Another Department head Trump needs to fire ASAP.

"The Homeland Security Department recently authorized $1.7 billion in grants to states, some of which went to “sanctuary” cities that do not enforce federal immigration laws, despite President Trump’s vows to cut off the funding.

According to a report in McClatchy, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen signed off on the grants despite objections from senior staffers.

“This is typical of Nielsen,” one person told McClatchy. “She is known for deliberately ignoring warnings that her decisions are not in keeping with the president’s agenda, but that she proceeds forcefully and simply misrepresents what she is doing.”

Nielsen has been under scrutiny since President Trump reportedly lambasted her at a Cabinet meeting over his frustrations on border security."

Full Story: The Hill

quote:

Originally posted by mikeyspizza:
Another Department head Trump needs to fire ASAP.

"The Homeland Security Department recently authorized $1.7 billion in grants to states, some of which went to “sanctuary” cities that do not enforce federal immigration laws, despite President Trump’s vows to cut off the funding.

According to a report in McClatchy, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen signed off on the grants despite objections from senior staffers.

“This is typical of Nielsen,” one person told McClatchy. “She is known for deliberately ignoring warnings that her decisions are not in keeping with the president’s agenda, but that she proceeds forcefully and simply misrepresents what she is doing.”

Nielsen has been under scrutiny since President Trump reportedly lambasted her at a Cabinet meeting over his frustrations on border security."

Full Story: The Hill

My first reaction was "fire her ass" but upon reading the whole story, I changed my mind. The grants were for terrorism preparedness and emergency/disaster preparedness. Besides, even in the article it says a Federal Judge put an injunction in place blocking the cut off of federal money to sanctuary cities.

If she had withheld the grants, could you imagine the "outrage" against the President if something happened?

The president this morning, referring to Trey Gowdy interview.


Text of his follow up tweets:

....chief law enforcement officer, and they told me later, ‘oh by the way I’m not going to be able to participate in the most important case in the office, I would be frustrated too...and that’s how I read that - Senator Sessions, why didn’t you tell me before I picked you.....
....There are lots of really good lawyers in the country, he could have picked somebody else!” And I wish I did!

quote:

...There are lots of really good lawyers in the country, he could have picked somebody else!” And I wish I did!

BOOM!

If the little bastard had an ounce of integrity he would resign.

Those who think that in a month or two-- or six or eight-- Sessions is going to leap out of the phone booth with a big "S" on his chest and announce that he is bringing charges against Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, and James Comey and 20 others are in fantasyland.

Another win


President Trump on Wednesday signed into law a bill that would allow those with deadly diseases to try experimental treatments and bypass the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The so-called Right to Try Act of 2017, sponsored by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., unanimously passed the Senate last August, and cleared the House last week on a party-line vote of 250-169 -- in a win for both Johnson and the Trump administration.

"Today I am proud to keep another promise to the American people as I sign the right to try legislation into law," Trump said Wednesday. "I called on congress to pass Right to Try—such a great name—some bills they don’t have a great name—this one...And a lot of that trying is going to be successful. I really believe that. We did it."


He added: We're going to be saving tremendous numbers of lives."

"This is very personal for me. As I proudly sign this bill, thousands of terminally ill Americans will have the help, the hope, and the fighting chance-- and I think it’s going to be better than chance--that they will be cured, that they will be helped, that they will be able to be with their families for a long time, or maybe just for a longer time,” Trump said. “But we’re able to give them the absolute best we have at this current moment, at this current second. We’re going to help a lot of people. It’s an honor to be signing this.”

The president was joined by Vice President Pence, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, FDA’s Deputy Commissioner Anna Abram and the Food and Drug Administration’s commissioner Scott Gottlieb, along with several "brave Americans," for whom the bill was named--some battling ALS, others muscular dystrophy.

The president said that he was seeking the "better bill" for "the people."

"Not the pharmaceutical companies, not the insurance companies--I don't care about them. I really couldn't care less," Trump said, underscoring the importance of a bill for "the people."

