quote:

Originally posted by braillediver:
RT's always good alternate source.

No, the Russians are always biased and always playing games, and RT is so deep in Putin's pocket that it makes no sense whatsoever to treat RT as anything but one of his personal political assets. RT is never a good alternative source unless Putin's troll factories need to pretend that they have an "objective" source for their lies.

Wanted to add a little bit more from the James Baker transcript

Baker told Comey that he thought the FISA warrant against Carter Page “was legally sufficient”.

Baker also said he only read part of the FISA.

Baker said he did not review the "Woods file" that provided the underlying documentation for the accuracy of facts in the FISA application.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Think about that. James Baker, General Counsel of the FBI, tells the FBI Director that the warrant is legally sufficient, but doesn’t read the complete FISA warrant.

A warrant that declares a former member of the Trump Presidential campaign was a Russian agent.

Perhaps Baker says he didn’t read the full warrant because he knows the warrant contains outright lies.

Buzzfeed released the Steele dossier in Jan 2017.

Buzzfeed recently claimed that President Trump told Michael Cohen to lie to congress.

Now we find out that NBC has invested $400 million into Buzzfeed.

https://www.foxnews.com/entert...onship-with-buzzfeed


NBCUniversal initially invested $200 million in 2015. Shortly after the 2016 election, NBCUniversal and BuzzFeed announced “an additional $200M investment to expand the strategic partnership between the two companies and fund the growth of BuzzFeed’s industry leading news and entertainment network.”

Reporter-turned-investment banker Porter Bibb told Fox news that NBCUniversal “controls” BuzzFeed.

“Their $400 million investment is just the tip of the iceberg. They use BuzzFeed content throughout the NBC system and should have disclosed their ownership when reporting especially unconfirmed stories, especially highly contentious reports suggesting the president committed a criminal act,” Bibb said. “Another egregious failure on the part of NBC news chief Andy Lack.”

NBC News and MSNBC fawned over BuzzFeed’s now-debunked report claiming President Trump directed his former attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress before the office of the special counsel released its rare statement.

quote:

They use BuzzFeed content throughout the NBC system and should have disclosed their ownership when reporting especially unconfirmed stories,

this is akin to their own carnival barker wing of fake news so prevalent in recent weeks

a reminder of how broad and coordinated the Clinton Campaign conspiracy against Donald Trump was

https://thehill.com/opinion/wh...mp-russia-dirt-until

How the Clinton machine flooded the FBI with Trump-Russia dirt … until agents bit

by John Solomon

When at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. That’s what Hillary Clinton’s machine did in 2016, eventually getting the FBI to bite on an uncorroborated narrative that Donald Trump and Russia were trying to hijack the presidential election.

Between July and October 2016, Clinton-connected lawyers, emissaries and apologists made more than a half-dozen overtures to U.S. officials, each tapping a political connection to get suspect evidence into FBI counterintelligence agents’ hands, according to internal documents and testimonies I reviewed and interviews I conducted.

In each situation, the overture was uninvited. And as the election drew closer, the point of contact moved higher up the FBI chain.

It was, as one of my own FBI sources called it, a “classic case of information saturation” designed to inject political opposition research into a counterintelligence machinery that should have suspected a political dirty trick was underway.

Ex-FBI general counsel James Baker, one of the more senior bureau executives to be targeted, gave a memorable answer when congressional investigators asked how attorney Michael Sussmann from the Perkins Coie law firm, which represented the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party, came to personally deliver him dirt on Trump.

“You’d have to ask him why he decided to pick me,” Baker said last year in testimony that has not yet been released publicly. The FBI’s top lawyer turned over a calendar notation to Congress, indicating that he met Sussmann on Sept. 19, 2016, less than two months before Election Day.

Sussmann’s firm paid Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS opposition-research firm to hire British intelligence operative Christopher Steele to create the now-infamous dossier suggesting Trump and Moscow colluded during the 2016 election.

By the time Sussmann reached out, Steele’s dossier already was inside the FBI. Sussmann augmented it with cyber evidence that he claimed showed a further connection between the GOP campaign and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Some was put on a thumb drive, according to Baker.

Baker’s detailed account illustrates how a political connection — Sussmann and Baker knew each other — was leveraged to get anti-Trump research to FBI leaders.

“[Sussmann] told me he had cyber experts that had obtained some information that they thought they should get into the hands of the FBI,” Baker testified.

