Flynn in major trouble for speaking to Russia about sanctions

[TSA]

969364786814312449 Reck Pavlov

Yeah TSA. That didn't go the way you thought it would.

:rollin keep telling yourself that

[djohn2oo8]

:rollin keep telling yourself that

Did you read the article?

[Brazil]

where is the quote from butowsky?

http://nerdpai.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Kick-Buttowski.jpg

[boutons_deux]

Trash knows This The End, My Friend

and he's fatherly trying to protect Javanka, but it's But It's Too Late Baby

Report: Trump Wants His Chief Of Staff To Get Rid Of Jared And Ivanka

The president reportedly wants his daughter and son-in-law out of the White House.

The New York Times reported that Trump privately requested Kelly’s help “in moving them out (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/us/politics/trump-chaos-oval-office.html).” :lol

He also told the couple they should stay, unnamed aides told the newspaper. :lol

Earlier this week, Kushner lost his interim top secret security clearance. News also broke about banking regulators in New York asking several lenders (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jared-kushner-loans_us_5a96fd89e4b0e6a52304458d) about their financial relationships with him.

Trump

“vacillates between sounding regretful that Mr. Kushner is taking arrows :lol

and annoyed that he is another problem to deal with,” :lol

The Times reported.


https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-jared-ivanka-kelly_us_5a98f1b1e4b089ec3538d550?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=__TheMorningEmail__030218&utm_content=__TheMorningEmail__030218+CID_86472328 08121645ec7b7af74b4a193c&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=HuffPost&ncid=newsltushpmgnews__TheMorningEmail__030218

==================

Trump’s Chaos Theory for the Oval Office Is Taking Its Toll

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/us/politics/trump-chaos-oval-office.html

Time for a long weekend golfing a M a L :lol

[djohn2oo8]

969526675951075328
Alex? Dieing? :lol

lordy that spelling

[boutons_deux]

969526675951075328
Alex? Dieing? :lol

lordy that spelling

... indicators of a precise, literate, conscientious, steel-trap mind

[Blake]

You're asking for something that doesn't tangibly exist yet afaik. Make sense now?

There was this guy who talked to some people who talked to other people who are convinced the murder was a cover up.

I demand a formal investigation.

[RandomGuy]

The State Department has officially approved a possible $47 million sale of Javelin antitank missiles and related equipment to Ukraine, the Pentagon announced Thursday.

The move marks a significant escalation of lethal aid to Ukraine in its ongoing struggles against Russia.

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/376351-us-approves-sale-of-210-anti-tank-missiles-to-ukraine
RandomGuy how’s this fit with your theory?

This would be enough to debunk it, IMO.

The theory would predict that the State Department would be overruled, as soon as (if) Hushmoney McPussygrabber finds out about it.

If Trump has been compromised, you can bet that Russia will tell him about it, and ask for it to be canceled. Russia may not care about a few sniper rifles, but will care about this, because that will lead directly to Russian military casualties.

Thanks for the info. This is how intelligent people decide what is true using falsifiable theories. We change our minds when presented with new information. I set out the theory, and what would disprove it ahead of time. I don't attach my ego to it, and will be happy to see it go, because it means that Cadet Bone Spurs might stand up to our actual enemies.

[RandomGuy]

Remember when TSA said leaks bad after loving them for so long?

Whiplash, man.

His reversals when told what to parrot are injuring inducing.

[RandomGuy]

“I’m told”

Thanks for providing more evidence for my theory you fool.

Why would Sessions publicly order Horowitz to investigate the FISA warrant? Why would Trump tweet an “attack” on Sessions/Horowitz the next day? Why would Nunes request to Sessions come out the day after that?

It’s obvious where this is headed and the slow roll out to the public has begun. Horowitz report comes out this month. Your entire world is about to be flipped upside down.

https://media3.giphy.com/media/l0IxYWDltdHEqujnO/giphy.gif

Keep settin dem traps, Wile E

[RandomGuy]

969404302291738625

https://media1.giphy.com/media/tyqcJoNjNv0Fq/giphy.gif

Here's one for you: Seth was murdered by the Russians for his part in infiltrating the DNC's networks. It would explain a lot, IMO.

Get them drunk and off guard, then off them, is a rather classic wetwork trick.

[RandomGuy]

969402082385002496

https://media.giphy.com/media/VJ2B0I6t2HEUE/giphy.gif

Russians had what they wanted. Rich at that point became a loose end.

A lot like the Russian general that talked to Steele.

Was This Russian General Murdered Over the Steele Dossier?
The notorious dossier on Trump that Republicans want to discredit may well have been credible enough in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s eyes to get at least one person killed.

there is evidence that at least one Russian was murdered because of Steele’s revelations: Gen. Oleg Erovinkin of Russia’s State Security Service (FSB). On the morning of Dec. 26, 2016, Erovinkin, age 61, was found dead in his car in central Moscow. Life News, known to be a Kremlin mouthpiece, first claimed on its website that Erovinkin had been “killed,” but then quickly changed its story, saying simply that Erovinkin had “died.” FSB investigators were called immediately to the death scene, and news outlets soon reported that Erovinkin had succumbed to a heart attack. There was no more official Russian mention of him.

-----------------------------------------


Steele dossier notes that Kremlin ordered a coverup after they realized how effective their operation was being at getting their guy elected.

[TSA]

Did you read the article?

Yes I read the article and it's all bullshit. The four people who are familiar with the matter that fed the NYT the story are the same four people who fed the WSJ article that is referenced.

This NYT article is a spin of a previous WSJ spin fed to reporters by none other McCabe/Page/Strzok/Kortan.

"The Journal reported that McCabe retorted to a Justice Department official upset to learn of steps the FBI had taken in the Clinton Foundation investigation, “Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” That would contradict any attempt by Trump or the GOP to claim that he was favoring the Democratic presidential candidate.

The Journal’s story was written by Devlin Barrett, now a reporter at The Washington Post. Spokesmen for the Journal did not return an email message. Recently released text messages from an FBI agent and FBI lawyer involved in the Clinton email case show that two days before the story was published, the lawyer, Lisa Page, and the FBI’s top spokesman, Michael Kortan, were on the phone with Barrett for an extended conversation.

Page worked in the FBI general counsel’s office and with McCabe, and she was briefly detailed to Mueller’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 election. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment, and Page’s lawyer did not respond to messages Thursday night.

Kortan, who has since left the FBI, could not immediately be reached for comment."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/report-said-to-fault-fbis-former-no-2-for-approving-media-disclosure-misleading-inspector-general/2018/03/01/f1e532c0-1ce3-11e8-9de1-147dd2df3829_story.html?utm_term=.6eaf14a3dfc9

https://theconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/page-strzok-text-hillary-1.jpg

“Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” :rollin

If you really think McCabe said this you are stupider than I thought. This was cover for them sitting on the Clinton emails found on Weiner's laptop.



"Senior FBI officials knew about new emails that emerged in the Hillary Clinton private server investigation about a month before then-FBI Director James Comey notified Congress, text messages between FBI agents show.

The messages indicate that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe knew about thousands of new emails concerning Clinton’s private email server during her tenure at the State Department on or before Sept. 28. Comey did not provide information about the emails to Congress until Oct. 28, just days before the election, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday."

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/senior-fbi-agents-knew-of-new-clinton-emails-from-anthony-wieners-laptop-weeks-before-congress-was-informed-report/article/2647765


Those being investigated by Horowitz are scared and scrambling to get false narratives into the media as quickly as possible.

[RandomGuy]

Yes I read the article and it's all bullshit. The four people who are familiar with the matter that fed the NYT the story are the same four people who fed the WSJ article that is referenced.

This NYT article is a spin of a previous WSJ spin fed to reporters by none other McCabe/Page/Strzok/Kortan.

"The Journal reported that McCabe retorted to a Justice Department official upset to learn of steps the FBI had taken in the Clinton Foundation investigation, “Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” That would contradict any attempt by Trump or the GOP to claim that he was favoring the Democratic presidential candidate.

The Journal’s story was written by Devlin Barrett, now a reporter at The Washington Post. Spokesmen for the Journal did not return an email message. Recently released text messages from an FBI agent and FBI lawyer involved in the Clinton email case show that two days before the story was published, the lawyer, Lisa Page, and the FBI’s top spokesman, Michael Kortan, were on the phone with Barrett for an extended conversation.

Page worked in the FBI general counsel’s office and with McCabe, and she was briefly detailed to Mueller’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 election. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment, and Page’s lawyer did not respond to messages Thursday night.

Kortan, who has since left the FBI, could not immediately be reached for comment."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/report-said-to-fault-fbis-former-no-2-for-approving-media-disclosure-misleading-inspector-general/2018/03/01/f1e532c0-1ce3-11e8-9de1-147dd2df3829_story.html?utm_term=.6eaf14a3dfc9

https://theconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/page-strzok-text-hillary-1.jpg

“Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” :rollin

If you really think McCabe said this you are stupider than I thought. This was cover for them sitting on the Clinton emails found on Weiner's laptop.



"Senior FBI officials knew about new emails that emerged in the Hillary Clinton private server investigation about a month before then-FBI Director James Comey notified Congress, text messages between FBI agents show.

The messages indicate that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe knew about thousands of new emails concerning Clinton’s private email server during her tenure at the State Department on or before Sept. 28. Comey did not provide information about the emails to Congress until Oct. 28, just days before the election, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday."

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/senior-fbi-agents-knew-of-new-clinton-emails-from-anthony-wieners-laptop-weeks-before-congress-was-informed-report/article/2647765


Those being investigated by Horowitz are scared and scrambling to get false narratives into the media as quickly as possible.

Inexorable.

[boutons_deux]

Kushner Close to Obtaining Clearance for Other Government Facility

https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5a984e7cdf8dba7b8d2ab62d/master/w_1298,c_limit/Borowitz-Kushner-Close-to-Obtaining-Clearance-for-Other-Government-Facility.jpg

WASHINGTON —Just days after losing his top security clearance at the White House,

Jared Kushner could soon be eligible to enter another high-security government facility, legal experts believe.

According to Davis Logsdon, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, Kushner could be

on the verge of obtaining “long-term clearance” at this separate facility,

which, like the White House, is owned and operated by the federal government.

Logsdon said that, although such a facility lacks some of the prestige of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Kushner would have

access to government benefits

there that far exceed what he has received as an unpaid adviser at the White House.

“All of his meals and housing would be fully paid for by the taxpayer,”

Logsdon said. “And, if things play out the way some believe they will, Jared

Kushner could be receiving these benefits for decades to come.”

While gaining entry to another government facility so soon after losing security clearance at the White House would represent an extraordinary comeback for Kushner,

it would not come without a price

, the law professor warned.

“Jared Kushner might have to put his plans to bring peace to the Middle East on hold,”

he said.

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/kushner-close-to-obtaining-clearance-for-other-government-facility

[dabom]

Kushner Close to Obtaining Clearance for Other Government Facility

https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5a984e7cdf8dba7b8d2ab62d/master/w_1298,c_limit/Borowitz-Kushner-Close-to-Obtaining-Clearance-for-Other-Government-Facility.jpg

WASHINGTON —Just days after losing his top security clearance at the White House,

Jared Kushner could soon be eligible to enter another high-security government facility, legal experts believe.

According to Davis Logsdon, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, Kushner could be

on the verge of obtaining “long-term clearance” at this separate facility,

which, like the White House, is owned and operated by the federal government.

Logsdon said that, although such a facility lacks some of the prestige of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Kushner would have

access to government benefits

there that far exceed what he has received as an unpaid adviser at the White House.

“All of his meals and housing would be fully paid for by the taxpayer,”

Logsdon said. “And, if things play out the way some believe they will, Jared

Kushner could be receiving these benefits for decades to come.”

While gaining entry to another government facility so soon after losing security clearance at the White House would represent an extraordinary comeback for Kushner,

it would not come without a price

, the law professor warned.

“Jared Kushner might have to put his plans to bring peace to the Middle East on hold,”

he said.

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/kushner-close-to-obtaining-clearance-for-other-government-facility

:lol

[djohn2oo8]

969647986748919808

[TSA]

:lol djohn abandoning the NYT article and on to the next

[djohn2oo8]

:lol djohn abandoning the NYT article and on to the next

Nothing you have predicted has come true. How does it feel?

[spurraider21]

"It's over" :lmao

who is it over for?
what will they be charged with?

Stop being a pussy. Name names.
by your own standards, stop being a pussy, TSA

who will be charged? what will they be charged with?

[TSA]

Nothing you have predicted has come true. How does it feel?

The OIG investigation along with Senate and House Intel haven't even finished yet so I've got a lot of predictions hanging out there. But since you asked it feels good man. Chris and I have stood shoulder to shoulder in this thread and never wavered. This thread will provide endless bumps of entertainment for years and years.

[TSA]

by your own standards, stop being a pussy, TSA

who will be charged? what will they be charged with?

Calling me a pussy isn't going to get me to answer anything, it works on others though. :bobo

[TSA]

Nothing you have predicted has come true. How does it feel?

What's it going to feel like when you pay me $500 and I give Chris $250 of it?

[spurraider21]

The OIG investigation along with Senate and House Intel haven't even finished yet so I've got a lot of predictions hanging out there. But since you asked it feels good man. Chris and I have stood shoulder to shoulder in this thread and never wavered. This thread will provide endless bumps of entertainment for years and years.
it already has provided endless bumps :lol

susan rice will be the only person indicted :lmao

[spurraider21]

Calling me a pussy isn't going to get me to answer anything, it works on others though. :bobo
oh, so you're just a hypocrite by not holding yourself to the very standards you set. got it

[Blake]

Chris and I have stood shoulder to shoulder in this thread and never wavered. This thread will provide endless bumps of entertainment for years and years.