Trump has long supported the legislation, pushing Congress to pass the bill for the benefit of terminally ill patients during his first State of the Union address in January.

“Patients with terminal conditions should have access to experimental treatments that could potentially save their lives,” Trump said during his address earlier this year. “It is time for the Congress to give these wonderful Americans the ‘right to try.’”

Johnson introduced the legislation in early 2017, authorizing patients diagnosed with life-ending illnesses to use unapproved medications—so long as they have undergone early testing on humans and are under continual evaluation. Patients also would have to have tried other treatment options.

“Today’s right to try bill signing was a moment of deserved celebration for everyone who fought to return a little freedom and restore hope to terminally ill patients and their families. I applaud and thank them all," Johnson said in a statement to Fox News Wednesday.

The vice president Wednesday touted the "bipartisan" legislation to "advance the interests of the American people."

"I want to thank the president who cares deeply about families of this country, especially vulnerable families--economically and families struggling with serious illness," Pence said. "President Trump has fought to advance interests of American families."

"I want to thank the president who cares deeply about families of this country, especially vulnerable families--economically and families struggling with serious illness," Pence said. "President Trump has fought to advance interests of American families."

So far, “Right to Try” laws have been enacted in 40 states, according to www.righttotry.org. The only states that have not yet adopted the law at the state level are Alaska, Hawaii, New Mexico, Kansas, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Delaware, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

“The FDA drug approval process can take up to 15 years. This is far too long for dying patients to wait,” the Right to Try website states. “Right to Try gives life-saving hope back to those who’ve lost it.”

But Democrats have been critical of the legislation, saying it would “peddle false hope” and place patients at risk.

Over 100 groups representing patients and research groups called the final legislation Tuesday “unsafe.”



http://www.foxnews.com/politic...us-number-lives.html

quote:

But Democrats have been critical of the legislation, saying it would “peddle false hope” and place patients at risk.

ok, lets see if I got this right

you have a patient that is terminally ill

said patient wants to try an experimental treatment that may or may not prolong his/her life but may provide valuable feedback for others

whats the risk?

that the patient may live?

democrats are SO FUCKING STUPID....

quote:

Originally posted by BamaJeepster:
The president this morning, referring to Trey Gowdy interview.


Text of his follow up tweets:

....chief law enforcement officer, and they told me later, ‘oh by the way I’m not going to be able to participate in the most important case in the office, I would be frustrated too...and that’s how I read that - Senator Sessions, why didn’t you tell me before I picked you.....
....There are lots of really good lawyers in the country, he could have picked somebody else!” And I wish I did!

Rush opined today that Gowdy retiring from Congress is part of a plan for Trump to replace Sessions with Gowdy. While that would probably be an improvement, I'm beginning to believe that Gowdy is a swamp creature at his core.

quote:

Originally posted by Bigboreshooter:


Rush opined today that Gowdy retiring from Congress is part of a plan for Trump to replace Sessions with Gowdy. While that would probably be an improvement, I'm beginning to believe that Gowdy is a swamp creature at his core.

Gowdy shot that idea down at the time he announced his retirement from Congress.

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:

quote:

Originally posted by Bigboreshooter:


Rush opined today that Gowdy retiring from Congress is part of a plan for Trump to replace Sessions with Gowdy. While that would probably be an improvement, I'm beginning to believe that Gowdy is a swamp creature at his core.

Gowdy shot that idea down at the time he announced his retirement from Congress.

Can you believe him?

This is so good that I am copying it in full here.
"Your pussy hat must be very sad."

Dear Ex-Friends in #TheResistance
Julie Kelly

Hey, what’s up. Long time no talk.

I think the last civil conversations we had occurred just days before November 8, 2016. You were supremely confident Hillary Clinton would win the presidential election; you voted for her with glee. As a lifelong Republican, I bit down hard and cast my vote for Donald Trump. Then the unimaginable happened. He won.

