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The Russian Connection 3: Mueller is Coming


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Mueller gives Trump's legal team questions for potential interview: report

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Special counsel Robert Mueller has presented President Trump's legal team with a list of questions as investigators seek an interview with the president.

The New York Times reported Saturday that the questions were a sort of starting point for Mueller, whose team is working to negotiate an interview with Trump as part of the investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 election. 

It was after his legal team received the questions that Trump launched into a series of tweets, in which he denied that his campaign coordinated with Moscow during the 2016 election and lambasted Mueller's investigation as unnecessary.

In one Saturday night tweet, Trump asserted that Mueller's investigation should never have been opened in the first place, because there was "no collusion" and "no crime."

That tweet came hours after John Dowd, one of the president's lawyers, called on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Russia investigation, to shutter the probe. 

The statement from Dowd was unusual for an attorney who has repeatedly insisted that Trump and the White House cooperate with Mueller's investigation in hopes that it would come to a natural end.

But according to the Times, Trump's lawyers appear increasingly on edge, especially after Trump met earlier this month with attorney Emmet Flood. He reportedly discussed bringing Flood on to handle his interactions with Mueller's team. He also discussed Flood as a possible replacement for White House counsel Don McGahn, the Times reported.

Dowd and another one of Trump's lawyers, Jay Sekulow, were not aware of the meeting with Flood, and reportedly became concerned upon learning about it that they could be pushed aside.

Trump's tweets on Saturday also followed the abrupt firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe just two days before he was set to retire. The president praised McCabe's ouster, tweeting that it was a "great day for Democracy."

It's no wonder the presidunce is firing people left, right and center. He's like a cornered rat... and scared shitless of what Mueller knows. Expect him to make ever more outrages attempts to end the investigation. 

Of course this news will only be exacerbating his fears:

Mueller now investigating whether Trump's FBI smear campaign constituted obstruction

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According to a damning new report, Trump ordered a smear campaign targeting FBI officials likely to testify against him — a move that Special Counsel Mueller is now investigating as potential obstruction of justice.

Donald Trump urged his aides to orchestrate a plan to discredit specific FBI officials after learning that they were likely to testify against him in Special Counsel Robert Muellers ongoing Russia probe, according to an explosive new report by Foreign Policy.

The report, published Friday evening, details a series of events that took place in June 2017, following the testimony of former FBI Director James Comey. Those events are now being investigated as potential obstruction of justice, according to Foreign Policy.

During his testimony, Comey mentioned that he had spoken with three other senior FBI officials about Trump’s efforts to undermine the Russia investigation. A short time later, Trump’s lawyer John Dowd warned the president that corroborating testimony from the other FBI officials would likely play a key role in Mueller’s investigation into potential obstruction of justice.

According to the new report, that warning prompted Trump to take matters into his own hands, telling aides they needed to “fight back harder” and ordering them to orchestrate a smear campaign targeting the specific FBI officials named by Comey, including Deputy Director Andrew McCabe:

Since Dowd gave him that information, Trump as well as his aides, surrogates, and some Republican members of Congress has engaged in an unprecedented campaign to discredit specific senior bureau officials and the FBI as an institution.

The FBI officials Trump has targeted are Andrew McCabe, the current deputy FBI director and who was briefly acting FBI director after Comeys firing; Jim Rybicki, Comeys chief of staff and senior counselor; and James Baker, formerly the FBIs general counsel. Those same three officials were first identified as possible corroborating witnesses for Comey in a June 7 article in Vox. Comey confirmed in congressional testimony the following day that he confided in the three men.

The Foreign Policy report comes just one day after the New York Times published a bombshell report revealing that Trump ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller last June — the same month that Trump called on his aides to devise the smear campaign.

The report also comes on the heels of the revelation that Attorney General Jeff Sessions pressured FBI Director Christopher Wray to fire McCabe — one of the three officials targeted by Trump’s smear campaign.

While it’s no secret that Trump and his allies have engaged in coordinated attacks against the FBI and the officials who work there, Friday’s report reveals that the targets of that campaign were not random. Rather, they were the specific people who were most likely to testify against Trump and corroborate what Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee.

McCabe, who has been the target of frequent and vicious attacks by Trump and his Republican allies, confirmed last month that he could corroborate Comey’s testimony about Trump pressuring him to pledge his loyalty by shutting down the Russia probe. This allegedly resulted in the firing of Comey when he refused Trumps request.

This series of events could prove crucial in Muellers investigation into whether Trump — and those around him — engaged in a cover-up.