Lol probably not for the way you mean

[Pavlov]

TSA wilts under the simplest questioning just like Chris.

:lol shoulder to shoulder

[TSA]

oh, so you're just a hypocrite by not holding yourself to the very standards you set. got it

No, I just don't let name calling get to my head like others here do.

[TSA]

it already has provided endless bumps :lol

susan rice will be the only person indicted :lmao

Susan Rice isn't in the clear and there is still not a single person indicted for colluding with Russia to sway the election.

[TSA]

TSA wilts under the simplest questioning just like Chris.

:lol shoulder to shoulder

Why do you keep the firearm you own in another home?

[Pavlov]

Why do you keep the firearm you own in another home?TSA talking about someone else's gun in the Russia thread. He has to change the subject at this point.

:lmao

[TSA]

TSA talking about someone else's gun in the Russia thread. He has to change the subject at this point.

:lmao

Just wanted to watch you wilt under a simple question, and you did as expected.

[RandomGuy]

Susan Rice isn't in the clear and there is still not a single person indicted for colluding with Russia to sway the election, yet.

Nixon wasn't impeached for ordering a break in.
Clinton wasn't impeached for a blowjob.

[spurraider21]

Susan Rice isn't in the clear and there is still not a single person indicted for colluding with Russia to sway the election.
last i heard she's brave patriot who went out of her way to expose the obama administration

[TSA]

Nixon wasn't impeached for ordering a break in.
Clinton wasn't impeached for a blowjob.

:lol still clinging to Trump being impeached

[spurraider21]

No, I just don't let name calling get to my head like others here do.
nope, you're a hypocrite.

hold others to the standard of having to name who will be charged and with what... refuse to apply the same to yourself

[Pavlov]

Just wanted to watch you wilt under a simple question, and you did as expected.I want to know what your conspiracy theory is about it.

Start a thread about it.

I'll answer where it's appropriate.

[Chris]

Just wanted to watch you wilt under a simple question, and you did as expected.

:lol

[Pavlov]

Susan Rice isn't in the clear and there is still not a single person indicted for colluding with Russia to sway the election.Wait.

Susan Rice bad now?

[Reck]

Calling me a pussy isn't going to get me to answer anything, :bobo

An honest answer for once.

[dabom]

Nothing you have predicted has come true. How does it feel?

Damn. :lol

[TSA]

last i heard she's brave patriot who went out of her way to expose the obama administration

Read the letter to Grassley from Rice's lawyer and compare the dates to when Rice said she found out about the investigation.

https://www.scribd.com/document/372258161/Susan-Rice-Response-to-Grassley-Graham

[Chris]

CNN :lol


969101186283470848

[TSA]

nope, you're a hypocrite.

hold others to the standard of having to name who will be charged and with what... refuse to apply the same to yourself

If being called a pussy forces you to answer something you are a pussy.

[TSA]

I want to know what your conspiracy theory is about it.

Start a thread about it.

I'll answer where it's appropriate.

No thanks, you'll just wilt again.

[spurraider21]

If being called a pussy forces you to answer something you are a pussy.
if you hold others to a different standard than you hold yourself you are a hypocrite

[Pavlov]

CNN :lol


969101186283470848Kim Dotcom promises to spill Seth Rich secrets.

[TSA]

if you hold others to a different standard than you hold yourself you are a hypocrite

I don't expect people to answer just because I called them a pussy.

[spurraider21]

I don't expect people to answer just because I called them a pussy.
neither do i

doesn't change that you're a hypocrite for holding yourself to a different standard than you hold others

[Pavlov]

No thanks, you'll just wilt again.Nope.

You have my word.

Just do it.

Start a thread, post your conspiracy and ask your question.

You are really, really interested. You already proved that.

[TSA]

Nope.

You have my word.

Just do it.

Start a thread, post your conspiracy and ask your question.

You are really, really interested. You already proved that.

I already asked you why you kept your gun in another home in the appropriate thread and you wilted, just like you wilted in here, and just like you would wilt in the new thread I created to ask the same question.

[TSA]

neither do i

doesn't change that you're a hypocrite for holding yourself to a different standard than you hold others

If I expected them to respond because I called them a pussy you'd have a point, but I don't expect them to. This is boring.

[Pavlov]

I already asked you why you kept your gun in another home in the appropriate thread and you wilted, just like you wilted in here, and just like you would wilt in the new thread I created to ask the same question.Look at you -- wilting when challenged.

Like always.

The answer is pretty simple. I love that you and DMC have created conspiracy theories about it

[Pavlov]

If I expected them to respond because I called them a pussy you'd have a point, but I don't expect them to. This is boring.Right, so why don't you just say what charges Horowitz will recommend against whom?

[TSA]

Look at you -- wilting when challenged.

Like always.

The answer is pretty simple. I love that you and DMC have created conspiracy theories about it

If you care to answer you can go back to the appropriate thread where I asked you the first time.

[TSA]

Right, so why don't you just say what charges Horowitz will recommend against whom?

I don't have access to the IG's findings. Just like I didn't have access yesterday when you asked the same question, or last week when you asked the same question.

[Pavlov]

If you care to answer you can go back to the appropriate thread where I asked you the first time.Was it appropriate in that thread?

I don't remember a Pavlov gun storage thread tbh.


I don't have access to the IG's findings. Just like I didn't have access yesterday when you asked the same question, or last week when you asked the same question.You already made a prediction that Horowitz would recommend criminal charges without access to his findings. How is that different, TSA?

[Chris]

Exclusive=> Insider Ed Butowsky: Seth Rich’s Father Confirmed His Son Was the Wikileaks Leaker



Ed Butowsky, the man who offered to assist the family of Seth Rich with the cost of hiring a private investigator, has told the Gateway Pundit that during a December 2016 conversation with the father of the slain staffer he confirmed that he “knew what his sons did.”



http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/wp-content/uploads/wikileaks-seth-rich-leaker-678x381-600x337.jpg


Butowsky further stated that the family was deeply concerned with their son being remembered for helping to get President Donald Trump elected.

Speaking to Butowsky by phone on Thursday evening, he told the Gateway Pundit that during a conversation with Joel Rich on December 17, 2016 at 3:17 p.m., the father stated “we know what our sons did, but we just want to find Seth’s killer.”

“They know — we all know,” Butowksy said.

In an audio recording that I previously obtained, private investigator Rod Wheeler explained that Seth’s brother, Aaron Rich, had tried to block Wheeler from looking at Seth’s computer — even though there could be evidence on it.


Wheeler said that Seth’s girlfriend told him that Aaron Rich had possession of Seth’s cell phones, but Aaron denied it and said “we’re not going to worry about the cell phones.”

Aaron also blocked Wheeler from finding out about who was at a party Seth attended the night of the murder.

“All I want you to do is work on the botched robbery theory and that’s it,” Aaron told Wheeler, according to Wheeler’s claim on the audio. Wheeler said that Seth’s father Joel “does not appear to have any hidden agenda.”

“He said no, he said I have his computer, meaning him,” Wheeler said. “I said, well can I look at it?…He said, what are you looking for? I said anything that could indicate if Seth was having problems with someone. He said no, I already checked it. Don’t worry about it.”

Aaron Rich works for Northrup Grumman, which was named as the fifth-largest defense contractor in the world in 2015, as a lead software developer.

“It’s not just hacking and defending, there’s a lot more to it,” a cyber software engineer at Northrup Grumman says in a video on the company’s website.

An additional leaked phone conversation I previously obtained featured award winning journalist Sy Hersh confirming that Rich had made contact with WikiLeaks.

“There are no DNC or Podesta emails that exist beyond May 21 or 22, last email from either one of those groups. What the report says is that some time in late Spring… he makes contact with WikiLeaks, that’s in his computer,” he says. “Anyway, they found what he had done is that he had submitted a series of documents — of emails, of juicy emails, from the DNC.”

“All I know is that he offered a sample, an extensive sample, I’m sure dozens of emails, and said ‘I want money.’ Later, WikiLeaks did get the password, he had a DropBox, a protected DropBox,” he said. They got access to the DropBox.”

Hersh also states that Rich had concerns about something happening to him, and had shared the DropBox with trusted associates incase anything happened to him.

“The word was passed, according to the NSA report, he also shared this DropBox with a couple of friends, so that ‘if anything happens to me it’s not going to solve your problems,’” he added. “WikiLeaks got access before he was killed.”

892510925244203008


In an email exchange that had been previously provided to me exclusively, Butowsky pleaded with Hersh to go to Congress with what he knew.

“I am curious why you haven’t approached the house committee telling them what you were read by your FBI friend related to Seth Rich that you in turn read to me. Based on all your work, it appears that you care about the truth. Even though, as you said you couldn’t get a second, shouldn’t you tell them so they could use their powers to determine the truth?” Butowsky asked.

In a bizarre response completely contradicting what Hersh is heard saying on the audio recording, he denies having any inside knowledge of the case.

“ed –you have a lousy memory…i was not read anything by my fbi friend..i have no firsthand information and i really wish you would stop telling others information that you think i have…please stop relaying information that you do not have right…and that i have no reason to believe is accurate…” Hersh wrote.

Desperate to find the truth about what happened, Bukowsky continues to plead with the journalist to go forward.

“I know it isn’t first hand knowledge but you clearly said, my memory is perfect, that you had a friend at the FBI who read / told you what was in the file on Seth Rich and I wonder why you aren’t helping your country and sharing that information on who it was?” Bukowsky responds.

Interestingly, a new report published on Thursday evening by the Washington Times also confirms that Rich had downloaded thousands of DNC emails.

“Another aspect that needs to be uncovered is the FBI’s ‘denial’ that its cyber experts who share space with the D.C. Metro police department at Cleveland Avenue in the District, assisted in accessing data on Mr. Rich’s laptop. Not likely. Data on the laptop revealed that Mr. Rich downloaded thousands of DNC emails and was in touch with Wikileaks. The file with evidence of what was on Mr. Rich’s laptop sits with the FBI in a co-shared space with the D.C. police department. According to Ed Butowsky, an acquaintance of the family, in his discussions with Joel and Mary Rich, they confirmed that their son transmitted the DNC emails to Wikileaks,” the Washinton Times reported.

Rich was shot in the back in the early morning hours of July 10, 2016, near his home while he was on the phone with his girlfriend — 12 days before the publication of the DNC emails by WikiLeaks. The police initially ruled that it was a botched robbery — but his wallet, watch, and necklace were still on his person when he was discovered by police.


http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/wp-content/uploads/seth-rich-2.jpg


The report from the Washington Times points out that “the same day Seth Rich was murdered, an FBI agent’s car was burglarized in the same vicinity. Included in the FBI equipment stolen was a 40 caliber Glock 22. D.C. Metro police issued a press release, declaring that the theft of the FBI agent’s car occurred between 5 and 7 a.m. Two weeks later, the FBI changed the time of the theft to between 12 a.m. and 2 a.m. Was the FBI gun used to shoot Seth Rich? Neither the FBI nor the Metro police will discuss.”

Last July, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) — a 30 member group made up of well respected former experts from the National Security Administration, tech companies and other intelligence agencies put out a report asserting that the DNC emails came from a leak, not a hack.

VIPS stated that “forensic studies of ‘Russian hacking’ into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computer. After examining metadata from the “Guccifer 2.0” July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device.”

Additionally, the former intelligence operatives detail how the FBI neglected to perform any independent forensics on the original “Guccifer 2.0,” and assert that “the reason the U.S. government lacks conclusive evidence of a transfer of a ‘Russian hack’ to WikiLeaks is because there was no such transfer.”

Among those who signed on to the report is William Binney, former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center, Larry C Johnson, who is retired from the CIA & State Department, Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst at SIGINT Automation Research Center of the NSA, and many more.

Though Assange has infamously expressed interest in Rich, he has always maintained that WikiLeaks will never name a source. WikiLeaks has offered a $20,000 reward for Rich’s murderer however, and has retweeted articles that asserted he was their source without providing any additional comment.


http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/03/insider-ed-butowsky-seth-richs-father-told-knew-sons/

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Nixon wasn't impeached for ordering a break in.
Clinton wasn't impeached for a blowjob.

Nixon wasn't impeached but when GOP leaders went to him and told him they could not stop it from happening he resigned.

It's going to take the GOP losing their majorities to get rid of Trump. His approval rating continues to tank hitting new lows this week so that possibility is looking up.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

if you hold others to a different standard than you hold yourself you are a hypocrite

:lol like he cares about that either. that is his whole schtick: use your standards against you and be a nihilist dimwit in the meantime.

that account should be treated just like the hater account: opposite day. you get off to arguing with it to merit though.

[spurraider21]

:lol like he cares about that either. that is his whole schtick: use your standards against you and be a nihilist dimwit in the meantime.

that account should be treated just like the hater account: opposite day. you get off to arguing with it to merit though.
much better to talk about koriwhat's identity

[spurraider21]

Exclusive=> Insider Ed Butowsky: Seth Rich’s Father Confirmed His Son Was the Wikileaks Leaker
lol a vague quote from a 2016 conversation is breaking news now

[FuzzyLumpkins]

much better to talk about koriwhat's identity

:lol moral equivalence. how droll.

I was trolling Joey pretty plainly. His melting down because I knew who he was and could demonstrate it to him was amusing for a week or two. You've been blithely arguing TSA and Chris on merit for several years straight now, counselor.

Hey if you get off to it then great. Who am I to judge?

[Pavlov]

lol a vague quote from a 2016 conversation is breaking news nowIt's getting so bad they're recycling conspiracies. Vince Foster journal incoming.

[Pavlov]

:lol moral equivalence. how droll.

I was trolling Joey pretty plainly. His melting down because I knew who he was and could demonstrate it to him was amusing for a week or two. You've been blithely arguing TSA and Chris on merit for several years straight now, counselor.

