Classified reports have ‘damning evidence’ of Trump campaign’s coordination with Russ

[KingOrfeo]

FBI used dossier allegations to bolster Trump-Russia investigation.

Washington (CNN)The FBI last year used a dossier of allegations of Russian ties to Donald Trump's campaign as part of the justification to win approval to secretly monitor a Trump associate, according to US officials briefed on the investigation.

The dossier has also been cited by FBI Director James Comey in some of his briefings to members of Congress in recent weeks, as one of the sources of information the bureau has used to bolster its investigation, according to US officials briefed on the probe.

This includes approval from the secret court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to monitor the communications of Carter Page, two of the officials said. Last year, Page was identified by the Trump campaign as an adviser on national security.

Officials familiar with the process say even if the application to monitor Page included information from the dossier, it would only be after the FBI had corroborated the information through its own investigation. The officials would not say what or how much was corroborated.

The dossier first came to light when CNN reported that a summary of it had been presented to President Obama and President-elect Trump back in December by top US Intelligence officials.

Comey's briefings to lawmakers stand in contrast to efforts in recent months by the bureau and US intelligence agencies to try to distance themselves from the dossier.
US law enforcement and intelligence officials have said US investigators did their own work, separate from the dossier, to support their findings that Russia tried to meddle in the 2016 presidential election in favor of Trump.

 

[Conager]

FBI used dossier allegations to bolster Trump-Russia investigation.

This is the opposite of supporting your contention that there is "evidence." Did they teach you the word "uncorroborated" at DeVry Law School?

Uncorroborated scurrilous allegations are not evidence of any kind. Especially when based on third-hand, unsourced hearsay.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Plus we already know that the British did it for the Obama Administration...



AND ~still~ the hope of impeachment lures the moths to the flame.

 

[KingOrfeo]

‘Not Trump’s fault’: House oversight chair Chaffetz blames Obama administration for failing to vet Flynn.



Mike Flynn’s Turkish benefactor has ties to Russia and Putin.

The Senate’s investigation into Trump’s Russia ties is staffed by only 7 people, part-time

Uncorroborated scurrilous allegations are not evidence of any kind. Especially when based on third-hand, unsourced hearsay.

Trump’s Russia dossier corroborated: FBI used document to obtain wiretap on Carter Page.

The controversial Russian dossier, which was compiled by former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele and circulated throughout Washington during the 2016 presidential election, was used by the FBI as the basis for secretly monitoring Carter Page, a former adviser on foreign policy and national security to Donald Trump.

A secret court responsible for implementing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) approved an FBI request to covertly monitor Page’s conversations based in part on the aforementioned dossier, according to a report by CNN. American officials with knowledge of the investigation told the news network that the FBI had first corroborated at least some of the information through its own investigation before submitting the request.

 

[Rightguide]

The mere continuation of fake news.

 

[KingOrfeo]

The mere continuation of fake news.

Every new story about the matter is real, so where does "fake news" come in?

 

[Rightguide]

Every new story about the matter is real, so where does "fake news" come in?

The investigation about 9 months old and no charges by the DOJ. Yawn.

 

[HisArpy]

This is the opposite of supporting your contention that there is "evidence." Did they teach you the word "uncorroborated" at DeVry Law School?

Uncorroborated scurrilous allegations are not evidence of any kind. Especially when based on third-hand, unsourced hearsay.

People believe what they want to believe regardless of the truth. Even if it's stupid.

Case in point, a "tip" on a "tip hotline" is uncorroborated yet it is enough to get a warrant. Thus, the Carter Page warrant means nothing to the underlying veracity of the dossier that resulted in the warrant. To say otherwise is bootstrapping.

Thus, the Russian cooperation story is still fake news.

 

[BotanyBoy]

Every new story about the matter is real, so where does "fake news" come in?

The part where they keep trying to conflate HRC's dumpster fire campaign with the election.

Exposing a candidates skid marks to the public is not interfering with an election.