Baker, the FBI’s top lawyer, is among the few other witnesses with inside knowledge about Trump’s reported attempts to pressure Comey to end the Russia investigation. In December, Baker was quietly and unexpectedly reassigned to another position within the FBI. He told colleagues he would be taking on other duties at the FBI.”

Like McCabe, Baker has been targeted by attacks launched by Trump’s allies, including right-wing media outlets like Circa (operated by the pro-Trump Sinclair network) and Breitbart (until recently, run by Trump’s former campaign manager and chief strategist Steve Bannon).

Clearly, Trump wanted to discredit officials like Baker and McCabe because he views their testimony as a threat which is telling, given that a person with nothing to hide would have no reason to fear the truth. But fearing that they could be key witnesses in an obstruction of justice case, Trump took matters into his own hands and tried to undermine them before they could give their testimony.

Now, though, Mueller is investigating those very efforts to undermine the three FBI witnesses as a potential act of obstruction by Trump.

As Foreign Policy noted, proving obstruction of justice hinges on whether a prosecutor can show the intent of the person under investigation. The fact that Trump was reportedly motivated to attack specific FBI officials because they were likely to testify against him “could demonstrate potential intent that would bolster an obstruction of justice case,” the report concluded.

It’s hard to imagine anything backfiring more spectacularly than Trump’s attempt to undermine the obstruction case against him by trying to impugn the integrity of these three FBI officials — only to find out that the smear campaign against the officials is now being investigated as an act of obstruction. But if anyone can top this failure, it’s Trump.

 

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Good. I hope they succeed and prosecute all of them.

Democrats May Seek Prosecution of Witnesses Who Misled House Intelligence Committee

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Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee are reviewing transcripts of interviews conducted during the panel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and plan to refer any witnesses who lied to the panel to the Justice Department for prosecution.

“We’re gonna be going through the transcripts and analyzing them for any concerns we have with the greater body of information we have,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) tells Mother Jones. “We’ll discuss it with the majority and ask whether they’ll join us in a referral, or, if we think one is warranted, then we reserve the right to make a referral even if they don’t.”

According to a source close to the committee, Democrats firmed up their plans to pursue criminal referrals this past week after their Republican colleagues abruptly announced they were ending the panel’s investigation. Democrats would send the referrals to the Justice Department and potentially directly to special counsel Robert Mueller.

Schiff and other Democrats have recently questioned the truthfulness of the testimony provided by three witnesses: Erik Prince, the former head of the security firm Blackwater and the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; Carter Page, a former Trump campaign national security aide; and Roger Stone, a longtime Trump political adviser. 

Prince said during a November 30 committee interview that a United Arab Emirates-brokered meeting he had in the Seychelles with a Russian fund manager close to Russian President Vladimir Putin was unplanned. But recent reports suggest Mueller has information showing the meeting was part of an effort by Trump’s transition team to set up back-channel communications with the Kremlin.

In his testimony to the committee last fall, Page first denied and then downplayed meetings with Russian officials during a July 2016 trip he took to Moscow. In a memo last month, Schiff said the FBI has information that contradicts Page’s claims.

Stone, meanwhile, reportedly told the panel last September that he had no direct contacts with WikiLeaks during the 2016 election. But recent reports have cast doubt on Stone’s denial.

Prince, Page, and Stone maintain they testified honestly. “I never ever have represented as anyone from the Trump transition, and the only reason I went to the Seychelles was to see” Mohammed bin Zayed, the United Arab Emirates’ crown prince, Prince told Fox News last week. “No one from the Trump transition team knew I was going,” Prince added.

Members of Congress are granted no special power to send criminal referrals to the Justice Department. Anyone can make one. But a referral by lawmakers would draw public notice and perhaps extra attention in Mueller’s office. Prosecutors there have already used false statement charges to win cooperation from three witnesses: Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser; Dutch lawyer Alex Van Deer Zwaan; and former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort also faces charges of making false statements to the Justice Department.

In January, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a senior Judiciary Committee member, sent the Justice Department a referral letter suggesting the prosecution of former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who authored the infamous memos alleging Trump was compromised by the Kremlin and that his campaign colluded with Russia. Grassley and Graham claimed that Steele had lied to the FBI about his contacts with the media, though critics say their referral is legally meritless and an act of political retribution. 

Schiff says he is “not sure that any referral is necessary” for false claims that Prince and Page may have made. Transcripts of those interviews are public, so Mueller’s team already has the ability to review and assess those witnesses’ claims against information they have gathered. A transcript of Stone’s September 26, 2017, interview, however, has not been made public. 

