has consistently displayed a soft spot for Putin. At various times, Trump has described Putin as “so nice,” “so smart” and doing “an amazing job.” Trump defended Putin from allegations that he interfered in elections and killed journalists. “You think our country is so innocent?” he scoffed. Trump told another interviewer, “I think our country does plenty of killing also.”

4. Trump picked people with ties to Russia. He named as a foreign policy adviser Carter Page, who was investigated by the F.B.I. as far back as 2013 for possible ties to Russian intelligence (Page denies any wrongdoing). To run his campaign, Trump selected Paul Manafort, who had long experience working for Russian interests and once wrote a memo offering a plan to “greatly benefit the Putin Government.” Trump’s aides also tweaked the Republican Party platform in a way that would please Moscow.

5. Russia confided in the Trump campaign. In April 2016, the Russians told George Papadopoulos, another Trump foreign policy adviser, that they had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” It’s not clear what Papadopoulos did with that information.

6. Trump aides secretly met with Russians. In June 2016, Russia offered the Trump campaign “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary.” Instead of calling the F.B.I., Donald Trump Jr. responded, “I love it,” and arranged a meeting with the Russians and top campaign officials.

7. A Trump ally secretly communicated with a Russian mouthpiece. In August 2016, Trump ally Roger Stone communicated with Guccifer 2.0, believed to be an outlet for Russian military intelligence. Separately, Stone tweeted that “it will soon [be] Podesta’s time in a barrel”; seven weeks later, WikiLeaks began releasing emails Russia had hacked from John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.

8. … more secret contacts. WikiLeaks, presumably representing Russian interests, engaged in secret correspondence with Donald Trump Jr.

9. Kushner met a Putin ally. Jared Kushner met in December 2016 with a Russian, Sergey Gorkov, who is close to Putin. Kushner also privately asked the Russians about using Russian equipment to establish a secret communications channel to the Kremlin.10. Trump aides falsely denied contacts. Campaign officials denied innumerable times that there had been any contact with Russia. “Of course not,” said Mike Pence shortly before the inauguration. “Why would there be any contacts?”

Good question. In fact, there were at least 51 such contacts, including 19 face-to-face interactions, by the count of CNN.

11. Russia is still at it. Russian bots are joining Trump supporters in tweeting hashtags like #MAGA and #FullOfSchiff. These same Russian bots are promoting Fox News links that disparage the Russia investigation.

12. This is not normal!

Actually, I doubt that there was anything so straightforward as a secret quid pro quo. Indeed, some of these links are so blatant that they seem confusingly exculpatory: Why would anybody conspiring with Putin raise suspicions by publicly praising him?

Yet the Russian interference itself is beyond doubt. The Mueller investigation has led to two guilty pleas and two indictments so far, and it must continue. Frankly, it’s suspicious that Trump is throwing up so much dust and trying so hard to delegitimize the investigation.

He is not acting innocent.

Quote Post 32

33 Reply by Memphis Trace (edited by Memphis Trace 2018-02-10 07:55:33)

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

njc wrote:

http://rasmussenreports.com/public_cont … presidency

Gonna get worse.  Gonna get a lot worse--if any revelation could be worse than the cancerous corruption being exposed.

You are right. It is gonna get worse... for President Trump. Note the date—9 February, yesterday, in the year of our Lord 2018—of this article.

Poll: Majority say Mueller’s Russia probe is fair
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 02/09/18 12:00 PM EST
 
A majority of Americans say special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia is fair and should continue without interference, a Marist College poll reports.

The poll, released Friday, finds that just more than half of those surveyed, 53 percent, say that the special counsel probe is a "fair" investigation into Trump's campaign, while 28 percent say it is "unfair." This marks an increase from 48 percent who said the investigation was "fair" in the same poll last month.

In addition, respondents said they are more likely to trust Mueller than Trump. Given an option between the two, 55 percent said they would believe Mueller over Trump, compared to 30 percent that said the reverse.

Most Americans still have a positive view of the FBI despite weeks of attacks from Trump and congressional Republicans over the bureau's handling of both the Russia investigation and the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server, the poll finds.