Most sane people understand that a campaign is not an election.

 

[KingOrfeo]

The part where they keep trying to conflate HRC's dumpster fire campaign with the election.

Exposing a candidates skid marks to the public is not interfering with an election.

Most sane people understand that a campaign is not an election.

All sane people understand that interfering in a campaign is interfering in an election.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Sally Yates in the spotlight: Fired attorney general will counter White House narrative on Michael Flynn.

Yates is going to testify before the Senate on Monday that she explicitly told White House counsel Don McGahn that Flynn had lied when he repeatedly insisted he had not discussed President Barack Obama’s sanctions against Russia with that nation’s ambassador, Sergei Kislyak, according to a CNN report. Yates will describe how in a meeting with McGahn on Jan. 26, she told him that she knew Flynn had lied publicly and privately to Trump administration officials about what he had discussed with Kislyak and she conveyed “serious concerns” that this made Flynn vulnerable to being compromised by Vladimir Putin’s regime.

She also is reported to have told McGahn that Flynn could be fired, although she did not specifically recommend his termination. Flynn was fired 18 days after the Yates-McGahn meeting.

Yates’ story will directly contradict the narrative presented by the Trump administration about the events leading up to Flynn’s firing. On Feb. 14, one day after Flynn was removed from his post, White House press secretary Sean Spicer downplayed Yates’ warning by saying that she had merely “wanted to give a ‘heads up’ to us on some comments that may have seemed in conflict with what [Flynn] had sent the Vice President.”

 

[KingOrfeo]

Senate Russia investigators ask Treasury for Trump team financial information.

(CNN)Senate Russia investigators have sent a request to the Treasury Department's criminal investigation division for any information related to President Donald Trump, his top officials and his campaign aides, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee told CNN Tuesday.

"We've made a request, to FinCEN in the Treasury Department, to make sure, not just for example vis-a-vis the President, but just overall our effort to try to follow the intel no matter where it leads," Sen. Mark Warner told CNN. "You get materials that show if there have been, what level of financial ties between, I mean some of the stuff, some of the Trump-related officials, Trump campaign-related officials and other officials and where those dollars flow -- not necessarily from Russia."

FinCEN is the federal agency that has been investigating allegations of foreign money-laundering through purchases of US real estate.
The news comes just a few days after the revelation that Senate investigators sent broad-based requests for documents to four key potential witnesses in their probe: former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former adviser Roger Stone and former foreign policy adviser Carter Page.

Warner added that until the Treasury Department responds with documents, that he will withhold his support for Trump's nominee to oversee terrorism and financial at the Treasury Department, Sigal Mandelker.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Now the Dems are openly using the I-word.

While President Donald Trump appears to have been too naive to foresee that his firing of FBI Director James Comey would provoke outrage, the consequences of his action are starting to become serious as congressional Democrats are now openly talking about impeaching him.

The prospect of a president provoking such discussions less than four months into his term seems surreal but with Trump as president, anything is possible.

“We should maybe have an impeachment clock,” Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., was quoted as saying on Wednesday, the day after Comey’s removal. “And if we did, I think yesterday moved us about an hour closer to having that need.”

Numerous politicians have called for a special commission or prosecutor to be put in charge of investigating possible connections between the Russian Federation and Trump administration or former campaign officials.

“This doesn’t look right given that we know now that the FBI is currently looking into this Russia association with the President and some of his associates,” Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas said in a Wednesday interview with KRIV, a Houston-based local television station.

Green called for an independent commission earlier in the interview.

“This is something that we have to get to bottom of and it’s starting to become something akin to an impeachable offense,” he said.

Other Democrats agreed, including Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.

“Evidence of Trump’s effort to obstruct justice continues to emerge. Lock HIM up?” he tweeted Thursday evening, recycling a once-favorite Trump fan meme calling for the imprisonment of Trump’s defeated presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Given that Republicans control the House of Representatives as well as the Senate, putting Trump on trial in the House, convicting him in the Senate and then making him subject to criminal sentencing is currently an unlikely prospect. But it might become more possible if Democrats do well in the midterm elections.

