Trolling for media attention

Troll for fish, trolling for fun and amusement, (internet trolls, with internet fame)and trolling the American public, and the news media.

Who is claiming a massive conspiracy within our justice system ? What are they basing this claim, on ?

A joke, and a glitch.


None of these Republicans ever explained why members of a secret, subversive cabal would discuss said cabal on government-issued phones. Nevertheless, Senator Ron Johnson informed Fox News that his colleagues had uncovered a “secret society,” with the aid of “an informant talking about a group holding secret meetings offsite.”

"...this last point is the entire reason why the “Release the Memo” movement exists:

Whatever its legal conclusions, the Mueller investigation has already produced information that is profoundly politically damaging — or, at least, would be for any president who didn’t enter office already loathed by nearly 60 percent of the country. And so, the GOP is compelled to obfuscate this reality by engineering an equal and opposite scandal.

Anyhow, as flimsy and incoherent as the Republican story was at its inception, it has somehow managed to become exponentially more so over the past 24 hours.


Before Wednesday, it was already clear that the allegation of a “secret society” within the FBI rested on a comically weak foundation. The claim derived from the contents of a single text message sent by senior FBI official Lisa Page to her colleague Peter Strzok. Strzok is one of the central “villains” of the GOP’s tale.


Now: Try to come up with a theory that reconciles all publicly available facts with the GOP’s theory that the Mueller investigation is an anti-Trump conspiracy.

Does it make more — or less — sense than this?


http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...i-conspiracy-theory-just-got-even-dumber.html


Trolling for attention, and trolling pleasure

DOJ Dick-Punches Devin Nunes Over Dumbass Fake Memo


January 25, 2018

https://wonkette.com/628814/doj-dick-punches-devin-nunes-over-dumbass-fake-memo

A barn full of animal waste and dirt, headed for the compost heap.

And the farmer hauled another load, away...

What happened to Senator Ron Johnson's source ?

Sen. Ron Johnson had to backtrack about his claim that he had an "informant who confirmed the existence of a secret society meeting off-site to overthrow Donald Trump."

Now he says he was "combining things he heard" as a member of Senate committees on Homeland Security and Foreign Relations, and that "secret society" was only used in the texts exchanged by lovers and FBI agents Strzok and Page, who were clearly joking in their text messages about the "first meeting of the secret society."


https://crooksandliars.com/2018/01/ron-johnson-back-tracks-secret-society-fbi


Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson walks back claims of an anti-Trump 'secret society' within FBI

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson acknowledged Thursday that his earlier statement about an anti-Trump "secret society" within the FBI may have been based on a joke within a single text message.

But he stood by his central assertion that an informant told his committee that a group of FBI employees was having meetings outside of government offices. "What I said was true," Johnson said. "Everybody else is putting words in my mouth."

The New York Times said Strzok bought Russia-themed calendars to give to the agents investigating Russia’s interference in the election. Page then made a "dark joke about the gag gifts" — calendars featuring “beefcake” photos of Vladimir Putin, says HuffPost — in light of the election.

Ron Johnson is the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.






Ron Johnson also alleged "corruption at the highest levels of the FBI."

gsgs comment- Any new information, on which he bases this serious charge ? Or is that based on a system glitch (remedied, and texts soon available to Republicans) and a joke ?

wow

Isn't this carrying the trolling/joke too far ?

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news...i-trump-secret-society-within-fbi/1065135001/

The Plum Line Opinion

Trump and the great GOP abdication

Greg Sargent
author/ columnist

January 25, 2018


Something remarkable is happening in our politics right now. On multiple fronts, it has fallen to Democratic elected officials to step up and defend the integrity and basic functionings of our government — against Republican efforts to pervert and manipulate them in service of the goal of shielding President Trump from accountability.