Seventy-one percent of Americans said the bureau was just trying to do its job, compared to 23 percent who told the poll they believe the FBI is biased against the president.

Sixty-five percent of Americans have an overall positive view of the FBI, while 28 percent have an unfavorable view. Fifty-five percent of Republicans still have a positive view of the FBI, according to the poll, despite Trump's feud with the agency.

Marist College contacted 1,012 adults from Feb. 5 to 7. The poll has a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.

∞ ∞ ∞

But there's still a seat in the caboose on the The Truth Train for you njc.

Quote Post 33

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

njc wrote:

So far Mueller has come up empty except for except for charging someone based on  criminalizing faulty memory--the same thing they got Conrad Black on.  But Mueller hiimself has come under doubt.. He'll walk away--if he walks away--with his reputation badly soiled.  Meanwhile, FEC charges for the HRC campaign--if not for herself--grow more plausible.

If Mueller is coming up "empty" then why in hell is Trump and his devotees trying every trick in the book to stop the investigation? Me thinks the liar doeth protest too much. The "Dumbass" memo shows how inept the so-called House investigation into Mueller is. Even without the Dem memo to point out the lies, the Pub memo contradicts it's own assertion that the surveillance of Carter Page was the catalyst for the Russia investigation. The weeks of ballyhoo were pathetic in the face of their bias and incompetence. Trump is without doubt a pathological liar and that alone should be enough to kick his ass out of the presidency. But there is much more he is guilty of and the smoke is clearing more every day. Let the investigation continue and see where it leads. Trump or HC or both, what the hell does it matter as long as the guilty is outed. Since HC has been investigated more times than Carter Page has liver pills, I know where my money goes. Place your bet and let the wheels turn and the cards fall where they will. Take care. Vern

Quote Post 34

35 Reply by njc

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

Let's see how things are going:

For law enforcement, Congress and even journalists, exposing misdeeds is like peeling an onion. Each layer you remove gets you closer to the truth.

So it is with the scandalous behavior of the FBI during its probe into whether President Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia in 2016. One layer at a time, we’re learning how flawed and dirty that probe was.

A top layer involves the texts between FBI lawyer Lisa Page and her married lover, Peter Strzok, the lead agent on the Hillary Clinton e-mail probe. They casually mention an “insurance policy” in the event Trump won the election and a plan for Strzok to go easy on Clinton because she probably would be their next boss.

Those exchanges, seen in the light of subsequent events, lead to a reasonable conclusion that the fix was in among then-Director James Comey’s team to hurt Trump and help Clinton.

Another layer involves the declassified House memo, which indicates the FBI and Justice Department depended heavily on the unverified Russian dossier about Trump to get a warrant to spy on Carter Page, an American citizen and briefly a Trump adviser.

The House memo also reveals that Comey and others withheld from the secret surveillance court key partisan facts that would have cast doubt on the dossier. Officials never revealed to the judges that the document was paid for by Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee or that Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the dossier, said he was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected.”

For Clinton, creating a cloud over Trump’s presidency and helping to put the nation through continuing turmoil is a victory of sorts. America is fortunate it’s her only victory.

A third layer of the onion involves the revelations in the letter GOP Sens. Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham wrote to the Justice Department. They urge a criminal investigation into whether Steele lied to the FBI about how much and when he fed the dossier to the anti-Trump media.

The letter is compelling in showing that Steele said one thing under oath to a British court and something different to the FBI. The contradictions matter because the agency relied on Steele’s credibility in both the FISA applications and its actual investigation. Strangely, even after it fired him for breaking its rule forbidding media contact, the FBI continued to praise his credibility in court.

If that were all the senators’ letter accomplished, it would be enough. But it does much more.

It also reveals that two former journalists linked to Clinton, separately identified as the odious Sidney Blumenthal and a man named Cody Shearer, created and gave a State Department official additional unverified allegations against Trump.