Hey if you get off to it then great. Who am I to judge?lol

[spurraider21]

It's getting so bad they're recycling conspiracies. Vince Foster journal incoming.
dotcom is shook. extradition appeals must be going poorly

[Pavlov]

dotcom is shook. extradition appeals must be going poorly"Muh lawyers say I can't tell the awesome earth shattering news I've been sitting on for years! It's Mueller's fault!"

[Chris]

969416926253338625

[spurraider21]

969416926253338625


"Muh lawyers say I can't tell the awesome earth shattering news I've been sitting on for years! It's Mueller's fault!"

[Reck]

969416926253338625

:lmao

[Chris]

969642044049297408

[Chris]

PATRIOTS! PLEASE READ! This is a LEAKED DOCUMENT from MEDIA MATTERS & THE DNC!

http://www.matrixfiles.com/DavidBrock/Full-David-Brock-Confidential-Memo-On-Fighting-Trump.pdf

[Chris]

TSA

Reports: Inspector General Michael Horowitz Will Accuse Andrew McCabe of Leaking, Misleading Investigators



Department of Justice Inspector General (DOJ-IG) Michael Horowitz’s long-awaited report will accuse outgoing FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe of improper leaking to the press and deliberately misleading DOJ-IG investigators, according to Thursday reporting in the New York Times and Washington Post.
The New York Times broke McCabe’s alleged leaking to the media first. According to their “four people familiar with the inquiry,” Horowitz’s report will accuse McCabe of authorizing the leaks that led to an October 2016 piece in the Wall Street Journal that revealed on ongoing dispute about how to handle the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails that had just been reopened by the discoveries on disgraced Congressman Anthony Wiener’s laptop. Among other things, the WSJ article revealed that a senior Obama Justice Department official called McCabe “very pissed off” he was continuing his investigation and pressuring him to tack close to FBI polices and avoid tactics like subpoenas and grand juries that close to an election.

“The inspector general has concluded that Mr. McCabe authorized F.B.I. officials to provide information for that article,” the Times sources claim.

The Times characterizes McCabe’s leak, which apparently took the form of authorizing a phone call to the press in violation of DOJ policy, as one harmful to Clinton rather than Donald Trump. However, as the Times notes, the WSJ piece also reported that some FBI agents in the field wanted to pursue a “more aggressive approach” than McCabe was willing to allow.

“Such calls are common practice across the federal government when officials believe that journalists have only part of the story. Rather than let incomplete or inaccurate coverage circulate, officials often try to fill out the picture or provide a defense,” the Times writes, but no indication is made which information leaked from McCabe’s alleged improper authorization.

This was followed late Thursday night by a potentially more momentous Washington Post report claiming McCabe would also face accusations he tried to throw off Horowitz’s investigators and may have conducted his leak through Lisa Page, the leftist FBI lawyer and Trump critic allegedly having an extramarital affair with FBI agent Peter Strzok and together with Strzok considered the Russia investigation an “insurance policy” against Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton.

The Post writes:

The Journal’s story was written by Devlin Barrett, now a reporter at The Washington Post. Spokesmen for the Journal did not return an email message. Recently released text messages from an FBI agent and FBI lawyer involved in the Clinton email case show that two days before the story was published, the lawyer, Lisa Page, and the FBI’s top spokesman, Michael Kortan, were on the phone with Barrett for an extended conversation.

Texts released in January show that Page and Strzok likely knew about the WSJ piece before it dropped.

The accusation that McCabe intentionally misled DOJ-IG investigators looking into the leak is disputed by one of the Post’s sources. The exact nature of McCabe’s alleged misleading is also not clear in the report.

If true, these first concrete findings from Horowitz’s eagerly awaited report add to the growing mountain of woes under which McCabe finds himself. He was forced to resign in January one day after his boss, FBI Director Christopher Wray, read an unredacted copy of House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes’s (R-CA) memo about the infamous Fusion GPS “dossier.” The memo accuses McCabe of using the memo as the primary justification for securing a FISA warrant against Trump associate Carter Page and trying to pass off a Yahoo News! report that dossier author Christopher Steele himself leaked as corroboration.

The Page-Strzok “insurance plan” texts were also made in reference to a meeting in McCabe’s own office, and last month, the WSJ also reported that he knew of the Weiner email revelations for weeks before the Comey made his October 30, 2016, announcement to Congress.

McCabe refused to recuse himself from the Hillary Clinton email investigation despite extensive links to the Clintons through his wife and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, only to do so one week before the 2016 presidential election. This recusal would have come just as he authorized the leak to the Wall Street Journal about the dispute over the Clinton investigation.

According to his November testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Horowitz’s final report is expected sometime this month or in April.

Update: An earlier version of the article mischaracterized the Wall Street Journal’s 2016 report as claiming an Obama DOJ official pressured McCabe explicitly to “discontinue” his investigation. The official only explicitly asked he avoid subpoenas, grand juries, and other overt tactics in close proximity to an election, as is specified by FBI policy, but McCabe reportedly asked if he was being told to stop his investigation.


http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/03/02/report-michael-horowitz-accuse-mccabe-leaking-misleading-investigators/

[Chris]

Russians had what they wanted. Rich at that point became a loose end.

A lot like the Russian general that talked to Steele.

Was This Russian General Murdered Over the Steele Dossier?
The notorious dossier on Trump that Republicans want to discredit may well have been credible enough in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s eyes to get at least one person killed.

there is evidence that at least one Russian was murdered because of Steele’s revelations: Gen. Oleg Erovinkin of Russia’s State Security Service (FSB). On the morning of Dec. 26, 2016, Erovinkin, age 61, was found dead in his car in central Moscow. Life News, known to be a Kremlin mouthpiece, first claimed on its website that Erovinkin had been “killed,” but then quickly changed its story, saying simply that Erovinkin had “died.” FSB investigators were called immediately to the death scene, and news outlets soon reported that Erovinkin had succumbed to a heart attack. There was no more official Russian mention of him.

-----------------------------------------


Steele dossier notes that Kremlin ordered a coverup after they realized how effective their operation was being at getting their guy elected.

Who paid for the Steele Dossier?

[Reck]

TSA (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/member.php?u=7640)

Reports: Inspector General Michael Horowitz Will Accuse Andrew McCabe of Leaking, Misleading Investigators

So, Chris, the report will paint Hillary as the actual victim of the FBI as oposed to them helping her.

:lol TSA

[Chris]

So, Chris, the report will paint Hillary as the actual victim of the FBI as oposed to them helping her.

:lol TSA

Comey didn't do shit. Everyone knows Hillary got the HQ Special.

[Chris]

969745678028234752

[Chris]

Did Fusion GPS’s Anti-Trump Researcher Avoid Surveillance With A Ham Radio?


It seems Nellie Ohr was well aware the National Security Agency can intercept and store every communication on the Internet. Did that affect her decision to become a ham radio operator?


http://thefederalist.com/2018/03/02/fusion-gpss-anti-trump-researcher-avoid-surveillance-ham-radio-license/

[Chris]

969732248772767745

[spurraider21]

TSA (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/member.php?u=7640)

Reports: Inspector General Michael Horowitz Will Accuse Andrew McCabe of Leaking, Misleading Investigators
their source is the new york times.

not fake news?

[Chris]

969773441158172677
969775086583631873

[Chris]

969789098104901632

[spurraider21]

:cry why won't Schiff reveal the secrets?

:cry Schiff is a leaker

[Chris]

Schiff: HEY GUYS I HAVE EVIDENCE OF RUSSIA COLLUSION!

Guys: OK LETS SEE IT!

Schiff: ITS CLASSIFIED LOL

[clambake]

tick tock

[Chris]

Pretty simple

970030742679023617

[Pavlov]

Pretty simple

970030742679023617The simple part is the warrant was renewed three times by Republican-appointed judges.

[Chris]

The simple part is the warrant was renewed three times by Republican-appointed judges.

Not all Republicans are good. Not all Democrats are bad. Not all white people are good. Not all white people are bad. Does this make sense to you?

[Pavlov]

Not all Republicans are good. Not all Democrats are bad. Not all white people are good. Not all white people are bad. Does this make sense to you?Chris, you don't know the criteria for renewing a FISA warrant so save your ignorant conspiracy theories.

[Chris]

Chris, you don't know the criteria for renewing a FISA warrant so save your ignorant conspiracy theories.

First you want our theories, now you don't want them. Pick a lane Pavlov!

[Pavlov]

First you want our theories, now you don't want them. Pick a lane Pavlov!You whined incessantly about my questions, now you want them.

Pick a lane, Chris.

[djohn2oo8]

So, Chris, the report will paint Hillary as the actual victim of the FBI as oposed to them helping her.

:lol TSA

Falling on his face time and time again is hilarious.

[TSA]

The simple part is the warrant was renewed three times by Republican-appointed judges.

What crime did Carter Page commit? Why hasn’t Carter Page been indicted?

[Pavlov]

What crime did Carter Page commit? Why hasn’t Carter Page been indicted?TSA got dem questions!

Demands answers!

Won't answer questions himself!

lol

I'll just say you don't know the criteria either.

[Chris]

You whined incessantly about my questions, now you want them.

Pick a lane, Chris.

True, but asking the same question over and over becomes spam. If that was your intention, I apologize. I'm aware I am engaging with a troll account.

[TSA]

TSA got dem questions!

Demands answers!

Won't answer questions himself!

lol

I'll just say you don't know the criteria either.

Don’t wilt. What crime did Carter Page commit? Why hasn’t Carter Page been indicted?

[Pavlov]

True, but asking the same question over and over becomes spam. If that was your intention, I apologize. I'm aware I am engaging with a troll account.You still haven't picked a lane.

[Pavlov]

Don’t wilt. What crime did Carter Page commit? Why hasn’t Carter Page been indicted?TSA demanding more answers after wilting.

lol

That's not the sole purpose of FISA warrants. You're ignorant about that too.

[Pavlov]

lol Chris and TSA whining about questions -- shoulder to shoulder.

[Chris]

lol Chris and TSA whining about questions -- shoulder to shoulder.

dodgerjohn and Reck aren't good for much besides emoticons and logging out. Its getting boring dominating the conversation.

[Pavlov]

dodgerjohn and Reck aren't good for much besides emoticons and logging out. Its getting boring dominating the conversation.What conversation?

You and TSA avoid actual conversation at every turn.

[Chris]

What conversation?

You and TSA avoid actual conversation at every turn.

Not being able to come up with answers to your impossible questions = avoiding conversation?

[Pavlov]

Not being able to come up with answers to your impossible questions = avoiding conversation?So you're solidly in the whining about questions lane now.

Until you aren't.

[TSA]

TSA demanding more answers after wilting.

lol

That's not the sole purpose of FISA warrants. You're ignorant about that too.

I’m not demanding you answer anything I just find it strange that your wilting so easily.

What crime did Carter Page commit? Why hasn’t Carter Page been indicted?

[Pavlov]

I’m not demanding you answer anything I just find it strange that your wilting so easily.

What crime did Carter Page commit? Why hasn’t Carter Page been indicted?Could be any number of crimes and any number of reasons he hasn't been indicted. They only stopped monitoring him a few months ago.

Because renewals.

Since you're all about questions now -- How can you predict Horowitz will recommend criminal charges when you haven't read his report?

[Chris]

How can you predict Horowitz will recommend criminal charges when you haven't read his report?

Sorry to interject, but we have 4 sources who have confirmed this on 2 of your favorite media outlets: NYT and WaPo.


According to their “four people familiar with the inquiry,” Horowitz’s report will accuse McCabe of authorizing the leaks that led to an October 2016 piece in the Wall Street Journal that revealed on ongoing dispute about how to handle the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails that had just been reopened by the discoveries on disgraced Congressman Anthony Wiener’s laptop. Among other things, the WSJ article revealed that a senior Obama Justice Department official called McCabe “very pissed off” he was continuing his investigation and pressuring him to tack close to FBI polices and avoid tactics like subpoenas and grand juries that close to an election.

[djohn2oo8]

970060023014436864
:lmao

[Pavlov]

Sorry to interject, but we have 4 sources who have confirmed this on 2 of your favorite media outlets: NYT and WaPo.Chris, did you even read that?

:lol

[Pavlov]

And, predictably, TSA withers away....

[Chris]

Chris, did you even read that?

:lol

Damnit, what did I miss?

[Reck]

dodgerjohn and Reck aren't good for much besides emoticons and logging out. Its getting boring dominating the conversation.

What are you talking about?

If you want me to reply to every single mad conspiracy you post, then you're crazy.

The whole Seth Rich story makes me sick. The parents already said their piece. They want to be left alone and his son too.

The Alex Jones of the world won't let that stupid conspiracy die.

[djohn2oo8]

What are you talking about?

If you want me to reply to every single mad conspiracy you post, then you're crazy.

The whole Seth Rich story makes me sick. The parents already said their piece. They want to be left alone and his son too.

The Alex Jones of the world won't let that stupid conspiracy die.

Fuck em. After Trump is forced out, they will have to eat this shit sandwich for all eternity.

[Chucho]

Fuck em. After Trump is forced out, they will have to eat this shit sandwich for all eternity.

LOL, you still seriously think he's getting forced out. He's making it thru this term and you're eating the shit sammich you're hoping TSA and so on will.:lmao

[djohn2oo8]

LOL, you still seriously think he's getting forced out. He's making it thru this term and you're eating the shit sammich you're hoping TSA and so on will.:lmao

No he's not. And you are welcome to leave once he is forced out.

[djohn2oo8]

969673749124567042
det shade though.

[Reck]

LOL, you still seriously think he's getting forced out. He's making it thru this term and you're eating the shit sammich you're hoping TSA and so on will.:lmao

Flying to close to the sun with that prediction, Chucho.

He's one Mueller and congress change away from being finished.