Today, I’m told, Sen. Mark Warner (Va.) — the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee — will publicly say that classified information debunks the arguments reportedly made in the now-notorious secret memo by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), which bolsters the idea that the Russia investigation is a Deep-State Coup against Trump. Nunes has made this memo available to members of Congress, in what Democrats charge is a selective cherry-picking of intelligence designed to arm Republicans with talking points to discredit the Russia probe.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...-great-gop-abdication/?utm_term=.35983ada3bcb


There’s a concerted Republican effort underway to smear and discredit the FBI and the Justice Department in order to shield Donald Trump from accountability, as Greg Sargent lays out today: Trump and the great GOP abdication.

Watch the video above to see how all-encompassing this effort is — it’s taking place at every level of the GOP.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/art..._How_Low_They_Can_Possibly_Go_to_Defend_Trump

Stop trolling America!

Responding to trolling, with reality

The Justice Department inspector general’s office said Thursday that it had recovered missing text messages between two FBI officials who are under scrutiny for their criticism of President Donald Trump.

The office said it had used “forensic tools” to retrieve text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page from over a five-month period, December 2016 to May 2017.


It is unclear how many text messages the inspector general recovered between Strzok and Page. The letter by Inspector General Michael Horowitz says the “effort to recover any additional text messages is ongoing.”



https://www.buzzfeed.com/thomasfran...l-republican?utm_term=.nmobPpA8z3#.himgW8R69D

Bullshit from the Trump White House is costing the tax payer money, and time wasted on nonsense.

Again.

The texts!The texts!

Bullshit.
Using the texts to troll everyone.



"...another text exchange between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page cast doubt on Republican allegations that Strzok’s animus toward Trump had fueled the Trump-Russia probe. Instead, the text appears to show that Strzok, who was the lead investigator in the early months of the probe, was hesitant to join special counsel Robert Mueller’s team. "You and I both know the odds are nothing,” his text to Page said, according to Johnson. “If I thought it was likely, I'd be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there's no there."


https://www.buzzfeed.com/emmaloop/g...-seems-to-be?utm_term=.soAy5ld10J#.gkeXlE0Jdr

Meanwhile,

"...Trump’s Justice Department has implored Congress to keep the memo under wraps."

Meanwhile,

"...a memo drafted by aides to Rep. Devin Nunes reportedly alleges that the FBI abused its powers to surveil the Trump campaign."

Nunes memo

"Drafted by aides to House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes, it reportedly alleges that the FBI abused its powers to surveil the Trump campaign. The specifics of the four-page document aren’t clear because it’s classified and only available to members of Congress, despite calls from the right and the left to release it to the public."

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/n...answers-says-former-fbi-agent-rep-fitzpatrick

The right-wing-propaganda complex immediately went to work — aided, hilariously, by an army of Russian bots that made sure the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo remained a trending topic on social media.

Before long, Donald Trump Jr. became a leading advocate for the memo’s release, and WikiLeaks soon after jumped in on the action, promising up to $1 million in cryptocurrency to whoever had the courage to leak the document.

On Tuesday — almost predictably — Alex Jones announced on Twitter that he had come into possession of a copy of the Nunes memo. But, also predictably, it turned out that all he had was a court order that has been publicly available for several months.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/devin-nunes-releasethememo-frenzy-explained.html


Deep State déjà vu?

Watergate was happening just as the FBI was finally transitioning to a new director. Nixon appointed an outsider named L. Patrick Gray, who lasted less than a year. But during that period, the No. 2 man in the bureau, W. Mark Felt, got wind of various forms of skulduggery practiced by Nixon's re-election campaign in 1971 and 1972, culminating in the burglary at the Watergate hotel that gave the scandal its name.

Felt managed to convey much of what he learned to a young reporter he knew who worked at The Washington Post. The reporter was Bob Woodward, and the rest is history — highly politicized history. Those who still defend Nixon today have to contend with the role played by Felt in prompting the congressional and legal proceedings that forced Nixon to resign in 1974.

Perhaps it is that episode in the long history of the bureau that is making some on Capitol Hill and some conservatives in the media uneasy about where the current investigation of Trump's campaign and cronies could be going. For these individuals, any indication that evidence gathered by the FBI could bring Trump or members of his circle to legal reckoning would be a bad case of déjà vu.

https://www.npr.org/2018/01/26/5806...sia-the-fbi-has-been-political-from-the-start

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA)

"...his performance as chairman of the highly sensitive House Intelligence Committee has been nothing short of embarrassing."



