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The Russian Connection


fraurosena

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1 hour ago, RoseWilder said:

Devin Nunes' hometown newspaper isn't too happy with him right now: 

Good, I hope every one of his constituents is reading about what a traitor he is to this country. I hope they all remember this the next time he's up for re-election. 

Apologies for being obnoxious enough to quote myself, but I want to add something to this and it's too late to edit. 

Apparently it's a huge deal that Devin Nunes' hometown newspaper has spoken out against him: 

 

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Charlie Dent is now saying the senate should take over the Russia investigation because the house isn't able to get it done.

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A Republican congressman said Wednesday that the Senate should take the lead on Congress’s Russia investigation, after the House Intelligence Committee’s probe all but ground to a halt this week over bitter political infighting.

“The House is paralyzed on this thing,” Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) said in an interview. “The Senate is moving forward. I think that’s the only committee that’s going to be able to bring us a report at this point.”

The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee are expected to brief the press on Wednesday afternoon about the status of their investigation.

Dent is one of the first Republican voices to openly advocate moving the Russia investigation out of the House Intelligence Committee’s hands. Last week, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said “no longer does the Congress have credibility to handle this alone,” calling for a select committee or independent commission to take over the investigation.

“The bottom line is, it seems like the Senate is moving in a good way,” Dent said. “They have a much greater likelihood of providing a report than the House does at this point.”

...

On the other side of the Capitol, Senate Democrats are also perplexed by Nunes’ actions of the past week, while Senate Republicans are largely loath to comment. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking member, Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), told reporters on Wednesday that if Nunes was onto something with the information he gleaned from his White House visit, it was a mystery to every other intelligence investigator in the Capitol.

“None of us, Republican or Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, has any idea what he’s talking about,” Warner said, wondering aloud why, after the Trump administration denied any Russia connections and railed against leakers, Nunes would act in a way to raise suspicions about both.

“There continues to be more and more smoke about contacts between people related to the campaign and foreign officials,” Warner added.

Sadly, the Irish undertaker won't do a darned thing about Nunes.

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I think we're getting closer to Paul Manafort turning on Trump in order to save himself. He's in deep shit right now: 

 

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This is how FoxNews is reporting on the Devin Nunes situation: 

I have no words for this fuckery. 

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Could the Senate be anxious to more forward with their hearings to forestall an independent commission?

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42 minutes ago, Howl said:

Could the Senate be anxious to more forward with their hearings to forestall an independent commission?

There are 8 Republicans, 1 Independent and 7 Democrats on the Senate committee. The 1 Independent sided with the Democrats, and then one Republican (Susan Collins, who is one of the last remaining moderate Republicans in the Senate) joined the Democrats. 

So the Democrats + Susan Collins have control over the Senate committee. Which is why it appears to not be the total clusterfuck the House committee is. I'm sure if the other Republicans had complete control over the committee, it would probably be a complete mess now too. 

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"Senate Intelligence Committee to start Russia probe interviews next week"

Quote

The Senate Intelligence Committee will begin as soon as Monday privately interviewing 20 people they have requested to speak with in their ongoing investigation of Russia involvement in the 2016 election as well as potential ties to the Trump campaign, its leaders said Wednesday.

Committee chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said that “if there’s relevance” to those and other interviews that he and vice chairman Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) anticipate scheduling going forward, “they will eventually be part of a public hearing.”

The two leaders stood side by side to update reporters about their investigation in a rare news conference Wednesday on Capitol Hill, called just as the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation appears to grinding to a halt.

Burr and Warner refused to comment on the cloud of political discord that has stymied the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation since its chairman, Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), went to the White House grounds last week without telling his committee colleagues to meet with a secret source and view documents he claims may show the president’s identity, or that of his transition team surrogates, were improperly revealed on surveillance reports focused on foreign targets.

...

“We’re not asking the House to play any role in our investigation, we don’t plan to play any role in their investigation,” Burr said.

While much of the House Intelligence Committee’s political infighting has taken place in public, the Senate so far has conducted the entirety of its Russia investigation behind closed doors — except for a public hearing in January with FBI Director James B. Comey, NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers, then-Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan.

