In hindsight what the Trump team should have done when Mueller was appointed was to hold a secret meeting with anyone with expertise in protocol in such investigations. They would discuss a reasonable, professional, and objective (ha!) time frame for such matters to be concluded. An internal secret memo would be written with a conclusion date and what the termination process would look like, and how many staff Mueller would retain to write his conclusion due in a month. His only duty remaining at the investigation termination date being to write the summation and that if no charges were brought at this time his power to do that had ceased. Prosecution determination would then go to the AG or a deputy he appointed.

The meeting and memo details released at the announcement of the termination. The left and the media would melt down, but let them.

Trump vs. The Deep State: Who Will Win?

The slow drip of news from the Mueller investigation has grown into a waterfall as of late, briefly placating the insatiable appetite of a mainstream media desperate to take down the president of the United States by any means possible.

Reports suggest that several Trump administration officials have been interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in recent days and that an interview with the president himself may occur imminently, fueling unbridled speculation about what kinds of charges could be leveled against him. Meanwhile, the FBI and Department of Justice have also been in the spotlight – albeit, for a news media that claims to be objective and honest, an embarrassingly far dimmer spotlight – as more information has emerged regarding missing text messages between agents and a memo allegedly showing abuses of FISA warrants.

It’s not a coincidence that all of these stories are coming out at the same time.

What we are likely witnessing are the closing moments of a death struggle which began during the last months of the 2016 campaign – a struggle over America’s very constitutional order.

On the one side is Trump, the duly-elected president of the United States sent to Washington by American voters to fulfill his campaign promise to “drain the swamp” and return power over government to the people and their elected officials. On the other side is the so-called “deep state,” the lifetime members of institutions such as the FBI and DOJ – as well as the elites in the mainstream media and political establishment who support them – who have from the beginning seen Trump as a threat to stable government and America’s influence in the world.

The stakes of this struggle could not be higher. A victory by Trump would prove that, despite the ingrained power of the deep state, the president still has ultimate authority over the executive branch – and, most importantly, the ability to dismantle parts of that branch which have slowly grown unaccountable. However, if the deep state prevails, it will discourage any future president from challenging them, setting a precedent in which all future elected leaders are forced to play by the rules set for them by the elite members of government and the media.

President Trump has dared to question those rules, and he has done so brazenly, drawing the ire of those who oppose him. From the beginning of his presidential campaign through his first year in office, he has shown a willingness to fight where no previous political leader has – taking on the media for its unfair treatment of conservatives, calling out influential entertainment and sports figures for their outward contempt for American values, and beginning the process of reining in the out-of-control administrative behemoth in Washington. For these crimes and others, those in the deep state and their allies have conspired to undermine and delegitimize Trump at every turn – a conspiracy which is now very close to being revealed.

It’s no wonder then that Mueller and his investigation are now hurrying to reach a conclusion. The credibility of their campaign against Trump is on the line, and a failure to connect the president to any kind of malfeasance may very well result in the destruction of their apparent invincibility.

Regardless of Mueller’s next moves, however, the winners and losers of this struggle will ultimately not be determined by him or anyone else in government; instead, they will be determined by the American people. The question before America is this: Will we continue to tolerate the existence of a “deep state” system which ensures the men and women voters elect are unable to enact any meaningful change in Washington? Or will we support a President who, despite his flaws, provides perhaps the most promising possibility of destroying that system and returning power to the voters?

Either way, if this week’s news is any indication, the outcome will soon become clear.

LINK

Let’s see what he’s got.

There is a great deal of commentary, some of it hysterical, about a short memo authored by Republican staffers on the House Intelligence Committee under the direction of Chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.). The memo is said to be about Obama-era abuses of the executive branch’s surveillance authorities under federal law — specifically, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The contents of the memo are not yet known to the public, so the commentary is the familiar game of shaping reaction to it.

The Republican script is that this was “Watergate on steroids.” The Democratic counter is that the memo is a one-sided partisan summary that takes investigative actions out of context in order to make mountains out of molehills. Unless and until we can read the document, we cannot make a judgment about which of these assessments is true, or at least closer to the truth. We can, however, make some observations about the controversy.