Nunes has colluded with the White House. Last March, Nunes said he’d seen secret intelligence reports backing Trump’s claims that President Barack Obama had “wiretapped” his offices, but it turned out the documents came from the administration.

The blowback forced Nunes to step away from the Russia investigation.


Republicans defended the FBI when Democrats criticized Comey last year for reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails just before the election.

But now we’re supposed to believe some Republicans that there’s some kind of anti-Trump “secret society” within the FBI? It’s ridiculous.


https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/editorials/article196633904.html

March 23, 2017

Nunes scurried to the White House to brief the president on intelligence reports that purportedly show that Trump and his advisers were incidentally picked up in court-authorized surveillance that had nothing to do with Russia. Nunes, who was on Trump’s transition team, won’t say what the information is or where it came from, refusing to even rule out that his source was affiliated with the White House.


The president predictably used Nunes’ revelation as cover for his baseless accusation that Barack Obama had wiretapped him, saying he felt “somewhat” vindicated. Perhaps Nunes thought he could have it both ways by letting Trump use him, but then telling the press that the new reports offered no such evidence.

Nunes should not have shared that information with a White House under investigation.


http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article140406598.html

Trolling every opposing politician and pro-Democracy activist, at the 2018 State of the Union

Mother Jones columnist has been paying attetion-

I wrote about this prior to the election (for all the good it did), noting that one constant in Trump’s life was his profound desire to get even and smite any of his detractors. Often he follows this impulse when a reasonable person might conclude it was self-defeating. As I noted back then:

(List of people that he victimized at link)


Trump seems to live to settle grudges. For him, retaliation is a religion. But don’t take my word for it. Take his. In speeches and public talks Trump gave in the years before he ran for president, he hailed retribution as an essential element of a success. One example:


In 2011, he addressed the National Achievers Congress in Sydney, Australia, to explain how he had achieved his success. He noted there were a couple of lessons not taught in business school that successful people must know. At the top of the list was this piece of advice: “Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.”



Others have noted Trump’s love affair with payback, including former House Speaker New Gingrich. In an interview before the election, he pointed out that Trump often loses his cool in response to “anything which attacks his own sense of integrity or his own sense of respectability, and he reacts very intensely, almost uncontrollably, to those kinds of situations.” He opined that “there’s a big Trump and a little Trump,” And, too frequently, Little Trump is in control—or out of control. (Richard Branson wrote of an unnerving revenge-drenched encounter with Trump several years before the 2016 campaign.)


The flip-side of Trump’s revenge-obsession is almost as bad: Trump has a profound yearning for acceptance, recognition, and compliments. How many times has Trump said that Putin is a good guy because he said something positive about Trump? Trump’s highly personalized—you might say, narcissistic—view of the world can undermine national security. As Trump has sought revenge against his foes in the FBI and the Justice Department, he has this week eased up on sanctions applied on Putin’s regime for its meddling in the election. In short, for Trump, McCabe is a problem, Putin is just fine.


https://www.motherjones.com/politic...and-this-revenge-is-what-he-cares-about-most/

gsgs comment-

Then, again, like the young girl said- "Why not have both ?"

Trump trolls Democrats, and does not sign sanctions against Russuans-

Trump Administration Baffles and Enrages Lawmakers With Latest Punt on Russia Sanctions


The administration announced that no new punishments were needed because the mere threat of punishment was doing enough



After briefing senators in a classified setting, the State Department announced that the sanctions regime currently in place was acting as a “deterrent” against Russian aggression and that, therefore, new measures will “not need to be imposed” as required under the law.


The announcement caught lawmakers off guard, including those who co-authored the bipartisan Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) last year. That bill passed in large part to punish Russia for its efforts to influence the U.S. presidential election in 2016. That it was put on the backburner left some on Capitol Hill with the impression, once more, that the Trump administration felt indifferent toward the Kremlin’s influence campaign.