And you lost your fucking minds.

I knew you would take the loss hard—and personally—since all of you were super jacked-up to elect the first woman president. But I did not imagine you would become totally deranged, attacking anyone who voted for Trump or supported his presidency as a racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic Nazi-sympathizer.

The weirdness started on social media late on Election Night, as it became clear Hillary was going to lose. A few of you actually admitted that you were cradling your sleeping children, weeping, wondering what to tell your kindergartner the next morning about Trump’s victory. It continued over the next several days. Some of you seriously expressed fear about modern-day concentration camps. Despite living a privileged lifestyle, you were suddenly a casualty of the white patriarchy. Your daughters were future victims; your sons were predators-in-waiting. You threatened to leave Facebook because you could no longer enjoy the family photos or vacation posts from people who, once friends, became Literal Hitlers to you on November 8 because they voted for Donald Trump.

I admit I was a little hurt at first. The attacks against us Trump voters were so personal and so vicious that I did not think it could be sustained. I thought maybe you would regain your sanity after some turkey and egg nog.

But you did not. You got worse. And I went from sad to angry to where I am today: Amused.

As the whole charade you have been suckered into over the last 18 months starts to fall apart—that Trump would not survive his presidency; he would be betrayed by his own staff, family, and/or political party; he would destroy the Republican Party; he would be declared mentally ill and removed from office; he would be handcuffed and dragged out of the White House by Robert Mueller for “colluding” with Russia—let me remind you what complete fools you have made of yourselves. Not to mention how you’ve been fooled by the media, the Democratic Party, and your new heroes on the NeverTrump Right.

On November 9, you awoke from a self-induced, eight-year-long political coma to find that White House press secretaries shade the truth and top presidential advisors run political cover for their boss. You were shocked to discover that presidents exaggerate, even lie, on occasion. You became interested for the first time about the travel accommodations, office expenses, and lobbyist pals of administration officials. You started counting how many rounds of golf the president played. You suddenly thought it was fine to mock the first lady now that she wasn’t Michelle Obama. Once you removed your pussy hat after attending the Women’s March, you made fun of Kellyanne Conway’s hair, Sarah Sanders’ weight, Melania Trump’s shoes, Hope Hicks’ death stare; you helped fuel a rumor started by a bottom-feeding author that U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley slept with Donald Trump. You thought it was A-OK that Betsy DeVos was nearly physically assaulted and routinely heckled. You glorified a woman who has sex on camera for a paycheck.

You have learned all kinds of new things that those of us who didn’t willfully ignore politics for the past eight years already knew. For example, we already knew that illegal immigrants were being deported and families were being separated. We already knew about misconduct at the Environmental Protection Agency. We already knew that politicians gerrymander congressional districts for favorable election outcomes. We already knew that citizens from certain countries had restricted access here.

But American politics became a whole new thing for you.

Some of your behavior has been kinda cute. It was endearing to watch you become experts on the Logan Act, the Hatch Act, the Second Amendment, the 25th Amendment, and the Emoluments Clause. You developed a new crush on Mitt Romney after calling him a “sexist” for having “binders full of women.” You longed for a redux of the presidency of George W. Bush, a man you once wanted imprisoned for war crimes. Ditto for John McCain. You embraced people like Bill Kristol and David Frum without knowing anything about their histories of shotgunning the Iraq War.

Classified emails shared by Hillary Clinton? Who cares! Devin Nunes wanting to declassify crucial information of the public interest? Traitor!

But your newfound admiration and fealty to law enforcement really has been a fascinating transformation. Wasn’t it just last fall that I saw you loudly supporting professional athletes who were protesting police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem? Remember how you fanboyed a mediocre quarterback for wearing socks that depicted cops as pigs?

