Intelligence Agencies

Latest on the Trump-Putin campaign investigation

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The New York Times reported this morning that White House Officials Say Trump Isn’t Target of Any Investigation: “After first refusing to disavow Mr. Trump’s allegations [that President Obama wiretapped him], made in a series of Twitter posts, and instead calling for Congress to investigate them, the press secretary, Sean Spicer, told reporters, “There is no reason that we have to think the president is the target of any investigation whatsoever.”

But this afternoon the New York Times posted that ‘No Comment,’ Justice Dept. Says, Asked About a Trump Inquiry:

[T]he Justice Department on Thursday declined to confirm statements a day earlier from the White House that Mr. Trump was not the target of a counterintelligence investigation.

Officials also said the White House had not relied on any information from the Justice Department in offering a statement denying the existence of an investigation.

The White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, told reporters on Wednesday that “there is no reason to believe there is any type of investigation with respect to the Department of Justice” or “ that the president is the target of any investigation whatsoever.”

But a Justice Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that there was no indication that anyone at the Justice Department had given the White House that assurance.

Asked whether Mr. Trump was in fact the target of an investigation, the official offered a “no comment.”

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James B. Comey Jr., the F.B.I. director, asked the Justice Department after Mr. Trump’s posts to publicly refute the notion that Trump Tower or Mr. Trump had been wiretapped. But the Justice Department has declined to do so.

In other developments,  Martin Longman at the Political Animal blog connects the dots between longtime GOP ratfucker Roger Stone, British white nationalist Nigel Farange, and Julian Assange of Wikileaks. Did Nigel Farage Serve as Roger Stone’s Intermediary?

Yesterday, The Smoking Gun wrote up an extensive article on their contacts with Guccifer 2.0, the “online persona that U.S. officials say was created by Russian government officials to distribute and publicize material stolen during hacks of the DNC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Gmail accounts used by Clinton staffers like John Podesta, the campaign’s chairman.”

The main focus of their article was Roger Stone, however, who had significant online contacts with the Guccifer 2.0 persona, called him a hero, and defended him extensively against accusations that he wasn’t who or what he claimed to be. It’s a fascinating article, and it just became much more urgently interesting this morning after BuzzFeed News reported that they essentially busted Nigel Farage coming out of a meeting with Julian Assange today in Ecuador’s London embassy.

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Follow the money: Coincidence or conspiracy? The Carter Page connection

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Back in January, “Baghdad Sean” Spicer claimed that former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Cater Page “is an individual whom the President-elect does not know and was put on notice months ago by the campaign.”

Per usual, this was false. “In an interview with The Washington Post editorial board in March, Trump named “Carter Page, Ph.D.,” as one of the people he was considering for his foreign policy team.” Trump news conference: CNN’s Reality Check team vets the claims:

Carter Page founded an investment company, Global Energy Capital, and has worked as an investment banker in London and Moscow.

Page has denied the allegations that he met with sanctioned Russian officials, telling The Washington Post, “All of these accusations are just complete garbage.”

That was, until last week in an interview with MSNBC host Chris Hayes. Carter Page: ‘I don’t deny’ meeting with Russian ambassador.

And now this complete reversal from “Baghdad Sean” Spicer’s false denial in January: Trump campaign approved adviser’s trip to Moscow:

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski approved foreign policy adviser Carter Page’s now-infamous trip to Moscow last summer on the condition that he would not be an official representative of the campaign, according to a former campaign adviser.

A few weeks before he traveled to Moscow to give a July 7 speech, Page asked J.D. Gordon, his supervisor on the campaign’s National Security Advisory Committee, for permission to make the trip, and Gordon strongly advised against it, Gordon, a retired naval officer, told POLITICO.

Page then emailed Lewandowski and spokeswoman Hope Hicks asking for formal approval, and was told by Lewandowski that he could make the trip, but not as an official representative of the campaign, the former campaign adviser said. The adviser spoke on the condition of anonymity because he has not been authorized to discuss internal campaign matters.

The trip is now a focus of congressional and FBI investigations into Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election.

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Trump tries to preemptively distract the media from the actual scandal that is just below the surface

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In case you have a life away from politics, you may have missed that the always insecure egomaniacal Twitter-troll-in-chief, Donald J. Trump — after media pundits, without justification, declared him “presidential” after his address to Congress on Tuesday — has returned to his old habit of early-morning Twitter rants this weekend.

This time, Trump’s Twitter rant is meant to distract the media with a bright shiny object from the actual scandal that is just below the surface of recent media reports on the Trump-Putin campaign connections. The intelligence agencies have been “following the money” and reviewing intercept surveillance, and they may be close to a bombshell story that is ready to break in the not-to-distant future.

This is a preemptive attempt by the Trump administration to get  out in front of the story and to gin up the conservative media entertainment complex with its comfort zone, Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Remember that Donald Trump emerged from the fever swamps of right-wing paranoia conspiracy theories — he was the head cheerleader of the Obama Birtherism conspiracy theory after all — when you consider his latest Twitter Rant.

The New York Times reports, Trump, Offering No Evidence, Says Obama Tapped His Phones:

President Trump on Saturday accused former President Barack Obama of tapping his phones at Trump Tower the month before the election, leveling the explosive allegation without offering any evidence.

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A spokesman for Mr. Obama said any suggestion that the former president had ordered such surveillance was “simply false.”

The Washington Post similalry reports, Trump accuses Obama of ‘Nixon/Watergate’ wiretap — but offers no evidence.

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The Richard Kleindienst precedent for prosecuting Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III

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Well, that didn’t take long. Once GOP Congressional leaders began calling for our “Confederate rebel” Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III to recuse himself from the Trump-Putin campaign investigations on Thursday, as the New York Times editorializes, Jeff Sessions Had No Choice but to recuse himself, something he should have taken the pledge to do at his Senate confirmation hearings.

A number of GOP leaders are now asserting that Session’s recusal solves the problem, he will simply “amend” his statements to the Senate to “clarify” his remarks, and avoid charges of failure to provide accurate information to Congress or perjury.

These Tea-Publican apologists (IOKIYAR) need to step into Mr. Peabody’s WAYBAC Machine and set the dial to 1972 for the historical precedent of another Attorney General who lied to Congress during his confirmation hearings: Richard Kleindienst.

Richard Painter, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who was the chief White House ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007, explains at the New York Times why Jeff Sessions Needs to Go:

In the wake of Wednesday’s revelation that Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke with Russia’s ambassador to the United States while working with the Trump campaign, despite denying those contacts during his confirmation hearings, Mr. Sessions recused himself from overseeing any Justice Department investigation into contacts between the campaign and the Russian government. Some members of Congress are saying that’s not enough; they want him to resign.

It’s a bombshell of a story. And it’s one with a clear and disturbing precedent.

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Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III lied under oath to the Senate about communications with the Russian ambassador

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Our “Confederate rebel” Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is already in hot water for having lied under oath during his Senate confirmation hearings about communications with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign.

The Washington Post reports, Sessions met with Russian envoy twice last year, encounters he later did not disclose:

Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney general.

One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s office, at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race.

The previously undisclosed discussions could fuel new congressional calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 presidential election. As attorney general, Sessions oversees the Justice Department and the FBI, which have been leading investigations into Russian meddling and any links to Trump’s associates. He has so far resisted calls to recuse himself.

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