“I referred this to investigators, and I believe they made a record of it,” he testified, adding that he believed he reached out to Peter Strzok, the agent in charge of the Russia case, or William Priestap, the head of FBI counterintelligence.

“Please come get this,” he recalled telling his colleagues. Baker acknowledged it was not the normal way for counterintelligence evidence to enter the FBI.

But when the bureau’s top lawyer makes a request, things happen in the rank-and-file.

The overture was neither the first nor the last instance of Clinton-connected Trump dirt reaching the FBI.

The tsunami began when former MI6 agent Steele first approached an FBI supervisor, his handler in an earlier criminal case, in London. That approach remarkably occurred on July 5, 2016, the same day then-FBI Director James Comey announced he would not pursue criminal charges against Clinton for mishandling classified emails on a private server.

If ever there were a day for the Clinton campaign to want to change the public narrative, it was July 5, 2016.

But the bureau apparently did not initially embrace Steele’s research, and no immediate action was taken, according to congressional investigators who have been briefed.

That’s when the escalation began.

During a trip to Washington later that month, Steele reached out to two political contacts with the credentials to influence the FBI.

Then-senior State Department official Jonathan Winer, who worked for then-Secretary John Kerry, wrote that Steele first approached him in the summer with his Trump research and then met again with him in September. Winer consulted his boss, Assistant Secretary for Eurasia Affairs Victoria Nuland, who said she first learned of Steele’s allegations in late July and urged Winer to send it to the FBI.

(If you need further intrigue, Winer worked from 2008 to 2013 for the lobbying and public relations firm APCO Worldwide, the same firm that was a contractor for both the Clinton Global Initiative and Russia’s main nuclear fuel company that won big decisions from the Obama administration.)

When the State Department office that oversees Russian affairs sends something to the FBI, agents take note.

But Steele was hardly done. He reached out to his longtime Justice Department contact, Bruce Ohr, then a deputy to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. Steele had breakfast July 30, 2016, with Ohr and his wife, Nellie, to discuss the Russia-Trump dirt.

(To thicken the plot, you should know that Nellie Ohr was a Russia expert working at the time for the same Fusion GPS firm that hired Steele and was hired by the Clinton campaign through Sussmann’s Perkins Coie.)

Bruce Ohr immediately took Steele’s dirt on July 31, 2016, to then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

When the deputy attorney general’s office contacts the FBI, things happen. And, soon, Ohr was connected to the agents running the new Russia probe.

Around the same time, Australia’s ambassador to London, Alexander Downer, reached out to U.S. officials. Like so many characters in this narrative, Downer had his own connection to the Clintons: He secured a $25 million donation from Australia’s government to the Clinton Foundation in the early 2000s.

Downer claims WikiLeaks’s release of hacked Clinton emails that month caused him to remember a conversation in May, in a London tavern, with a Trump adviser named George Papadopoulos. So he reported it to the FBI.

The saturation campaign kept building. Sometime in September, Winer and Nuland got another version of Steele-like research suggesting Trump-Russia collusion, this time from known associates of the Clintons: Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer.

Again, it was sent to the FBI.

Sussmann’s contact with Baker at the FBI occurred that same month.

By mid-September — less than a month before Election Day — there likely was agitation inside the Clinton machine: After so many overtures to the FBI, there was no visible sign of an investigation.

Simpson and Steele began briefing reporters with the hope of getting the word out. It is taboo for an FBI source such as Steele to talk to the media about his work. Yet, he took the risk, eventually getting fired for it, according to FBI documents.

Baker, the FBI’s top lawyer, testified to Congress that he was clearly aware Simpson’s team was shopping the media. “My understanding at the time was that Simpson was going around Washington giving this out to a lot of different people and trying to elevate its profile,” Baker told congressional investigators.

Ohr, through his contacts with Steele and Simpson, also knew the media had been contacted. In handwritten notes from late 2016, Ohr quoted Simpson as saying his outreach to reporters was a “Hail Mary attempt” to sway voters.

The next and final overture came from one of Clinton’s top acolytes in Congress.

Then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, having been briefed by then-CIA Director John Brennan on the Russia allegations, sent a letter to the FBI in late October demanding to know if agents were pursuing the evidence. Before long, the letter leaked.

The political pressure from Team Clinton had come from many directions: State, Congress, Justice, a top Democratic lawyer.