Committee Democrats have no specific timeline for issuing referrals, Schiff notes. Because Republicans did not force many witnesses to turn over banking, phone, and other records that might support or contradict their claims, he says, “we can’t tell who is telling the truth in many cases.”

But new reports that contradict the truthfulness of witnesses testimony could result in referrals down the road. “As additional things come to light, if there are reports of witnesses saying things that are inconsistent with what has been said to the committee, that list could grow,” Schiff says.

Democrats say they remain open to Republicans joining them in referrals to Mueller, though Republicans would likely oppose such efforts. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a senior committee member, dismissed Democrats’ potential efforts to refer witnesses for prosecution: “Those guys just keep trying.”

 

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Oh dear. Here's even more fuel to highten the presiduncial anxiety. No wonder he's tweeting so much today about the big bad FBI out to get him.

Exclusive: Sources contradict Sessions' testimony he opposed Russia outreach

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U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ testimony that he opposed a proposal for President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign team to meet with Russians has been contradicted by three people who told Reuters they have spoken about the matter to investigators with Special Counsel Robert Mueller or congressional committees.

Sessions testified before Congress in November 2017 that he “pushed back” against the proposal made by former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos at a March 31, 2016 campaign meeting. Then a senator from Alabama, Sessions chaired the meeting as head of the Trump campaign’s foreign policy team.

“Yes, I pushed back,” Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee on Nov. 14, when asked whether he shut down Papadopoulos’ proposed outreach to Russia. Sessions has since also been interviewed by Mueller.

Three people who attended the March campaign meeting told Reuters they gave their version of events to FBI agents or congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 election. Although the accounts they provided to Reuters differed in certain respects, all threes, who declined to be identified, said Sessions had expressed no objections to Papadopoulos’ idea.

However, another meeting attendee, J.D. Gordon, who was the Trump campaign’s director of national security, told media outlets including Reuters in November that Sessions strongly opposed Papadopoulos’ proposal and said no one should speak of it again. In response to a request for comment, Gordon said on Saturday that he stood by his statement.

Sessions, through Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores, declined to comment beyond his prior testimony. The special counsel’s office also declined to comment. Spokeswomen for the Democrats and Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee did not immediately comment.

Reuters was unable to determine whether Mueller is probing discrepancies in accounts of the March 2016 meeting.

The three accounts, which have not been reported, raise new questions about Sessions’ testimony regarding contacts with Russia during the campaign.

Sessions previously failed to disclose to Congress meetings he had with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and testified in October that he was not aware of any campaign representatives communicating with Russians.

Some Democrats have seized on discrepancies in Sessions’ testimony to suggest the attorney general may have committed perjury. A criminal charge would require showing Sessions intended to deceive. Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee that he had always told the truth and testified to the best of his recollection.

Legal experts expressed mixed views about the significance of the contradictions cited by the three sources.

Sessions could argue he misremembered events or perceived his response in a different way, making any contradictions unintentional, some experts said.

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said Sessions’ words might be too vague to form the basis of a perjury case because there could be different interpretations of what the term pushing back means.

“If you’re talking about false statements, prosecutors look for something that is concrete and clear,” he said.

Other legal experts said, however, that repeated misstatements by Sessions could enable prosecutors to build a perjury case against him.

“Proving there was intent to lie is a heavy burden for the prosecution. But now you have multiple places where Sessions has arguably made false statements,” said Bennett Gershman, a Pace University law professor.

The March 2016 campaign meeting in Washington was memorialized in a photo Trump posted on Instagram of roughly a dozen men sitting around a table, including Trump, Sessions and Papadopoulos.

Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty in October to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his Russia contacts, is now cooperating with Mueller.

According to court documents released after his guilty plea, Papadopoulos said at the campaign meeting that he had connections who could help arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Papadopoulos continued to pursue Russian contacts after the March 2016 meeting and communicated with some campaign officials about his efforts, according to the court documents.

Trump has said that he does not remember much of what happened at the “very unimportant” campaign meeting. Trump has said he did not meet Putin before becoming president.

Moscow has denied meddling in the election and Trump has denied his campaign colluded with Russia.

 

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Yeah... sorry, I don't think much of Graham's statements anymore. I mean, I hope he'll stick to what he says now, but I'm not the least bit confident he will given his record lately.

Graham: Trump firing Mueller would be 'the beginning of the end of his presidency'

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Sen. Lindsey Graham gave a stern warning Sunday to President Donald Trump against firing special counsel Robert Mueller.