That scenario was predicted by California Rep. Jared Huffman in a Friday morning tweet:

“Impeachment will happen if handful of Republicans in Congress join Dems to put country above party. Or in 2019 after Dems win the House,” he wrote.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Paul Krugman writes:

For generations, Republicans have impugned their opponents’ patriotism. During the Cold War, they claimed that Democrats were soft on Communism; after 9/11, that they were soft on terrorism.

But now we have what may be the real thing: circumstantial evidence that a hostile foreign power may have colluded with a U.S. presidential campaign, and may retain undue influence at the highest levels of our government. And all those self-proclaimed patriots have gone silent, or worse.

Just to be clear, we don’t know for sure that top Trump officials, and maybe even Trump himself, are Russian puppets. But the evidence is obviously enough to take seriously — just think about the fact that Michael Flynn stayed on as national security adviser for weeks after Justice Department officials warned that he was compromised, and was fired only when the story broke in the press.

And we know how to resolve the remaining uncertainty: independent investigations conducted by officials with strong legal powers, insulated from partisan political influence.

So here’s where we stood as of Thursday evening: 138 Democrats and independents had called for the appointment of a special prosecutor; just one Republican had joined that call. Another 84 Democrats had called for an independent investigation, joined by only six Republicans.

At this point, in other words, almost an entire party appears to have decided that potential treason in the cause of tax cuts for the wealthy is no vice. And that’s barely hyperbole.

How did a whole party become so, well, un-American? For this story now goes far beyond Trump.

In some ways conservatism is returning to its roots. Much has been made of Trump’s revival of the term “America First,” the name of a movement opposed to U.S. intervention in World War II. What isn’t often mentioned is that many of the most prominent America-firsters weren’t just isolationists, they were actively sympathetic to foreign dictators; there’s a more or less straight line from Charles Lindbergh proudly wearing the medal he received from Hermann Göring to Trump’s cordial relations with Rodrigo Duterte, the literally murderous president of the Philippines.

But the more proximate issue is the transformation of the Republican Party, which bears little if any resemblance to the institution it used to be, say during the Watergate hearings of the 1970s. Back then, Republican members of Congress were citizens first, partisans second. But today’s G.O.P. is more like a radical, anti-democratic insurgency than a conventional political party.

The political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have been trying to explain this transformation for years, fighting an uphill battle against the false equivalence that still dominates punditry. As they note, the G.O.P. hasn’t just become “ideologically extreme”; it is “dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

So it’s naïve to expect Republicans to join forces with Democrats to get to the bottom of the Russia scandal — even if that scandal may strike at the very roots of our national security. Today’s Republicans just don’t cooperate with Democrats, period. They’d rather work with Vladimir Putin.

In fact, some of them probably did.

 

[Rightguide]

Sally Yates in the spotlight: Fired attorney general will counter White House narrative on Michael Flynn.

We heard her nothing burger under oath the other day. "He might be blackmailed." Nothing has been made public showing Flynn did anything illegal. Hillary, on the other hand, could be blackmailed right out of her grannie whites by just about every major power on Earth.

 

[Rightguide]

Now the Dems are openly using the I-word.

Too bad it's only a friggin fantasy for the voteless crybabies.

 

[Rightguide]

Paul Krugman writes:

There's no need for a special prosecutor, the Russian collusion bit never happened.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

5 questions about James Comey's firing answered (<<< link)

What happens to Comey’s documents and to investigative files that have already been gathered? Can they be destroyed?

What happens with the Russia investigation until a new director is confirmed?

Can a new director “kill” the Russia investigation?

Can a new director do anything to stall the investigation?

What is the morale of the agency, and how will that affect what happens going forward?

 

[KingOrfeo]

5 questions about James Comey's firing answered (<<< link)

What happens to Comey’s documents and to investigative files that have already been gathered? Can they be destroyed?