But the main difference between the House and Senate processes is in how united the two Senate leaders are.

“Over the last month we’ve seen some progress,” Warner said. Later, with a hand on Burr’s shoulder, he added: “I have confidence in Richard Burr that we together, with the members of our committee, are going to get to the bottom of this.”

...

Burr said the Senate committee has dedicated seven staff members to the Russia investigation, and is “within weeks” of completing a review of “thousands of pages” of documents the intelligence community has made available to them. Burr added that though the committee is in “constant negotiations” with the intelligence committee about access, they intend to request more documents — and expect to receive more, as the investigation continues.

Burr declined to speculate about where the investigation ultimately would end up.

In response to questions, Burr said that he had not coordinated with the White House to set the scope of the Senate committee’s investigation. He insisted that, although he had advised Trump during his campaign — and voted for him — he could conduct the probe objectively.

He promised also to “test” some of Trump’s appointees during the investigation, to see if they were ready to work with the committee investigation regardless of whether the president tries to influence them not to, as CIA Director Mike Pompeo and DNI Daniel Coats pledged to do during their confirmation hearings.

Most of the initial 20 interviews the committee will conduct are with “the people who helped put together the January report,” Warner said, referring to a report that the intelligence community put out stating that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections with the purpose of trying to improve Trump’s chances of winning. Burr said that five of those interviews have already been scheduled, and the remaining 15 will be scheduled in the next ten days.

...

Though the committee leaders declined to comment directly Wednesday on the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation or its chairman, Warner offered some thoughts about Nunes earlier Wednesday, telling reporters that if Nunes was onto something with the information he gleaned from his White House visit, it was a mystery to every other intelligence investigator in the Capitol.

“None of us, Republican or Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, has any idea what he’s talking about,” Warner said, wondering aloud why, after the Trump administration denied any Russia connections and railed against leakers, Nunes would act in a way to raise suspicions about both.

“There continues to be more and more smoke about contacts between people related to the campaign and foreign officials,” Warner added.

 

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If this happens, Christopher Steele better hire a bodyguard and a food taster. I think we're up to 13 people with information that could tie Trump to Russia mysteriously dying. 

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5 hours ago, RoseWilder said:

There's so much awful crap happening every day with this administration that I can't even keep track of what's been posted and what hasn't. Have we talked about this yet?
 

 

I'm not sure if anyone posted this here yet, but I know I read about it somewhere. Or did I see it on Rachel Maddow?... hmmm, off to have a look...

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Here's a good timeline of events between Nunes and the WH: "The Nunes-White House question, assessed minute-by-minute"

Quote

The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza laid out a compelling case on Tuesday evening for why he thinks that the White House was likely aware of what Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) was up to last week.

Nunes, as you probably now know, is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and, in that role, in charge of one of the investigations into how Russia may have tried to influence the 2016 election and, further, if anyone associated with President Trump’s campaign was involved. Over the course of the past week, though, Nunes has imperiled that position. On March 22, he suddenly told the press that he’d seen intelligence suggesting that some Trump associates had been caught up in government surveillance — which, we were left to assume, might mean that Trump’s March 4 tweets about having been wiretapped by former president Barack Obama had some validity.

Since Nunes didn’t actually share that intelligence, since he later amended his description of what he’d seen and since the manner in which he alerted the public to what he’d discovered can at best be described as unorthodox, the story quickly became about Nunes instead of what he alleges he learned. As reporters dug into the story, we learned that Nunes actually reviewed those documents within the White House complex (though not at the White House itself).

Lizza’s piece fleshes out the timeline further, including a conversation Lizza had with an administration staffer at the beginning of last week suggesting that the White House and Nunes would offer the same argument in defense of Trump’s (false) assertion.

...

There are Tweets, maps, and interviews. Definitely an interesting summary of events.

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Well this is interesting. I feel like I'm watching a miniseries where the plot twists just keep on coming: 

 

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"Who is ‘Source D’? The man said to be behind the Trump-Russia dossier’s most salacious claim."

Quote

In June, a Belarusan American businessman who goes by the name Sergei Millian shared some tantalizing claims about Donald Trump.