"As I said before, if he tried to do that, that would be the beginning of the end of his presidency," the South Carolina Republican said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"The only reason that Mr. Mueller could be dismissed is for cause. I see no cause when it comes to Mr. Mueller," Graham said, later adding he believed the Mueller was "doing a good job."

Graham called for Mueller to be able to carry out his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election "independent of any political influence."

"I pledge to the American people, as a Republican, to make sure that Mr. Mueller can continue to do his job without any interference," he said.

Graham's defense of Mueller comes in the wake of the President's latest attacks suggesting partisan bias on the special counsel.

"Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans? Another Dem recently added ... does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!," Trump wrote on Twitter.

Trump's criticism of Mueller, a Republican, also came a day after his personal lawyer, John Dowd, called for anend to the special counsel's probe.

On Saturday, CNN learned that Mueller had interviewed former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and asked about the firing of FBI Director James Comey. McCabe was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday night after being long derided by the President.

Graham said on "State of the Union" that the Senate Judiciary Committee should hold a hearing on McCabe's firing to "make sure it was not politically motivated."

"I think we owe it to the average American to have a hearing in the Judiciary Committee, for Mr. Sessions, Attorney General Sessions, comes forward with whatever documentation he has about the firing and give Mr. McCabe a chance to defend himself," Graham said. "I believe when it comes to this issue, we need as much transparency as possible, to make sure that it was not politically motivated.

Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont issued a similar call to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley on Saturday.

 

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I can hardly wait. I want that evidenced-backed truth out sooner rather than later.

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"Chuck — it's serious"

Strangely, this letter is dated 30 January, but refers to "the former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe". 

A possible explanation for this discrepancy could be that a draft of this letter was typed up on that date, to be used if and when McCabe got fired. And then someone forgot to correct the date before sending it the letter out. 

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Interesting stuff. I really hope they post it online. 

Of course, Cambridge Analytica is attempting to stop the broadcast. 

So that means they've got damning information. 

Mueller, are you going to be watching this too?

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I'm delighting in the irony of a company who harvested the personal information of so many people, having a melt down over others harvesting THEIR information. 

And was there a Russian American who had done extensive research in Russia and the Ukraine involved in the Cambridge Analytica story?  Of course there was!

And did Steve Bannon and the Mercers leave their grubby little paw prints all over this story?  Of course they did. 

Yes, I hope we get to see it over the pond! 

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How good is this! :dance:

The Federal Elections Commission is looking at pro-Trump donations made to the National Rifle Association.

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The Federal Election Commission has launched an inquiry into potential illegal donations made to the National Rifle Association by Russian individuals and businesses in support of President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to Politico.

The revelation comes a month after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sought answers and relevant records in a letter to the NRA: “I am specifically troubled by the possibility that Russian-backed shell companies or intermediaries may have circumvented laws designed to prohibit foreign meddling in our elections,” Wyden wrote.

Politico, which first revealed the existence of the FEC investigation late on Friday evening, says the commission is examining similar issues to Wyden’s probe. The senator’s inquiry focuses on Alexander Torshin, a Russian central bank official with close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin, and his contributions to the NRA. In January, McClatchy reported that the FBI was investigating Torshin’s contributions. In response to Wyden’s letter, NRA general counsel John Frazer denied the NRA had accepted donations from foreign entities during US elections. The NRA contributed a striking $30 million to Trump’s 2016 campaign. 

As Mother Jones previously reported, social media posts from Torshin and Siberian gun rights activist Maria Butina show longstanding ties between the pair, the NRA, and various conservative heavyweights. Mother Jones‘s Mark Follman and Denise Clifton recently wrote an article laying out the duo’s history:

Alexander Torshin and his protégé Maria Butina also share an extraordinary status with America’s largest gun lobbying group, according to Torshin: “Today in NRA (USA) I know only 2 people from the Russian Federation with the status of ‘Life Member’: Maria Butina and I,” he tweeted the day after Donald Trump was elected president.

Of particular interest are their overtures to Trump. Butina asked him straight-up at a campaign event about the future of “damaging” sanctions against Russia. Torshin twice tried to meet with Trump, according to the New York Times, and did meet with Donald Trump Jr. at an NRA event. Meanwhile, the House Intelligence Committee has heard sworn testimony about possible Kremlin “infiltration” of the NRA and other conservative groups. And the FBI reportedly is investigating whether Torshin illegally funneled money to the Trump campaign through the NRA—which backed Trump with a record $30 million.