I'd say the likelihood of Mueller finding something wrong with Trump is pretty high at this point. Trump's got a couple of bullets to dodge yet.

[Chris]

970141902287835136

[Chucho]

No he's not. And you are welcome to leave once he is forced out.

No worries, you're wrong and I'll stick around to make fun of a retarded, simple tool like you.

[Chucho]

Flying to close to the sun with that prediction, Chucho.

He's one Mueller and congress change away from being finished.

I'd say the likelihood of Mueller finding something wrong with Trump is pretty high at this point. Trump's got a couple of bullets to dodge yet.

I'm hoping they do, tbh, said it multiple times. I think the investigation hit it's peak and the charges and indictments filed already so be the biggest victories for Mueller. He will finish his term as one of the worst POTUSes ever, but I think he makes it all the way.

[Pavlov]

970141902287835136"Daily Caller upset it doesn't get special treatment."

[Chris]

970187856340815872


“I have to see first what they’ve done. Give us materials, give us information,” Putin said in an interview with NBC TV, according to an English voice-over. “We can not respond to that if they do not violate Russian laws.”

“With all due respect for you personally, with all due respect for Congress, you must have people with legal degrees, 100 percent you do,” Putin said with a smile, according to Reuters. “This has to go through official channels, not through the press or yelling and hollering in the United States Congress.”

[djohn2oo8]

970324236509372421
Makes perfect sense about TSA and Chris

[Spurminator]

970324236509372421
Makes perfect sense about TSA and Chris

This is the least surprising development in some time.

[TSA]

Could be any number of crimes and any number of reasons he hasn't been indicted. They only stopped monitoring him a few months ago.

Because renewals.

Since you're all about questions now -- How can you predict Horowitz will recommend criminal charges when you haven't read his report?

Because that’s how predictions work.

[TSA]

970324236509372421
Makes perfect sense about TSA and Chris

What makes perfect sense? Be specific.

[TSA]

And, predictably, TSA withers away....

And, predictably, Pavlov assumes everyone else will be spending their entire Saturday on spurstalk

[Pavlov]

Because that’s how predictions work.So you can predict Horowitz will recommend criminal charges without having anything from Horowitz at all but wilt when asked what those charges will be and against whom.

That's how TSA works.

[TSA]

So you can predict Horowitz will recommend criminal charges without having anything from Horowitz at all but wilt when asked what those charges will be and against whom.

That's how TSA works.

Could be any number of crimes and any number of reasons he recommends charges.

[Pavlov]

Could be any number of crimes and any number of reasons he recommends charges.Too bad I never made any predictions about Carter Page at all. I said not every FISA warrant is designed to set up a criminal indictment of the subject.

This is how TSA works. He lies.

[TSA]

Too bad I never made any predictions about Carter Page at all. I said not every FISA warrant is designed to set up a criminal indictment of the subject.

This is how TSA works. He lies.”If the government wants to establish that an American is a foreign agent, it must demonstrate that the American is knowingly engaged in clandestine activity on behalf of the foreign power that is so egregious it very likely constitutes a serious federal felony — e.g., terrorism, sabotage, or using false identities while spying on behalf of the foreign power.”

What FISA warrant is designed to not set up a criminal indictment of the subject?

In order for them to get a FISA against Page they needed to show they had probable cause he was an active purposeful agent of a foreign power. Do you believe Carter Page was and is an active purposeful agent of a foreign power? When Carter Page was assisting the FBI to bring convictions in 2013 was he an active purposeful agent of a foreign power? Or did he just become one after helping secure convictions?

(A) knowingly engages in clandestine intelligence gathering activities for or on behalf of a foreign power, which activities involve or may involve a violation of the criminal statutes of the United States;

(B) pursuant to the direction of an intelligence service or network of a foreign power, knowingly engages in any other clandestine intelligence activities for or on behalf of such foreign power, which activities involve or are about to involve a violation of the criminal statutes of the United States;

(C) knowingly engages in sabotage or international terrorism, or activities that are in preparation therefor, for or on behalf of a foreign power;

(D) knowingly enters the United States under a false or fraudulent identity for or on behalf of a foreign power or, while in the United States, knowingly assumes a false or fraudulent identity for or on behalf of a foreign power; or

(E) knowingly aids or abets any person in the conduct of activities described in subparagraph (A), (B), or (C) or knowingly conspires with any person to engage in activities described in subparagraph (A), (B), or (C).

[Pavlov]

Heh, TSA demands I speculate more than he did before wilting.

This is how TSA works.

All I know is Republican appointed judges kept renewing the warrant.

I'd ask TSA what the criteria for renewing a warrant are, but he would wilt.

[djohn2oo8]

Heh, TSA demands I speculate more than he did before wilting.

This is how TSA works.

All I know is Republican appointed judges kept renewing the warrant.

I'd ask TSA what the criteria for renewing a warrant are, but he would wilt.

:lmao

[TSA]

Heh, TSA demands I speculate more than he did before wilting.

This is how TSA works.

All I know is Republican appointed judges kept renewing the warrant.

I'd ask TSA what the criteria for renewing a warrant are, but he would wilt.

Merely some follow up questions to the statement you just made.

What FISA warrant is designed to not set up a criminal indictment of the subject?

[Pavlov]

Merely some follow up questions to the statement you just made.

What FISA warrant is designed to not set up a criminal indictment of the subject?FISA warrants operate on reasonable suspicion, not concrete proof: The FBI doesn’t have to prove somebody is a spy or a criminal to get a FISA warrant. Instead, they have to prove they have a reasonable suspicion somebody is an agent of a foreign power, which is not just spies and terrorists, but also anybody who aids and abets them, even unknowingly.

https://uproxx.com/news/what-is-fisa-warrant-carter-page-russia-devin-nunes/

Since you are so into questions, I'll ask you one -- what are the criteria for renewing a FISA warrant, TSA?

[Chris]

970367989341179904

[TSA]

FISA warrants operate on reasonable suspicion, not concrete proof: The FBI doesn’t have to prove somebody is a spy or a criminal to get a FISA warrant. Instead, they have to prove they have a reasonable suspicion somebody is an agent of a foreign power, which is not just spies and terrorists, but also anybody who aids and abets them, even unknowingly.

https://uproxx.com/news/what-is-fisa-warrant-carter-page-russia-devin-nunes/

Since you are so into questions, I'll ask you one -- what are the criteria for renewing a FISA warrant, TSA?

djohn has already posted the criteria as laid out by the former FBI chick.

Grassley and Graham said the FBI relied heavily on the Steele dossier in the application and renewal. How was the FBI able to convince the FISC Page was participating in one the following? And where does it say unknowingly fits the criteria?

A) knowingly engages in clandestine intelligence gathering activities for or on behalf of a foreign power, which activities involve or may involve a violation of the criminal statutes of the United States;

(B) pursuant to the direction of an intelligence service or network of a foreign power, knowingly engages in any other clandestine intelligence activities for or on behalf of such foreign power, which activities involve or are about to involve a violation of the criminal statutes of the United States;

(C) knowingly engages in sabotage or international terrorism, or activities that are in preparation therefor, for or on behalf of a foreign power;

(D) knowingly enters the United States under a false or fraudulent identity for or on behalf of a foreign power or, while in the United States, knowingly assumes a false or fraudulent identity for or on behalf of a foreign power; or

(E) knowingly aids or abets any person in the conduct of activities described in subparagraph (A), (B), or (C) or knowingly conspires with any person to engage in activities described in subparagraph (A), (B), or (C).

[TSA]

Just followed both links in the uproxx article and looks like the author pulled unknowingly out of his ass. Can you back up that claim?

[Pavlov]

Just followed both links in the uproxx article and looks like the author pulled unknowingly out of his ass. Can you back up that claim?Sorry, you have a question pending. Nothing more until you answer.

What are the criteria for renewing a FISA warrant, TSA?

[TSA]

Sorry, you have a question pending. Nothing more until you answer.

What are the criteria for renewing a FISA warrant, TSA?

Already posted in this thread.

https://www.justsecurity.org/39886/high-bar-fisa-warrant-monitor-carter-page/

https://www.justsecurity.org/38422/aint-easy-fisa-warrant-fbi-agent/

Can you provide anything backing the claim of unknowingly yes or no?

[TSA]

970283888860979200

970283411750473728

[Pavlov]

Already posted in this thread.

https://www.justsecurity.org/39886/high-bar-fisa-warrant-monitor-carter-page/

https://www.justsecurity.org/38422/aint-easy-fisa-warrant-fbi-agent/

Can you provide anything backing the claim of unknowingly yes or no?
Sorry. I'll need the relevant passages like I post d.

Thanks.

[TSA]

Sorry. I'll need the relevant passages like I post d.

Thanks.


Your “relevant” passage is what I’m questioning. What statute says a FISA warrant can be granted on a person who is unknowingly an agent of a foreign power?

[Pavlov]

Your “relevant” passage is what I’m questioning. What statute says a FISA warrant can be granted on a person who is unknowingly an agent of a foreign power?As soon as you give me the relevant passage as I did, we can proceed.

What are the criteria for renewing a FISA warrant, TSA?

[Pavlov]

....the current system allows a U.S. person about whom there is no suspicion of being a terrorist or engaging in other illegal activity but who unknowingly corresponds with the target of a Section 702 proceeding -- perhaps a relative or professional colleague or old friend -- to have his or her correspondence with the target, over a period of several years, collected, reviewed at will by intelligence analysts, and retained in a FISA data bank.

https://www.nsa.gov/about/civil-liberties/resources/assets/files/pclob_section_702_report.pdf

This may or may not apply to Page, but it served the purpose for your stalling.

So where's that relevant passage that does apply to the renewal of Carter Page's FISA warrant, TSA?

[TSA]

https://www.nsa.gov/about/civil-liberties/resources/assets/files/pclob_section_702_report.pdf

This may or may not apply to Page, but it served the purpose for your stalling.

So where's that relevant passage that does apply to the renewal of Carter Page's FISA warrant, TSA?Irrelevant passage and does not apply to Page.

Page was the target, so how would the FBI convince the FISC to grant a FISA warrant if Page was unknowingly acting as an agent of a foreign power?

[Pavlov]

Irrelevant passage and does not apply to Page.

Page was the target, so how would the FBI convince the FISC to grant a FISA warrant if Page was unknowingly acting as an agent of a foreign power?I never said the FBI considered him to be unknowing so your questions are irrelevant.

You have a relevant passage to produce. So where's that relevant passage that does apply to the renewal of Carter Page's FISA warrant, TSA?

[TSA]

I never said the FBI considered him to be unknowing so your questions are irrelevant.

You have a relevant passage to produce. So where's that relevant passage that does apply to the renewal of Carter Page's FISA warrant, TSA?

You posted a passage saying the FBI could obtain a FISA warrant even if Page was unknowing. Did you not mean to post that or was the author of the passage you posted full of shit?

[Pavlov]

You posted a passage saying the FBI could obtain a FISA warrant even if Page was unknowing. Did you not mean to post that or was the author of the passage you posted full of shit?You asked for one. It had nothing to do with the particular case of Page.

I never said the FBI considered him to be unknowing so your questions are irrelevant.

You have a relevant passage to produce. So where's that relevant passage that does apply to the renewal of Carter Page's FISA warrant, TSA?

You're wilting.

[TSA]

You asked for one. It had nothing to do with the particular case of Page.

I never said the FBI considered him to be unknowing so your questions are irrelevant.

You have a relevant passage to produce. So where's that relevant passage that does apply to the renewal of Carter Page's FISA warrant, TSA?

You're wilting.

I’m just trying to get you to clear up a strange claim I’ve never once heard. Can the FBI be granted a FISA warrant on a US person who is unknowingly acting as an agent of a foreign power yes or no?

[Pavlov]

I’m just trying to get you to clear up a strange claim I’ve never once heard. Can the FBI be granted a FISA warrant on a US person who is unknowingly acting as an agent of a foreign power yes or no?Sorry, you're behind a couple questions.

You have a relevant passage to produce. So where's that relevant passage that does apply to the renewal of Carter Page's FISA warrant, TSA?

You were doing so well half answering one question. Now you're wilting.

[TSA]

Sorry, you're behind a couple questions.

You have a relevant passage to produce. So where's that relevant passage that does apply to the renewal of Carter Page's FISA warrant, TSA?

You were doing so well half answering one question. Now you're wilting.

Sorry but we still need to resolve your passage.

Can the FBI be granted a FISA warrant on a US person who is unknowingly acting as an agent of a foreign power yes or no?

After you answer this clean up your question because I don’t even get what you’re looking for concerning FISA renewals.

[Pavlov]

Sorry but we still need to resolve your passage.Sorry, you're too far behind and need to catch up. You have a relevant passage to produce. So where's that relevant passage that does apply to the renewal of Carter Page's FISA warrant, TSA?

[TSA]

Sorry, you're too far behind and need to catch up. You have a relevant passage to produce. So where's that relevant passage that does apply to the renewal of Carter Page's FISA warrant, TSA?

Fetal wilt position now. I’ll check back in tomorrow to see if you get watered.

[Pavlov]

Fetal wilt position now. I’ll check back in tomorrow to see if you get watered.Sorry, you wilted and will never recover.

I provided the source and passage you asked for, then you moved the goalpost. If you think it's all bullshit from the author, that's fine.

You will never post the actual criteria for renewing a FISA warrant because it destroys basically everything you now want to believe.

lol

[Chris]

970475500652052480

[Pavlov]

970475500652052480How can you be editor in chief of the Washington Reporter when you're based in LA?

[Chris]

970503582595338240

[Reck]

970503582595338240

Time to let this one go, Chris.

[Chris]

Time to let this one go, Chris.

Sorry Reck, no Comey there to sweep this one under the rug. IG report coming this week.

[Reck]

Sorry Reck, no Comey there to sweep this one under the rug. IG report coming this week.