The official passed those documents to Steele, who passed them to the FBI, which reportedly saw them as further evidence that Trump worked with Russians. But as Grassley, head of the Judiciary Committee, and Graham write, “It is troubling enough that the Clinton Campaign funded Mr. Steele’s work, but that these Clinton associates were contemporaneously feeding Mr. Steele allegations raises additional concerns about his credibility.”



The State Department official involved in the episode, Jonathan Winer, wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post Friday in which he confessed to the senators’ chronology while offering a benign description of his motives. Winer also admitted he shared all the unverified allegations from the Clinton hitmen with other State Department officials.

There are many more layers of the onion to peel, but here’s where we are now: It increasingly appears that the Clinton machine was the secret, original source of virtually all the allegations about Trump and Russia that led to the FBI investigation.

In addition, the campaign and its associates, including Steele, were behind the explosion of anonymously sourced media reports during the fall of 2016 about that investigation.

Thus, the Democratic nominee paid for and created allegations against her Republican opponent, gave them to law enforcement, then tipped friendly media to the investigation. And it is almost certain FBI agents supporting Clinton were among the anonymous sources.

In fact, the Clinton connections are so fundamental that there probably would not have been an FBI investigation without her involvement.

That makes hers a brazen work of political genius — and perhaps the dirtiest dirty trick ever played in presidential history. Following her manipulation of the party operation to thwart Bernie Sanders in the primary, Clinton is revealed as relentlessly ruthless in her quest to be president.

The only thing that went wrong is that she lost the election. And based on what we know now, her claims about Trump were false.

Of the charges against four men brought by special counsel Robert Mueller, none involves helping Russia interfere with the election.

And neither the FBI nor Mueller has vouched for the truthfulness of the Blumenthal and Shearer claims or the Steele dossier. Instead, the dossier faces defamation lawsuits in the US and England from several people named in it.

In fairness, one person besides Steele has been cited as justification for the FBI probe. George Papadopoulos, a bit but ambitious player in the Trump orbit, met with a professor in Europe early in 2016 who told him the Kremlin had Clinton’s private e-mails.

In May 2016, Papadopoulos told the story to an Australian diplomat and two months later, in July, the Australian government alerted the FBI.

However, a full timeline convincingly points to Steele as the initial spark. He was hired by a Clinton contractor in June of 2016, and filed his first allegations against Trump on June 20. Two weeks later, on July 5, he met with an FBI agent in London, The Washington Post reported, and filed three more allegations that month, including one about Carter Page.

At any rate, it is certain that Steele and other Clinton operators provided all the allegations about Trump himself that the FBI started with and that Mueller inherited.

For Clinton, creating a cloud over Trump’s presidency and helping to put the nation through continuing turmoil is a victory of sorts. America is fortunate it’s her only victory.

From Michael Goodwin.

Meanwhile, what 'tricks' are Trump using to interfere with the investigation?  As far as I can see, he and Sessions are sitting back and letting it happen.  Are you saying he's playing rope-a-dope?

Quote Post 35

36 Reply by njc

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

From RealClearInvestigations:

“Brennan made it very clear that he was a supporter of candidate Clinton, hoping he would be rewarded with being kept on in her administration.” (Brennan is a liberal Democrat. In fact, at the height of the Cold War in 1976, he voted for a Communist Party candidate for president.)

What’s more, his former deputy at the CIA, Mike Morell, who formed a consulting firm with longtime Clinton aide and campaign adviser Philippe Reines, even came out in early August 2016 and publicly endorsed her in the New York Times, while claiming Trump was an “unwitting agent” of Moscow.

Quote Post 36

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

The other shoe will drop soon enough. Just be patient. So far Trump has risen above pussy-grabbing and Russian cock-sucking and paying off porn stars and firing Omarosa and tweeting abhorrent rhetoric, but... Something wicked this way comes. What really amazes me is how it all flows like water off a duck's ass haircut. Our president is truly a Teflon Don. As in Donald. As in Duck. As in I don't even know what to fucking say anymore...

I'm just embarrassed for America.

