The Russian Connection 3: Mueller is Coming

[formergothardite]

@fraurosena, that guy is absolutely right, Trump must know that surveillance on Page showed something very, very bad. I hope that one day we learn what it is. 

[AuntK]

From everything that I've been reading, I have concluded that the long-whispered rumor that the Russians have a sex tape on Trump must be true, but I think it's more than that. I think they probably have evidence of money laundering, money changing hands, along with the nastiest sex tape one can imagine, one that would cause even our "Christian" evangelicals to drop their support, and perhaps so disgusting that his family (Ivanka) will be embarrassed. I think most American officials who go to Russia are aware of the Russians taping everything, but Trump is so smug and arrogant, I can see him being stupid and not even considering the possible consequences of his actions. (Remember how he looked directly at the sun during the solar eclipse without sunglasses, despite all the warnings against it? No, nothing would ever happen to him - he believes he is Teflon.)

Trump is extremely valuable to the Russians and, as long as these matters remain secret, he will continue to do their bidding. It is to both their benefits to keep the secrets. But, I can only hope that somewhere, there is someone who knows, and will tell. 

But in the meantime, it is IMPERATIVE that Democrats take back Congress this year. The Koch brothers are funding a drive to rewrite the Constitution and with a few more states, or a few more Repubs in Congress, they can do it.  And THAT, my friends, is more frightening than a second Trump term!

 

[AuntK]

I think Carter Page knows what the Russians have on Donnie. And if you watch Page, he comes across as kind of goofy. He is probably the weak link and maybe Mueller got to him. (Reduced sentence for talking?)  The interesting thing is there is an old interview with Chris Hayes from October that Rachel referenced on her show Friday night, in which Page talks about RYAN RELEASING THE SURVEILLANCE INFO! 

Folks, this has been in the works a LONG time; I suspect Ryan, McTurtle, maybe Pence, and other Repugs KNOW what the Russians have, but are keeping quiet because if this info is released, and especially if their knowledge of it is disclosed, the Republican party is history. And they will cover up ANYTHING to keep that from happening. That is why they have gone along with the tax cut, which they know is a disaster, and other crap Trump is doing because they know he can  singlehandedly take them all down. And they cannot have that. Party over country!

If I sound like a conspiracy theorist, I'm sorry, but these fuckers have scared the shit out of me.   (anyone have change for the swear jar?)

[onekidanddone]

12 minutes ago, AuntK said:

If I sound like a conspiracy theorist, I'm sorry, but these fuckers have scared the shit out of me.   (anyone have change for the swear jar?)

Sorry I'm all tapped out. Mine is so heavy I can't lift it.

[GrumpyGran]

Good Lord, do you people ever sleep? 

There's too much in here to quote but I will say that I think the fallout from the "memo" hasn't been quite what Team Trump hoped for. So did the T-Team(Kelly, Miller and the legal vultures) use Eager Beaver Nunes to attempt a last-ditch effort to deflect and de-legitimize? Dumpy made a weak effort to distance himself from the memo but couldn't contain the five-year-old inside as he talked about it being released. He over-sold it, which didn't help.

All reports I have seen and heard have been careful to mention that Carter Page was considered a possible Russian operative long before the Steele dossier. Hiring him was a huge mistake. But then the Trump campaign was hardly a template for good employee vetting. It's becoming more and more obvious that the thing that would get you chosen was a connection to Russia. That just won't go away no matter how hard they try. And the fact that he wouldn't impose the sanctions is another confirmation of what is almost impossible for them to deny now.

We need to support and applaud the voices of those who can clearly see what is going on, including Michael Steele, who seems genuinely horrified at what's happening. MSM needs to have him on every show.

As for a tape, which most likely does exist because the details we have heard are specific, evangelicals who support him won't care. These people talk about God but they worship Trump. He can do no wrong. It remains to be seen if the ones who are in it just for the money will ever wake up to the reality of what living in a Putin-controlled country will really be like for them.

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, GrumpyGran said:

Good Lord, do you people ever sleep?

I feel as if I haven't slept a week since a Tuesday night November 2016

[fraurosena]

This is by far the best response to the mehmo I've seen. 

 

[AuntK]

Nines is a fucking idiot. I can't even stand to look at his sorry face.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Nunes memo wasn’t meant to win over everyone — just 34 senators"

Spoiler

“When you’re attacking FBI agents because you’re under criminal investigation, you’re losing.”