The Claim That the Memo Is One-Sided

The most common complaint is that the memo represents the Republican slant on a dispute that should be above politics. (Yeah, yeah, I know . . . but stop snickering.) Now, maybe the memo will read like sheer propaganda, but this seems highly doubtful. There are extremely good reasons for Nunes and his staff to create a summary, and very easy ways for Democrats to remedy anything that is arguably misleading, so the “one-sidedness” objection appears overblown.

First, the main questions that we need answered are:

Were associates of President Trump, members of his campaign, or even Trump himself, subjected to foreign-intelligence surveillance (i.e., do the FISA applications name them as either targets or persons whose communications and activities would likely be monitored)?

Was information from the Steele dossier used in FISA applications?

If Steele-dossier information was so used, was it so central that FISA warrants would not have been granted without it?

If Steele-dossier information was so used, was it corroborated by independent FBI investigation?

If the dossier’s information was so used, was the source accurately conveyed to the court so that credibility and potential bias could be weighed (i.e., was the court told that the information came from an opposition-research project sponsored by the Clinton presidential campaign)? The FBI has said that significant efforts were made to corroborate Steele’s sensational claims, yet former director James Comey has acknowledged (in June 2017 Senate testimony) that the dossier was “unverified.”

If the dossier was used in FISA applications in 2016, has the Justice Department — consistent with its continuing duty of candor in dealings with the tribunal — alerted the court that it did not succeed in verifying Steele’s hearsay reporting based on anonymous sources?

These are not questions that call for nuanced explanation. These things either happened or didn’t. To provide simple answers to these straightforward questions would not be a one-sided partisan exercise, even if the person providing the answers happened to be a partisan.

FISA proceedings are classified, and applications for surveillance warrants from the FISA court typically include information from classified sources — informants who spy at great risk to themselves, intelligence techniques (e.g., covert surveillance), etc. Disclosing such applications and/or the underlying intelligence reporting on which they are based could thus jeopardize lives, national security, and other important American interests.

Thus, the problem: How do we convey important information without imperiling the sources and methods through which it was obtained?

Fortunately, this is far from a unique problem: It comes up all the time in court cases that involve intelligence matters, and Congress has prescribed a process for dealing with it in the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA). There are various remedies: Sometimes the classified information can be declassified and disclosed without causing danger; sometimes the classified information can be redacted without either jeopardizing sources or compromising our ability to grasp the significance of what is disclosed. When neither of those solutions is practical, the preferred disclosure method is to prepare a declassified summary that answers the relevant questions without risking exposure of critical intelligence secrets and sources. (See CIPA section 4 — Title 18, U.S. Code, Appendix.)

So, far from being unconventional, the preparation of a summary is a routine and sensible way of handling the complicated tension between the need for information and accountability, on the one hand, and the imperative of protecting intelligence, on the other.

As with any summary, there is always a danger of its being misleading. This, too, is a recurring problem in judicial proceedings, where the need to boil voluminous information down to its essence is obvious. The problem is solved by the so-called rule of completeness: If a party contends that his adversary is taking information out of context or otherwise omitting essential details necessary to an accurate understanding of a document, the party may propose that the necessary context or details be included. An example: Smith tells the police, “I was in the bank but I didn’t rob it.” At the trial, the prosecutor disingenuously suggests to the jury that Smith was implicitly admitting guilt when he told the police “I was in the bank” the day it was robbed. Smith would then be entitled to introduce his complete statement — the “but I didn’t rob it” portion is necessary to the jury’s understanding that, far from implicitly admitting guilt, Smith explicitly denied guilt.