Torshin, a former Russian senator and longtime ally of Vladimir Putin, has been accused of having ties to the Russian mob (an allegation he has vehemently denied). Butina, a graduate student since fall 2016 at American University in Washington, DC—who founded a Russian gun rights group and worked as Torshin’s assistant—has reportedly bragged about her connections to the Trump campaign.

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@AmazonGrace said "This is the new normal low." 

Fixed it for ya.  Sadly, the story of this entire administration.  So many new normals lows. Big normals lows.  Really, the best, most bigliest new normals lows. 

My spidey sense is that the shit is going to completely hit wind tunnel fan levels in the next two weeks.  Trump's crux crutch people (Bob Porter, Hope Hicks, body man what's his name) are gone, there is more chaos than ever, Trump is to some extent unchained and unrestrained, and there is desperation to do SOMETHING about the Mueller investigation because the information in the Trump family business financials is so damaging it could bring down the entire shitaroo.  Am I correct in remembering that the Mueller team subpoenaed Trump's income taxes?   Let's say that Mueller has tax records, gets the Trump business financials and compares them, only to discover massive tax fraud, evidence of money laundering, illegal interactions with foreign entities, you name it. 

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"Democrats fume over Parscale's limited answers on Russian digital meddling"

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Even as digital media guru Brad Parscale takes over President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, federal investigators have mounting questions about the high-tech “secret weapon” Parscale says was instrumental to Trump’s 2016 victory — including whether it might have played a role in Russian election meddling.

But Parscale isn’t talking.

That’s despite the fact that Democrats on at least three different congressional committees say they want to hear more from Parscale about potential data sharing between the campaign and Russian entities. Democrats say evidence of such collaboration — or even Russian manipulation of Trump campaign software that may have been unknown to Trump aides — would be highly explosive given its potentially direct impact on the election’s outcome and legitimacy.

While Republicans seem content with Parscale’s insistence he knows nothing about the Russian scheme, more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers and staffers interviewed by POLITICO say that no investigation into Moscow’s election interference can be complete without a full accounting from Trump’s 2016 digital campaign director — especially given that special counsel Robert Mueller has recently focused on Kremlin-linked efforts to manipulate election-related social media.

Over the weekend, several Democrats said they were extremely concerned about recent media reports that Cambridge Analytica, the conservative data analytics firm Parscale hired for the campaign, had improperly collected information on more than 50 million Facebook users and likely used it in the voter-targeting operation. The new reporting, in The New York Times and the Observer of London, also suggested that Cambridge Analytica has previously undisclosed connections to Russia.

A full accounting from Parscale is especially important now, the Democrats say, given his central role in both Trump’s 2020 campaign and, through that organization, in supporting Republican candidates in the 2018 congressional midterm elections.

Yet Parscale stonewalled lawmakers during his July testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Democratic sources familiar with it tell POLITICO, in an account of his appearance that has not been reported before.

During his testimony, Parscale was unresponsive to some questions and referred most others to Alexander Nix, the chief executive officer of Cambridge Analytica, and to campaign senior adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who hired Parscale and worked closely with him on the targeting operation, according to several officials present.

“We got nothing,” Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) recalls. “Tapioca.”

More recently, Parscale has declined to cooperate with a January request for information and documents from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who also asked him to voluntarily testify.

Parscale has denied any wrongdoing and insists that he has been cooperative. Before his House appearance, he tweeted that he was “unaware of any Russian involvement in the digital and data operations” of the campaign, and that he looked forward to “sharing with them everything I know.”

That hasn’t satisfied Democrats who say that, even if Parscale and his colleagues did nothing wrong, it is vital to understand whether and how the Russians might have exploited the Trump campaign’s online political machine — especially given U.S. concerns that Russia is already gearing up to meddle with the midterms.

“They still need to fully answer the question of where they got their information, and what they did with it,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), a House Intelligence Committee member. "There is still a big cloud hanging over the digital operation.”

Added Rep. Adam Schiff, the intelligence committee’s ranking Democrat, “There are still a number of important questions about the Trump campaign’s digital operation that remain under investigation, the most significant of which is whether the Russian covert social-media effort was completely independent.”

Last Monday, Republicans on the intelligence committee announced they were ending their investigation of Russian election interference and declared they had found no evidence that members of Trump’s campaign team cooperated with the Russian scheme.

In response, Schiff released an “investigative status update” from committee Democrats that said the Trump campaign’s digital operation requires further investigation, including witness testimony and documents, “to determine whether the campaign coordinated in any way with Russia in its digital program.”