Trump had a long-standing relationship with Russian officials, Millian told an associate, and those officials were now feeding Trump damaging information about his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Millian said that the information provided to Trump had been “very helpful.”

Unbeknownst to Millian, however, his conversation was not confidential. His associate passed on what he had heard to a former British intelligence officer who had been hired by Trump’s political opponents to gather information about the Republican’s ties to Russia.

The allegations by Millian — whose role was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and has been confirmed by The Washington Post — were central to the dossier compiled by the former spy, Christopher Steele. While the dossier has not been verified and its claims have been denied by Trump, Steele’s document said that Millian’s assertions had been corroborated by other sources, including in the Russian government and former intelligence sources.

The most explosive allegation that the dossier says originally came from Millian is the claim that Trump had hired prostitutes at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton and that the Kremlin has kept evidence of the encounter.

By his own evolving statements, Sergei Millian is either a shrewd businessman with high-level access to both Trump’s inner circle and the Kremlin, or a bystander unwittingly caught up in a global controversy.

An examination of Millian’s career shows he is a little of both. His case lays bare the challenge facing the FBI as it investigates Russia’s alleged attempts to manipulate the American political system and whether Trump associates participated.

It also illustrates why the Trump administration remains unable to shake the Russia story. While some of the unproven claims attributed in the dossier to Millian are bizarre and outlandish, there are also indications that he had contacts with Trump’s circle.

...

The article is lengthy, but quite interesting.

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On tonight's episode of The Rachel Maddow Show, Rachel talked about how the guy pushing for Cal-Exit (California to suceed from the union) is based in Russia: 

 

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This tweet from Seth Abramson goes to a lengthy thread with some very interesting facts (plus bonusses, and a postscript!). Some we know already. Some are new (at least to me they were).

For those of you who don't want to scroll through the whole thread, I've transcribed the facts for you under the spoiler.

Spoiler

Fact 1:
Sessions had a third Kislyak meeting at an intimate cocktail hour at the Mayflower Hotel (april 2016). He still hasn’t disclosed it.

Fact 2:
Manafort repeatedly lied on national TV about whether Trump’s campaign sought to change a GOP platform plank on Russia and Ukraine.

Fact 3:
Cater Page told the FBI in a letter that he never met with any sanctioned Russian individuals. Later, he admitted doing just that.

Fact 4:
Trump lied about his commitment to avoiding FSB bugging. In 2013, he brazenly sought adulterous hotel sex with Miss Hungary.

Fact 5:
The CIA told the BBC that Putin holds “multiple” tapes of a “sexual” nature – from Moscow and St. Petersburg – in which Trump appears.

Fact 6:
Rogue NYPD and FBI agents repeatedly leaked anti-HRC intel to Giuliani and Prince, and thus Trump, during the presidential campaign.

Fact 7:
Trump had lined up a national anti-HRC disinformation campaign for the week before the vote. Comey stopped it with the Comey Letter.

Fact 8:
Erik Prince, Rudy Giuliani, and rogue NYPD and FBI agents effectively blackmailed Comey into inserting himself into the election.

Fact 9:
Manafort wasn’t a Trump campaign official from May to August but from March to August. In other words, 50% longer than reported.

Fact 10:
Those who lied in some way about Russian meetings include Page, Flynn, Manafort, Kushner, Sessions, Cohen and Trump. Plus Kislyak.

Fact 11:
Trump’s national security policy has been shaped by pro-Russian lobbyists and/or pipeline advocates like Burt, McFarlane, and Page.

Fact 12:
Sally Yates warned the White House that Flynn was an immediate security risk over Russia and the White House did nothing at all.

Fact 13:
The U.S. IC has significant SIGINT from Russian sources discussing their collusion with Trump and his campaign during the election.

Fact 14:
The FBI investigation into Trump-Russia ties successfully secured a FISA warrant as part of its investigation in October of 2016.

Fact 15: Putin has had one of the sources of the Steele Dossier – Oleg Erovinkin, an ex-KGB agent and top Putin-Rosneft go-between – murdered.

Fact 16:
The biggest-ever Russian oil deal was structured just as the Dossier predicted, bolstering its charge Trump colluded in the deal.