Conforming to House rules, Chairman Nunes has taken pains to make his memo available to all members of Congress before proceeding with the steps necessary to seek its disclosure. Thus, lawmakers have an opportunity to propose the inclusion of details that may be necessary to correct any misimpressions; or Democrats could prepare their own summary in an effort to demonstrate Nunes’s partisan spin. Congressman Nunes is a smart guy, and he clearly knows he will look very foolish if he plays fast and loose with the facts. It is in his interest not to do that, and the careful way he has gone about complying with the rules — rather than leaking classified information, as Trump’s opponents have been wont to do — suggests that his memo will prove to be a fair representation of the underlying information.

On that last point, it would be hard to imagine a more one-sided partisan screed than the Steele dossier. Democrats seem to have had no hesitation about using it as a summary of purported Trump collusion with Russia.

The Failure to Share the Memo with the FBI

The Justice Department and the FBI are reportedly angry that, after they complied with the Intelligence Committee’s demand that they make classified and investigative materials available for inspection, Nunes will not permit the FBI to inspect his memo summarizing that information before moving to disclose it. The irony here is rich.

These executive-branch agencies did not cooperatively comply with congressional investigators; they stonewalled for five months. To this day they are stonewalling: Just this weekend, they belatedly fessed up that the FBI had failed to preserve five months’ worth of text messages — something they had to have known for months. An American who impeded a federal investigation the way federal investigators are impeding congressional investigations would swiftly find himself in legal jeopardy.

Moreover, it is not like the Justice Department and FBI did Nunes a favor and are thus in a position to impose conditions; Congress is entitled to the information it has sought in its oversight capacity. There is no Justice Department or FBI in the Constitution; while these agencies are part of the executive branch, they are creatures of statute. Congress created them, they are dependent on Congress for funding, and Congress has a constitutional obligation to perform oversight to ensure that the mission they are carrying out — with taxpayer support and under statutory restrictions — is being carried out appropriately.

Republicans tend to be favorably disposed toward law enforcement’s preferences. They would surely have preferred to have non-confrontational interactions with vital executive agencies led by Republican appointees of a Republican president. Indeed, most Republicans are puzzled by the lack of cooperation — by the failure of the White House to direct the president’s subordinates to comply with congressional requests for information about potential abuses of power carried out under the prior, Democratic administration.

This is a reciprocal business. If the Justice Department and FBI want accommodations, they have to exhibit cooperation — do the little things, like maybe remember that congressional subpoenas are lawful demands, not suggestions or pleas. On the record thus far, the committee has every reason to believe that submitting the Nunes memo for review by the Justice Department and FBI will result in more delay and foot-dragging. Clearly, there is a strategy to slow-walk compliance in hopes that events — such as, say, a midterm-election victory that returns the House to Democratic control — will abort congressional investigations of the investigators.

Nunes is wise not to play into that strategy. As he knows, if the House ultimately moves to declassify and publicize information, the chamber’s rules require giving the president five days’ notice. (See Congressional Research Service, “The Protection of Classified Information: The Legal Framework” page 3 and note 23.) Thus, the Justice Department and FBI will have an opportunity to both review the memo and try to persuade the president to oppose disclosure. There’s no reason to hold up the works at this point.

The Claim That the Memo Discredits or Distracts from the Mueller Investigation

Finally, committee Democrats and other critics contend that Chairman Nunes is engaged in a stunt designed to discredit Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, or at least distract attention from its subject matter — Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. These transparently political claims are ill-conceived. The memo reportedly addresses an issue that is at least as significant as election meddling by Russia and suspected but unproven Trump-campaign collusion in it, namely: election meddling by the intelligence and law-enforcement arms of government and Clinton-campaign collusion in it. The latter issue involves conduct that predates Mueller’s investigation by more than two years — Hillary Clinton’s criminal conduct having been exposed in March 2015.

If the principal basis for the allegation that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia were shown to be the shoddy, unverified Steele dossier, this allegation would be discredited. Let’s assume for a moment, and for argument’s sake, that there were irregularities in the Obama-era investigation of Trump associates (perhaps including Trump himself). This would discredit Mueller’s investigation only to the extent it is established that the premise of that investigation is traceable to those irregularities. For example, if the principal basis for the allegation that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia were shown to be the shoddy, unverified Steele dossier, this allegation would be discredited — and deservedly so. To the contrary, if it turns out that there are other legitimate grounds for suspecting Trump-campaign collusion in Russian activity that violated American law, those would plainly merit investigation — although we ought to be told what they are.