The document cites Nix and Cambridge Analytica, as well as two of Parscale’s campaign aides. One of them is Avi Berkowitz, a Harvard Law School graduate and Kushner protégé who served as assistant director of data analytics on the 2016 campaign and is now a special assistant to Trump at the White House. The committee Democrats said they had reason to believe Kushner “may have dispatched Mr. Berkowitz to meet with Russian Ambassador [Sergey] Kislyak in December 2016.”

The Democrats did not indicate what the purpose of the meeting might have been. Kushner himself is known to have met with Kislyak in December 2016 and reportedly discussed with the Russian the possibility of opening a secret communications back channel to Moscow.

Trump named Parscale to run his 2020 campaign in late February. "Brad was essential in bringing a disciplined technology and data-driven approach to how the 2016 campaign was run," Kushner said in a statement.

Parscale was a virtual unknown before he joined Trump’s 2016 campaign. He had been a struggling digital entrepreneur when he bid on building the Trump Organization’s website in 2010, and did similar work for the family until joining Trump’s 2016 campaign, where Parscale became a digital jack-of-all-trades — overseeing data collection, online advertising and messaging from a San Antonio bunker known as Project Alamo.

His most powerful tool, by far, was the sophisticated data-crunching effort known as microtargeting, which churned out tens of thousands of constantly changing Facebook ads every hour, all of them computerized and individually tailored to distinct demographic clusters of potential Trump voters throughout the country.

“I understood early that Facebook was how Donald Trump was going to win,” Parscale said in a CBS “60 Minutes” profile of him last October. “Facebook was the method — it was the highway in which his car drove on.”

The data operation underpinning Parscale’s targeting effort, he has said, also provided the campaign with the kind of surgically precise, real-time information it needed down the stretch to focus precious resources on swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin, while Hillary Clinton focused elsewhere.

“I took every nickel and dime I could out of anywhere else. And I moved it to Michigan and Wisconsin. And I started buying advertising, digital, TV,” Parscale told “60 Minutes,“ which described him, and his targeting operation, as the campaign's “secret weapon.”

His “secret weapon” wasn’t any proprietary software or algorithm, but the way in which Parscale marshaled various resources, including data provided by Cambridge Analytica and Facebook itself, to determine which versions of ads worked best when microtargeting voters. Parscale told “60 Minutes” he embraced an offer by Facebook — declined by the Clinton campaign — to send ideologically like-minded staffers to work in-house at the Trump campaign and teach him “every, single secret button, click, technology” available for microtargeting.

Some have criticized Parscale for using Cambridge Analytica and its controversial technology known as psychographics, in which huge troves of data are collected to microtarget potential voters based on personality traits, as divined from their social media profiles, rather than typical categories like race or age. Mueller has reportedly been examining Cambridge Analytica’s campaign role.

On Friday night, Facebook announced that it was suspending Cambridge Analytica and parent company Strategic Communication Laboratories Group after learning that Cambridge misled the social media giant and improperly kept user data for years in violation of policy. Hours later, reports in the New York Times and Observer suggested the violations were far more serious than what Facebook announced, and that they were tied directly to Cambridge's work for the Trump campaign and its alleged entanglements with Russia.

The Times said Cambridge Analytica — whose board members included former Trump political strategist Steve Bannon and which was funded by the Trump-friendly GOP megadonor Robert Mercer — used the harvested information to turbocharge its microtargeting operation and sway voters on Facebook and other popular digital platforms.

Another Times report said Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Group, had contact in 2014 and 2015 with executives from Lukoil, the Russian oil giant. Lukoil was interested in how data was used to target American voters, the Times said, adding that SCL and Lukoil denied that the talks were political in nature.

The Times also reported that Cambridge Analytica included extensive questions about Russian President Vladimir Putin in surveys that it was conducting using American focus groups in 2014, though it said it was not clear why, or for which client.

The Trump campaign and Trump himself have denied colluding with the Kremlin, which denies meddling in the election altogether.

But Democratic lawmakers have focused on potential collusion in the microtargeting effort as one of their top priorities since launching their investigations, especially given what several called striking similarities between Trump campaign messaging and that of Russian operatives.

Appearing Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Schiff called for congressional testimony from “numerous Cambridge Analytica personnel who may have knowledge of this and other issues” but who have so far refused to cooperate. Schiff also said that Cambridge Analytica’s ties to Russian entities and to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange need to be investigated, and that committee Republicans who have blocked such efforts, including subpoenas, need to approve them.