When the Congress voted for this, the whole point of it was to slap sanctions on these Russian companies that interfered with our election and are doing all kinds of other things,” Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Daily Beast in an interview. “The legislation itself is not a deterrent if you don’t put teeth behind it. And the teeth behind it are the sanctions.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump...awmakers-with-latest-punt-on-russia-sanctions

While we're at it, let's look at corrupt traitors inside the uniformed portion of our military-industrial complex.

Leaks, feasts and sex parties: How ‘Fat Leonard’ infiltrated the Navy’s floating headquarters in Asia

In a case that ranks as the worst corruption scandal in Navy history, authorities say a long line of officers from the USS Blue Ridge traded military secrets for a taste of the high life.

Click to expand...

Trading military secrets. Hmmm, has Tromp traded any secrets to Russia? For what?

"The thing that’s always angered Trump the most wasn’t the fact that someone was investigating his campaign’s connection to Russia, it’s the whole idea that the Justice Department is supposed to be independent of the White House. The memo isn’t just a play to crush the Russia investigation, but to solve that pesky problem of an FBI that doesn’t view itself as Trump’s personal instrument for bringing sweet vengeance and persecution to his enemies."

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/1737918

No, Emperor Carrot Head, these are not "your boys, your guys," or your employees.

gotsnowgotslush said:

No, Emperor Carrot Head, these are not "your boys, your guys," or your employees.

Click to expand...

They are if Congress lets him get away with it. Gups seems intent on installing a dictatorship with all in gov't purged if they don't pledge loyalty to the God-Emperor. Non-loyalists will be issued mandatory yellow armbands to publicly identify The Enemy. But no numbers tattooed down their arms, oh no. Chip implants will suffice.

Emperor Carrot must be very pleased, at the moment. Memogate is generating headlines, causing distress and anger, and trolling anyone that values the truth.

Magnificently awful.


Emperor Carrot Head has transformed the White House into the Stronghold of Trolls and Goblins

gotsnowgotslush said:

Emperor Carrot must be very pleased, at the moment. Memogate is generating headlines, causing distress and anger, and trolling anyone that values the truth.

Magnificently awful.


Emperor Carrot Head has transformed the White House into the Stronghold of Trolls and Goblins

Click to expand...

Naw, them and their political enablers and leeches are only traitorous scumbags, not evil fantasies. They nicely follow the script: Trouble for the God-Emperor? Toss out more distractions, give the kittehs yet another dozen laser dots to chase. Atrocity fatigue sets in. They win. Yow.

The newly released memo by Republican staff follows the tracks of this reasoning. Its central contention, leaked in advance, is that the FBI used the work of a biased source (Christopher Steele, a British intelligence agent with expertise in Russia) to justify surveillance of Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser. The memo highlights Steele’s opposition to Trump (he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected”), along with the beliefs of FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, both of whom “demonstrated a clear bias against Trump and in favor of Clinton.”

As a legal matter, as law professor Orin Kerr has explained, there is no merit to the argument that a politically biased source cannot be used to obtain a warrant. Indeed, the FBI used journalism funded by Steve Bannon to investigate Hillary Clinton. In the place of any strong legal claim, the memo substitutes the assumption that intelligence sources who don’t want Trump to be president must be up to no good.

Republicans blocked the publication of a Democratic-authored memo rebutting the claims in the Republican one. Instead, they leaked the Nunes memo first to sympathetic conservative reporters, who could shape its narrative. (One problem critics of the Nunes memo have is that revealing other sources of intelligence that were used to support the application to surveil Carter Page might risk blowing up the FBI’s sources.)


They can force Democrats and the FBI to choose between letting the accusation against the Bureau stand or risk its secrets.



http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/the-backward-logic-of-the-nunes-memo.html

The current pantomime staged by Nunes, Nune's staffers, the White House contributors committed to corrupting the Nunes memo, and Trump himself, have fed the Trump loyalists and fans a narrative that they will enjoy-

Trump is a victim! (Trump paints himself as hero, with powerful enemies.)"Unfair," Trump shouts. "Fake news! No collusion!"