It won’t change anything.

[Chris]

It won’t change anything.


That's wishful thinking. Schiff hits the fan soon :corn:

[Chris]

Jeff Sessions: DOJ Investigating Illegal Leak of Michael Flynn’s Phone Call


http://media.breitbart.com/media/2018/03/Mike-Flynn-Drew-AngererGetty-Images-640x360.jpg



Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a recent interview that he was investigating who illegally leaked former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s phone calls to the media.
Asked specifically by Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo if his office was investigating the leak, he responded: “That is a violation of the law, to leak classified documents, and it is being investigated.”

Those comments were overshadowed by his remarks that alleged FBI abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were being investigated. Sessions later said it was actually the Justice Department Inspector General investigating that matter, not DOJ prosecutors, prompting a strong rebuke from President Trump earlier this week.

However, it appears that the Flynn leak is being handled by the Justice Department. Breitbart News asked Justice Department Press Secretary Sarah Isgur Flores about Sessions’ comments and whether the leak is being investigated by the DOJ or the DOJ IG. Flores indicated the former.

“Criminal unauthorized disclosures of classified material are investigated by the national security division,” she said.

Last August, Sessions stood up a task force dedicated to investigating leaks. He did not indicate during the recent interview when anything might be announced, but said the leaks are being investigated “aggressively.”

“I will say this, the last two years before I became Attorney General there were – each year there were three open investigations of classified leaks. Now we have 27, we’re going after this aggressively. I am directing it personally. Some of the matters involve this matter and some of it is a matter I am not recused on and we’re pursuing it aggressively,” he said during the interview earlier this month.

In December 2016, Flynn, then the incoming national security adviser, spoke with U.S. Ambassador to Russia Sergei Kislyak via phone, to discuss sanctions the Obama administration had just enacted on Moscow, in response to election interference.

A “senior U.S. government official” then told the Washington Post’s David Ignatius that Flynn had phoned Kislyak several times on December 29, 2016.

The January 12, 2017, article asked: “What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions?” It then questioned whether Flynn had violated the “spirit” of “the Logan Act,” a never-enforced law that bars U.S. citizens from discussing U.S. disputes with a foreign government.

“Current and former U.S. officials” then illegally leaked the contents of that call — which was classified intelligence — to the Post, which ran another story two weeks later, on February 9, 2017. In that story, they told the Post that Flynn “privately discussed” the Obama sanctions, contrary to what Trump officials had said publicly.

Although the FBI reportedly concluded he did nothing wrong during his calls, Flynn’s alleged lying to other Trump administration officials purportedly led to his firing.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/03/02/jeff-sessions-doj-investigating-illegal-leak-of-michael-flynns-phone-call/


https://media2.giphy.com/media/tyqcJoNjNv0Fq/giphy.gif

[Pavlov]

970503582595338240Too bad for you it wasn't necessary.

[Chris]

Too bad for you it wasn't necessary.

Too bad you won't answer TSA about det one. Don't blame you though.

[djohn2oo8]

970635034704035840
lmao

[djohn2oo8]

970647669168205824
lol already got em

[Pavlov]

Too bad you won't answer TSA about det one. Don't blame you though.

I did. He posted about the answer and wilted.

Again.

[djohn2oo8]

970699291911102465
Lordy!

[djohn2oo8]

970696658995613696
Lordy!

[djohn2oo8]

970696658995613696
Lordy!

Now CNN reporting the same. Lordy!!!

[djohn2oo8]

970715684899401728
:lmao

[djohn2oo8]

970715684899401728
:lmao

970709701695479809
CROFL

[RandomGuy]

Scoop: Mueller's hit list (subpoenas for texts, emails, etc)


Carter Page
Corey Lewandowski
Donald J. Trump
Hope Hicks
Keith Schiller
Michael Cohen
Paul Manafort
Rick Gates
Roger Stone
Steve Bannon
John Podesta
Hillary Clinton

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/04/axios-reports-robert-mueller-grand-jury-subpoena-donald-trump-russia-investigation.html

:lol TSA



Axios has reviewed a Grand Jury subpoena that Robert Mueller's team sent to a witness last month.

What Mueller is asking for: Mueller is subpoenaing all communications — meaning emails, texts, handwritten notes, etc. — that this witness sent and received [with list-RG] from November 1, 2015, to the present. Notably, Trump announced his campaign for president five months earlier — on June 16, 2015.

Bottom line: In December, the president's lawyer Ty Cobb told me the White House would be free of the Mueller investigation "shortly after the first of the year absent some unforeseen delay."

We know very little about what's keeping the investigators so busy, but the breadth of this subpoena means Mueller's team could easily stumble into goodies about Trump's inner circle given so many people are coughing up material. (Cobb didn't respond to a request for comment.)

[djohn2oo8]

Scoop: Mueller's hit list (subpoenas for texts, emails, etc)


Carter Page
Corey Lewandowski
Donald J. Trump
Hope Hicks
Keith Schiller
Michael Cohen
Paul Manafort
Rick Gates
Roger Stone
Steve Bannon
John Podesta
Hillary Clinton

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/04/axios-reports-robert-mueller-grand-jury-subpoena-donald-trump-russia-investigation.html

:lol TSA

Mueller subpoenaed a witness regarding comms with all. those people.

[RandomGuy]

Mueller subpoenaed a witness regarding comms with all. those people.

As noted. The timeline of course shows that Mueller is looking at communications DURING THE ELECTION.

[boutons_deux]

Kelly Reportedly Angered By Ivanka and Jared’s ‘Freelancing,’ Questions What They Do All Day


White House chief of staff John Kelly is reportedly unsure

how President Donald Trump’s relatives-turned-advisers Jared Kushnerand Ivanka Trump spend their days and

has grown frustrated in their ominous roles.

In a report released by the Associated Press (https://apnews.com/50e878580b634f5f9f65538bda26f1a2), sources informed the outlet Trump’s top staffer is

furious at the president’s daughter and son-in-law for influencing policy decisions in a “freelancing” style —

often bucking the official stance of the administration in last-second efforts to change the president’s mind.

Per the AP, “He blames them for changing Trump’s mind at the last minute and questions what exactly they do all day, according to one White House official and an outside ally.”

Additionally, Kelly and Kushner had recent preexisting beef over security clearance issues.

https://www.mediaite.com/online/kelly-reportedly-angered-by-ivanka-and-jareds-freelancing-questions-what-they-do-all-day/

That's why Jarvanka want Kelly replaced with an even more sycophatic asshole.

[djohn2oo8]

970728152099037184

:lmao

[djohn2oo8]

970729413225664513
Ruh roh. Seems like Trump himself directed Cohen to pay her off, which makes this a CRIMINAL act. A Felony to be exact. Lordy!

http://cashmereagency.com/content/uploads/2015/10/hotline3.gif

[djohn2oo8]

970734306565001219
lots of people poisoned and shot dead in the street over a "nothingburger"

[boutons_deux]

Republicans going after Christopher Steele because

he is credible, respected, and damning for Trump (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/3/5/1746631/-Republicans-going-after-Christopher-Steele-because-he-is-credible-respected-and-damning-for-Trump)

The New Yorker has an extended profile (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/christopher-steele-the-man-behind-the-trump-dossier), showing again the depth of Steele’s experience in Russia and the extent to which he was trusted by agencies on both sides of the Atlantic.

Steele had spent more than twenty years in M.I.6, most of it focussing on Russia.

For three years, in the nineties, he spied in Moscow under diplomatic cover.

Between 2006 and 2009, he ran the service’s Russia desk, at its headquarters, in London.

He was fluent in Russian, and

widely considered to be an expert on the country.


But while Steele is an expert on Russian deceptions and dirty tricks, he failed to appreciate just how many of the same techniques would be applied to him in the United States.

Especially when Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham decided that filing a criminal referral against Steele would be a nice little distraction for Trump.

And so Steele, on that January night, was

stunned to learn that U.S. politicians were calling him a criminal.

He told Christopher Burrows, with whom he co-founded Orbis, that the sensation was “a feeling like vertigo.”


Because Steele, despite his Russian experience, naively

expected that in the United States such a charge would involve something like evidence, and couldn’t be pushed for purely political purposes.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/3/5/1746631/-Republicans-going-after-Christopher-Steele-because-he-is-credible-respected-and-damning-for-Trump

Steele didn't realize what a shit hole the oligarchy's whored Repugs have become

[djohn2oo8]

970724201408548864

[djohn2oo8]

970745773976518656
Sorry Sam, you don't have a choice. And dis week gon be fun.

[djohn2oo8]

970735869337448450
:rollin

[djohn2oo8]

970745773976518656
Sorry Sam, you don't have a choice. And dis week gon be fun.

970752074827759616

:lmao

[dabom]

970752074827759616

:lmao

:lol

[boutons_deux]

Mueller is casting a wide net. We now know the target is Trump.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is now directly gunning for President Trump — and not just on one front.

It appears that Mueller is investigating whether Trump himself committed misconduct or possible criminality on two fronts, and possibly more.

NBC reports that the subpoena suggests Mueller is focused, among other things, on determining what Trump himself knew about Russian sabotage of the 2016 election as it was happening.

the publicly known facts already point to Trump’s centrality. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. eagerly held a meeting in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer fully expecting (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/11/donald-trump-jr-s-emails-about-meeting-a-russian-government-attorney-annotated/?utm_term=.1ddec7bd5d16) that he’d be getting dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government.

It has not been established whether Donald Trump knew about that meeting. But recall that Trump himself helped draft the initial statement misleading the nation (https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/07/12/how-trump-may-have-helped-don-jr-lie-about-his-explosive-russia-meeting/?utm_term=.0483cb87ec92) about the real purpose of that meeting.

Also recall that former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon told author Michael Wolff (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/03/donald-trump-russia-steve-bannon-michael-wolff) that, in his view, the “chance that Don Jr. did not walk” the Russians “up to his father’s office on the twenty-sixth floor is zero.”

“The president in particular is right in the middle of questions about Russian interference,”

Trump has acted methodically to hamstring the Mueller probe

* NOTHING FROM CONGRESS ON ELECTION SECURITY:

accused Republicans of refusing to forcefully condemn Russian sabotage of the 2016 election. The Post adds this (https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/former-obama-chief-of-staff-said-top-senate-republican-watered-down-pre-election-russia-warning/2018/03/04/85b92940-1fd0-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html?utm_term=.a725cf18ec3b):

Not one congressional panel looking into the Russia probe has released a bipartisan plan for how to strengthen election security, even though the 2018 primary season begins in certain states this month. The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is also investigating Russian intervention, is expected to release recommendations later this month, though that will not mark the end of its probe.


And we have heard very little from the administration about its plans, ever since it was reported that Trump has not held a single Cabinet-level meeting (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/donald-trump-pursues-vladimir-putin-russian-election-hacking/?utm_term=.304dda664a7c) on the threat of more sabotage.

* NOTHING FROM STATE DEPARTMENT ON ELECTION SECURITY: The New York Times reports that the State Department has spent none of the $120 million allotted to it (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/04/world/europe/state-department-russia-global-engagement-center.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2F politics&action=click&contentCollection=politics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront) for countering foreign sabotage of our elections:

* QUOTE OF THE WEEKEND, TRUMP-IS-A-DECISIVE LEADER EDITION:

On “Meet the Press,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was pressed to say whether Trump’s decision on tariffs is final. He replied (https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-march-4-2018-n853041):


“Whatever his final decision is, is what will happen. … If he says something different, it’ll be something different. I have no reason to think he’s going to change. … He has made a decision at this point … If he for some reason should change his mind, then it’ll change.” :lol




The most senior members of Trump’s administration haven’t got any earthly clue where the strong and decisive businessman president will end up. :lol

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/03/05/mueller-is-casting-a-wide-net-we-now-know-the-target-is-trump/?utm_term=.0274e1e4d3ab

[boutons_deux]

Pootin vetoed Romney for Secy of State, and got his BFF BigOil man Rexxon

"This memo, which did not surface publicly with the others, is shorter than the rest, and is based on one source, described as “a senior Russian official.”

The official said that he was merely relaying talk circulating in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but what he’d heard was astonishing: people were saying that the Kremlin had intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney.

(During Romney’s run for the White House in 2012, he was notably hawkish on Russia, calling it the single greatest threat to the U.S.)

The memo said that the Kremlin, through unspecified channels, had asked Trump to appoint someone who would be prepared to lift Ukraine-related sanctions, and

who would coöperate on security issues of interest to Russia, such as the conflict in Syria.

If what the source heard was true, then a foreign power was exercising pivotal influence over U.S. foreign policy—and an incoming President.

And of course Trump went on to appoint Rex Tillerson —

a man whose entire resume consisted of his ability to reach a deal that would make billions for Moscow, and

also a man who had a personal stake in having the Ukraine-related sanctions lifted. "

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/3/5/1746631/-Republicans-going-after-Christopher-Steele-because-he-is-credible-respected-and-damning-for-Trump

Trash such a compromised, traitorous, dickless "asset" for so-called hardass Pootin

[RandomGuy]

970735869337448450
:rollin

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/03/06/world/06panama1/merlin_135051165_1a6a73c0-9ece-4dda-8dbc-d916563da81a-master768.jpg

[boutons_deux]

Thugs, Leeches, Shouting and Shoving at Trump Hotel in Panama


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/03/world/americas/donald-trump-panama-hotel-orestes-fintiklis.html

[Reck]

This Numberg guy is melting down calf tats style. :lol

970744739984236546

970770940391903232

[dabom]

Boom. :lol

[Pavlov]

This Numberg guy is melting down calf tats style. :lol

970744739984236546

970770940391903232

https://giant.gfycat.com/UnripeSomeHorseshoecrab.gif

[clambake]

shoulder to shoulder

[Chris]

970785565875539968

[djohn2oo8]

970774139631013889
:lmao

[hitmanyr2k]

If Nunberg keeps flapping his gums all over cable news I think he's going to open himself up to the Manafort pre-dawn FBI raid treatment....any maybe a hard cavity search while they're at it :lol

[Pavlov]

970785565875539968That's not what this article says.