That was White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeting on Nov. 3, 2016. Back then, it was Democrats who were complaining about the FBI, and with ample justification: The bureau had released a letter 11 days before the election announcing that it was reopening its investigation of Hillary Clinton based on emails found on former New York congressman Anthony Wiener’s laptop. Nate Silver later concluded, “Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28.” Comey’s supposed anti-Clinton bias was even (disingenuously) cited by President Trump as his rationale to fire the FBI director.

Now Trump and his most fervent followers are attacking the FBI for anti-Trump bias. On Friday, Trump tweeted: “The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans.” So the top leadership of the Justice Department and FBI — all appointed by Trump, all Republicans — are biased against Republicans?

This claim is about as convincing as Trump’s boast that his State of the Union address was the most-watched in history. Republicans (and Russian trolls) had been pinning their hopes on Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, to deliver the goods. But his four-page memo was such a nothingburger that he left everyone wondering: Where’s the beef?

Nunes impugned the motives of former British spy Christopher Steele without actually contradicting anything he reported, and he confirmed that the Steele dossier was not the reason the FBI started investigating the Trump campaign, as Trump partisans had been claiming.

The Nunes memo is only the latest failed attempt to find evidence of anti-Trump bias at the FBI. A few weeks ago, Trump’s supporters latched onto a few critical text messages about the president written by agent Peter Strzok. Trump even said the texts were evidence of “treason.” It turns out, according to the Wall Street Journal, “Texts critical of Mr. Trump represent a fraction of the roughly 7,000 messages, which stretch across 384 pages and show no evidence of a conspiracy against Mr. Trump.” Far from being an anti-Trump conspirator, Strzok wrote the initial draft of the October 2016 Comey letter that helped sink the Clinton campaign.

None of this remotely supports the hyperbolic demands of Trump supporters who want the leaders of the Justice Department and FBI to be “taken out in cuffs.” If anyone is breaking the law here, it’s Trump with his attempted obstruction of justice.

But, specious as the attack on the FBI might be, there is good cause to fear that it is resonating with the only audience that matters to Trump. If special counsel Robert S. Mueller III delivers a scathing report on the president and if Democrats win the House in November, it’s almost certain the House will vote to impeach. But it takes 67 votes in the Senate to remove a president.

The case against the FBI that’s being assembled by Trump and his minions is not designed to convince dispassionate observers. It’s only supposed to give the thinnest of cover to true believers — and at least 34 senators — to do what they are predisposed to do anyway, i.e., protect the president at all costs.

The Nunes memo is a modern-day version of the jury nullification that O.J. Simpson’s legal team sought to inspire. (I’m grateful to Eric Felten of the Weekly Standard for the analogy.) Johnnie Cochran and company spun an elaborate conspiracy theory about how the Los Angeles Police Department supposedly framed their client. They were helped by minor procedural errors in the handling of evidence and by previous racist remarks from one of the detectives, just as Trump is helped by minor FBI missteps such as the Strzok texts and the alleged failure to alert a judge about Steele’s Democratic Party funding.

It was never clear why the LAPD would be eager to frame a local celebrity for murder, just as it’s not clear why the FBI — full of white, middle-age, conservative agents — would want to frame a Republican president. And, of course, the supposed police conspiracy could not possibly account for the mountain of evidence against Simpson, just as the supposed FBI conspiracy cannot possibly account for the undeniable reality that the Russians really did intervene in the election to help elect Trump and that there are numerous documented links between the campaign and the Kremlin.

But in Simpson’s case, it didn’t matter: The overwhelmingly African American jury bought the argument because jurors knew the experience of police brutality and sympathized with the defendant. Likewise, today it doesn’t matter to the president’s acolytes that the case for an anti-Trump conspiracy is so flimsy. They are simply looking for an excuse to exonerate him, evidence be damned. Sadly, Sarah Huckabee Sanders may have been wrong: Attacking the FBI could turn out to be a winning (if reprehensible) strategy for Trump.

Sad, but true.

[Howl]

8 hours ago, AuntK said:

I think most American officials who go to Russia are aware of the Russians taping everything, but Trump is so smug and arrogant, I can see him being stupid and not even considering the possible consequences of his actions.

