Intelligence Agencies

Trump lets the Saudis get away with the murder of a U.S. resident and one of the Arab world’s most prominent journalists

by

After weeks of charges and denials between autocratic regimes Turkey and Saudi Arabia over the assassination of permanent U.S. resident and Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi, last week the CIA concluded Saudi crown prince ordered Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination:

The CIA has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month, contradicting the Saudi government’s claims that he was not involved in the killing, according to people familiar with the matter.

The CIA’s assessment, in which officials have said they have high confidence, is the most definitive to date linking Mohammed to the operation[.]

In reaching its conclusions, the CIA examined multiple sources of intelligence, including a phone call that the prince’s brother Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, had with Khashoggi, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence.

Read more

Abuse of power and obstruction of justice in plain sight

by

Russian asset and crime family boss Donald Trump just keeps digging his hole deeper with the Special Counsel’s investigation.

Yesterday he added two more counts, for abuse of power and obstruction of justice. The GOP House Freedom Caucus co-conspirators who are aiding and abetting his crimes should also be charged.

Steve Benen does a good job of breaking it down. Trump ignores security, crosses ‘red line’ with declassification gambit:

Donald Trump’s abuses have become routine, but that doesn’t make them any easier to tolerate. The president’s move yesterdayafternoon, for example, is awfully tough to defend.

In an unprecedented move that stunned current and former intelligence officials, President Donald Trump on Monday ordered the public release of highly classified documents and text messages related to the FBI investigation into whether his campaign conspired with Russia.

A statement by the White House press office said Trump had directed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Department of Justice and the FBI to declassify about 20 pages of a highly sensitive application for surveillance against Carter Page, a one-time Trump foreign policy aide.

The president suggested two weeks ago that he was considering such a move, but many hoped Trump was just blowing off steam and he’d end up in a more responsible place. That’s obviously not what happened.

Read more

Putin’s puppet protects the Russian mafia, and his connections to it

by

Russian asset – and unindicted co-conspirator – mafia “Don” Trump has systematically been hollowing out America’s federal law enforcement officials who investigate international organized crime since becoming president.

Already he has removed acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates, FBI Director James Comey, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord, FBI Assistant Director Mike Kortan, FBI Chief of the Counterespionage Section Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, a lawyer in the Justice Department’s organized-crime section whose cases centered on international organized crime and money laundering.

Putin’s Russian mafia has infiltrated the U.S. government and has its puppet on the inside of American law enforcement to do its bidding.

Trump’s latest target is Department of Justice attorney Bruce Ohr, an expert in Russia and Russian organized crime.

Natasha Bertrand of The Atlantic reports, Trump’s Top Targets in the Russia Probe Are Experts in Organized Crime:

Bruce Ohr. Lisa Page. Andrew Weissmann. Andrew McCabe. President Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked these FBI and Justice Department officials as dishonest “Democrats” engaged in a partisan “witch hunt” led by the special counsel determined to tie his campaign to Russia. But Trump’s attacks have also served to highlight another thread among these officials and others who have investigated his campaign: their extensive experience in probing money laundering and organized crime, particularly as they pertain to Russia.

Read more

Obstruction of justice in plain sight by Donald Trump and his co-conspirators in Congress

by

Late Saturday night, the government released a redacted version of the FISA Court warrant application for Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.

The application has been the basis of an elaborate conspiracy theory concocted by Donald Trump and his collaborators in Congress that his campaign was “spied on” by the FBI and intelligence agencies only after the Steele Dossier, a claim for which there is no basis or evidence. It also resulted in the discredited “Nunes Memo” from the House Intelligence Committee, which was entirely refuted by the Democratic minority memo.

Trump ordered the FISA Court warrant application released — the first time any such secret evidence in the FISA Court has ever been released —  in a pathetic attempt to revive his discredited conspiracy theory and renewed his attacks on the FBI and intelligence agencies,  after a week in which he sided with Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence community and was forced to walk it back at least four times, before returning to attacking his intelligence community over the weekend.

What we are witnessing is obstruction of justice in plain sight by Donald Trump and his co-conspirators in Congress. This crime is continuing and is ongoing.

Read more

Trump’s Surrender Summit: A Date Which Will Live In Infamy

by

For almost 240 years, General Benedict Arnold has personified the traitor in American history. He can now finally rest in peace, because he has been surpassed by a far worse traitor whom history will condemn and vilify as the personification of the traitor for the rest of time. The name Trump will forever be synonymous with traitor.

To borrow a turn of phrase from Franklin D. Roosevelt: Yesterday, July 16, 2018 – a date which will live in infamy – a president of the United States capitulated and surrendered to a Russian dictator whose government conspired to help him win the presidency. In fealty to this Russian dictator, Donald J. Trump leveled attacks against his own government and its political institutions, and blamed the American people for his own cowardly act of betrayal.

Americans will remember the day when they witnessed their president casually capitulate and surrender to a Russian dictator — without a shot ever having been fired in an armed conflict — to reveal himself as a willing puppet of the Russian government, and a traitor to the United States.

America has a national security crisis. We have a compromised commander-in-chief who must be removed from office without delay in order to safeguard the national security of the United States. The U.S. Constitution provides only one remedy for this, impeachment. Article 2, Section 4, U.S. Constitution.

The only question today is whether Republicans in Congress will rise up to the urgency of this national security crisis and do their constitutional duty to remove this national security threat from the presidency. Their failure to act is silent consent to Trump’s betrayal of his country, and Republicans will be complicit in his act of betrayal. Any Republican who fails their constitutional duty to act must also be removed from office.

This is the litmus test: Do you stand with Trump and Putin, or do you stand with America and the Constitution you have sworn an oath to defend?

Read more