Meanwhile, the complex investigation is interrupted and entangled with Nune's effort to disrupt the process.

Refusing to release the counter-memo


On Monday, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) asked Nunes if his staffers worked with the White House on his memo. Nunes originally answered the question by saying “as far as I know,” no one collaborated with the White House. Ultimately, though, he refused to answer the question — perhaps suggesting that there may actually have been some collusion there.

"I'm not answering”
-Nunes

Tellingly, when asked whether the Republican staff who wrote the memo had coordinated its drafting with the White House, the Chairman refused to answer.

(Nunes did not take a chance with perjuring himself.)


https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/1/16956290/nunes-memo-release-the-memo-fbi-russia


James Comey, the former FBI director who was fired by Trump last year, reacted to the memo with incredulity. “That’s it?” he asked on Twitter. “Dishonest and misleading memo wrecked the House intel committee, destroyed trust with intelligence community, damaged relationship with Fisa court, and inexcusably exposed classified investigation of an American citizen. For what? DOJ & FBI must keep doing their jobs.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/nunes-news/552227/

Adam Schiff
@RepAdamSchiff
The President’s decision to publicly release a misleading memo attacking DOJ & FBI is a transparent attempt to discredit these institutions and undermine Mueller’s probe.

We'll fight to release our classified response. Until then here's a glimpse at what's wrong with their memo:


Democrats Say Republicans Who Released the Memo Are Complicit in Obstruction of Justice

They charge their colleagues with “a shocking campaign to obstruct the work of the Special Counsel

The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), tweeted the full statement:

(((Rep. Nadler)))
@RepJerryNadler
·
5h
Joint statement from House Judiciary Democrats: Republicans Are Complicit in Efforts to Obstruct Justice with Release of #NunesMemo. (link: https://nadler.house.gov/press-rele...plicit-efforts-obstruct-justice-release-nunes) nadler.house.gov/press-release/…


https://www.motherjones.com/politic...memo-are-complicit-in-obstruction-of-justice/

MARTIN: Which brings up why the Democratic memo they've written in rebuttal can't be released simultaneously, which is another concern.

HURD: Because it was 10 pages, and it actually included information that would impact national security. It's being re-edited to remove that information, and that will be released to the public as well.



MARTIN: So you think Chris Wray was just wrong when he said that it could jeopardize sources and methods.(Wray objected to releasing the altered and corrupted Nunes memo) You disagree with the director of the FBI.

HURD: I do.

MARTIN: Where does it go from here? I mean, if this memo comes out, does Chris Wray resign? Do you want him to resign?

MARTIN: Will Hurd - he is a congressman from Texas, and he joined us this morning on Skype.

https://www.npr.org/2018/02/02/5826...to-erode-national-security-says-rep-will-hurd


Opinion: Rep. Nunes drops his cherry-picked memo: This is it?


Jennifer Rubin, The Washington PostFebruary 2, 2018


We know that other materials included with the dossier to obtain the warrant were left out of Nunes account, and that a point-by-point rebuttal from Democrats has been suppressed. There is plenty else left out of the memo:



There is no explanation that FISA courts set a high bar for issuance of warrants and generally require multiple pieces of evidence.

--There is no acknowledgment that Steele was a respected former MI6 agent or that some of his findings were confirmed by evidence provided from other sources. (Nunes says they were "minimally" sourced.)

--There is no recognition the intelligence community already had Page on its radar screen as early as 2013.

--There is no indication Steele knew who had funded the dossier (which was begun for a right-leaning publication and later financed by a Democratic associate of Hillary Clinton's campaign).


---There is no proof anything in the dossier was in fact false

---There is no proof Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein thought the dossier was unreliable



---There is no proof that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III or FBI Director Christopher A. Wray (whom Trump hired) had anything to do with the application for the warrant or that it affected their work. Both were hired the year after the initial FISA warrant request.