There's every possibility that the Russians could just as easily, even more easily, set up a honey trap in the US.  

[GreyhoundFan]

From Jennifer Rubin: "When will the GOP muzzle Nunes?"

Spoiler

With his memo, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) botched for a second time (remember the unmasking scandal) an attempt to discredit the intelligence community to protect President Trump in the Russia investigation. For a second time he resorted to a specious and factually defective non-scandal, hoping to play to the Trump cultists and their state TV channel, Fox News. Nunes is exceedingly terrible at this game. For example:

• He managed to prove the dossier was not the basis of the Russia investigation; George Papadopoulos was.
• He underscored that one couldn’t possibly “spy” on the Trump campaign by getting a FISA warrant, which was kept secret during the campaign, on Carter Page — who already had left the campaign at the time the warrant was sought.
• He did not attempt to tie the FISA warrant to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III or to explain how the FISA court approved the warrant and its three extensions (which required a showing of progress in the investigation).
• He misstated former director James B. Comey’s remarks about the dossier.
• According to The Post’s reporting, his suggestion that the political nature of the dossier was withheld from the court — the central allegation in the memo — was false. (“The court that approved surveillance of a former campaign adviser to President Trump was aware that some of the information underpinning the warrant request was paid for by a political entity, although the application did not specifically name the Democratic National Committee or the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter. … ts central allegation — that the government failed to disclose a source’s political bias — is baseless, the officials said.”)

He never tried to prove the dossier was false or that Christopher Steele knew Fusion GPS was paid by the DNC (after it was originally engaged by the conservative Washington Free Beacon). He underscored that at four different points, the FISA court thought there was probable cause to conduct surveillance of Page, thereby establishing that a suspected Russian agent had in fact worked on the campaign.

Nunes’s memo was so flimsy that even White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly told Trump it was a bust. The Post reports that Kelly told Trump that “the document was not as compelling as some of its advocates had promised Trump.” Oops.

The good news for the political health of the country is that a number of Republicans were ready to call out Nunes’s gambit for what it was — a belly flop that inadvertently confirmed Trump’s frenzy to derail the investigation.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) — who spent endless time on the Benghazi investigation — was the only one on the Intelligence Committee to see the underlying intelligence. He gave Nunes’s effort a failing grade. “As I have said repeatedly, I also remain 100 percent confident in Special Counsel Robert Mueller,” he tweeted. “The contents of this memo do not – in any way – discredit his investigation.” Oh.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) released a statement blasting both the House and the president. “The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests – no party’s, no president’s, only [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s,” the memo stated. “The American people deserve to know all of the facts surrounding Russia’s ongoing efforts to subvert our democracy, which is why Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation must proceed unimpeded.” He warned, “Our nation’s elected officials, including the president, must stop looking at this investigation through the warped lens  of politics and manufacturing partisan sideshows. If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin’s job for him.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) had also had enough. “Oversight of the intelligence community, the FISA process, and this investigation are far too important to be tarnished by partisanship,” she said in a written statement.

It was interesting who preferred to keep as far from Nunes’s calamity as possible  — Trump loyalist Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), for example, as well as Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

Meanwhile, ranking Democrat Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and other Intelligence Committee Democrats released a persuasive rebuttal to Nunes’s botched memo and declared they would again demand a vote to release their own memo (referencing classified material) publicly. The statement read, in part:

The authors of the GOP memo would like the country to believe that the investigation began with Christopher Steele and the dossier, and if they can just discredit Mr. Steele, they can make the whole investigation go away regardless of the Russians’ interference in our election or the role of the Trump campaign in that interference. This ignores the inconvenient fact that the investigation did not begin with, or arise from Christopher Steele or the dossier, and that the investigation would persist on the basis of wholly independent evidence had Christopher Steele never entered the picture.

The DOJ appropriately provided the court with a comprehensive explanation of Russia’s election interference, including evidence that Russian agents courted another Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos. As we know from Papadopoulos’ guilty plea, Russian agents disclosed to Papadopoulos their possession of stolen Clinton emails and interest in a relationship with the campaign. In claiming that there is ‘no evidence of any cooperation or conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos,’ the Majority deliberately misstates the reason why DOJ specifically explained Russia’s role in courting Papadopoulos and the context in which to evaluate Russian approaches to Page.