Yet, no one in the FBI seemed to tap the brakes, noticing the obvious: Its counterintelligence apparatus was being weaponized with political opposition research from one campaign against its rival.

Leaking. Politically motivated evidence. Ex parte contacts outside the normal FBI evidence-gathering chain.

None of it seemed to raise a red flag.

That is a troubling legacy.

Michael Cohen postpones his scheduled 7 Feb 2019 congressional testimony

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0...tponed-congress.html

Michael D. Cohen, the former personal lawyer and fixer for President Trump, has indefinitely postponed his congressional testimony, his lawyer said in a statement on Wednesday.

Mr. Cohen was scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 7 at the invitation of Representative Elijah Cummings, Democrat of Maryland and the chairman of the committee, but backed out because of ongoing threats against his family, his lawyer Lanny Davis said in a statement. He cited Mr. Trump’s verbal attacks on Mr. Cohen and some of his relatives.

“By advice of counsel, Mr. Cohen’s appearance will be postponed to a later date,” Mr. Davis said in the statement. “Mr. Cohen wishes to thank Chairman Cummings for allowing him to appear before the House Oversight Committee and looks forward to testifying at the appropriate time.” He added, “This is a time where Mr. Cohen had to put his family and their safety first.”

EVERYTHING'S a Goddamned postponement in this stupid shit.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
Michael Cohen postpones his scheduled 7 Feb 2019 congressional testimony

After the BuzzFeed debacle, I doubt if this clown actually ever shows his face in front of Congress.

That depends - can his lawyer get Mueller or the court or both to agree to a delay of his sentencing date if he waits until the last minute to appear before the committee at the invitation of that lying, skyving political hack of a scumbag that disgraces the name of Elijah Cummings? Cohen has nothing left but weaseling, and no reason to expect anything other than that he's going to federal prison for five years.

Gee, and here I thought that when you were scheduled to appear before a congressional/senate hearing you had no choice. Or has it become voluntary?

Ever hear of subpoenas? One really has to wonder just how serious these politicraP creatures are about getting to the bottom of this!

Just how wide and deep the corruption is, is anybody's guess, I suppose. Having been a witness in a federal court trial I can say that there was little in the way of not appearing!

Subpoena these assholes and lock them up if they refuse to appear! And for the idiots (being kind here) who refuse to push this whole damned issue, they need to get the message that if you do push this issue you will be considered part of it and suffer the punishment!

Schedule the damned sessions, letting the "witnesses" know that if they do not appear the US Marshalls will appear and escort you. Quit playing patty ass with these scum bags!.

Perhaps I missed it, but I have no memory of any of these anti-trump criminals actually receiving any punishment. Yeah, a couple might have been fired, but so what? Is that punishment in the sense that there is a penalty to be paid for such crap?

He probably had a long discussion with his lawyer, Lanny Davis, about what would be asked... and decided it would be better NOT to testify further either by risking perjury charges or not furthering Lanny's leftist agenda.
Lanny Davis wants to take down Trump. Cohen would just be collateral damage.

Quite simply this farce is not designed to end with Trump in office. Period. If he wins reelection in 2020 this will continue until 2024. Unfortunately the first cowardly piece of shit Trump appointed as AG let this fester and now the second AG has absolutely no plans to do anything about it. He said as much during his confirmation.

This is a WSJ opinion article that I very much agree with

Sen Burr (R) chairs the Senate Intel Comm, but Mark Warner (D) runs it


https://www.wsj.com/articles/m...enablers-11548375028

Mark Warner’s Enablers

Hand it to Sen. Mark Warner. Of the many Russia-collusion theorists, how many get to claim “bipartisan” credentials?

That’s one question that accompanied Thursday’s supposedly big news that the Senate Intelligence Committee had subpoenaed former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to testify in February. If anything comes from this appearance—it would be surprising. Senate Intel is the committee Mr. Warner, as ranking Democrat, has turned into the black hole of the Russia investigation, with Republican signoff.

Congressional committees have been doggedly unraveling the “Russia collusion” story from the first days of the Trump administration. Most of these investigations resulted in piles of vital facts that fundamentally altered the collusion narrative. Thanks to House committees, we know the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted surveillance of the Trump team based on opposition research from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley blew the lid off the FBI’s feckless relationship with dossier author Christopher Steele. The Senate Homeland Security Committee, under Ron Johnson, helped unearth the biased Peter Strzok-Lisa Page texts. And the House Intelligence Committee by April 2018 had already issued a report finding no evidence of collusion.