But now you sound like paid spokesmen for the Fraternal Order of Police. You insist that any legitimate criticism of the misconduct and possibile criminality that occured at the Justice Department and FBI is an “attack on law enforcement.” While you once opposed the Patriot Act because it might have allowed the federal government to spy on terrorists who were using the local library to learn how to make suitcase bombs, you now fully support the unchecked power of a secret court to look into the phone calls, text messages and emails of an American citizen because he volunteered for the Trump campaign for a few months.

Spying on terrorists, circa 2002: Bad. Spying on Carter Page, circa 2017: The highest form of patriotism.

And that white, male patriarchy that you were convinced would strip away basic rights and silence any opposition after Trump won? That fear has apparently been washed away as you hang on every word uttered by James Comey, John Brennan, and James Clapper. This triumvirate is exhibit “A” of the old-boy network, and represents how the insularity, arrogance, and cover-your-tracks mentality of the white-male power structure still prevails. Yet, instead of rising up against it, you are buying their books, retweeting their Twitter rants and blasting anyone who dares to question their testicular authority. Your pussy hat must be very sad.

But your daily meltdowns about Trump-Russia election collusion have been the most entertaining to observe. After Robert Mueller was appointed as Special Counsel, you were absolutely convinced it would result in Trump’s arrest and/or impeachment. Some of you insisted that Trump wouldn’t last beyond 2017. You quickly swallowed any chum tossed at you by the Trump-hating media on MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post about who was going down next, or who would flip on the president.

For the past year, I have watched you obsess over a rotating cast of characters: Paul Manafort, Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, Carter Page, Reince Priebus, Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, Sam Nunberg, and Hope Hicks are just a few of the people you thought would turn on Trump or hasten his political demise. But when those fantasies didn’t come true, you turned to Michael Avenatti and Stormy Daniels for hope and inspiration. It will always be your low point.

Well, I think it will be. Each time I believe you’ve hit bottom, you come up with a new baseline. Perhaps defending the unprecedented use of federal power to spy on political foes then lie about it will the next nail in your credibility coffin.

The next several weeks will be tough for you. I think Americans will learn some very hard truths about what happened in the previous administration and how we purposely have been misled by powerful leaders and the news media. I wish I could see you as a victim here, but you are not. I know you are smart; you chose to support this insurgency with your eyes wide open.

Now, I shall sit back and enjoy your pain.

Your Ex-Friend,
Julie

https://amgreatness.com/2018/0...s-in-the-resistance/

quote:

Originally posted by justjoe:

Dear Ex-Friends in #TheResistance...

https://amgreatness.com/2018/0...s-in-the-resistance/

Yeah, really good.

I like it

nail - meet hammer

Turns out Kim Jong Un might be as big of a fast food fan as Trump.

According to a new U.S. intelligence assessment, while the North Korean leader is no longer willing to give up his nuclear weapons, he said he may open a “Western hamburger franchise in Pyongyang as a show of goodwill,” NBC reports.

This consolation prize of sorts is said to have possibly been suggested by Kim as a way to gain favor with the burger-loving president.

In 2016 at a campaign rally in Atlanta, Trump said he’d invite Kim to the U.S. for a state dinner, but instead of doing something formal, the two would simply dine on the fast-food American staple.

“We should be eating a hamburger on a conference table, and we should make better deals with China and others and forget the state dinners,” Trump said.


POTUS’ love of burgers has been well-documented in the past, from his reported go-to McDonald’s order of two Big Macs to his request for an American-beef burger during a lunch in Tokyo with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Most recently, Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, revealed the president has taken to ordering his burgers with only half a bun “in service to his health.”

Link

We're keeping this thread on topic, right?

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:

quote:

Originally posted by Bigboreshooter:


Rush opined today that Gowdy retiring from Congress is part of a plan for Trump to replace Sessions with Gowdy. While that would probably be an improvement, I'm beginning to believe that Gowdy is a swamp creature at his core.

Gowdy shot that idea down at the time he announced his retirement from Congress.

The prestige of that office would be tough to turn down. Although, at a salary of only around 200K, which he could most certainly eclipse privately, it might be a tough call.

