National Security

Latest on Trump-Putin campaign investigation

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The U.S. Justice Department on Friday delivered documents to congressional committees responding to their request for information that could shed light on President Donald Trump’s claims that former President Barack Obama ordered U.S. agencies to spy on him. Reuters reports, Justice Dept. delivers documents on wiretap claim to Congress:

The information was sent to the House and Senate intelligence and judiciary committees, said Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Devin Nunes, said in a statement late on Friday that the Justice Department had “fully complied” with the panel’s request.

A government source, who requested anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said an initial examination of the material turned over by the Justice Department indicates that it contains no evidence to confirm Trump’s claims that the Obama administration had wiretapped him or the Trump Tower in New York.

The House Intelligence Committee will hold a hearing on Monday on allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. election. Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers will testify and are expected to field questions on Trump’s wiretap claim.

Leaders of both the House and Senate intelligence committees, including from Trump’s Republican Party, have said they have found no evidence to substantiate Trump’s claims that Obama ordered U.S. agencies to spy on Trump or his entourage. The White House has publicly offered no proof of the allegation.

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‘No evidence’ to support Trump claim that Trump Tower was ‘wire tapped’

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Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Senate Intelligence Committee chairmanRichard Burr, and ranking Democrat on the committee Mark Warner said Thursday that they have seen no evidence of President Donald Trump’s accusation that he was wiretapped last year by President Obama. Ryan, Senate Intel committee see no evidence of Trump wiretap:

“We have not seen any evidence that there was a wiretap or a (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court order against Trump Tower or somebody in Trump Tower,” Speaker Paul Ryan said in an interview Thursday on CNN’s “The Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer.

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Senate Intelligence Committee chair Richard Burr and ranking member Mark Warner issued a statement earlier Thursday, saying “based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016.”

The statement from the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee marks the clearest and strongest refutation of Trump’s allegations since the President first made them two weeks ago. The senators statement also addresses Trump’s more recent statement that he was not merely speaking about wiretapping specifically.

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Latest on the Trump-Putin campaign investigation

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The Senate Judiciary Committee held a closed-door briefing from FBI Director James Comey today, and let’s just say that the committee was not pleased with the FBI director. Republicans lose patience with FBI on Russia, Trump campaign ties information:

Top Republicans in Congress expressed their dissatisfaction Wednesday about getting answers from the FBI, as lawmakers trying to investigate Russia’s meddling in the US election say they’ve continued to see no evidence of President Donald Trump’s claim that he was wiretapped by his predecessor.

The FBI’s decision to brief the Senate Judiciary Committee comes after the committee’s Chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley, threatened to not schedule a vote for Rod Rosenstein to be deputy attorney general unless his panel got the FBI briefing he and the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, requested weeks ago.

Grassley — a stalwart Republican with a powerful post — expressed his exasperation the FBI hours before a private meeting at the Capitol with Comey. He called the scheduled meeting a “positive step,” but also added: “I don’t want to say that’s enough at this point.”

Grassley said he was frustrated that officials haven’t been as forthcoming as lawmakers would like, and said his committee hasn’t been given the respect it deserves for its oversight of the executive branch.

“That’s very irritating,” Grassley told CNN.

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AP covers the Carter Page connection

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I previously posted about this more in depth in Follow the money: Coincidence or conspiracy? The Carter Page connection.

The Associated Press “Big Story” by Julie Pace reports, Ex-Trump adviser Carter Page at center of Russia storm:

Last year, Moscow’s New Economic School invited Carter Page, a little-known former investment banker and foreign policy adviser to then-U.S. presidential hopeful Donald Trump. It wouldn’t be the last time Page would draw unexpected — and some say outsized — attention for his relationship to Trump, his entanglements in Russia and the murky nexus between the two.

Page, who left the campaign before the election, has emerged as a key figure in the controversy surrounding Trump associates’ connections to Russia. The New York Times has reported that Page is among the Trump associates whose potential contacts with Russia are being investigated by the FBI. Congressional committees probing Russia’s hacking during the election and Trump campaign ties have asked Page to preserve materials related to their investigations.

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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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