The Majority suggests that the FBI failed to alert the court as to Mr. Steele’s potential political motivations or the political motivations of those who hired him, but this is not accurate. The GOP memo also claims that a Yahoo News article was used to corroborate Steele, but this is not at all why the article was referenced. These are but a few of the serious mischaracterizations of the FISA application.

The memo was a disaster not only for the Trump-Nunes strategy but also for the country. A raft of national security experts eviscerated the memo and castigated Nunes for wrecking the oversight process. The Lawfare blog explained: “The bottom line is that there are multiple reasons to expect that Nunes has not given a full and fair account of the FBI’s FISA process and that his memo is as factually deficient as it accuses the Carter Page warrant application of being.” However, even if accurate, the memo doesn’t show much of anything, the Lawfare gurus state. The “facts,” they say, are not “particularly strong, let alone scandalous … because the points recounted (assuming they are true) don’t make out a coherent complaint.”

They conclude, “At the end of the day, the most important aspect of the #memo is probably not its contents but the fact that it was written and released at all. Its preparation and public dissemination represent a profound betrayal of the central premise of the intelligence oversight system.”

The only questions that remain are how long House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) is going to let this humiliating spectacle go on and how much damage he will permit to be done to the oversight process so Nunes can flail about trying to protect Trump and ruin public servants’ reputations. Nunes promises further memos, but if they are anything like the first one, the only things they will damage will be Republicans and the intelligence oversight process. Mr. Speaker, haven’t you all done quite enough damage?

Lyan will let it go on until he stops breathing or until he is voted out of office. Frankly, I don't care which comes first, I just want him out of power.

[WiseGirl]

8 hours ago, AuntK said:

(anyone have change for the swear jar?)

Long ago I gave up on putting change in the swear jar. Strictly bills now and the denominations keep increasing.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Nunes memo and Putin’s long game"

Spoiler

Vladimir Putin might get tired of winning.

Ever since the U.S. intelligence community discovered the Russian operation to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and aid President Donald Trump’s victory, some Republicans have been laboring to undermine investigations into the attack and discredit the intelligence agencies that discovered it.

Those efforts reached a new crescendo on Friday, when House Republicans released a partisan memo alleging anti-Trump bias at the FBI with approval from Trump, who declared on Twitter that both the FBI and Department of Justice are corrupt.

But that turmoil, some were quick to point out, is exactly what Putin wanted all along.

“The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests— no party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in a statement Friday. “Our nation’s elected officials, including the president, must stop looking at this investigation through the warped lens of politics and manufacturing partisan sideshows. If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin’s job for him.”

For more than a year, Trump has consistently cast doubt on the assessments of intelligence agencies he now leads, arguing that “the deep state” is stacked against him. Facing an investigation that reached into his own administration, and potentially into the Oval Office, the president chose to fire his FBI director, James Comey, last May, and since then has repeatedly hinted that he might try to do the same to others.

That may include deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who oversees Russia special counsel Robert Mueller. “You figure that one out,” Trump said when asked Friday if he still had confidence in Rosenstein after reading the memo.

The cumulative effect of it all, intelligence veterans said, is to diminish trust in government institutions — thereby weakening the U.S.

“We have to remember what Putin’s goal in this whole endeavor was,” said Ned Price, a former CIA officer and National Security Council spokesman under President Barack Obama. “It was at its core to divide the American people and pit us against each other.”

“This is exactly what he had hoped and it has succeeded beyond his wildest expectations,” he said of the memo. “This memo just plays right into that. ... This is exactly what Putin had in mind.”

The memo “is simply an attempt to cast aspersions on the whole investigation,” said Robert Litt, a former general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who now works for Morrison and Foerster.

“To the extent that Putin’s goal is to weaken us and emphasize our internal division, which was certainly one of the conclusions that the intelligence community reached, yes absolutely [he succeeded],” Litt added. “This is increasing partisanship and division and making it more difficult to bring to light what they’re actually doing. … I would’ve thought that there would have been a considerably greater level of bipartisan concern about what the Russians have done.”

But for Trump, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and other Republicans, Friday was a day of triumph.

“The Committee has discovered serious violations of the public trust, and the American people have a right to know when officials in crucial institutions are abusing their authority for political purposes,” Nunes wrote on Friday, accompanying the release of the memo his staff drafted.