I'd like to see him there.

If I were the AG and my boss wrote that, I would tender my resignation. Immediately. But, I am not a swamp creature so what do I know. Regards 18DAI

National Review
Andrew McCarthy


Well, well, well. The bipartisan Beltway establishment has apparently had its fill of this “Trump colluded with Russia” narrative — the same narrative the same establishment has lustily peddled for nearly two years. The Obama administration recklessly chose to deploy the government’s awesome counterintelligence powers to investigate — and, more to the point, to smear — its political opposition as a Kremlin confederate. Now that that this ploy has blown up on the Justice Department and the FBI, these agencies — the ones that went out of their way, and outside their guidelines, to announce to the world that the Trump campaign was under investigation — want you to know the president and his campaign were not investigated at all, no siree.

What could possibly have made you imagine such a thing?

And so, to douse the controversy with cold water, dutifully stepping forward in fine bipartisan fettle are the Obama administration’s top intelligence official and two influential Capitol Hill Republicans who evidently pay little attention to major testimony before their own committees.

Former National Intelligence director James Clapper was first to the scene of the blaze. Clapper concedes that, well, yes, the FBI did run an informant — “spy” is such an icky word — at Trump campaign officials; but you must understand that this was merely to investigate Russia. Cross his heart, it had nothing to do with the Trump campaign. No, no, no. Indeed, they only used an informant because — bet you didn’t know this — doing so is the most benign, least intrusive mode of conducting an investigation.

Me? I’m thinking the tens of thousands of convicts serving lengthy sentences due to the penetration of their schemes by informants would beg to differ. (Mr. Gambino, I assure you, this was just for you own good . . .) In any event, I’ll leave it to the reader to imagine the Democrats’ response if, say, the Bush administration had run a covert intelligence operative against Obama 2008 campaign officials, including the campaign’s co-chairman. I’m sure David Axelrod, Chuck Schumer, the New York Times, and Rachel Maddow would chirp that “all is forgiven” once they heard Republicans punctiliously parse the nuances between investigating campaign officials versus the campaign proper; between “spies,” “informants,” and other government-directed covert operatives.

Sure!

Senator Rubio

Then there are Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Representative Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), General Clapper’s fellow fire extinguishers.

Rubio is a member in good standing of that Washington pillar, the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has had about as much interest in scrutinizing the highly irregular actions of intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the Clinton and Russia probes as Gowdy’s Benghazi committee had in revisiting Republican ardor for Obama’s unprovoked war on Moammar Qaddafi. (That would be: roughly zero interest.)

Rubio told ABC News that he has seen “no evidence” that the FBI was gathering information about the Trump campaign. Rather, agents “were investigating individuals with a history of links to Russia that were concerning.” The senator elaborated that “when individuals like that are in the orbit of a major political campaign in America, the FBI, who is in charge of counterintelligence investigations, should look at people like that.”

Gee, senator, when you were carefully perusing the evidence of what the FBI was doing, did you ever sneak a peek at what the FBI said it was doing?

May I suggest, for example, the stunning public testimony by then-director James Comey on March 20, 2017, before the House Intelligence Committee — perhaps Representative Gowdy, who sits on that committee, could lend you the transcript, since he appears not to be using it. Just so we’re clear, this is not an obscure scrap of evidence buried within volumes of testimony. It is the testimony that launched the Mueller probe, and that sets (or, better, fails to set) the parameters of that probe — a flaw the nation has been discussing for a year.

Comey’s House testimony was breathtaking, not just because it confirmed the existence of a classified counterintelligence investigation, but because of what the bureau’s then-director said about the Trump campaign (my italics):

I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts. . . .

That is an unambiguous declaration that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign. That is why, for nearly two years, Washington has been entranced by the specter of “Trump collusion with Russia,” not “Papadopoulos collusion with Russia.” A campaign, of course, is an entity that acts through the individuals associated with it. But Comey went to extraordinary lengths to announce that the FBI was not merely zeroing in on individuals of varying ranks in the campaign; the main question was whether the Trump campaign itself — the entity — had “coordinated” in Russia’s espionage operation.