[Reck]

970774139631013889
:lmao

TSA suspiciously absent today in the face of Numberg going full retard and letting all the secrets out. :lol

This guy has been hitting all the right notes today.

Mueller may have something on Trump
Page colluded with Russia
Trump knew about meeting in Trump tower
TSA
https://i.imgur.com/NP4OnW4.gif

[boutons_deux]

What is the problem with Dems financing Steele's oppo research?

Repugs don't do oppo research? :lol

[Reck]

Guy on TV right now setting himself on fire. This is great to watch.

[CosmicCowboy]

What is the problem with Dems financing Steele's oppo research?

Repugs don't do oppo research? :lol


The problem is that Steele didnt witness anything first hand and absolutely zero could ever be verified. It was always second, third, or fourth hand gossip and inuendo. Basically Steele pulled a multimillion dollar scam on Clinton and the FBI.

[Chris]

Nunberg telling Mueller and team to fuck off :lol Balls of steel.

[djohn2oo8]

Nunberg telling Mueller and team to fuck off :lol Balls of steel.

Chris hates his country and cares not about the rule of law.

[Chris]

CLINTON COLLUSION: Trump Says Obama LAUNCHED INVESTIGATION to ‘Discredit’ His Campaign



The President openly slammed his predecessor on social media Monday morning, saying Barack Obama launched an investigation into his campaign to “discredit” Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2016 general election.

The President vented his frustration on twitter this week, blasting Obama’s election interference with “zero proof of wrongdoing” in the months leading up to Election Day; adding he “did nothing” to prevent Russian meddling and labeling the ongoing scandal “bigger than Watergate.”

“Why did the Obama Administration start an investigation into the Trump Campaign (with zero proof of wrongdoing) long before the Election in November? Wanted to discredit so Crooked H would win. Unprecedented. Bigger than Watergate! Plus, Obama did NOTHING about Russian meddling,” he tweeted.

970650759091163137

The President’s comments come as the Justice Department opens its own investigation into the Obama administration’s use of the Clinton-financed ‘Steele Dossier’ to obtain FISA warrants against senior Trump officials in 2016.

https://www.hannity.com/media-room/clinton-collusion-trump-says-obama-launched-investigation-to-discredit-his-campaign/


Can't wait for that IG report and second special counsel :tu

[Chris]

The Devin Nunes You Don’t Know


https://i2.wp.com/www.nationalreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/devin-nunes-cpac-2018.jpg?resize=789%2C460&ssl=1



It’s been a long road for the House Intelligence Committee chairman, now at the center of the political hurricane.
The odds are good that until recently you had barely heard of House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes. By congressional standards, he was obscure; last month, Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer kept mispronouncing Nunes’s surname. (It is NEW-nes, not NOON-yez.) The tumultuous presidency of Donald Trump catapulted the once-little-known congressman into the harshest glares of the Washington spotlight, and his critics contend that he’s comically underqualified for his role and the moment.

House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi dismisses Nunes as “a stooge of the White House.”


“There’s certainly nothing in his résumé that would have qualified him for the post,” scoffed Peter Lance in the Huffington Post. Roll Call’s David Hawkings concluded that “the match between his backstory and his prominence seems wholly incongruous and helps underscore the perception that Nunes is cavalierly playing at a very high-stakes game while in way over his head.”

The Left has created a hostile caricature of Nunes, while conservatives know little about him beyond his work on his explosive memo. But Nunes didn’t come from nowhere. He’s a farmer turned politician whose career began with a near-accidental run for the board of trustees at a community college. He delved deeply into foreign policy as part of his work for the intelligence committee, and he was respected by Democrats with whom he worked — until the divisive post–2016 election debate changed everything.


Immigrants in the Fields
The backstory of Devin Nunes begins not really in Washington or California but in the Azores, a tiny group of islands more than 800 miles off the coast of Portugal. These distant, isolated volcanic islands, settled in the 1400s, offered a harsh and difficult life. Inhabitants faced starvation, harsh weather, and earthquakes. Ships crossing the Atlantic stopped regularly in the Azores, and the locals often felt tempted by the thought of new life on a distant shore; some joined the gold rush to California in 1849.

Nunes’s grandparents came from the Azores and, like many other Portuguese, settled in California’s San Joaquin Valley, which holds some of the best land for farming in the country, or perhaps on earth. Previous generations of Portuguese Azorean immigrants and their children had turned to farming after the sheepherding industry declined in the 1870s. This is the region that John Steinbeck wrote about so frequently, a fertile, sunny Eden that offered many opportunities for work — and at least a slim chance at a fortune and the American dream. As Nunes described it in his 2010 book Restoring the Republic, the valley was “a place where someone with few belongings, little education, and even no ability to speak English could prosper by picking grapes, milking cows, or hoeing cotton fields.” Nunes’s family ultimately worked and saved enough money to buy a 640-acre farm outside Tulare.

“We’re in the agricultural center of the planet,” Nunes boasts. “Over 300 crops grow here, year-round for the most part.” The congressman grew up surrounded by extended family, all working on the farm and finding work on other farms nearby. Family and the land were closely intertwined in this immigrant subculture. Tony Jerome, a Portuguese Azorean immigrant who moved to Turlock, Calif., in 1912, wrote:

Sometimes when I am working in the fields, I reach down and get a handful of good clean dirt. It feels warm in the palm of my hand. I let it dribble through my fingers and I feel as if I had just shaken hands with all my ancestors.

“It’s little bit of a dying breed now, not a lot of people my age or younger grew up like that,” Nunes tells me. He describes the family milieu:

You get together for every single birthday, Sunday afternoons are family dinners or lunches, and it’s not just your immediate family, it’s all your aunts and uncles and cousins and great-aunts and uncles and all of that. . . . Until I was a freshman in high school, I grew up with a dozen cousins who were all [aged] within three or four years of me.

When the extended Nunes family wasn’t farming, its members were serving in the armed forces. Since his election to Congress in 2002, Nunes has always had cousins and relatives serving in uniform and often in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the moment, Nunes and his wife together have five cousins serving in the military; among them, one is an officer, one just returned from Afghanistan, and one is about to deploy to Afghanistan. The congressman says his many relatives in the military are one of the factors that made him want to join the intelligence committee.

When the extended Nunes family wasn’t farming, its members were serving in the armed forces.

In the early 1990s, the congressman’s father, Anthony Nunes, urged his son to not merely go out and find work but to start his own business. The teenage Devin Nunes and his younger brother, also named Anthony, started their own business, leasing a swather — a farm instrument that cuts hay or small grain crops such as alfalfa or wheat and forms them into a windrow.

“I went around to neighbors, and my brother and I would do this custom work,” Nunes recalls. He figured his whole life would be in agriculture. “I never pictured myself running for office. I always wanted to be a winemaker and make cheese, that sort of thing.”

At this time, agricultural life in California’s Central Valley was changing dramatically. Besides the rain, water for the valley’s farms largely came from California’s Central Valley Project, a complex network of dams, reservoirs, canals, hydroelectric power plants, and other facilities, built over five decades. In 1992, Congress passed the Central Valley Improvement Act, sponsored by George Miller, then a Democratic representative from California’s eleventh district, and Bill Bradley, a Democratic senator from New Jersey. The new law diverted at least 800,000 acre-feet of water from agricultural use to preserving wetlands. The Audubon Society called it “an ambitious effort to move federal water policy in a more balanced and sustainable direction.” Farmers saw it as diverting water — water they had enjoyed access to for decades — out farther west, so far that it ended up in the Pacific Ocean.

Among those farmers convinced that the federal government was taking usable fresh water and diverting it out to the sea in the name of environmentalism was young Devin Nunes. In his teen years and later when he owned his own farm, he found federal policies hitting home.

“The only land that I could afford [to buy] was the land with the worst water,” Nunes says. “It’s been 15 years since I sold my land, and a lot of that land out there where I farmed just isn’t being farmed anymore. It’s basically turned back to desert — not sand, but dry scrub and tumbleweeds. It’s sad to see. There’s beautiful land out there, with very fertile soil” — presuming, of course, that the soil gets enough water.

In addition to the fights over water use, Nunes’s future path was shaped in part by an obscure critter, the Tipton kangaroo rat.

During the early 1990s, enforcement of the Endangered Species Act grew increasingly controversial, as landowners and the government fought over protections for the spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest. During this period, Taiwanese immigrant Taung-Ming Lin bought 700 acres of farmland west of Bakersfield, Calif., on the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service contended that it sent Lin a certified letter explaining that endangered species, including the Tipton kangaroo rat, lived on his land; they urged him to work with the service on a habitat-conservation plan. Lin insisted he never saw the letter.

On February 20, 1994, armed federal agents arrested Lin, charging that he had tilled land he allegedly knew to be the home of three endangered species: the San Joaquin Valley kit fox, the blunt-nosed leopard lizard, and the Tipton kangaroo rat. Lin faced up to three years in jail and $300,000 in fines.

The soft-spoken immigrant, who spoke little English, turned into an unlikely symbol of government overreach and trampled property rights. The late Tony Snow wrote about Lin’s case in his syndicated column, noting that “a squadron of more than two dozen state and federal agents, accompanied by helicopters, descended on the farm.” (Agents disputed that they used helicopters.) Rush Limbaugh discussed it on his radio program.

The controversy even caught the eye of Donald Trump. In his 2000 book The America We Deserve, the future president told the story of Lin. “These regulations begin with the assumption that hardworking, thrifty people deserve to be treated like common criminals,” Trump wrote. “And they are all but designed to kill jobs and opportunity.”

Federal prosecutors ultimately decided to drop criminal charges after Lin agreed to pay $5,000 to a fund to preserve endangered species.

‘I’m in politics because of what the government did to my family, to my region, to where I live and the people I represent.’ — Devin Nunes

“When all this is happening, I’m trying to make payments by the month,” Nunes says. “We were the guinea pig. And that’s what drove me into politics. I’m in politics because of what the government did to my family, to my region, to where I live and the people I represent.”

Back in the early Nineties, Cathy Abernathy was chief of staff to Representative Bill Thomas, who would go on to become chairman of the powerful tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. She remembers Nunes as an enthusiastic teenager showing up at town halls, asking detailed questions about federal water policies.

“It was a shock to see a young person so astute on federal policies!” she says.

After high school, Nunes attended the College of the Sequoias, a two-year community college in Visalia, and then he spent three years completing a bachelor’s and master’s degree at California Polytechnic State University, at San Luis Obispo. About a month after getting his master’s degree, Nunes’s grandfather passed away, and he started working with his uncle managing his grandmother’s dairy farm — as well as working on his own farmland.

In 1996, Nunes’s community college announced a controversial decision to sell the farmland used for the school’s vocational training. Farmers had donated the land, and the college planned to use the profits from the land sale to build new buildings: “building more bureaucracy on campus,” as Nunes saw it.

One of his former community-college professors heard that Nunes had worked at political campaign fundraisers during his time at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and he reached out, urging Nunes to help two students who planned to run against the sitting president on the college’s board of trustees. But Nunes’s experience had been vastly overstated by the rumor mill. “I didn’t know a damn thing about running a campaign, I had parked cars and poured wine,” Nunes recalls with a laugh.

'Why Don’t You Run?’

Nunes agreed to help, but fate had a consequential twist ahead of him: “Literally the day of the deadline, the two guys who had been talking about running both backed out and said, ‘Why don’t you run?’”

Nunes drove out to the farm of Ron Quinn. The father of a college friend and housemate, Quinn grew to become a mentor to Nunes and, as Nunes puts it, “kind of like my godfather.”

“He said, ‘Oh yeah, you’re going to win, and I’m going to help you.’ I thought he was going to tell me, ‘No, don’t run!’” Nunes says. “It’s the little things that happen in life. If he had said ‘You’re out of your mind,’ I would have never done it.”

“He was nervous because he was young,” Quinn says. (At 22 going on 23, Nunes was younger than the average student at the College of the Sequoias.)

I said, “Your personality, and your stature, you’re going to win. . . . We need younger generations, your generation, to start getting involved with what’s going on in our community. We’re an ag-based community. You grew up in agriculture. You know what kind of problems we’re having. You’re really schooled in this, you’ll be really good at this.”

Quinn remembered a prophetic observation: “I said, ‘You never know what can happen after that.’”

“He defeated a guy who was in his sixties, a well-established real savvy guy,” says John Zumwalt, vice president of the College of the Sequoias, who served as college-board president when Nunes was on the board. “He was a 22-year-old kid, and we were in our fifties and sixties, so we were . . .” He paused to chuckle. “Real skeptical of him when he first came on. It didn’t take long for us to realize that this was a kid with potential. He ended up being a leader.”

Once on the college board, Nunes played a key role in moving the agricultural vocational program from Visalia, where the property had been increasingly surrounded by housing, to a new, expansive college farm in Tulare.

“He and another board member had the vision to see that if you put a farm down there and made it big enough, that someday it might be a college,” Zumwalt says, meaning a new branch campus about 16 miles away. “Sure enough. He was driven to make sure the ag program was sound. It had been a hodge-podge when he first came in. Now it’s a first-class program.”

The college’s Tulare center now consists of a 500-acre site that includes 220 acres of farmland.

As a young, up-and-coming Republican in one of the few remaining heavily GOP parts of the state, Nunes got to know, and built useful relationships with, lots of local Republicans. None would prove to be more consequential than former congressman Bill Thomas, the Republican who chaired the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee from 2001 to 2006 and represented a large portion of the valley. Another key player was Thomas’s staffer Kevin McCarthy, who went on to run for Congress himself and is today the House majority leader.