Notably absent have been the self-proclaimed adults in the room on Senate Intel. From them—nada. Chairman Richard Burr last spoke up during the fall, when he took time to rebuke President Trump for proclaiming there was no evidence he or his campaign colluded with Russia. Mr. Burr admitted his committee has no “hard evidence” of collusion, but added that “we have a lot of investigation left.”

Mr. Burr appears to have suffered a political mugging. Before Mr. Trump even took office, the left’s media friends depicted him as a lackey of the new president, incapable of running a fair probe, potentially even having been co-opted to run interference for the White House. Democrats (and a few Republicans) demanded that the investigation be taken out of Mr. Burr’s hands in favor of a special panel or commission.

Mr. Burr kept his probe, though at the price of a promise to work cooperatively with committee Democrats. That means Mr. Warner effectively runs the show , using the committee’s secrecy to nurture every allegation against Mr. Trump even as he ensures that it delays producing any conclusions. “Bipartisan” in the Warner dictionary means that committee Democrats make unfounded claims and committee Republicans must sit silent, lest they be accused of uncongeniality. That’s also the media’s definition of bipartisanship, which it daily encourages with a never-ending gush of stories about the committee’s integrity and seriousness.

All this leaves Mr. Warner free to act as the Senate’s resident conspiracy theorist, but with the veneer of respectability—the grown-up version of Rep. Adam Schiff. In recent weeks Mr. Warner has painted the lurid possibility of Trump-Russia collusion. He’s said that Mr. Trump “parroted” President Vladimir Putin’s policies in 2016; that the president “never spoke ill” of Russia; that the Republican Party “softened” its Russia platform; that Mr. Trump hid his Helsinki conversations with Mr. Putin last July.

Where are all the Senate Intelligence Republicans to remind Mr. Warner and his viewers that the committee has failed to produce any “hard evidence” for such claims? They are sitting quietly, the good members who follow the rules and don’t talk about the committee’s work—even as Mr. Warner does.

The situation has also left Mr. Warner free to get away with some unbecoming actions. In March 2017, he began secretly texting with a lobbyist who offered to put him in touch with Mr. Steele. In his texts, Mr. Warner insisted that he alone on the committee should talk to Mr. Steele first, about the “scope” of any possible testimony. He didn’t disclose any of this to his committee colleagues until months later. Who was running interference, and on whose behalf? Not only did Intel Republicans let this pass, a few even defended Mr. Warner.

Republican defenders of the committee say its primary mission was always to investigate the intelligence community’s handling of Russia’s 2016 interference—and that it has already issued two reports—one on the community’s assessments, the other on election security.

At some point, however, Republicans might note that Mr. Warner has unilaterally redefined the work of this “bipartisan” group. Recently he told CNN that the “defining question” of the Senate Intel investigation is whether there was “collusion.” The longer he can keep that question open at a leading Senate committee, the longer the innuendo hovers over the White House.

Yes, we all want adult behavior. Someone on the Senate Intelligence Committee ought to step up and offer some supervision of Mr. Warner.

seen at CTH

DoJ IG posted this today

Hard to say if there is significance to the "Russia" investigation or not.

This could be totally unrelated. If the FBI takes no action, we may never know.

Someone has leaked the Bill Priestap testimony to Congress in June 2018.

I was disappointed when we heard a little about that testimony some time ago, because it didn't seem very informative.

But now this report has some very important new information.

Full report here:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/...cisions_2786159.html

It is long.

some highlights:

Peter Strzok and Jonathan Moffa "drove" the Russia investigation. They went around Priestap, and Strzok communicated directly to McCabe.

(Priestap was Strzok's boss)

Priestap never heard about an "insurance policy".

Priestap never met w Bruce Ohr. Priestap was unaware that Ohr was providing inputs from Christopher Steele.

Priestap's testimony was in June 2018. He said "about a year ago" he heard rumors of an affair between Strzok and Lisa Page. He talked w Strzok and Page about the rumor. He didn't ask if it was true, he just said "it better not interfere with things"

It was on 25 June 2017 that Lisa Page texted "please don't ever text me again"

I wonder if Priestap talking to her triggered that.