Representative Gowdy

Gowdy’s fire truck pulled into Fox News Tuesday night for an interview by Martha MacCallum. An able lawyer, the congressman is suddenly on a mission to protect the Justice Department and the FBI from further criticism. So, when Ms. MacCallum posed the question about FBI spying on the Trump campaign, Gowdy deftly changed the subject: Rather than address the campaign, he repeatedly insisted that Donald Trump personally was never the “target” of the FBI’s investigation. The only “target,” Gowdy maintains, was Russia.

This is a dodge on at least two levels.

First, to repeat, the question raised by the FBI’s use of an informant is whether the bureau was investigating the Trump campaign. We’ll come momentarily to the closely connected question of whether Trump can be airbrushed out of his own campaign — I suspect the impossibility of this feat is why Gowdy is resistant to discussing the Trump campaign at all.

It is a diversion for Gowdy to prattle on about how Trump himself was not a “target” of the Russia investigation. As we’ve repeatedly observed (and as Gowdy acknowledged in the interview), the Trump-Russia probe is a counterintelligence investigation. An accomplished prosecutor, Gowdy well knows that “target” is a term of art in criminal investigations, denoting a suspect who is likely to be indicted. The term is inapposite to counterintelligence investigations, which are not about building criminal cases but about divining and thwarting the provocative schemes of hostile foreign powers. In that sense, and in no other, the foreign power at issue — here, Russia — is always the “target” of a counterintelligence probe; but it is never a “target” in the technical criminal-investigation sense in which Gowdy used the term . . . unless you think we are going to indict a country.

Moreover, even if we stick to the criminal-investigation sense of “target,” Gowdy knows it is misleading to emphasize that Trump is not one. Just a few short weeks ago, Gowdy was heard pooh-poohing as “meaningless” media reporting that Trump had been advised he was not a “target” of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe (which is the current iteration of the Russia investigation). As the congressman quite correctly pointed out, if Trump is a subject of the investigation — another criminal-law term of art, denoting a person whose conduct is under scrutiny, but who may or may not be indicted — it should be of little comfort that he is not a “target”; depending on how the evidence shakes out, a subject can become a target in the blink of an eye.

So, apart from the fact that Gowdy is dodging the question about whether the Trump campaign was being investigated, his digression about “targets” is gibberish. Since the Obama administration was using its counterintelligence powers (FISA surveillance, national-security letters, unmasking identities in intelligence reporting, all bolstered by the use of at least one covert informant), the political-spying issue boils down to whether the Trump campaign was being monitored. Whether Trump himself was apt to be indicted, and whether threats posed by Russia were the FBI’s focus, are beside the point; in a counterintelligence case, an indictment is never the objective, and a foreign power is always the focus.

Withholding Information from Trump

Second, if Gowdy has been paying attention, he must know that, precisely because the Trump campaign was under investigation, top FBI officials had qualms of conscience over Comey’s plan to give Trump a misleading assurance that he personally was not under investigation. If this has slipped Gowdy mind, perhaps Rubio could lend him the transcript of Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee — in particular, a section Rubio seems not to remember, either.

A little background. On January 6, 2017, Comey, Clapper, CIA director John Brennan, and NSA chief Michael Rogers visited President-elect Trump in New York to brief him on the Russia investigation. Just one day earlier, at the White House, Comey and then-acting-attorney general Sally Yates had met with the political leadership of the Obama administration — President Obama, Vice President Biden, and national-security adviser Susan Rice — to discuss withholding information about the Russia investigation from the incoming Trump administration.

Ms. Rice put this sleight-of-hand a bit more delicately in her CYA memo-to-file about the Oval Office meeting (written two weeks after the fact, as Rice was leaving her office minutes after Trump’s inauguration):

President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia. [Emphasis added.]