What happens with the Russia investigation until a new director is confirmed?

Can a new director “kill” the Russia investigation?

Can a new director do anything to stall the investigation?

What is the morale of the agency, and how will that affect what happens going forward?

Interesting:

What is the morale of the agency, and how will that affect what happens going forward?

Reports suggest that the Bureau has not taken Comey’s firing well: One agent told me that people have been “gobsmacked” by the news. This isn’t surprising, considering that Comey made it a point to foster a good relationship with his agency, personally visiting all 56 field offices—twice—after being appointed director. To be sure, Comey’s public commentary regarding the Clinton investigation had also led to some loss of morale, but that had less to do with lack of faith in Comey’s leadership and more to do with the public criticism that the FBI was acting with partisan motives. The FBI has traditionally been able to steer clear of political minefields even while investigating charged issues—think of the Kenneth Starr investigation under President Bill Clinton or the Valerie Plame leak under President George W. Bush (both cases, incidentally, in which neither president interfered)—so being caught in partisan cross hairs is not a space the Bureau is accustomed to occupying.

On this front, Comey realized that the FBI needed a public relations makeover. Prior to his firing, he had approved a new documentary TV series on the day-to-day work of the FBI, in order to assure the public that the Bureau is “not on anyone’s side.” Interestingly, the series focuses on the FBI’s traditional investigations into violent crime, harkening back to the J. Edgar Hoover days when popular depictions of “G-men” in comics and movies—often promoted by Hoover himself—glorified FBI agents as the ultimate good guys and bastions of justice. At this point, however, the FBI may not need the PR. It’s possible that the doubt cast on the FBI’s ability to conduct its Russia inquiry at all will in fact spur agents to double down on the investigation, restoring the public’s trust—but maybe not in the way Trump intended.

 

[KingOrfeo]

We heard her nothing burger under oath the other day. "He might be blackmailed." Nothing has been made public showing Flynn did anything illegal.

Not all blackmail material is illegal. In any case, it was certainly damaging testimony.

On May 8, 2017, Yates and James Clapper testified for three hours before the Senate Judiciary's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism over the Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.[43] Yates said the FBI interviewed then-National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn on January 24, 2017. Because of that interview she made an "urgent" request to meet with White House Counsel Don McGahn.[44] She met with him on January 26 and again on January 27.[45] She informed McGahn that Flynn was "compromised" and possibly open to blackmail by the Russians. As previously reported, she told McGahn that Flynn had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials about the nature of his conversation with the Russian ambassador.[46] She said Flynn's "underlying conduct", which she could not describe due to classification, "was problematic in and of itself," adding "(i)t was a whole lot more than one White House official lying to another."[45][44]

 

[Colonel Hogan]

Interesting:

I personally thought the other four answers were significantly MORE interesting in light of the rampant speculation involving the President's "true" motives in firing Comey.

How about you?

 

[phrodeau]

There's no need for a special prosecutor, the Russian collusion bit never happened.

If you can prove it, you'll get free hotel accommodations and golf for life.

 

[KingOrfeo]

I personally thought the other four answers were significantly MORE interesting in light of the rampant speculation involving the President's "true" motives in firing Comey.

How about you?

I don't think he fully understands those factors.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

I don't think he fully understands those factors.

Who, TRUMP??!!! LOL No, probably not.

But the point of having those five questions answered, is whether EVERYONE ELSE who is in a certifiable panic about the President trying to halt the investigation understands them.

That's the reason I posted the article. If the President simply cannot DO what Democrats grabbing for the smelling salts are apparently afraid he is trying to do, then why be fearful of the man's impotency?

That is the message the link irrefutably delivers.

 

[Disgustipated]

Too bad it's only a friggin fantasy for the voteless crybabies.

We know you're perfectly OK with Americans not voting.

There's no need for a special prosecutor, the Russian collusion bit never happened.

The investigation about 9 months old and no charges by the DOJ. Yawn.

Yeah, at least you fuckers got Clinton with Benghazi.