Department of Justice

Senate Intelligence Committee refutes House Intelligence Committee whitewash report n Russia

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The Senate Intelligence Committee’s leaders said Wednesday they believed that the intelligence community’s 2017 assessment of election meddling was correct, breaking with Midnight Run Devin Nunes and compromised Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee who questioned the conclusion that the Russians were trying to help President Donald Trump get elected.

The Republican House Intelligence Committee’s whitewash report now stands alone as a highly partisan attempt to exonerate the Trump campaign, and a glaring failure to perform its constitutional duty of congressional oversight. It may also constitute acting as accessories to a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Donald Trump has relied upon the wild conspiracy theories concocted by Rep. Nunes in coordination with the White House, and the House committee’s bogus whitewash report in attacking the Special Counsel’s Russia investigation.

Rep. Devin Nunes should immediately be removed as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and every Republican member on the committee voted out of office this November.

Politico reports, Senate intelligence leaders: Russians schemed to help Trump:

Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday endorsed the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election to help President Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.

It’s a powerful bipartisan endorsement of a conclusion that had been called into question by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, who have accused intelligence agencies of failing to employ proper “tradecraft” when they concluded Russia came to support Trump’s candidacy. Instead, it’s the Republicans on the House panel who find themselves isolated in their position in what has become an increasingly antagonistic relationship with the FBI and Justice Department.

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Cohen payments get curiouser and curiouser (Updated)

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Last week we were left wondering how Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels attorney, got his hands on Michael Cohen’s financial information, which appeared to come from a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR). Avenatti’s memo was quickly confirmed by news media outlets.

We still don’t know how Avenatti got his hands on the SAR report, but we now know how the media was able to confirm the financial information in his memo so quickly: a government whistleblower provided the news media with a copy of the SAR report.

The New Yorker reports, Missing Files Motivated the Leak of Michael Cohen’s Financial Records:

Last week, several news outlets obtained financial records showing that Michael Cohen, President Trump’s personal attorney, had used a shell company to receive payments from various firms with business before the Trump Administration. In the days since, there has been much speculation about who leaked the confidential documents, and the Treasury Department’s inspector general has launched a probe to find the source. That source, a law-enforcement official, is speaking publicly for the first time, to The New Yorker, to explain the motivation: the official had grown alarmed after being unable to find two important reports on Cohen’s financial activity in a government database. The official, worried that the information was being withheld from law enforcement, released the remaining documents.

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The Trump Swamp: ‘pay to play’ corruption

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Over the weekend the New York Times and the Washington Post did some excellent investigative reporting into the shady finances of Donald Trump and his consigliere Michael Cohn. The more we learn about Cohn’s “pay to play” scheme, and the two pending lawsuits challenging Trump’s “pay tp play” scheme under the emoluments clauses of the U.S. Constitution, the more this feckless GOP-controlled Congress has an obligation to investigate Trump’s tax records and financial dealings as president to “drain the swamp”: this is the most corrupt administration in recent American history.

Steve Benen has a decent short summary, The closer one looks at Trump’s finances, the louder the questions become:

Last summer, Donald Trump sat down with the New York Times, which asked whether Special Counsel Robert Mueller will have crossed “a red line” if the investigation into the Russia scandal extends to include examinations of the resident’s finances. “I would say yeah. I would say yes,” he replied, adding, “I think that’s a violation.”

Naturally, this generated no shortage of speculation as to why Trump is so concerned about scrutiny of his finances. For that matter, there’s no reason to separate questions about the president’s finances with the Russia scandal – because as Rachel Maddow has explained on her show more than once, there’s an amazing number of people from Russia who’ve purchased Trump properties over the years. (My personal favorite is the story of Dmitry Rybolovlev, the fertilizer king, who purchased a derelict Florida estate from the future president at an extreme markup.)

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Rep. Devin Nunes would endanger a top-secret intelligence source in his quest to obstruct justice in the Russia investigation

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The New York Times reported last week that top Justice Department and FBI officials “suspect that some GOP lawmakers were using their oversight authority to gain intelligence” about the Special Counsel’s evidence and work product in the Russia probe that could be handed over to the White House.

As I previously explained, GOP House Freedom Caucus members are accessories to a conspiracy for obstruction of justice.

But no one has been more blatant in his attempts to obstruct justice than Midnight Run Devin Nunes (R-CA), Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Daily Kos reported Nunes threatens to hold Sessions ‘in contempt’ for not turning over documents he doesn’t even read:

[Nunes] has routinely demanded documents from the Department of Justice be handed over to him that, given the chance to review instead of actually take into his possession, he has declined to read.

Unfortunately, the fact that Nunes chairs the House Intelligence Committee is more than just a perverse joke by the universe, since he’s wielding his ignorance like a battering ram against the Justice Department’s special counsel investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference.

On Sunday, Nunes threatened anew to hold a Justice Department official “in contempt” of Congress for not producing more documents he has no interest in actually reading. This time, Attorney General Jeff Sessions found himself in the crosshairs alongside Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has previously earned Nunes’ uninformed ire.

“The only thing left to do is we have to move quickly to hold the attorney general of the United States in contempt and that is what I will press for this week,” Nunes told Fox News.

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The incestual relationships of the FAUX News presidency

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FAUX News aka Trump TV was engulfed by sexual harassment scandals over the past couple of years. The pervasiveness of the complaints targeted not only the network’s powerful founder, Roger Ailes, but also primetime host Bill O’Reilly and former Fox News Latino executive Francisco Cortes. Fox News still hounded by sexual harassment allegations:

[It] suggests a culture of misogyny and sexual objectification that extended beyond Ailes’ office.

Current and former employees have described the Fox News environment as archaic, stuck in a 1950s view of male-female relations.

An internal investigation last year led the company to pledge zero-tolerance for “behavior that disrespects women.”

Michael Cohen is Donald Trump’s “fixer” to clean up his sexcapades with nondisclosure agreements (NDAs). Cohen did the same for Elliot Brady, the former RNC deputy finance chair. Cohen’s only other client, revealed in court on Monday, is Donald Trump’s Minister of Propaganda at FAUX News aka Trump TV,  Sean Hannity.

Given Cohen’s legal practice of NDAs to clean up sexual indiscretions, shall we say, it begs the obvious question whether he was hired to do the same for Sean Hannity.

It turns out that Michael Cohen is not the only lawyer that Donald Trump shares with Sean Hannity.

Sean Hannity also employed Jay Sekulow, currently Trump’s personal attorney on the Russia investigation, and Victoria Toensing, a frequent guest on Hannity’s program. She and her husband Joseph E. diGenova, the members of diGenova and Toensing LLP, were recently hired by Donald Trump in the Russia investigation, until they suddenly were not (asserting a unidentifed conflict of interest).

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