Moreover, it would remain perfectly legitimate to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election — the counterintelligence purpose that the Justice Department told us was the principal reason for appointing a special counsel. Of course, as we’ve covered many times (see, e.g., here), there are independent reasons for discrediting Mueller’s appointment on this score: (a) The appointment was unnecessary because counterintelligence investigations are not prosecutor work and ordinarily do not have a prosecutor assigned because the aim is not to develop a criminal prosecution; and (b) the appointment was improper because the Justice Department is supposed to specify a crime that has triggered the need for a special counsel, and that was never done here.

Still, my objections on these grounds notwithstanding, the stubborn facts remain that Mueller has been appointed and Russian interference in our election is a worthy subject for investigation.

To the extent Democrats and their media friends caterwaul that the Nunes memo “distracts” from concerns about Russia, this brings us to a longstanding complaint among national-security-minded conservatives: We were warning about Russian perfidy long before the Democrats jumped aboard that bandwagon for patently political reasons. It has always been partisan hackery to mark acceptance of the “Trump collusion” narrative as the price of admission for taking threats posed by Russia seriously.

The moment that the “collusion with Russia” narrative is no longer politically viable (and we may be nearing that point if the Steele dossier is its foundation), Democrats will return to their default appeasement mode and goofy “Reset” buttons. But in the meantime, investigating Russia’s provocations will still be a worthy exercise. And even if there was no need to appoint a special counsel to lead such an investigation, Mueller has been working the issue and his conclusions should prove valuable. They will not rise or fall on the question of whether Obama-era executive agencies abused their powers.

Conclusion

There is no problem a priori with the fact that Nunes’s memo is a summary prepared by Republican members of the Intelligence Committee’s professional staff. There is no need to delay its release by permitting the FBI and Justice Department to vet it; they will have that opportunity in any event when the president is given five days to weigh in on whether the memo should be disclosed. And complaints that the memo is a distraction intended to discredit Mueller’s investigation are meritless political talking points.

Republicans have made extravagant corruption claims in recent days; if the memo does not bear them out, many a face will be covered in egg. Democrats contend that Chairman Nunes is engaged in a partisan stunt. The allegation that the Obama administration put the law-enforcement and intelligence arms of the federal government in the service of the Clinton campaign to undermine the Trump campaign is, they maintain, an overwrought conspiracy theory. If that is true, then Democrats — who have had the opportunity to review the memo — should be clamoring for it to be disclosed, not fighting its release. After all, Republicans have made extravagant corruption claims in recent days; if the memo does not bear them out, many a face will be covered in egg.

No one is more aware of this than Congressman Nunes. He is pressing ahead nonetheless. So . . . let’s see what he’s got.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/...-memo-lets-see-in-it

That the exact contents of the almost-infamous Nunes memo — a four-page classified document apparently claiming the FBI engaged in “shocking” surveillance abuses —have remained secret even as the document has captured headlines for weeks and is available to all House members to view is remarkable in today’s Washington.

Its author, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and some of his GOP colleagues on the House Intelligence Committee want to declassify it, and may vote to do so as soon as Monday. The White House says it supports “full transparency.” The Justice Department, on the other hand, says that to make it public without their review and possible redactions would be “extraordinarily reckless.” And Democrats accuse Nunes of trying to derail Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III's probe into Russia's influence in the 2016 election and whether it worked with the Trump campaign.

In its opening language, the memo says that its purpose is to brief lawmakers on the findings of the Intelligence Committee’s investigation into actions by the Department of Justice and the FBI, according to a Democrat familiar with the document; the actions had to do with an application for a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in connection with Mueller’s investigation.

But, the source said, “There is no investigation” in the usual sense of the word -- no factfinding mission by the full committee, with witnesses and the usual trappings. That alone is a tipoff that the memo’s purpose is suspect, said the source.