“I think it’s a disgrace what's happening in our country,” Trump declared.

The memo, however, showed little that was new. A dossier compiled by a former British intelligence operative, who was funded in part by Clinton’s campaign, was part of the basis for the investigation, the memo says. But that was already known. And other elements of the investigation were underway independent of the dossier, the memo acknowledged.

Nonetheless, conservative media — including some outlets that were handed the memo before it became public — rejoiced.

Former House Speaker and Trump confidant Newt Gingrich suggested that the memo would ultimately undermine Mueller’s investigation.

“This memo will lead to more releases of more material and it will go on and on,” Gingrich told POLITICO. “We will be shocked at how deep the sickness was. … Why would you think Mueller is anything different? He’s just part of the same mess.”

As much as I loathe Lyan, I despise Newt Gingivitis 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 times more.

[SilverBeach]

I so want to wipe the smirk off of Elizabeth Foley's face. She was just on CNN, where she is a frequent contributor of nonsense.

 

 

 

 

[Smoochie]

10 hours ago, AuntK said:

I think Carter Page knows what the Russians have on Donnie. And if you watch Page, he comes across as kind of goofy. He is probably the weak link and maybe Mueller got to him. (Reduced sentence for talking?)  The interesting thing is there is an old interview with Chris Hayes from October that Rachel referenced on her show Friday night, in which Page talks about RYAN RELEASING THE SURVEILLANCE INFO! 

Folks, this has been in the works a LONG time; I suspect Ryan, McTurtle, maybe Pence, and other Repugs KNOW what the Russians have, but are keeping quiet because if this info is released, and especially if their knowledge of it is disclosed, the Republican party is history. And they will cover up ANYTHING to keep that from happening. That is why they have gone along with the tax cut, which they know is a disaster, and other crap Trump is doing because they know he can  singlehandedly take them all down. And they cannot have that. Party over country!

If I sound like a conspiracy theorist, I'm sorry, but these fuckers have scared the shit out of me.   (anyone have change for the swear jar?)

I caught Rachel too and was truly shocked he said that back then (love both her and Joy). 

I watched that interview and never caught on to that sentence.  I presume someone remembered or were re-watching the interview looking for other talking points about Carter after the memo dropped.  I just remember how damn weird the whole interview was!

[hoipolloi]

Well, well, well. Time Magazine has a little Carter Page update.

Page portrayed himself as an informal advisor to the Kremlin in a 2013 letter to an academic press, trying to persuade them to publish his book manuscript.

Quote

 

The letter, dated Aug. 25, 2013, was sent by Page to an academic press during a dispute over edits to an unpublished manuscript he had submitted for publication, according to an editor who worked with Page.

“Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda,” the letter reads.

 

 

[Howl]

And, @hoipolloi, thanks for that link. Finally, FINALLY, some element of the MSM is looking at Carter Page as being the central element of  #TheMemo.   Based on coverage to date, you'd think a FISA warrant was taken out on air. 

Carter Page, he of the weird affect, is a legend in his own mind.  I suspect the Russians have found him to be a useful stooge, or, see below, a useful idiot. 

From another Newsweek article Jan. 26, 2015, Who Is Carter Page? Meet the Donald Trump Advisor at the Center of the GOP Memo

Quote

Jan. 26, 2015:  Pobodnyy and two other Russians are charged with working as agents for Russian intelligence in New York. Court records include a transcript of a recorded conversation in which Pobodnyy talks about trying to recruit someone identified as Male-1, which BuzzFeed later reveals to be Page. “I think he is an idiot,” Pobodnyy says in the transcript.

And the editor of a manuscript Page was trying to get published said Page is "a kook." 

 

[GrumpyGran]

Whoops! Trey Gowdy just shut Dump down. I kind of expected this. Gowdy's actually a pretty letter-of-the-law guy, for a Repub. The most shocking thing-he just said he's never met Dump. FYI, this is him talking to Margaret on Face the Nation but recorded earlier so he may be on other shows this morning.

Gowdy does say he wasn't happy with FISA and is saying there should have been disclosure of Steele being biased but that the investigation would still be going on without the dossier and that he has confidence in FBI and DOJ and Mueller. Says it should be up to FBI if the FISA is made public.