It is easy to understand why Obama officials needed to discuss withholding information from Trump. They knew that the Trump campaign — not just some individuals tangentially connected to the campaign — was the subject of an ongoing FBI counterintelligence probe. Indeed, we now know that Obama’s Justice Department had already commenced FISA surveillance on Trump campaign figures, and that it was preparing to return to the FISA court to seek renewal of the surveillance warrants. We also know that at least one informant was still deployed. And we know that the FBI withheld information about the investigation from the congressional “Gang of Eight” during quarterly briefings from July 2106 through early March 2017. (See Comey testimony March 20, 2017, questioning by Representative Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.).) Director Comey said Congress’s most trusted leaders were not apprised of the investigation because “it was a matter of such sensitivity.” Putting aside that the need to alert Congress to sensitive matters is exactly why there is a Gang of Eight, the palpable reason why the matter was deemed too “sensitive” for disclosure was that it involved the incumbent administration’s investigation of the opposition campaign.

Clearly, the Obama officials did not want Trump to know the full scope of their investigation of his campaign. But just as importantly, they wanted the investigation — an “insurance policy” that promised to hamstring Trump’s presidency — to continue.

Clearly, the Obama officials did not want Trump to know the full scope of their investigation of his campaign.
So, how to accomplish these objectives? Plainly, the plan called for Comey to put the new president at ease by telling him he was not a suspect. This would not have been a credible assurance if Comey had informed Trump that his campaign had been under investigation for months, suspected of coordinating in Russia’s cyber-espionage operation. So, information would be withheld. The intelligence chiefs would tell Trump only about Russia’s espionage, not about the Trump campaign’s suspected “coordination” with the Kremlin. Then, Comey would apprise Trump about only a sliver of the Steele dossier — just the lurid story about peeing prostitutes, not the dossier’s principal allegations of a traitorous Trump-Russia conspiracy.

As I’ve previously recounted, this did not sit well with everyone at the FBI. Shortly before he met with Trump, Comey consulted his top FBI advisers about the plan to tell Trump he was not a suspect. There was an objection from one of Comey’s top advisers — we don’t know which one. Comey recounted this disagreement for the Senate Intelligence Committee (my italics):

One of the members of the leadership team had a view that, although it was technically true [that] we did not have a counterintelligence file case open on then-President-elect Trump[,] . . . because we’re looking at the potential . . . coordination between the campaign and Russia, because it was . . . President-elect Trump’s campaign, this person’s view was, inevitably, [Trump’s] behavior, [Trump’s] conduct will fall within the scope of that work.

Representative Gowdy and Senator Rubio might want to read that testimony over a few times.

They might note that Comey did not talk about “potential coordination between Carter Page or Paul Manafort and Russia.” The director was unambiguous: The FBI was investigating “potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.” With due respect to Gowdy, the FBI did not regard Russia as the “target”; to the contrary, Comey said the focus of the investigation was whether Donald Trump’s campaign had coordinated in Russia’s election interference. And perspicaciously, Comey’s unidentified adviser connected the dots: Because (a) the FBI’s investigation was about the campaign, and (b) the campaign was Trump’s campaign, it was necessarily true that (c) Trump’s own conduct was under FBI scrutiny.

Director Comey’s reliance on the trivial administrative fact that the FBI had not written Trump’s name on the investigative file did not change the reality that Trump, manifestly, was a subject of the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation. If Trump were not a subject of the investigation, there would be no conceivable justification for Special Counsel Mueller to be pushing to interview the president of the United States. If Trump were not a subject of the investigation, Trump’s political opponents would not have spent the last 18 months accusing him of obstruction and demanding that Mueller be permitted to finish his work.

In the interview with Ms. MacCallum, Representative Gowdy further confused matters by stressing Trump’s observation, in a phone conversation with Comey on March 30, 2017, that it would be good to find out if underlings in his campaign had done anything wrong. This, according to Gowdy, means Trump should be pleased, rather than outraged, by what the FBI did: By steering an informant at three campaign officials, we’re to believe that the bureau was doing exactly what Trump suggested.