The Intelligence Committee voted last week to allow the full House to review the memo in a secure area of the Capitol, but the contents still remain a secret to the Senate, the Justice Department, the White House and the public.

Megan Stifel, a former attorney at DOJ’s National Security Division who helped draft the FISA Amendments Act, cautioned that the report may contain speculation that readers might mistake for fact.

“I think discussions around this memo have made it clear that even at the highest levels of government, we have people who don’t understand how FISA works,” Stifel said. “(This report) might speculate, and the speculations could be really wrong, and it could do huge damage to national security.”

The Justice Department and the FBI have repeatedly requested to review the contents of the memo — requests that have all been denied, according to FBI spokesman Andrew Ames. A letter sent to Nunes this week from Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd urged that the document not be released before DOJ had a chance to review it for possible national security damage.

Five House Intelligence Committee Republicans who responded to a Lawfare survey said they’d vote to release the memo to the public (Nunes was not included). Only three of the five, though, said they had “confidence in the factual accuracy” of the document’s claims. Reps. Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey and Mike Conaway of Texas did not answer that question.

Many Republicans, not just those in Congress, have taken up the call to make the document public, and #ReleaseTheMemo has taken off on Twitter. Among those promoting the meme are accounts that have been linked to Russia, according to at least one report. But on Friday the GOP found itself battling to retake the momentum from the latest President Trump-related revelation in a news cycle that seems only to accelerate: that Trump tried to have Mueller fired last June.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., ranking Democrat on the committee, said the fact that the panel's Republicans wouldn't share the memo with the chairman of the Intelligence Committee on the other side of the Capitol, GOP Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, "shows how little confidence they have" in their memo.

Schiff and Mark Warner, D-Va., ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, both accused Nunes of preparing the memo without even reading the underlying classified documents that it characterizes, and Schiff is preparing a counter-memo that critiques Nunes’s.

“Unlike almost all of the 200 GOP congressmen who’ve seen the memo, I have actually read the underlying documents, and I am confident that there was nothing improper like what this memo seems to allege,” Warner said.

Boyd’s letter said only Schiff, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and members of their staffs have reviewed those documents on behalf of the House Intelligence Committee.

The document apparently deals with a dossier on then-candidate Donald Trump prepared by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele in 2016 for research firm Fusion GPS. An FBI application for a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in connection Mueller’s investigation allegedly relied at least partially on the dossier. It’s not clear whether the FBI disclosed at the time that Fusion GPS was being paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the research on Trump.

If the panel does vote to make the memo public, the ball goes to Trump’s court for five days. If he objects, the full House would meet behind closed doors for a vote to decide the matter. Trump could also approve its immediate release or do nothing, in which case the memo would become public after the five days.

Republican attacks on the FBI and DOJ, which have ramped up in recent weeks, sap morale and potentially harm the agencies’ ability to operate effectively, said Jamil Jaffer, who served as counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security under the Bush administration.

“But at the same time, parts of the FBI have been their own worst enemy,” Jaffer said. “The messages between (FBI personnel) Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, losing the data, it doesn’t paint a great picture.” Jaffer was referring to text messages between the two that disparaged Trump — but also commented negatively on some Democrats.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a speech in Norfolk, Virginia on Friday that DOJ officials “don’t see criticism from Congress as a bad thing,” but that “while we are open to fair criticism, we will of course defend our investigators and prosecutors from criticism that is unfair.”

Nunes’ office did not respond to a request for comment.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/new...9.html#storylink=cpy

^^^^^^^. I really hope there is something there. The way this memo has been hyped (jaw dropping I believe) there needs to be. If not, the pachyderms are going to look really bad and will be red meat for the media.

If you hold your breath for 3 minutes, just before you pass out you'll realize comey, mueller, strozk, page et al are patriots and risked all to defend America from Donald Trump. And this is coming out now because mueller is getting close.......

I consider anything coming out of Lawfare blog as being highly suspect.

Cofounder Benjamin Wittes is a personal friend of James Comey.

