DHS Secretary forced out over Russia

[someoneyouknow]

Ms. Nielsen left the Department of Homeland Security early this month after a tumultuous 16-month tenure and tensions with the White House. Officials said she had become increasingly concerned about Russia’s continued activity in the United States during and after the 2018 midterm elections — ranging from its search for new techniques to divide Americans using social media, to experiments by hackers, to rerouting internet traffic and infiltrating power grids.

But in a meeting this year, Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, made it clear that Mr. Trump still equated any public discussion of malign Russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory. According to one senior administration official, Mr. Mulvaney said it “wasn’t a great subject and should be kept below his level.”

In other words, the con artist didn't and still doesn't care that a foreign government is interfering in our elections, only that any talk of such interference would lead back to the fact he benefited from the interference.

As if to emphasize how unconcerned they are with foreign interference in our elections, the con artist regime eliminated the position of cybersecurity coordinator at the White House last year, leaving less experienced aides to deal with the issue. Further:

Ms. Nielsen grew so frustrated with White House reluctance to convene top-level officials to come up with a governmentwide strategy that she twice pulled together her own meetings of cabinet secretaries and agency heads. They included top Justice Department, F.B.I. and intelligence officials to chart a path forward, many of whom later periodically issued public warnings about indicators that Russia was both looking for new ways to interfere and experimenting with techniques in Ukraine and Europe.

One senior official described homeland security officials as adamant that the United States government needed to significantly step up its efforts to urge the American public and companies to block foreign influence campaigns. But the department was stymied by the White House’s refusal to discuss it, the official said.​

It's funny how any time the subject of Russia is brought up the con artist goes out of his way to defend someone else's country, whines about having sanctions on that country for its invasion of its neighbor, and eliminates the very organizations whose role it is to prevent attacks on this country.

“Russian intelligence’s 2016 covert actions to divide Americans by interfering in our election were so successful,” said Kevin T. Carroll, a former C.I.A. officer who was a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security during the first two years of the Trump administration.

“Putin will amplify them in 2020,” he said.​

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/us/politics/russia-2020-election-trump.html

 

[bodysong]

tRump's minion (Kirstjen Nielsen) was disobedient, and refused to "stay out of it."


Russia is tRump's lifeline, and he comes first, before anyone, or anything.



tRump killed funding, removed everyone that was connected, and that could use the international network to circumvent the information blackout about Russia. Kirstjen Nielsen did not take the hint. She took intiative, and tried to defend America against Putin.

Mueller knows

Last week, special counsel Robert Mueller said in a redacted version of his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that a Russian troll group engaged in a years-long campaign to sow discord in the US -- and eventually to support Trump's election -- by creating and maintaining fake social media personas and activist organizations designed to look like they were run by real Americans.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/24/politics/kirstjen-nielsen-trump-election-security/index.html


Something is really rotten in the state of Kentucky, and it's coming from Russia

The opinion editors back home in Kentucky are not really thrilled with the idea of the Russians getting an economic hold on the state. Not just the Russians, but the Russian mob. At the Louisville Courier Journal, Joseph Gerth is not too excited at the prospect that "by the middle of the year, we'll be in business with Oleg Deripaska, a buddy of Vladimir Putin." Kentucky is looking for $200 million from the Russian to invest in a $1.7 billion aluminum plant there. He goes on to describe Deripaska's "deep ties to Russian organized crime," and the allegations of Deripaska's violent, ruthless, criminal past in Russia.


And you all remember Deripaska—he's good buddies and a former employer of Donald Trump's first campaign manager, Paul Manafort. The Trump/Manafort/Russia and specifically Deripaska (friend of Putin!) connection is deep and complicated and at the heart of the NO COLLUSION collusion that helped land Trump in the White House.

April 24, 2019

dailykos.com

 

[Carnal_Flower]

He's ignoring a real threat to focus on an imaginary one.

Ok, if he wants to do that in his psychotic little brain, but it bugs the crap out of me that he's using the DHS and the US military to indulge his egotistic delusions. It is completely sick.

We're in Dr. Strangelove-land and Rethugs are perfectly ok with squandering our national protection agencies to keep him happy.

It's all so twisted.

Ms. Nielsen left the Department of Homeland Security early this month after a tumultuous 16-month tenure and tensions with the White House. Officials said she had become increasingly concerned about Russia’s continued activity in the United States during and after the 2018 midterm elections — ranging from its search for new techniques to divide Americans using social media, to experiments by hackers, to rerouting internet traffic and infiltrating power grids.

But in a meeting this year, Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, made it clear that Mr. Trump still equated any public discussion of malign Russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory. According to one senior administration official, Mr. Mulvaney said it “wasn’t a great subject and should be kept below his level.”

In other words, the con artist didn't and still doesn't care that a foreign government is interfering in our elections, only that any talk of such interference would lead back to the fact he benefited from the interference.

As if to emphasize how unconcerned they are with foreign interference in our elections, the con artist regime eliminated the position of cybersecurity coordinator at the White House last year, leaving less experienced aides to deal with the issue. Further:

Ms. Nielsen grew so frustrated with White House reluctance to convene top-level officials to come up with a governmentwide strategy that she twice pulled together her own meetings of cabinet secretaries and agency heads. They included top Justice Department, F.B.I. and intelligence officials to chart a path forward, many of whom later periodically issued public warnings about indicators that Russia was both looking for new ways to interfere and experimenting with techniques in Ukraine and Europe.

One senior official described homeland security officials as adamant that the United States government needed to significantly step up its efforts to urge the American public and companies to block foreign influence campaigns. But the department was stymied by the White House’s refusal to discuss it, the official said.​

It's funny how any time the subject of Russia is brought up the con artist goes out of his way to defend someone else's country, whines about having sanctions on that country for its invasion of its neighbor, and eliminates the very organizations whose role it is to prevent attacks on this country.

“Russian intelligence’s 2016 covert actions to divide Americans by interfering in our election were so successful,” said Kevin T. Carroll, a former C.I.A. officer who was a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security during the first two years of the Trump administration.

“Putin will amplify them in 2020,” he said.​

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/us/politics/russia-2020-election-trump.html