--There is no reason spelled out why Rosenstein, whom Trump later appointed, would have intentionally misled the court


http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opi...cked-memo-This-is-12546872.php#photo-14972524

There was not much to the rumor of Deep State interference, concerning emails trumpeted by Republican Sen. Ron Johnson. But, the stream of resulting nonsense sandpapers away, at the fabric of reality, nonetheless.

A FISA warrant also needs to be renewed every 90 days—the Nunes memo says Page's warrant was renewed three times. A renewal generally indicates that the existing warrant has been in some way useful; Nunes does not mention anything about any evidence that might have found its way into subsequent applications. “He seems to be talking about what was in the first application, he doesn’t really talk about whether the Steele application was re-submitted every time," says Goitein.


https://www.wired.com/story/devin-nunes-memo-carter-page-surveillance/


"There is a Russia investigation without a dossier. So to the extent the memo deals with the dossier and the FISA process, the dossier has nothing to do with the meeting at Trump Tower."


"The dossier has nothing to do with an email sent by Cambridge Analytica. The dossier really has nothing to do with George Papadopoulos' meeting in Great Britain. It also doesn't have anything to do with obstruction of justice."


"The process matters. The end does not justify the means."

-Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.)



https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/03/trey-gowdy-nunes-memo-russia-probe-389083


Some of the president's allies have sought to use the memo to bash the FBI and undermine the integrity of those involved in Mueller's probe.

Gowdy has cautioned his fellow Republicans about jumping to conclusions, adding that his advice last week had been to leave Mueller "the hell alone."

Rachel Maddow



Rachel Maddow MSNBC
@maddow
·
Feb 2
LOL

A year attacking the Steele dossier.

A month hyping that the dossier started the whole FBI investigation.

Weeks hyping that they have a memo (a memo!) that will finally prove it!

So... is there some other memo?

Because this one says it was Papadopoulos, not the dossier


Rachel Maddow MSNBC
Rachel Maddow MSNBC
@maddow
·
15h
Congressman Devin Nunes to Bret Baier on Friday night:

“I don't believe that somebody like Mr. Page should be a target of the FBI.”



Natasha Bertrand
@NatashaBertrand
! Big news from @TIME: “Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin,” Page wrote in a 2013 letter




TIME
@TIME
Carter Page touted Kremlin contacts in 2013 letter




Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page bragged that he was an adviser to the Kremlin in a letter obtained by TIME that raises new questions about the extent of Page’s contacts with the Russian government over the years


http://time.com/5132126/carter-page-russia-2013-letter/




Court records include a transcript of a conversation where Podobnyy talks about recruiting someone named “Male-1” by making “empty promises” about “connections in the [Russian] Trade Representation.” Page now acknowledges that he was “Male-1.” Podobnyy and one of the Russians had diplomatic immunity and left the U.S. The third Russian was arrested and eventually expelled from the U.S. in April 2017

The bots had the influence, to get the Nunes memo released. Will human beings be allowed to respond ?


The House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously Monday evening to release a 10-page Democratic rebuttal to a memo authored by Devin Nunes


http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...otes-to-release-democratic-memo-rebuttal.html

The Orange Entity that sometimes sits in the Oval office, now has five days to decide whether to authorize the release of the document to the public. It’s unclear whether he is inclined to do so.


http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...otes-to-release-democratic-memo-rebuttal.html


Is this Nunes walking back his claims ?



As the Ellen Nakashima reported, the application to wiretap Page did disclose that one of the sources of intelligence to generate suspicion that Page might be acting illegally came from a political source. It was mentioned in a footnote on the FISA application. Nunes was asked about this on Fox & Friends. He did not deny the point. Instead he insisted that it wasn’t good enough because the disclosure was merely a footnote."



Notice how The FBI LIED about the Steele dossier has been scaled back to, The FBI did not highlight the truth about the Steele Dossier in the part of the application we bothered to read. So now the main attack on the FBI is about font size. No doubt all the subsequent memos Nunes is promising to release will have additional bombshells.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...fbi-didnt-lie-but-its-font-was-too-small.html

The Biggest! Historic!