Gowdy’s argument assumes something that is simply not true: namely, that the Trump campaign was not under investigation.
Such a specious argument. So disappointing to hear it from someone who clearly knows better.

First, the informant reportedly began approaching campaign officials in July 2016. It was nine months later, well after the election, when President Trump told Comey that if would be good if the FBI uncovered any wrongdoing by his “satellites.” Trump was not endorsing spying during the campaign; the campaign was long over. The president was saying that it would be worth continuing the FBI’s Russia investigation in order to root out any thus-far-undiscovered wrongdoing — but only if the FBI informed the public that Trump was not a suspect (an announcement Comey declined to make).

Second, Gowdy’s argument assumes something that is simply not true: namely, that the Trump campaign was not under investigation. As we’ve seen, Comey testified multiple times that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign for possible coordination with Russia. The bureau was not, as Gowdy suggests, merely investigating a few campaign officials for suspicious contacts with Russia unrelated to the campaign.

The Steele Dossier and FISA Surveillance

That brings us to a final point. In support of the neon-flashing fact that the Trump campaign was under investigation when the Obama administration ran an informant at it, there is much more than former Director Comey’s testimony.

Probes conducted by both the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee have established that the Obama Justice Department and the FBI used the Steele dossier to obtain FISA court warrants against Carter Page. The dossier, a Clinton-campaign opposition-research project (a fact withheld from the FISA court), was essential to the required probable-cause showing; the FBI’s former deputy director, Andrew McCabe, testified that without the dossier there would have been no warrant.

So . . . what did the dossier say? The lion’s share of it — the part Director Comey omitted from his briefing of Trump — alleged that the Trump campaign was conspiring with the Kremlin to corrupt the election, including by hacking and publicizing Democratic-party emails.

We also know, thanks to more testimony by Director Comey, that dossier information was presented to the FISA court because the Justice Department and the FBI found former British spy Christopher Steele to be reliable (even if they could not corroborate Steele’s unidentified Russian sources). That is, the FBI and Justice Department believed Steele’s claim that the Trump campaign was willfully complicit in Russia’s treachery.

It is a major investigative step to seek surveillance warrants from the FISA court. Unlike using an informant, for which no court-authorization is necessary, applications for FISA surveillance require approvals at the highest levels of the Justice Department and the FBI. After going through that elaborate process, the Obama Justice Department and the FBI presented to the court the dossier’s allegations that the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia to undermine the 2016 election.

If that was their position under oath before a secret United States court, why would anyone conceivably believe that it was not their position when they ran an informant at members of the campaign they were investigating?

To be sure, no sensible person argues that the FBI should refrain from investigating individuals suspected of acting as clandestine agents of a hostile foreign power. The question is: How should such an investigation proceed in a democratic republic whose norms forbid an incumbent administration, in the absence of strong evidence of egregious misconduct, from directing its counterintelligence and law-enforcement powers against its political opposition?


That norm was flouted by the Justice Department and the FBI, under the direction of the Obama administration’s senior political leadership. Representative Gowdy, Senator Rubio, and General Clapper maintain that the Justice Department and the FBI were just doing what we should expect them to do, and that we should applaud them. But this claim is based on the easily refuted fiction that the Justice Department and FBI were not investigating the Trump campaign. The claim also ignores the stubborn fact that, if all the Obama administration had been trying to do was check out a few bad apples with suspicious Russia ties, this could easily have been done by alerting the Trump campaign and asking for its help.

Instead, Obama officials made the Trump campaign the subject of a counterintelligence investigation.

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This is encouraging.

North Korean ex-spy chief dines with Pompeo in NYC

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
This is encouraging.

North Korean ex-spy chief dines with Pompeo in NYC

Does this mean that Trump is now colluding with North Korea? Just trying to anticipate the next round of CNN headlines...