Here is a big issue:

The Intelligence IG found evidence every one of Clinton's emails had also gone to an address not on the distribution list. It was a foreign entity unrelated to Russia.

The Intel IG briefed Strzok.

Strzok never told Priestap.

The matter had to be closed out before the Clinton investigation was closed. Strzok personally called the Intel IG within minutes of Comey's 5 July 2016 press conference. He told them the FBI would be closing out the issue.

Strzok never told Priestap about this.


Another big item:

When Comey was asked why he didn't brief Congress about the Russia counterintel operation, Comey said it was the decision of the Counter-intel Division. (that was Priestap)

Priestap was asked who made the decision not to brief Congress.

Priestap said it was Comey.

think about how Mueller has nailed Donald Trump associates with everything he could dig up. And some he made up.

But FBI agents just walk away.

Of course. The Secret Police will never go after their own. The Department Of inJustice and their goose stepping brown shirts at the Hoover building exist only to suppress the will of the American people and protect their leftist masters. NOT to protect and defend the Constitution like they are sworn to.

I have ZERO faith that the new AG will turn that cesspool around.

Maybe the FBI will prosecute the SSA. Hey, heh, just joking – I know better.

In the President Trump thread I posted some general comments by Sen Richard Burr of the Sen Intel Comm.

This post provides a more in depth discussion of Burr's interview w CBS.

It was a strange interview. Burr said some surprising things.

At times I wondered if he is just blowing smoke.

But the interview is worth reading:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/r...tigation-2-years-on/

Richard Burr on the Senate Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation, 2 years on

a few things that caught my attention:

"he acknowledges now that the investigation is broader, and perhaps more consequential, than it has long been thought to be."

He made clear that the investigation is not compiling the story of one pivotal election, but of something larger, more complicated and, from a counterintelligence perspective, more nefarious. The final report may be so highly classified, he said, that a meaningful portion may not be made public at all.

so classified, the poor old American public just can't see it

"Many of the connections that we've made are the direct result of intelligence products," he said. "I think it's safe to say we've interviewed people that I don't even know if the special counsel knows about them — but you've got to remember that we're on a totally separate path than what they are."

He acknowledged that a core part of committee's charge is to tell the country, in the greatest detail possible, what happened in 2016.

"The other piece of that," he said, "is probably work that the committee will do for the next decade . And it's work that has helped even our intelligence community's understanding of Russia's capabilities and intent behind this."

??

In subsequent months, Burr's defense of former FBI Director James Comey after his firing and his pushback against Mr. Trump's claims of having been "wiretapped" by the Obama administration helped grow perceptions that the committee's efforts would be bipartisan.

Comey should have been fired. He is a lying snake. Donald Trump's campaign was "wiretapped", at a minimum through Carter Page and everyone who communicated w Page

Mark Warner talked about using outside investigators rather than the committee staff

the committee had "not been shy" in referring individuals for criminal prosecution. He declined to say how many referrals had been made.

Neither Burr, Warner nor the rest of the committee's 13 members participate in the closed-door witness interviews

??

The day-to-day investigative work and the long-term arc of the inquiry has been driven by the same core team, which has grown slightly from an original staff of seven to nine. Interviews have been as short as one hour and as long as 10 hours.

The investigation now spans continents and includes sources from countries besides Russia. The staff have traveled overseas and witnesses have come in to testify from abroad.

After he and Warner agreed on the investigation's overall parameters, it was initially structured to include three buckets:

a review of the intelligence underpinning an assessment of Russia's efforts to target the 2016 election;

an examination of the "active measures," including cyber activities, that Russia employed; and

an inspection of counterintelligence concerns stemming from possible links between Moscow and the campaigns.

It has since expanded to include at least two additional inquiries:

an evaluation of the Obama administration's response to Russia's efforts, and

a deep dive on the effect of foreign influence campaigns on social media.


the committee has interviewed more than 200 witnesses and reviewed more than 300,000 pages of documents

Burr had not wanted to expand the universe of witnesses the committee interviewed, but felt he had little choice. He guessed that the committee had completed interviews with its target list "fairly early on" in 2017.

"It's not the people that were on the deck that we knew about that lengthened the time. It was the people that we didn't know about that we came to the conclusion — either for the campaign interactions or for this bigger picture that we're looking at — that extended the timeline," he said.