John

Quote Post 37

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

njc wrote:

So far Mueller has come up empty except for except for charging someone based on  criminalizing faulty memory--the same thing they got Conrad Black on.  But Mueller hiimself has come under doubt.. He'll walk away--if he walks away--with his reputation badly soiled.  Meanwhile, FEC charges for the HRC campaign--if not for herself--grow more plausible.

Please read: http://billmoyers.com/story/trump-russia-timeline/

NJC..with all due respect you have no idea what Mueller has or doesn't have. You just have Trump's assessment. And he doesn't know. No one knows for sure what Mueller has found. However, it is significant that he wants to interview Trump. 

smile

Quote Post 38

39 Reply by Norm d'Plume (edited by Norm d'Plume 2018-02-13 20:38:27)

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

dagnee wrote:

Please read: http://billmoyers.com/story/trump-russia-timeline/

Trump would have to be an idiot to sit down with Mueller. If the above news organization can put together that much information, imagine what Mueller has been able to uncover. I'd plead the Fifth so fast Mueller's would head would spin. Trump's supporters already believe Mueller is out to get him, so they'll just spin it as the sensible way to shut down the witch hunt. Assuming Trump doesn't do more stupid things like fire Rosenstein and Mueller. And the GOP will give him a pass on any minor offenses since they're desperate to hold onto Congress.

It's odd that an innocent man would spend so much of his energy trying to undermine the FBI, the special prosecutor, and the Justice Department.

Quote Post 39

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

NJC, I was going to counter pretty much each point you've made (pretty simple to do), but it occurs to me that with all the evidence to do so would most likely land outside your field of tunnel vision as has everything to date so I won't waste my time or yours. Trump's outrageous insistence that there was no Russian interference with the election (and constant attacks against the investigation into such) despite all the evidence to the contrary is more than enough to make him suspect. Most of the Pubs are too far up his ass to do their job of reigning him in when he attacks pretty much every standard of democracy and decency. Now even his own intelligence agencies are warning against the Russian meddling which will continue and most likely get worse without some push-back by the US which Lord Trump is loath to do because even if he is innocent of colluding (a long shot at best), his lard-ass ego won't let him say or do anything against Putin for fear of somehow delegitimizing his presidency. I understand there is no amount of evidence to convince Lord Trump's disciples  that he is never wrong, but at least I'll put out this link showing his own agencies warning of the danger and to a person has gotten no direction from Trump to do anything about Russian meddling in our and other countries elections.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intel-ch … d=53054932
Take care. Vern

Quote Post 40

41 Reply by njc (edited by njc 2018-02-15 13:49:58)

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

Most of that meddling was done through social media (hundreds of low-grade AI robo-trolls) and paid ad campaigns.  I'll dig up the reports if you like.

The claim that the media are on Trump's side is risible.

Meanwhile, Roger L. Simon (who, in spite of his Academy Award nominations, is NOT--and, I predict, will not be--involved in any sex scandals) sums things up:

Want to know why there are so many redactions in all those FBI/DOJ documents, the ones whose contents you can't make heads or tails of while the indelible ink spills off the pages and stains your best flokati rug black forever?  It's only 1% security but 99% humiliation.  Forget "sources and methods." They are so ashamed of themselves they don't dare tell the truth.  ...   A release last week of texts showed that Christopher Steele, the former British spy whose memos regarding the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia are referred to as the Steele dossier, reached out to Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, through a Russian-linked Washington, D.C.,  lobbyist named Adam Waldman. Among Waldman’s clients is Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a text dated Mar. 16, 2017, Waldman texted Warner, “Chris Steele asked me to call you.” In 2009, Waldman filed papers with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) registering himself as an agent for Deripaska in order to provide “legal advice on issues involving his U.S. visa as well as commercial transactions” at a retainer of $40,000 a month. In 2010, Waldman additionally registered as an agent for Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, “gathering information and providing advice and analysis as it relates to the U.S. policy towards the visa status of Oleg Deripaska,” including meetings with U.S. policymakers. Based on the information in his FARA filings, Waldman has received at least $2.36 million for his work with Deripaska.