In U.S. trading, banks fared the worst as bond yields and interest rates nosedived. Health care, technology and industrial companies took outsize losses and energy companies sank with oil prices.

The slump began Friday as investors fretted that creeping signs of higher inflation and interest rates could derail the U.S. economy along with the market's record-setting rally.


The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 2.66 percent from 2.84 percent. That hurt banks by sending interest rates lower, meaning they cannot charge as much money for mortgages and other types of loans.


https://www.usnews.com/news/busines...-extend-global-losses-after-wall-streets-rout


Wall Street plunges, S&P 500 erases 2018's gains


"irrational exuberance"


Even Wall Street peeks at reality, once in awhile-

"The economy is not perfect."

"higher long term interest rates."

"cannot go on, forever"

"global phenomena"

"online trading, peculiar market"

"myopia," too

"driving without a seat belt..."

(these heavenly opportunities will be never-ending, and there is no need for caution!)

Although information about the dossier's funding is newsworthy, the story had already been broken earlier this year. CNN reported in January that the author of the study, Christopher Steele, was "initially funded by groups and donors supporting Republican opponents of Mr. Trump during the GOP primaries . . . Those sources also said that once Mr. Trump became the nominee, further investigation was funded by groups and donors supporting Hillary Clinton."


https://www.salon.com/2017/10/25/ne...onstrated-some-astonishing-false-equivalency/

The Washington Free Beacon confirmed it originally retained the political research firm Fusion GPS to scour then-candidate Trump’s background for negative information, a common practice known as “opposition research” in politics. Leaders from the Free Beacon, which is funded largely by Republican billionaire Paul Singer, insisted none of the early material it collected appeared in the dossier released later in the year detailing explosive allegations, many uncorroborated, about Trump compiled by a former British spy.



https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/website-with-gop-ties-funded-research-on-trump-dossier



The research was actually initiated in 2015 by “a wealthy Republican donor who strongly opposed Mr. Trump,” according to the New York Times, but when that source of funding dried up the San Francisco law firm Perkins Coie brokered a deal to keep it going on behalf of the Democrats. The Post reported:




https://www.snopes.com/2017/10/25/dnc-clinton-campaign-pay-trump-russia-steele-dossier/


In a statement, the Washington Free Beacon said it retained Fusion GPS to provide research on multiple Republican candidates in the 2016 presidential election. Two people familiar with billionaire GOP donor Paul Singer said he provides financial support to the publication. A spokesman for Singer's firm, Elliott Management, did not respond to requests seeking comment.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...ive-website-trump-dossier-20171027-story.html

gsgs comment-

I am refusing to quote the Free Beacon editor in chief Matthew Continetti and chairman Michael Goldfarb, because Republicans have proved to be willing to participate in a defense of Tonald Drump/Drumpf that involves a colossal pack.of lies.

I recall Steele (?) stating his inquiry started from, and largely substantiated, a prior independent report by Shaeffer (?). And during the process, Steele warned the FBI of his and Shaeffer's (?) Russia findings. My memory is fuzzy and I don't have time at the moment to track that down. (Gotta run in five minutes.) Do you have anything on this?

gsgs comment-


It is Friday.

Democrats have been waiting for an answer.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/emmaloop/d...ussia?bfsplash&utm_term=.sx0KMALe5#.tigg1oEZ9


On Monday night, the House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously to send the classified Democratic memo to the White House, where Trump and his staff would review it and decide whether to object to its declassification, or return it to the committee for expected public release.

Click to expand...

It is anyone's guess, why the White House is saying no to the release of the Democrat's memo. What is being said by the Republican White House, could possibly be all lies.



https://www.npr.org/2018/02/09/5846...ly-release-democratic-memo-suggests-revisions


Trump Will Not Immediately Release Democratic Memo, Suggests Revisions


February 9, 2018

https://www.npr.org/2018/02/09/5846...ly-release-democratic-memo-suggests-revisions



If Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is gone, and Justice Department, Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand is gone, who will oversee the Mueller probe ?