[GrumpyGran]

Adding on-Wow! This is more on what Gowdy just said and this may be popping up on the other thread but he leaving. I mean leaving. He didn't name names, didn't have to, but pretty clear because he said he doesn't like the partisanship and DOES NOT believe the end justifies the means. So there, no Dump appointment for him.

[Howl]

4 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

Whoops! Trey Gowdy just shut Dump down. I kind of expected this. Gowdy's actually a pretty letter-of-the-law guy, for a Repub.

Uh oh.  Alt-right keyboard warriors are going to ALL CAPS in 3, 2, 1!

[GreyhoundFan]

6 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

Adding on-Wow! This is more on what Gowdy just said and this may be popping up on the other thread but he leaving. I mean leaving. He didn't name names, didn't have to, but pretty clear because he said he doesn't like the partisanship and DOES NOT believe the end justifies the means. So there, no Dump appointment for him.

Too bad he didn't come to that way of thinking before spending a zillion taxpayer dollars on the partisan Benghazi hearings.

[Cartmann99]

Explanation of how the #releasethememo campaign went viral on Twitter:

Quote

On Tuesday morning—the day after the House Intelligence Committee voted along partisan lines to send Rep. Devin Nunes’ memo, alleging abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to President Donald Trump for declassification—presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway was confronted with the idea that Russian trolls were promoting the #releasethememo hashtag online. She was offended. Russian trolls, she told a television interviewer, “have nothing to do with releasing the memo—that was a vote of the intelligence committee.” But her assertion is incorrect. The vote marked the culmination of a targeted, 11-day information operation that was amplified by computational propaganda techniques and aimed to change both public perceptions and the behavior of American lawmakers.

And it worked. By the time the memo got to the president, its release was a forgone conclusion—even before he had read it.

This bears repeating: Computational propaganda—defined as “the use of information and communication technologies to manipulate perceptions, affect cognition, and influence behavior”—has been used, successfully, to manipulate the perceptions of the American public and the actions of elected officials.

The analysis below, conducted by our team from the social media intelligence group New Media Frontier, shows that the #releasethememo campaign was fueled by, and likely originated from, computational propaganda. It is critical that we understand how this was done and what it means for the future of American democracy.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/amp/story/2018/02/04/trump-twitter-russians-release-the-memo-216935

[GreyhoundFan]

"Sebastian Gorka was defending Trump on C-SPAN. A man phoned in to accuse him of treachery."

Spoiler

It’s been several months since Sebastian Gorka, a former deputy assistant to President Trump, either quit the administration in indignation or was forced out by those who thought his take-no-prisoners brand of nationalist politics was a bad influence on Trump — depending whom you ask.

Regardless, Gorka has kept up his public profile since abruptly leaving his unofficial White House spokesman role in August. A couple of months later, he appeared in a roundtable discussion on U.S. gun violence and blamed the problem mainly on “black Africans” shooting each other. Then last month, he turned up in a police report in his native Hungary, wanted on unspecified firearm charges from before Trump’s election.

But most days, as The Washington Post has written, Gorka appears without much drama on a talking-head show, where he reliably praises the president.

Sunday was such a day, or at least it started out that way.

Gorka was on C-SPAN in the morning, discussing a memo released last week by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee — over the furious objections of national security officials — alleging that political bias has tainted a federal investigation into Trump’s links to Russia.

Gorka, per usual, was defending the president.

“Almost every member of the team is either connected with the left, donated to the left,” he told the show’s host, Steve Scully. The whole investigation headed by Robert S. Mueller III should be dropped, he said.

Then Gorka paused, and Scully informed him that a certain “Henry” from Michigan was on the line.

“Good morning,” Scully said.

“Good morning, first of all, I’d like to try and establish some ground rules,” Henry said in a single breath.

Scully’s eyes grew quite wide, and his lips pressed together as he listened.

“I’d like to be allowed to make my comments without interruption by Sebastian,” Henry continued, “because these clever right-wingers, they have a way of interrupting you.”

Gorka laughed. “I think Steve’s in charge,” he said.

“Go ahead, Henry,” Scully said.

“First of all,” Henry said, “I’d like to say the elections in 2018 are perhaps the most consequential in our history because we have to stop an impending dictatorship by this white-supremacist, right-wing traitor. And Donald Trump, make no mistake, is a traitor. Along with everybody in his orbit.”