Burr acknowledged he had resorted to issuing subpoenas

"Can't get into who," Burr said, "but there are some that" — he intimated an elbow nudge as he imitated a witness saying, "'I'll come if you subpoena me.'"

"They wanted the cover of being compelled," he said.

One key witness whom the committee had been unsuccessful in engaging, Burr said, was Christopher Steele

Last February, the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, sent a letter to a Washington-based lawyer acting as an intermediary for Steele asking whether Steele may have been indirectly on the payroll of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin. The implicit suggestion of Grassley's inquiry was that the dossier contained purposeful misinformation intended to help Russia. It is not a view, or a suspicion, that Democrats share.

Burr would only say that Steele remained of interest, but out of reach.

"We've made multiple attempts," to elicit a response, Burr said, but declined to surmise why Steele would not engage.

"You'd have to ask him," he said, referring to Steele. "I think there will always be some questions as to…" he stopped, and paused for a long time.

"…whether his connections to this extend far outside of the contract."

we already know Steele was a confidential human source for the FBI

Burr has previously said it would be impossible to assess the credibility of the dossier without understanding who Steele's sources and sub-sources were; failing to speak directly with Steele suggests that the committee has not, itself, come to a determination of the dossier's reliability.

good grief. the committee is still determining the dossier reliability

"I think it's safe to say that we have followed every potential lead and we know a heck of a lot more today than we did two years ago," he said. "But I can't tell you we —" he trailed off again.

"— we know the motivation."

they don't know the motivation of the dossier ?

was there collusion?

For now, Burr appears to have arrived at his answer. "If we write a report based upon the facts that we have, then we don't have anything that would suggest there was collusion by the Trump campaign and Russia," he said.

The finality of Burr's assertion was jarring — but he had said a version of it before. He told Fox News in September that the committee had found no "hard evidence" of collusion, though new information could still come to light.

He now doubled down, adding it was "accurate with everything we've accumulated since then."

It was the first time the chairman sounded like he was not speaking for the entirety of his committee, given the disconnect between his view of a set of facts and that of the vice chairman. (Warner declined to be interviewed for this article.)

In January, Warner said the revelation that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort shared polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a business associate of Manafort's known to have ties to Russian intelligence, was the "closest we've seen" to collusion.

Warner tweeted, "My question is, what did the President know about Mr. Manafort's collusion with Russian intelligence, and when did he know it?"

Burr did not use the word then and would not now. Manafort, he said, "shared polling data with a former partner of an effort to do campaign services in the Ukraine." It was a "stretch," Burr said, to call that collusion.

"I have no belief that at the end of our process, people that love Donald Trump are going to applaud what we do. And I have no belief that people that hate Donald Trump are going to reverse and say, 'Well, you know, this clears him.' They are solidly in one camp or the other," he said.

"I'm speaking to what I hope is the 60 percent in the middle that are saying, 'Give me the facts that I need to make a determination in this one particular instance — what happened.' And that's what our focus is," he said.

"If I can finish tomorrow, I would finish tomorrow," he said. "We know we're getting to the bottom of the barrel because there're not new questions that we're searching for answers to."

He added the disclaimer that if a new person of interest arose, the committee would pull the necessary threads.

He did not say whether the final product would be something like a thoroughly sourced chronology or whether it would include an evaluative judgment — from the investigators who spent two years examining it — on the question of collusion. The latter sounded unlikely.

"What I'm telling you is that I'm going to present, as best we can, the facts to you and to the American people. And you'll have to draw your own conclusion as to whether you think that, by whatever definition, that's collusion," he said.

seems inconsistent w his earlier remarks. Give the DEMs the slightest ambiguity and they will exploit it w a vengeance

His last words were of caution.

"My only advice to you is, be careful. There are a lot of false narratives out there," he said.

the most honest thing he said

sdy,
Thanks for following this and for going through it all.

So.... was there collusion? Apparently not, at least not with the Trump team.

quote:

was there collusion?

For now, Burr appears to have arrived at his answer. "If we write a report based upon the facts that we have, then we don't have anything that would suggest there was collusion by the Trump campaign and Russia," he said.

The finality of Burr's assertion was jarring — but he had said a version of it before. He told Fox News in September that the committee had found no "hard evidence" of collusion, though new information could still come to light.

He now doubled down, adding it was "accurate with everything we've accumulated since then."