No. 3 Justice Department Official Rachel Brand Will Step Down

February 9, 2018

Her office oversees the Antitrust Division, the Civil Division, the Environment and Natural Resources Division, the Tax Division, the Office of Justice Programs, the Community Oriented Policing Services, the Community Relations Service, the Office of Dispute Resolution, the Office of Violence Against Women, the Office of Information and Privacy, the Executive Office for United States Trustees and the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission.


The news of Brand's departure was first reported by the New York Times.

https://www.npr.org/2018/02/09/5846...partment-official-rachel-brand-will-step-down

NBC Politics
@NBCPolitics
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1h
On Friday, the White House notified the House intel committee that President Trump is "unable" to declassify a memo of government surveillance powers in the FBI's Russia investigation



White House Counsel Don McGahn responded to the committee by saying that “[a]lthough the President is inclined to declassify the February 5th Memorandum, because the Memorandum contains numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages, he is unable to do so at this time.”


President Donald Trump on Saturday accused the Democrats of playing politics with classified information, asserting that their memo countering GOP allegations about the conduct of the FBI’s Russia probe was a trap meant to “blame the White House for lack of transparency.”


They (Democrats) noted that federal law enforcement officials had informed the court about the political origins of Steele’s work and that some of the former spy’s information was corroborated by the FBI. They also noted that there was other evidence presented to the court besides Steele’s information, though they have not provided details.

The Democratic memo is believed to elaborate on these points.


https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-accuses-democrats-of-playing-politics-with-memo

Ironically, it seems as though Wray’s and Rosenstein’s request to protect classified information that might be used to defend the FBI and the deputy attorney general has been used by the Trump administration as a justification not to release that information. Essentially, Trump’s White House is using the integrity of these two men as a shield to prevent the release of information that might both protect Rosenstein and support Wray’s heavily vilified bureau from the attacks of the backers of the previous memo, such as the president himself.


https://slate.com/news-and-politics...-to-block-release-of-new-classified-memo.html


Democrats reacted angrily to Trump’s decision, with House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) accusing Trump of trying to hide the truth. “The President’s decision to block the Democratic memo from release is part of a dangerous and desperate pattern of cover-up on the part of the President,” Pelosi said Friday night. “Clearly, the President has something to hide.”

Despite Trump’s objection to its release and command that it be rewritten, the issue may be out of his hands. The rules governing the release of the memo put Congress in the driver’s seat. Following the Intelligence Committee’s vote to release the memo, the president has the right to object, but now that he has, the committee can either make the changes he suggests or try to override the decision by voting to allow the entire House of Representatives to decide whether to release it.

https://www.motherjones.com/politic...ocratic-counter-memo-on-russia-investigation/


Democrats have pressed Nunes for answers over whether he coordinated with the White House to research and produce the memo’s claims. He told the committee on Monday that “there was involvement in drafting the memo with the White House,” but Democrats were not satisfied by that answer, because it left open the possibility that the administration had aided the production of the memo in some way. Schiff told me on Tuesday that it sounded like the committee’s lawyer had written that response for Nunes. Congressman Eric Swalwell, meanwhile, a Democrat who sits on the committee, told me it's worth asking whether Trump, who is the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation, should have access to evidence that's relevant to that investigation.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...classify-democratic-rebuttal-to-nunes/553013/

Tonald Dfump/Drumpf never passes up on a chance
to puncture, and twist the troll knife.

In the middle of the #metoo moment, The Orange Entity of the Oval office stabs at the voters block that will never look his way-Women.

The pink-hatted pussy power bloc that ruins his spectacles, and draws the cameras away from him.

The Mid-West women's bloc population is turning against him, now that his empty rhetoric has been squashed by what he does.


Ladies, we have taken away his most favorite, longest lasting chew toy in the WH.

"We are men, and we will do what we wish, and what we will- because boys,"will be boys ? That does not fly, when the public is watching.

@gsgs: Do you have anything on the report supposedly Steele based his investigation on, that I mentioned a few posts back? Thanks.