Wittes has called for the impeachment of President Trump.

Wittes has questioned the fitness of President Trump to hold the office.

http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/wa...-trump-1035568195656


When McClatchy says Nunes didn't read the underlying docs, he is correct. But what he doesn't say is that Trey Gowdy was the designated REP person from Nunes committee to review the underlying docs.

When Schiff says most of the REPs on House Intel comm have not read the underlying docs, he too is correct on that. But why is that ?

Because the FBI/DoJ would only allow one person on the majority of the House Intel Comm and one person from the DEM House Intel comm to read the underlying docs. So because the FBI/DoJ wouldn't allow everyone on the comm to read the material, of course they have not seen the underlying docs.

We are being tied into knots and confusion because FBI/DoJ has tried to hide what is known about the Steele dossier and what has happened w FISA warrant applications.

I hope people like Schiff and Mark Warner have to eat their words eventually. (Actually they never will admit they are wrong in this)

http://www.washingtonexaminer....exts/article/2647289

Justice Department withholds majority of FBI texts

The Justice Department has given Congress less than 15 percent of the texts between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page – and that is all Congress is likely to get, at least until department experts finish an effort to recover an unknown number of previously lost texts that were sent and received during a key five-month period during the Trump-Russia investigation.

The Justice Department has identified about 50,000 Strzok-Page texts. But that is apart from the texts between Dec. 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017 that were declared missing a week ago but are now being recovered. So, the total is apparently 50,000 plus the currently unknown number of formerly missing texts.

But that number refers only to the Strzok-Page texts that were sent and received on FBI-issued Samsung phones. There are a number of instances in the texts in which the two officials say that they should switch the conversation to iMessage, suggesting they continued to talk about FBI matters on personal Apple phones. For investigators, those are particularly intriguing texts – what was so sensitive that they couldn't discuss on their work phones? – but the number of those texts is unknown. And of course, they have not been turned over to Congress.

How many texts have been turned over? Both Justice Department and Capitol Hill sources say the total number is in the 7,000 range, which includes all the texts handed over on two separate occasions.

"The department is not providing text messages that were purely personal in nature," Boyd wrote. "Furthermore, the department has redacted from some work-related text messages portions that were purely personal. The department's aim in withholding purely personal text messages and redacting personal portions of work-related text messages was primarily to facilitate the committee's access to potentially relevant text messages without having to cull through large quantities of material unrelated to either the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server or the investigation into Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election."

Finally – and this could be significant or not – Boyd said that "in a few instances," the Justice Department consulted with the office of Trump-Russia special prosecutor Robert Mueller and made some redactions "related to the structure, operation, and substance of the [Special Counsel's Office]'s investigation because it is ongoing." Hill investigators don't really know what that covers. (The letter said if Congress has questions about redactions in a particular text, the department would "work with" Congress to further describe or reveal redacted information "in a closed setting.")

Right now, Justice Department officials are not saying how far along the process of recovering the texts is, or how long the work will take, or how many texts will ultimately be turned over to Congress. Just another unknown in a long and secretive investigation.

***************

the process sounds oddly similar to how Clinton filtered her emails before turning half of them over

http://video.foxbusiness.com/v...8001/?#sp=show-clips

Bernie Marcus talks tax reform under President Trump
Jan. 27, 2018 - 7:34 - Home Depot offering one-time bonuses of up to $1,000 for U.S. hourly workers.

More WINNING...good listen! LOL

Watch his face. Watch his eyebrows, watch his mouth when he talks about Meuller, watch him swallow and purse his lips, and then repeat himself and do it again. While he defends the FBI. Because he's a company man. I don't believe this man.

Trump broke with Justice Dept, called for release of memo: report
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 01/27/18 06:05 PM EST 3,939
WATCH: A rundown of the Intel memo

Autoplay: On | Off
President Trump broke with top officials at the Justice Department and called for the release of a classified memo purported to list Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses by the U.S. government, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

Despite warnings from top officials at the agency, Trump reportedly told Attorney General Jeff Sessions through Chief of Staff John Kelly that he wants to see the memo released, believing that it will shed light on the special counsel investigation.