In 1998, Nunes’s ambitions turned to Washington, perhaps a bit too early. He announced a bid in California’s 20th congressional district against Democrat Cal Dooley, who had represented the region since 1990. Nunes, then only 25 years old, fell short of the Republican nomination by about 1,100 votes.

“He just wasn’t well known enough,” Quinn says, pointing out that the district lines at that time covered some of Fresno’s more urban, less agriculture-focused suburbs.

In 2000, Nunes volunteered on the presidential campaign of George W. Bush. He was torn between the desire to work for the administration and the desire to stay close to his family and farm. After Bush won, Nunes was appointed to his ideal job, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s state director of rural development.

“That was the coolest job you could ever have,” Nunes says. “I was all over the state and still able to farm, and still able to serve on the community-college board.”

The 2000 census added a U.S. House seat to California, and the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature set out to redraw the lines for maximum partisan advantage. But the process of creating safe Democratic-leaning seats left a large Republican-leaning chunk of the San Joaquin Valley that included less of Fresno. The 2002 election was the first under the new district lines. Nunes ran again, facing the top two primary rivals, state assemblyman Mike Briggs and former Fresno mayor Jim Patterson. Briggs and Patterson represented the Fresno area, while Nunes, who had now served in an influential USDA position, had the votes of Tulare County more or less to himself.

Nunes’s campaign strategist for that 2002 race was Mark Abernathy. Cathy Abernathy, his wife, recalls:

[Mark] advised Devin that water didn’t poll highly with the average voter, so it was important to explain it. Devin insisted upon making it the issue in his campaign. He stuck to the issues of water and agriculture, and slowly climbed ahead over four months.

Nunes won the three-way primary with 37 percent, and the general election that November with 70 percent. Since then, Nunes has never won less than 62 percent of the vote; he ran unopposed in 2010.

[Chris]

Welcome to D.C.

When Nunes took the oath of office, he was 29, the second-youngest member in the House of Representatives. Nunes recounts an early conversation with Thomas about being the fresh-faced kid in the hallways of the Capitol Building:

I asked him, “Being this age, is anybody going to think lesser, or greater, one way or the other about me?” And he said, “You see that card you’ve got there?” He pointed to my voting card. He said, “Everybody got here some way just like you, and your vote counts as much as anybody else’s. You’re not going to have any problems.”

Of course, a preexisting relationship with the House Ways and Means Committee chairman doesn’t hurt. And he also struck up a friendship with another particularly young member of the House Republican Caucus, a wonky numbers-focused Wisconsinite named Paul Ryan.

“Devin’s been working on fiscal issues with me since he got to Congress,” says Ryan. “He was an early supporter of the Road Map,” Ryan’s far-reaching budget proposal. “And he played a big role in advancing tax reform for years, long before we actually achieved it.”

For most of his early terms in Congress, Nunes had little profile outside of his district and his colleagues — which was how his constituents liked it, seeing him as a tenacious fighter in their crusade for more water.

“He’s a person who can really focus,” says Connie Conway, the former Republican minority leader of the California Assembly from Tulare. “He can be a bulldog. He’s not backing down, the way some people have. In California, it’s easy to get worn down by the [Democratic] majority and their constant criticism.”

In 2011, the San Joaquin Valley faced increasingly serious drought conditions. Year after year, Nunes kept pushing Congress and, in particular, his state’s Democratic senators to provide relief to the region. He wanted to see more water flowing through the Central Valley Project canals to the valley farmers, and less steered west to the oceans. The House kept passing legislation, but it often died in the Senate, and the Obama administration signaled its opposition.

Nunes’s persistence finally bore fruit in late 2016, when Congress passed and President Obama signed legislation that included $335 million for water-storage projects; the law also eased limits on moving water south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta to help San Joaquin Valley farmers. The bill’s language was hashed out by Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative McCarthy; it was one of the rare splits between Feinstein and fellow California Democratic senator Barbara Boxer, who called the bill “ugly,” “wrong,” and “horrible.”

John Boehner became House Majority Leader in 2005 and started arranging for GOP members to take trips to places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Nunes joined Boehner on those trips, which usually would occur twice a year. Nunes had declared his 2002 bid shortly after 9/11, and members of the extended Nunes clan, wearing the country’s uniform, kept heading off to war.

When Boehner became Speaker after the 2010 GOP wave, he put Nunes on the intelligence committee; by all accounts, he fit in fine. Representative Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who is now the ranking member on the intelligence committee and who has become one of Nunes’s toughest critics, once had high praise for him, telling the Fresno Bee in April 2014, “I have always been impressed by him. He works in a very bipartisan way.”

He has found himself on a creaky, nearly century-old barge, loaded up with trucks and livestock, crossing the Danube River at a remote spot in Eastern Europe, and driving through the Balkans, following the paths of Syrian civil-war refugees.

Membership on the intelligence committee meant that Nunes was soon traveling to far-flung corners of the earth, and he quickly made clear he wanted more than the usual embassy meetings and tours of capital cities. In 2011, he and Representative Mac Thornberry of Texas drove eight hours along the Indian side of the India–Pakistan border, starting in Kashmir. He has found himself on a creaky, nearly century-old barge, loaded up with trucks and livestock, crossing the Danube River at a remote spot in Eastern Europe, and driving through the Balkans, following the paths of Syrian civil-war refugees.

Last year, while visiting a North African country (he can’t disclose certain details about his trips), Nunes’s convoy, protected by about 25 members of a security force loyal to the head of state, encountered ten members of rival local police forces. A tense showdown ensued. Through the window of his bulletproof vehicle, Nunes saw “two guys with 9 millimeters [pistols] pointed at each other’s heads.” Thankfully, after a few minutes, cooler heads prevailed, and Nunes’s convoy was allowed to pass.

In 2014, Nunes wanted to meet with a representative of a Libyan faction that opposed the Muslim Brotherhood and that was not favored by the Obama administration. In a Middle Eastern country that wasn’t Libya, Nunes returned to his hotel late at night from his scheduled meetings, waited for his security and embassy escort to leave, and then snuck out, grabbed a taxi, and headed to a secret meeting — with the entire leadership team of the faction.

“We go off the beaten path, taking cars and trains,” Nunes says. “You can only truly learn what’s going on in a country if you talk to people outside the bubble. In my mind, if I meet with someone and they’re just repeating the conventional wisdom or reading talking points, it’s a red flag” that there’s something more to uncover.

In March 2014, Mike Rogers, then chairman of the intelligence committee, announced his intention to retire. The House Steering Committee decides most committee chairmanships, but the chairman of the intelligence committee is picked by the House speaker alone. Several members of the intel panel had more experience than Nunes did, but they had either already served as chairman or they were set to chair other important panels: Representative Mac Thornberry of Texas was expected to become the next chairman of the Armed Services Committee; Jeff Miller of Florida was already chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and Peter King of New York already chaired a key subcommittee of the Homeland Security Committee.

Boehner selected his longtime ally, and Nunes, at 41, became the youngest committee chairman in Congress.

His first day on the job as chairman was the day of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris, and he quickly earned goodwill from the panel’s Democrats. Representative C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the committee’s former top Democrat, called Nunes a “good man” in the Fresno Bee back in 2015. “He’s smart, he’s hardworking, and he’s taking his job very seriously.” By December of that year, Nunes and ranking member Schiff had worked out a previously thorny disagreement on the Intelligence Authorization Act.

Nunes is an unlikely candidate to be, in Pelosi’s term, a “Trump stooge.” He didn’t endorse any of the Republican candidates for president in the 2016 primary, and he never had a conversation with Trump until the summer of 2016. Nor does Nunes share in Trump’s skepticism that Russia would attempt to hack sensitive information at the DNC or try to influence the election. A month before the election, Nunes told reporters it was “no surprise” that Russia would target U.S. political organizations.

Nor is there much evidence that Nunes is a fan of Russia, or outside of the Republican foreign-policy mainstream. He supported trade-promotion authority and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, doesn’t believe the country can sufficiently screen Syrian refugees, and opposed the Iran nuclear deal.

In 2014, he denounced the “shameless propaganda” of RT, the Kremlin’s flagship international media outlet. And, in an op-ed in the Washington Times, he warned: “While [Vladimir Putin] may be willing to sacrifice Russia’s own economy for his geo-political ambitions, we cannot afford to be a mere bystander as his destabilizing actions begin to threaten the economies of the Baltics and other NATO allies, possibly including our own.”

In 2015, he joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers urging the Obama administration to authorize the transfer of “lethal, defensive weapons systems to the Ukrainian military.” In an appearance on CNN in April 2016, he criticized the Obama administration for being too soft with Putin:

After the Georgian invasion, maybe we thought some diplomacy might work. Clearly, after the invasion of Crimea, that should have been a red line, and we immediately should have moved quickly in to bolster our NATO allies. But instead we continued to negotiate with the Russians, we continued to talk to the Russians, and then they invaded Eastern Ukraine. We missed that. Then we completely missed entirely when they put a new base with aircraft into Syria. We missed it, we were blind. . . . We misjudged Putin for many, many years.

Nunes joined Trump’s transition team three days after the election and recommended James Mattis to be secretary of defense, and his congressional colleague Mike Pompeo to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

But Nunes’s past stances were forgotten as Democrats touted Russian meddling as the most satisfying explanation for the president’s surprise victory and as President Trump publicly fumed about the FBI’s investigation of his campaign. Nunes’s relatively good relationship with the president, and his belief that the FBI and Department of Justice had abused their powers in the run-up to the 2016 election, spurred an avalanche of criticism — some fair, and much downright unhinged.

In November, Andrew Janz, a Democratic congressional candidate, unveiled a billboard that depicts Trump and Nunes on Putin’s leash. In January, MSNBC contributor John Heilemann asked Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy on air, “Is it possible that we actually have a Russian agent running the House Intel Committee on the Republican side?”

Nunes is no Russian agent, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t willing to lock horns with top officials in the intelligence community and federal law enforcement.

[Chris]

The FBI and the FISA Court

The FBI and the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court are going to need to make “major changes,” Nunes says.

They don’t even know what hit them yet. I’ve been trying to tell DOJ and FBI, “Look, your best [move] is to get in front of this.” In fact, I begged them. I said, “Look, you guys, I didn’t even want to come out with the memo. But if you guys aren’t going to investigate this, if you’re not going to appoint either a second special counsel or give us some confidence that something’s going to happen . . . ” All they would do is say, “Well, there’s an IG investigation.” That is not what I was talking about. There was a big disagreement between myself and my committee members [on one side] and the top people at DOJ and FBI [on the other]. They’re a little bit in denial. And I think that the longer they stay in that position, crouched down, thinking they can weather this . . . They haven’t seen anything yet. You can only imagine the amendments that are going to come on the floor come appropriations-bill time in a couple of months. It’s going to be ugly. And by them not getting in front of it, it’s going to make it worse.

In its initial application for a wiretap on Carter Page, the FBI told the FISA court, in a footnote: “The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.” The description is technically accurate but painfully generic; we now know that opposition researcher Christopher Steele was being paid indirectly by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

“The footnote that they’re so hot to talk about, from our perspective, that was evidence that they actually went out of their way to not tell the court,” Nunes says, adding:

It’s a cute lawyer trick to somewhere down the line be able to say, “Oh yeah, we did tell you.” It was kind of like an escape hatch. Just come right out and say, “Hey judge, the Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign paid for this dossier, they hired this Christopher Steele guy to go talk to Russians.” That’s the right way to handle it, and that’s what the American people expect, and if we’re going to have secret courts, they damn sure should expect total and full transparency when something of this nature happens.

There’s another detail indicating that an even less reliable source was involved in getting the information to the FBI. On February 8, former State Department special envoy to Libya Jonathan Winer wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that in late September 2016 he met with Sidney Blumenthal. Speaking of Blumenthal, Winer wrote: “He showed me notes gathered by a journalist I did not know, Cody Shearer, that alleged the Russians had compromising information on Trump of a sexual and financial nature.” Winer said he let Steele keep a copy of the Shearer notes, and “I learned later that Steele did share them — with the FBI, after the FBI asked him to provide everything he had on allegations relating to Trump, his campaign and Russian interference in U.S. elections.”

In other words, at least some information was passed through notorious Clinton attack dog Blumenthal to Winer, who then passed it to Steele, who then passed it to the FBI. This is the same Sidney Blumenthal whom his colleagues nicknamed “Grassy Knoll” for his paranoia when he worked in the White House, who was rebuked in the courtroom for his false characterization of grand-jury proceedings during the Ken Starr investigation, who was obsessed with a mythical “whitey tape” in the 2008 Democratic primary, and whom the Obama team deemed too dishonest and unethical to work in the State Department under Hillary Clinton.

In 2003, in a Slate essay titled “Insidious Sid,” Michael Isikoff wrote of Blumenthal: “He rearranges facts, spins conspiracy theories, impugns motives, and besmirches the character of his political and journalistic foes — all for the greater cause of defending the Clintons (and himself). . . . Distortion is standard fare for Blumenthal.”

This doesn’t prove that the entire Trump dossier is entirely false — only that one of the most dishonest figures ever to haunt Washington had a hand in assembling its material. It is very difficult to imagine a scenario in which the FBI would carefully consider statements from comparably controversial figures (say, Roger Stone or Alex Jones) alleging crimes committed by Hillary Clinton.

A key question before Nunes and his committee overlaps with an investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz. The IG’s office is trying to determine why Andrew McCabe, deputy director at the FBI in autumn of 2016, appeared to take no action for about three weeks on a request to examine a batch of Hillary Clinton emails that contained classified information. The emails were discovered during an investigation of Anthony Weiner, the ex-husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin. McCabe left the FBI in January; the IG report is expected sometime this spring. A Washington Post report on March 1 said that the IG’s office has already concluded that McCabe leaked information inappropriately and then misled investigators.