The relationships between top Democrats and the Russians are half a degree short of incest.  Meanwhile, Trump bombs Russian installations in Syria.

Quote Post 41

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

And yet Congress is still waiting for him to enact their sanctions.

Quote Post 42

43 Reply by njc

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

The month isn't over.

Meanwhile, did Comey and Mueller railroad Flynn by concealing exculpatory evidence?  Judges do not like that, even in plea bargains.

Bruce Ohr, the Department of Justice official who brought opposition research on President Donald Trump to the FBI, did not disclose that Fusion GPS, which performed that research at the Democratic National Committee’s behest, was paying his wife, and did not obtain a conflict of interest waiver from his superiors at the Justice Department ...

Oh, look: Emails show Clinton ties to Russian oligarch under investigation.  So the investigation isn't over.

Quote Post 43

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

njc wrote:

The relationships between top Democrats and the Russians are half a degree short of incest.  Meanwhile, Trump bombs Russian installations in Syria.

Like I said, tunnel vision. Trump refuses to even acknowledge any Russian meddling despite all of his own agency heads warning that they did and will again even worse and Trump still refuses to give any direction for them to counter any of it. I say that again only because you evidently didn't read before or refuse to  accept Trump's own people as providing truthful information.

Trump will not say one thing negative about Putin; he kisses his ass at every opportunity but doesn't mind pissing off our allies, he makes secret phone calls to him to whisper his sweet nothings, meets with him without anyone else around so they can hold hands, and publicly fawns over him every chance he gets. They will probably announce their engagement any day now. Take care. Vern

Quote Post 44

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

njc wrote:

The month isn't over.

Meanwhile, did Comey and Mueller railroad Flynn by concealing exculpatory evidence?  Judges do not like that, even in plea bargains.

Bruce Ohr, the Department of Justice official who brought opposition research on President Donald Trump to the FBI, did not disclose that Fusion GPS, which performed that research at the Democratic National Committee’s behest, was paying his wife, and did not obtain a conflict of interest waiver from his superiors at the Justice Department ...

Oh, look: Emails show Clinton ties to Russian oligarch under investigation.  So the investigation isn't over.

I guess it slips your mind or you just can't see it through tunnel vision that it was a freaking republican who initiated the dossier and some Dems only took it over for what Trump would claim is opposition research. But regardless, Clinton isn't the fracking President, Trump is, and if all the die hards who have clamored for more and more and more Clinton investigations would've put that much effort in finding the truth about Trump, he'd already have been impeached. After all the too-many-to-count investigations of Clinton, the Pubs have produced nothing to charge her with. Are they that incompetent? The Pubs concern over some inconsequential classified emails is a farce when Trump out right gives the Russians classified material. Oh well, the truth will out sooner or later despite Trumps continued tactics with the full support of his lackeys in the White House and congress. Take care. Vern

Quote Post 45

46 Reply by njc

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

A lot of people disagree with you.  IBD isn't neutral, but its readers are probably better analysts and better read than the average Joe.  https://www.investors.com/politics/edit … tipp-poll/

Quote Post 46

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

Looks like Rick Gates (Manafort's partner) is nearing a plea deal with Mueller. I doubt he'd get one if he didn't have something to offer.

Quote Post 47

48 Reply by njc

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

You don't have a plea bargain until the judge accepts it.  And the new judge on the Flynn case is on the wrothpath with Mueller and Company.

Quote Post 48

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

13 indictments against Russians meddling in election. Ahh who cares? Certainly not Lord Trump's devotees though even Trump has now had to admit meddling. Just part of the investigation into nothing. Take care. Vern

Quote Post 49

Re: Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger

vern wrote:

13 indictments against Russians meddling in election. Ahh who cares? Certainly not Lord Trump's devotees though even Trump has now had to admit meddling. Just part of the investigation into nothing. Take care. Vern

Wonder how these meddlers will respond, if Trump suddenly were to implement sanctions against Russia?

¿Too bad Kushner's backchannel link was exposed before it was used?

Memphis Trace

Quote Post 50