Trump “is inclined to have that released just because it will shed light,” a senior administration official told the Post.

“Apparently all the rumors are that it will shed light, it will help the investigators come to a conclusion," the official added.

The decision to release the memo rests with the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes. Earlier this week, the Justice Department warned the committee it would be "extremely reckless" to release the memo without first supplying it to the agency for review.

"Indeed, we do not understand why the committee would possibly seek to disclose this information without first consulting the relevant members of the Intelligence Community," associate Attorney General Stephen Boyd wrote to the lawmakers on Thursday.

Republicans in Congress who have seen the memo say that the contents are "shocking," and voted this week to allow House members to view the memo in secure locations. The Senate Intelligence Committee, however, has been reportedly blocked from viewing it.

“I’m here to tell all of America tonight that I’m shocked to read exactly what has taken place,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said in a speech on the House floor.

“I thought it could never happen in a country that loves freedom and democracy like this country. It is time that we become transparent with all of this, and I’m calling on our leadership to make this available so all Americans can judge for themselves,” he said.

http://thehill.com/homenews/ad...lease-of-memo-report

Who the hell is that Erin CNN anchor? God damn, how much bias can one show? Her gestures, mannerisms, wordchoice all tell me she is a woman I would want nothing to do with. Yuck.

Nunes has everybody hyper ventilating over his memo. If it gets released I think it will just be a laundry list of what we already know. I'm already tired of the hype.
Strozk and Page still have jobs and neither of them as far as I know have not even had their security clearances pulled.
So how bad can it be?
Now if Page comes out and says he grabbed her ass or touched her elbow in a elevator when she didn't want him to he's toast!
Today treason and espionage are unproveable crimes and not even crimes really.
But anything that resembles sexual advances that's the kryptonite that kills.

I'm not a great fan of the President's Twitter habit, but a piece I just saw on Fox News has eased my opinion some.

The tweet reads, "I have offered DACA a wonderful deal, including a doubling in the number of recipients & a twelve year pathway to citizenship, for two reasons: (1) Because the Republicans want to fix a long time terrible problem. (2) To show that Democrats do not want to solve DACA, only use it!"

Holy smokes! THAT was a worthwhile tweet, IMO.

I'm not fluent in Twitter, but I believe this will show it:
https://twitter.com/realDonald...s/957462746060206080

quote:

a twelve year pathway to citizenship

I think that's reasonable. Add to that at least six (6) years in a bureaucratic queue and eighteen (18) years sounds like a nice, round number.

It's definitely a new classification--- Not-quite-permanent Permanent Resident.

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:
I'm not a great fan of the President's Twitter habit, but a piece I just saw on Fox News has eased my opinion some.

The tweet reads, "I have offered DACA a wonderful deal, including a doubling in the number of recipients & a twelve year pathway to citizenship, for two reasons: (1) Because the Republicans want to fix a long time terrible problem. (2) To show that Democrats do not want to solve DACA, only use it!"

Holy smokes! THAT was a worthwhile tweet, IMO.

I'm not fluent in Twitter, but I believe this will show it:
https://twitter.com/realDonald...s/957462746060206080

He's painting the Dems right into a corner to portray them as THEY are, not really interested in these people...just using them as political pawns. Check Mate!

The dems are over matched in dealing with Trump.
They are being out manuvered and exposed daily by
Trump. Limbaugh was going on and on about Trump offering 1.8 million dreamers amnesty on his show Friday. I like Rush but he needed a slap upside his head on Friday. The only one using the word amnesty was him. Trump never said it. Trump has always said "pathway to citizenship" which is a entirely different thing.

The dems want voting rights for the illegals now. Trump is putting them in a position where they are going to have to come out and actually say the words.

quote:

Originally posted by jehzsa:

quote:

over matched

http://video.dailymail.co.uk/v...3874060129648317.mp4

Ok that's awesome! Perfect illustration!