Nunes sees a pattern: FBI senior leaders were moving cautiously and glacially on a matter related to Clinton, but they were determined to dig into Carter Page’s electronic communications as quickly as possible.

Put the FISA request alongside 1) McCabe’s decisions, 2) the FBI chief of counterespionage Peter Strzok’s softening of the language in James Comey’s July 5 statement that he would not recommend prosecution of Hillary Clinton, and 3) the anti-Trump comments in texts between Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page . . . and Nunes sees a pattern: FBI senior leaders were moving cautiously and glacially on a matter related to Clinton, but they were determined to dig into Carter Page’s electronic communications as quickly as possible.

He lays out the core issue:

The obvious challenge here is, “Is it ever okay to use the FISA court to open up a counterintelligence investigation into another campaign?” That, in my book, is a big no-no, and when you go one step further and you use the FISA court to get a warrant on somebody within one campaign, using dirt from the other campaign, that is totally unacceptable. If the media would actually cover that, 80 percent of Americans would be on one side. Maybe 90.

On March 1, Nunes wrote to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, citing the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide. The guide states: “Accuracy of information contained within FISA applications is of utmost importance. . . . Only documented and verified information may be used to support FBI applications to the court.” Nunes asked Sessions whether those protocols were changed, and if not, what steps the DOJ or FBI had taken to hold accountable the officials who used the dodgy Steele dossier, with its unverified information, as part of the FISA application.

All of this would naturally be a formula for tension with the new FBI director, Christopher Wray, but Nunes characterizes his relationship with Wray as productive:

I like Wray, and I told him, “We’re counting on you to clean this up. We want to support you.” But so far, we haven’t seen it yet. That doesn’t mean It’s not going to happen. I think we need to give him a lot more time and space to see if he can perform. It’s not like the guy walked into easy shoes to fill here, with all the problems that were left.

Now Nunes seems to run into new controversies like clockwork, disputes and accusations that he dismisses as partisan nonsense. In April 2017, the House Ethics Committee opened up an investigation into claims that he had illegally disclosed classified information when he said he’d found instances of Obama officials doing improper unmaskings of Trump team members. (This came after President Trump claimed he’d been illegally wiretapped at Trump Tower; there seems to have been no wiretapping of Trump Tower, but the FISA surveillance did include wiretapping Page.) In December, the House Ethics Committee announced that it had consulted with classification experts in the intelligence community and concluded that the information that Nunes disclosed was not classified.

In February, Fox News reported that Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, had extensive contact last year with Adam Waldman, a Washington lawyer and a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch who was offering Warner access to former British spy and dossier author Christopher Steele. The report quoted text messages between Warner and Waldman. The Fox News report said the messages “were obtained from a Republican source.”

The New York Times reported March 1 that Warner and the Senate panel chairman, Richard Burr of North Carolina, had met with House speaker Paul Ryan in February to complain about Nunes, blaming Nunes for the leak. But after the Times report came out, Burr told CNN’s Manu Raju that much of the paper’s account was flat wrong. He denied that the Senate Intelligence Committee had concluded that Nunes or House Republicans were behind the leak of the Warner texts. He also denied that they he and Warner had raised their concerns with Ryan. “We met with Speaker Ryan to update him on our investigation,” Burr told Raju. “That was it.”

“We’re not investigating Warner, we don’t give a sh** about him,” Nunes tells me. The copies of the texts had been sent by a law firm to the staff of the House Intelligence Committee, he says, and the staffers quickly realized they didn’t want to start snooping in the communications of their Senate counterparts. “No member [of the committee] looked at them. The staff looked at them and said, ‘We don’t want to have anything to do with this.’” He said the documents were sent back to the law firm.

Nunes dismisses the accusation that the House Intelligence Committee has grown more divided and contentious on his watch: “There was a toxic environment on the Intelligence Committee for many, many years, because of the Iraq War and the intelligence leading up to the war. It started under [former chairman] Porter Goss and got worse, to the point where the committee didn’t operate.”

Three of Nunes’s predecessors as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee had a previous career tie to one of the agencies the committee oversees. By comparison, Nunes is a true outsider.

The tensions on the committee did alleviate somewhat during Obama’s presidency, but it’s worth remembering that for several years the chairman was Mike Rogers, who had spent five years as an FBI special agent, and the ranking member was Ruppersberger, whose home district includes the headquarters of the National Security Agency. The two men were, at least in the broadest sense, sympathetic to their former employers and key constituents.

In fact, three of Nunes’s predecessors as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee had a previous career tie to one of the agencies the committee oversees: Rogers with the FBI; Texas Democrat Silvestre Reyes worked for the U.S. Border Patrol for 26 years; and Florida Republican Porter Goss spent a decade working in the clandestine services of the Central Intelligence Agency. By comparison, Nunes is a true outsider.

“The more time that I’ve been involved in this, [I’ve learned that] the fewer people you have who come from the agencies or the area that’s represented, the better off you are to oversee them,” Nunes said. “There’s nothing that you can’t learn if you spend time studying it.”

4
Nunes doesn’t expect the denunciations from Democrats or the on-background criticism from members of the agencies he oversees to cease any time soon. While amiable, he’s not here to make friends.

“I don’t really judge this by, ‘Is the committee bipartisan? Do people cooperate?’ I don’t really give a damn about that,” Nunes says. “What I care about is: Do you have members doing their work? Are they doing their work in an honest, hard-working fashion to get to the truth, whatever the truth is? Our job is to oversee these agencies, and when they go awry, to rein them in. That’s our job. We’re the legislative branch of government. We created these guys, and they’re not above the law. And they’re going to be reined in for as long as I’m chairman.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/devin-nunes-political-story-congressional-career-intelligence-committee/

[Pavlov]

lol wall of text.

Chris's version of obstruction.

[Pavlov]

:rollin
970792130464681984

[Chris]

:cry somebody give me cliff notes :cry

[spurraider21]

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/48kN1a037Yk/hqdefault.jpg

[Reck]

970824471576743936

:lmao :lmao

Chris pulling triple duty while TSA hides. :lol

[spurraider21]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjNwtxeLoNI

[Chris]

970824471576743936

:lmao :lmao

Chris pulling triple duty while TSA hides. :lol

CNN keeping it unprofessional per par what a joke of a news organization :lol

"I'm just trying to understand what happened! (Hands up in the air) :lol

[Chris]

Australian diplomat whose tip prompted FBI’s Russia-probe has tie to Clintons



The Australian diplomat whose tip in 2016 prompted the Russia-Trump investigation previously arranged one of the largest foreign donations to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s charitable efforts, documents show.

Former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer’s role in securing $25 million in aid from his country to help the Clinton Foundation fight AIDS is chronicled in decade-old government memos archived on the Australian foreign ministry’s website.

Downer and former President Clinton jointly signed a Memorandum of Understanding in February 2006 that spread out the grant money over four years for a project to provide screening and drug treatment to AIDS patients in Asia.


The money was initially allocated to the Clinton Foundation but later was routed through an affiliate of the charity known as the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), officials said. Australia was one of four foreign governments to donate more than $25 million to CHAI, records show.

n the years that followed, the project won praise for helping thousands of HIV-infected patients in Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, China and Indonesia, but also garnered criticism from auditors about “management weaknesses” and inadequate budget oversight, the memos show.

Downer, now Australia’s ambassador to London, provided the account of a conversation with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos at a London bar in 2016 that became the official reason the FBI opened the Russia counterintelligence probe.

But lawmakers say the FBI didn’t tell Congress about Downer’s prior connection to the Clinton Foundation. Republicans say they are concerned the new information means nearly all of the early evidence the FBI used to justify its election-year probe of Trump came from sources supportive of the Clintons, including the controversial Steele dossier.

“The Clintons’ tentacles go everywhere. So, that’s why it’s important,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) chairman of a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee that has been taking an increasingly visible role defending the Trump administration in the Russia probe. “We continue to get new information every week it seems that sort of underscores the fact that the FBI hasn’t been square with us.”

Spokesman for the FBI and Russia special counsel Robert Mueller declined comment.

The Australian Foreign Ministry says the Clinton grant was handled like all its other $2 billion annual foreign aid awards, and it ultimately helped thousands in Asia gain access to antiretroviral AIDS medications.

Democrats accuse the GOP of overreaching, saying Downer’s role in trying to help the Clinton Foundation fight AIDS shouldn’t be used to question his assistance to the FBI.

Nick Merrill, Hillary Clinton’s spokesman, said any effort to connect the 2006 grant with the current Russia investigation was “laughable.”

Craig Minassian, a spokesman for the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, said the focus should be on the foundation’s success helping tens of thousands of AIDS patients.

http://thehill.com/376858-australian-diplomat-whose-tip-prompted-fbis-russia-probe-has-tie-to-clintons

[Trill Clinton]

this nunberg guy looks like he hasn't slept in weeks.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

The problem is that Steele didnt witness anything first hand and absolutely zero could ever be verified. It was always second, third, or fourth hand gossip and inuendo. Basically Steele pulled a multimillion dollar scam on Clinton and the FBI.

Except the FBI has said they have independently verified much of what was in the dossier. This notion that none of it "could be verified" is just brain dead.

[CosmicCowboy]

Bullshit. Your claim. Document it.

[djohn2oo8]

970869136728367105
:lmao

[Pavlov]

970824471576743936

:lmao :lmao

Chris pulling triple duty while TSA hides. :lolIs he trying for an insanity defense?

[boutons_deux]

Nunberg took to a local news station Monday afternoon to call White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders a “fat slob”

“She’s a joke,” Nunberg said.

“OK fine, yeah, she’s unattractive, she’s a fat slob, but that’s not relevant.”



“The person she works for has a 30 percent approval rating,” he continued.

“If she wants to start attacking me, that’s fine. She can do that.”

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/watch-ex-trump-aide-nunberg-swipes-back-fat-slob-sarah-huckabee-sanders/

[boutons_deux]

Sam Nurnberg has said that he probably will cooperate with Robert Mueller.

https://www.mediaite.com/online/sam-nurnberg-im-going-to-end-up-cooperating-with-mueller/

[Pavlov]

Holy shit:lmao

970819976729976832

[Chris]

:lmao

[djohn2oo8]

Sam Nurnberg has said that he probably will cooperate with Robert Mueller.

https://www.mediaite.com/online/sam-nurnberg-im-going-to-end-up-cooperating-with-mueller/

Getting wrecked by US Marshals wasn't a smart plan.

[Chris]

CNN Trash Network :lol


970897879140245504

[djohn2oo8]

Poor trash Chris seems sleepless.

[Chris]

Poor trash Chris seems sleepless.

I'm at work. Poor djohn seems desperate fishing for CNN tweets.

[Chucho]

LOL, djohn and Chris are the same exact person, just on opposite sides of the fence...cute.

[Spurminator]

This is a great article.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/christopher-steele-the-man-behind-the-trump-dossier

[Chris]

Highly recommend the Nunes article posted on the last page.

[Reck]

CNN Trash Network :lol


970897879140245504

Actually the hooker in prison is trying to give Trump dirt about the Russians for asylum here.

But given that Trump loves himself some Putin, this whore is pretty much dead anyways.

[Chris]

Trump loves himself some Putin

https://i.makeagif.com/media/8-24-2015/_Iy_o-.gif

[Chris]

970914476211036160

[djohn2oo8]

Another post that does nothing to clear Trump. :tu

[Reck]

https://i.makeagif.com/media/8-24-2015/_Iy_o-.gif

Explain why he hasn't enacted the sanctions that passed like 500 to 2 then.

Or why he won't talk bad about Putin but will trash his own country and cabinet and whole military but not good odl Putin.

Are you blind or what's going on, Chris?

[Chris]

Explain why he hasn't enacted the sanctions that passed like 500 to 2 then.

Or why he won't talk bad about Putin but will trash his own country and cabinet and whole military but not good odl Putin.

Are you blind or what's going on, Chris?

Maybe Trump doesn't want WW3?

[Pavlov]

Maybe Trump doesn't want WW3?lol fire and fury

[Chris]

lol fire and fury

lol Trump flexing = WW3

[Chris]

970913308449693696

[Pavlov]

lol Trump flexing = WW3lol Trump bends right over for Putin and Xi.

[Pavlov]

970913308449693696"Nunberg drives narrative: Our latest conspiracy."

[Reck]

Maybe Trump doesn't want WW3?

Wow not a bad spin. But no. :lol

[Chris]

"Nunberg drives narrative: Our latest conspiracy."

Easy to discern imo not surprised DC picked it up.

[Pavlov]

Easy to discern imo not surprised DC picked it up.Easy to discern what?

What is your Nunberg conspiracy, Chris?

[Chris]

Easy to discern what?

What is your Nunberg conspiracy, Chris?

Typical rabble-rouser. Go ahead and google it. I'll wait.

[Pavlov]

Typical rabble rouser. Go ahead and google it. I'll wait.Nope. It's your conspiracy, Chris.

Explain it.

[Chris]

Nope. It's your conspiracy, Chris.

Explain it.

Wasn't talking about googling the conspiracy Pavlov. He's a rabble-rouser. Nothing much to explain. If you want more in depth stuff about his personal life maybe try TMZ or Salon.

[Pavlov]

Wasn't talking about googling the conspiracy Pavlov. He's a rabble-rouser. Nothing much to explain. If you want more in depth stuff about his personal life maybe try TMZ or Salon.Nunberg is rousing rabble for what purpose? It's your conspiracy -- explain it.

[Chris]

Nunberg is rousing rabble for what purpose? It's your conspiracy -- explain it.

To convince the public that Trump is a really bad man. It's called the Death by a Thousand Cuts strategy. It's not working. IG report and 2nd special counsel coming soon to a theater near you.