Presumably he meant Gorka, who was now looking at his desk.

“Henry, why do you say he’s a traitor?” Scully said.

“Okay, I’m glad you asked me that question,” Henry said. “Donald Trump is owned by the Russian oligarchs because they are the ones that funded him when U.S. banks wouldn’t. They have compromising information on him.”

By “compromising information,” Henry meant an explosive dossier in which a former British intelligence agent claimed the Russian government had corrupted Trump. The dossier was leaked to the public in January. The GOP memo Gorka had been discussing before Henry called in claimed the document was politically biased and had tainted the investigation into Trump, who has repeatedly denied there was any collusion between his campaign and Russia.

On C-SPAN, Henry said most of the information in the dossier had been proved, and none of it had been disproved. So bad news for Trump and his “orbit.”

Gorka sighed. “2018 will be a very consequential election,” he told Henry, as if trying to find some common ground, only to reverse course in the next sentence. “I’m saddened by people who live in an alternate universe, who use words such as dictator, white supremacist and traitor.”

Henry remained silent, allowing Gorka — who, say what you will about him, is an experienced debater by now — to get back to his staple topic: the goodness of President Trump.

“He doesn’t have a racist bone in his body,” Gorka said, by way of addressing Henry’s white supremacy comments. “He doesn’t care who you voted for. . . . He wants you to be safe, and he wants your family to prosper.”

But Henry had disconnected by then and never left a family name.

I wish the media would stop interviewing Gorka. Anyone with more than two brain cells knows he's going to just say that Dumpy is god and everyone who is against him is ebil and/or stupid.

[Howl]

Thanks, @Cartmann99.  It's so easy to forget about the Russians, Russians, Russians, when the MSM is serving up and endlessly rehashing the Trump idiocy du jour.  I know I do and I actually enjoy the endless rehash of the Trump idiocy du jour and believe it's the free press going about their essential function. However, this article in the Washington Post by Asha Rangappa (senior lecturer at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University and a former FBI agent) from back in June 2017 reminded me to  really shift my focus to study current, ongoing daily Russian interference, like the Politico article. 

I was an FBI agent. Trump's lack of concern about Russian hacking shocks me.   June 10, 2017 Is the president breaking his oath to protect and defend the country from foreign attacks?

Here's the crux paragraph: 

Spoiler

The FBI can usually disrupt this threat under the radar — for instance, by delicately alerting unwitting individuals that they may be being targeted by a foreign power, or by identifying and recruiting an intelligence service’s sources to become double agents for the United States. The Russia case is different, because its operation last year did not simply try to use the American system as a vehicle for Russia’s benefit. Instead, Russia essentially attempted to break the system itself, by hacking political parties’ computer and email systems, flooding the media with disinformation and purposely sowing political chaos in the voting process, which is the bedrock of our democracy. Although its activities didn’t involve bombs or dead bodies, Russia’s efforts were no less dangerous than any terrorist attack. In fact, the insidiousness of Russia’s interference lies in its invisibility: The American public did not even know that their freedom of choice was potentially being manipulated and distorted for foreign interests.

For any president to ignore the situation is shocking. My former colleagues at the FBI who are working on this case and have uncovered the full scale of Russia’s efforts must be incredulous at Trump’s cavalier attitude.

So we're 7 months down the road since this article was written and here we are with Russian interference still going strong, primaries 9 months away and no one seems to have a handle on stopping Russian social media manipulation; in fact, the Russians have had a lot of time to observe their successes and refine the process to be even more effective -- with #ReleseTheMemo being a good example of successful Russian manipulation from just the last two weeks. At this time, there is NOTHING standing in their way to continue social media manipulation.  Now I need to go back to find the Website that tracks Russian twitter bots in real time. 

[GrumpyGran]

19 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Too bad he didn't come to that way of thinking before spending a zillion taxpayer dollars on the partisan Benghazi hearings.

I think he's smart enough now to realize that if he stayed there would be bad things ahead no matter what. If the Dems take the House, he will be in the minority and possibly a party to impeachment. From this interview alone I believe he feels there is cause for impeachment so it would be a crisis of conscience for him.

If the Repubs hold onto majority, the "prosecute Hillary" movement may continue and he could be held responsible for her not being jailed already. He doesn't seem inclined to jump on the Dump bus so he, like so many others, is opting to go.