Fact 17:
Chris Steele, ex-MI6 Russia-desk head and author of the dossier at the heart of Russiagate, has a sterling reputation in the UK.

Fact 18:
Flynn and Kushner snuck Sergey Kislyak – Russia’s ambassador/spy – in the back door of Trump Tower as the Rosneft deal was closing.

Fact 19:
During the election season, Trump Tower was ‘pinged’ thousands of times by a Russian bank for reasons even experts cannot justify.

Fact 20:
The White House says former DNI Clapper has seen Comey’s evidence and found it unpersuasive. In fact, Comey never briefed Clapper.

Bonus:
Millian may be Source D, but it’s still possible Epshteyn is Source E. He could be called by Congress to be Russiagate’s Deep Throat.

Bonus 2:
Roger Stone didn’t just communicate with a Russian hacker during the election, he put out in advance the info that would be leaked.

Bonus 3:
Other than two typo’s and one misidentification every part of the dossier that can be checked has so far checked out as accurate.

Bonus 4:
Trump, who claims to have no ties whatsoever to Russia, would be in the construction phase of Trump Tower Moscow if he hadn’t run.

Bonus 5:
The Senate Intelligence Committee will find a way to have Chris Steele testify before them. (This has since been confirmed by NBC).

Postscript:
All of the above news came exclusively from, or was chiefly popularized by, freelance journalists – not major U.S. media.

 

 

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From the senate intel hearing. WOW.

:pb_surprised: color me not shocked about what is being said

:pb_surprised: color me shocked that it is being said

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Well, well, well...

2 White House Officials Helped Give Nunes Intelligence Reports

Quote

A pair of White House officials played a role in providing Representative Devin Nunes of California, a Republican and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with the intelligence reports that showed that President Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies.

The revelation that White House officials assisted in the disclosure of the intelligence reports — which Mr. Nunes then discussed with President Trump — is likely to fuel criticism that the intelligence chairman has been too eager to do the bidding of the Trump administration while his committee is supposed to be conducting an independent investigation of Russia’s meddling in the last presidential election.

Mr. Nunes has also been faulted by his congressional colleagues for sharing the information with President Trump before consulting with other members of the intelligence committee.[...]

Several current American officials identified the White House officials as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and formerly worked on the staff of the House Intelligence Committee.[...]

Mr. Cohen-Watnick is a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who was originally brought to the White House by Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser. The officials said that this month, shortly after Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter about being wiretapped on the orders of President Barack Obama, Mr. Cohen-Watnick began reviewing highly classified reports detailing the intercepted communications of foreign officials.

Officials said the reports consisted primarily of ambassadors and other foreign officials talking about how they were trying to develop contacts within Mr. Trump’s family and inner circle in advance of his inauguration. [...]

Officials say Mr. Cohen-Watnick has been reviewing the reports from his fourth-floor office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where the National Security Council is based.

But the officials’ description of the intelligence is in line with Mr. Nunes’s own characterization of the material, which he has said was not related to the Russia investigations when he disclosed its existence in a hastily arranged news conference.

And the tantrum tweets about finding the leaks will start in three... two... one...

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After another evening of serial posting, I'm off to bed as it's nearing midnight here. But don't worry, I'm handing over the baton to @RoseWilder  and @GreyhoundFan!

Before I go, I'll just leave this here for your information. 

White House letter to Reps. Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff

It seems that the WH really, really, really wants the investigation to focus on the leaks. Not a peep about Russian influence, as you can see.

 

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18 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

After another evening of serial posting, I'm off to bed as it's nearing midnight here. But don't worry, I'm handing over the baton to @RoseWilder  and @GreyhoundFan!

Before I go, I'll just leave this here for your information. 

White House letter to Reps. Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff

It seems that the WH really, really, really wants the investigation to focus on the leaks. Not a peep about Russian influence, as you can see.

 

Hopefully Schiff tells the White House to kiss his ass.

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Nunes appears to be in retrograde or just total disintegration.  WTF is going on with that guy?  

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3 minutes ago, Howl said:

Nunes appears to be in retrograde or just total disintegration.  WTF is going on with that guy?  

He's terrified of something.  I wonder how involved in this whole Russian thing he is.

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