“People have been circling this since the beginning, because it doesn’t pass the smell test. Something is missing,” adds a former U.S. intelligence official who has spoken extensively to congressional investigators.

“How did it all happen? It’s what directly links Kushner to Parscale to Cambridge Analytica — and potentially to the Russians,” the former intelligence official said, adding that Parscale and Kushner brought in Cambridge Analytica over the objections of “everybody else” in the campaign.

Compounding lawmakers’ concerns is the fact that Russian hackers were able to penetrate at least 20 state election systems, perhaps double that amount. Initially, investigators were comforted by the fact that the Russians did not manipulate any voting results. But now they fear the real Russian objective could have been to steal voter information for microtargeting.

Democrats in Congress got nowhere when they tried to get answers about that from Parscale, as well as from Kushner and Nix, when they agreed, reluctantly, to testify before the House intelligence committee, several Democratic congressional officials told POLITICO.

“They were basically playing dumb,” said one congressional official who, like several others, was present but spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified committee matters. That official described the interviews of Parscale, Kushner and Nix as one giant exercise in circular finger pointing, in which they each referred questions to the others. “I can’t say we got details.”

In the past, Parscale has dismissed such accusations of collusion. “I think it's a joke. Like, at least for my part in it,” he told “60 Minutes.“ But he also acknowledged that even his wife jokes that it was as though he “was thrown into the Super Bowl, never played a game — and won.”

That lack of experience has also drawn the attention of some investigators, who say they are also mystified by Parscale’s rapid trajectory from low-profile web developer to leader of a U.S. presidential campaign in just a few short years.

At a March 2017 hearing, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said that in some key precincts in swing states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, “there was so much misinformation coming talking about Hillary Clinton's illnesses or Hillary Clinton stealing money from the State Department or other [that it] completely blanked out any of the back and forth that was actually going on in the campaign.”

“Would the Russians on their own have that level of sophisticated knowledge about the American political system if they didn't at least get some advice from someone in America?" Warner added.

Feinstein’s letter to Parscale suggested a similar interest. The California senator asked Parscale to provide any information involving Russian efforts “to identify voters or potential voters for targeted advertising, marketing or social media contact in support of the Trump campaign or other efforts to elect Donald J. Trump as president of the United States.”

She also asked for any campaign documents and communications concerning Russia, WikiLeaks, various shadowy intermediaries in the meddling effort, and hacked Democratic Party emails and data.

Two months later, however, Feinstein is still waiting for Parscale to appear, a congressional source said, and he has refused to turn over any of the wide array of documents Feinstein requested about the campaign and any connections to Russia, WikiLeaks or other entities suspected of being involved in the interference effort.

A 2016 Trump campaign official familiar with Parscale's thinking said Feinstein and other Democrats will be waiting a long time.

Feinstein declined to comment for this story, as did Warner and his Republican counterpart on the Senate Intelligence panel, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.).

Parscale, the former official said, has no intention of complying with any requests from congressional Democrats, because he believes he has cooperated fully with both the House and Senate intelligence committees in answering questions and providing emails, texts and other documents.

As far as he’s concerned, the former campaign official said, Parscale is moving on.

Parscale said he is too busy to comment, though he pointed to a November letter to Democrats on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees. In his response, Parscale said he had already “cooperated fully with those tasked with the primary responsibility for investigating these matters,” and believed the request was “duplicative.”

So far, Parscale has not spoken to Mueller, who is leading the Justice Department’s investigation into 2016 Russian election meddling, or been asked to provide documents, a person familiar with that aspect of the investigation said.

For the most part, the committees have split along party lines about whether those providing testimony have been cooperative, including Parscale. One senior Republican congressional official told POLITICO that Parscale had, in fact, been helpful, even providing advice on how lawmakers can institute safeguards in the upcoming election.

Numerous Democratic lawmakers disagreed. One noted that if Parscale had fully satisfied the Senate Intelligence Committee, Feinstein — the former chairwoman and still a member of the panel — wouldn’t have pursued him from her Judiciary Committee perch.

“This matters,” Castro added, “because we must determine if the Trump campaign shared this data, or received data, from illicit sources."

There is little that frustrated Democrats can do to compel Parscale to provide more information, short of a subpoena — to which Republicans would have to agree.

Eric Swalwell of California, the second-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the only way to verify whether Parscale and other Trump associates have been truthful is to “subpoena the communication logs, bank records, travel logs, and anything we can on the data operations.”

But, Swalwell said, “We’ve asked, and we were shut down in every request by the majority.”

I hadn't heard of this Parscale dude, but he seems like a real piece of work. Just like pretty much everyone else associated with Dumpy.

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Here's the first two Cambridge Analytica videos:

Spoiler

 

Part three will be broadcast at 7pm their time on Tuesday. 

Just wanted to add that I watched the interview Chris Wiley did with The Guardian last night. He said they even got access to people's private messages on Facebook. :kitty-cussing:

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Teaser about part three:

Word nerd moment:

I had only heard the word "bespoke" used in terms of clothing, but in part two of this series, it was used to describe the custom ads developed and fed to people to influence them in the 2016 election.

My country may currently be a dumpster fire, but at least my vocabulary is growing. :pb_neutral:

 

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Oh! I am sooo surprised! I never would have guessed... 

 

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Donald Trump can't be trusted to speak with an investigator but he has the nuke codes. Good job, America

 

 

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There are many reasons I refuse to have a facebook account. I'm glad I don't have one.

Another good snarky piece by Alexandra Petri: "If Trump fires Mueller, Republicans will be, like, really disappointed"

Spoiler

When President Trump gleefully leapt to Twitter to revel in the firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, to observe that the Mueller investigation is a WITCH HUNT led by “hardened Democrats” (Robert S. Mueller III is a Republican), and to point out that the House investigation found no collusion (“Our committee was not charged with answering the collusion idea,” mumbled Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.) on “Meet The Press“), it seemed as though he was contemplating the Heretofore Unthinkable Course of trying to shut down the Mueller investigation. His lawyer John Dowd even put forth a request that the investigation stop.

But there is no cause for alarm. Should the president attempt such a course, the Republicans who hold power in Congress have made it clear that they will … be disappointed.

One or two even have definite plans to compose a strongly worded letter to the president and think very, very hard about sending it. Another handful will go so far as to whisper to some reeds growing just on the edge of the great swamp that they think this idea is “very bad, and a travesty of our values.”

With one voice, Republicans in Congress have made it clear that if the president takes this extreme step, they will not be afraid to defy him by appearing on a cable news channel and saying something noncommittal. As they are doing right now. For instance, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” “If he tried to do that [fire Mueller], that would be the beginning of the end of his presidency.” Beware, President Trump! If you continue down your present course, there is every reason to believe that Graham may even go so far as to write a memoir where he calls this “a dark, dark moment for this country, when people should have spoken up.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is likewise standing firm. If the president crosses this hardest, firmest red line, Rubio will be, like, super bummed, and probably also go on TV and say words to that effect, and maybe even deliver a speech that includes stinging phrases like “I weep for our democracy” — which would be delivered directly into a camera.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said nothing publicly, but those around him have been given to understand that if the president crosses this red line, McConnell will crumple up whatever paper he happens to be holding at the time and throw it to the ground and say, “Darn!” loudly.

Some Republicans have even spoken up already. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said this weekend, through a spokesperson, that he continues to see firing Mueller as a red line, and that he is pretty sure that if the president crosses it, someone will stop him. (Someone brave, probably. Someone who was in a position to do something about this.) Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said he has confidence that we will get to hear the outcome of the Mueller investigation, because when have we ever seen this president violate norms in a surprising, disappointing way? Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said he is confident in the courage of his fellow Republicans, who have never let him down before, and that they will do the right thing regardless of the electoral consequences. (He is not running for reelection.) But just in case that does not work out, he is in New Hampshire right now shaking hands and kissing babies.

The red line is certainly not slowly receding into the distance like a mirage; it is definitely real, and it will kick in this time. People should not be worried: If the future of our democracy depends on the courage of the current crop of Republican lawmakers, we can rest assured that when the time comes, they will put country over party and eventually say something stern, as they open for Trump at a rally.

It is reassuring to hear the Republicans in the legislative branch, one of the checks and balances holding our democracy precariously in place, speaking in chorus that there are some breaches they will not enjoy accepting with only a murmur of protest. It will be grueling and disheartening for them to sit there silently and watch this unfold without taking the slightest action to stop it. They are not looking forward to it at all.

 

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i guess he was unable to recall 

When Hillary Clinton got this all right last year she was slammed as a bitter loser.

 

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I know that the Andrew McCabe firing is so a few days ago, BUT it might be useful to read the first part of his statement, which I'll leave without comment:  

Quote

I have been an FBI Special Agent for over 21 years. I spent half of that time investigating Russian Organized Crime as a street agent and Supervisor in New York City. I have spent the second half of my career focusing on national security issues and protecting this country from terrorism.

 

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