Courtesy of TPM:Intel chairman says Russia hired more than 1000 hackers to create fake, anti-Clinton news in key states, won by Trump. @jeffpeguescbs, now pic.twitter.com/mmRBcE4qCu
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) March 29, 2017
One thing was made crystal clear in a Wednesday press briefing on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election: this investigation is a very big and very serious deal.
In an hour-long appearance, committee Chair Richard Burr (R-NC) and Vice-Chair Mark Warner (D-VA) framed their probe as one of most ambitious investigative efforts ever taken on by a congressional committee. Burr, a 22-year veteran of Capitol Hill, framed the investigation as “one of the biggest” he’s seen in his tenure in Washington, D.C.
Warner concurred, saying, “When we started this, we saw the scope, what was involved, I said it was the most important thing I have ever taken on in my public life. I believe that more firmly now.”
Their solemn assurances to investigate the full scope of Russia’s involvement, to look into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian officials, and to produce a truly bipartisan report on their findings offered a stark contrast from the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation, led by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA). The House’s probe came to a standstill this week over Nunes’ overly close relationship with the President, and he and ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) haven’t appeared together publicly in days.
According to CNN the Senator Intelligence Committee already has a slate of witnesses ready to be called:
Burr and Warner say they have 20 witnesses they plan to interview and have scheduled interviews with five of them so far. The committee leaders said that they are happy that President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort have agreed to testify, but they have not yet decided when they will bring them in.
"To date, we have made 20 requests for individuals to be interviewed by the committee," Burr said. "As we stand here today, five are already scheduled on the books, and probably within the next 10 days the remaining 15 will have a scheduled date for those individuals to be interviewed by our staff. We anticipate inviting additional individuals to come and be interviewed, and ultimately some of those interviewed individuals may turn into private or public hearings by the committee, but yet to be determined."
It is rumored that one of the witnesses they have in mind is Christopher Steele, that former MI-6 agent responsible for that Russian dossier.
If true that puts the Senate WAY ahead of the House in getting to the bottom of what happened in 2016.
I have to imagine that Trump's orange tinged assholes slammed right shut as he watched that news conference yesterday.
Shit is about to get real for Trump, Nunes and others. Personally, I'm most looking forward to seeing not only Trump go down but that smug bastard Kushner and the first lady Ivanka. Wonder who will raise their three little rugrats while they're in jail?
ReplyDeleteMany people, the best people are saying this beautiful picture of Trump should hang in Mar-a-Lago.
DeleteMany people, the best people are saying this beautiful picture of Trump should hang in Mar-a-Lago.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b2fa31fbde95726f1d0b5d7c40f9f9b62f9a491f8c373803b9bb1711acc55449.jpg
..or perhaps the entrance to a federal prison.
This condition undoubtedly will make Trump's orange tinged anus even more inmate friendly in a freaky kind of way.
...cue the distracting Tweet by Thumper, mad as hell.
ReplyDeleteRichard Burr is my Senator. I am going to be calling his office soon to express my gratitude to him for taking this so seriously. Not that I voted for him, lol.
ReplyDeleteLow info stupid Americans got played by sneaky fucking Russians.
ReplyDeleteLive coverage today,Thursday continues at 2 PM EST.
ReplyDeletehttp://thehill.com/policy/national-security/326467-live-coverage-senate-intel-committee-probes-russian-intelligence
Absolutely all executive orders and any decisions made by trump and friends must be paused until all investigation has been completed. This asshole and his family are dangerous and they cannot be allowed to continue for one more second. The entire white house, air force one, and all buildings must be under total surveillance and monitoring. This is awful and trump should resign today for the sake of this country.
ReplyDelete9:25:+++++!!!
DeleteBut....not gonna happen.
DeleteIf anything, they'll accelerate the pace as what they do will not be undone should they be kicked out, which they won't.
‘Follow the trail of dead Russians’ if you want to crack 2016 election interference: Senate intel witness
ReplyDelete“The other part that I think we should be looking at is: Follow the trail of dead Russians,” Watts said. “There’s been more dead Russians in the past three months that are tied to this investigation who have assets in banks all over the world. They are dropping dead, even in western countries. We have seen arrests in I believe it’s Spain and different computer security companies that are based in Russia, which provide services to the United States. These are all huge openings to understand how they are funded by the Russian government. I don’t have the capability to do that from where I sit, but I think that’s a huge angle.”
Watts is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a specialist in the Islamic State (ISIS) and cyber terrorism.
Watch the video, embedded below:
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/follow-the-trail-of-dead-russians-if-you-want-to-crack-2016-election-interference-senate-intel-witness/?comments=disqus
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/nobodys-covering-my-back-ex-fbi-agent-tells-senate-he-doesnt-trust-trump-to-protect-him-from-russia/
DeleteTime To Investigate Paul Ryan After He Gives False Information To Defend Devin Nunes
ReplyDeleteDuring an interview on CBS This Morning, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan made a false statement about House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes's source being a "whistleblower type person," which is a reason for an independent investigation into the role of the Speaker in the effort to cover-up the Russia scandal.
...Ryan said that he never saw the documents himself, and didn’t tell Nunes to go brief Trump, but then he added, “He was going to go and brief everybody. I already knew he was going to brief.” So, Ryan didn’t have to tell Nunes to go to Trump, because he already knew that Nunes was going to brief the White House.
Speaker Ryan is both covering for Nunes with the “whistle blower type” language and also giving himself plausible deniability by suggesting that he didn’t know who Nunes was going to brief or what he was going to say.
There is no legal definition of a whistle blower type person. The federal law is very clear. A whistle blower a person who works for the federal government and reports agency misconduct. One either is or isn’t a whistle blower. Ryan was attempting to imply that Nunes’s source was a whistle blower, but the source isn’t whistle blowing, most likely because the source is the White House and the target of an investigation can’t also be a whistle blower.
The reality is that Paul Ryan is compromised. The Speaker of the House can’t be trusted to oversee an objective investigation into the Russia scandal. It is growing more obvious by the day that the Republican majority in the House is trying to cover-up the scandal of the Republican in the White House. House Republicans have abandoned their oversight obligations to engage in a partisan cover-up to protect Trump.
The behavior of Ryan and Nunes is why the country needs an independent investigation that will look at Trump, Russia, and the role of congressional Republicans who could be attempting to cover up the scandal.
Rep. Ryan (R-WI) has welded himself to Trump and his scandal. For this reason, if Donald Trump goes down, he is likely to take Paul Ryan with him.
http://www.politicususa.com/2017/03/30/time-investigate-paul-ryan-false-information-defend-devin-nunes.html
I fervently hope so.
DeleteIn the happy world of my imagination, the Democrats take over the House just in time for the impeachment proceedings to conclude, taking down Trump and Pence, and we end up with a Democrat taking over the Presidency.
DeleteWouldn't THAT be wonderful?
5:10, sorry to burst your bubble, but a new Senate under Democratic control probably couldn't "conclude" an impeachment. More than likely, a new impeachment process would have to be started.
DeleteKind of hard to conclude a trial with a new jury, after all.
And this is exactly why Donald Trump and his campaign didn't buy ads like any other politician, they knew what was going on and that the Russians were busy spreading fake news. There is a connection here that can't be ignored!
ReplyDeleteYou can't prove why someone didn't do something that never happened without their confession.
Delete“Mike Pence went from yesterday’s forum on empowering women to today leading a group of male politicians in a vote to take away access to birth control and cancer screenings,” Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood, said in a statement. “There’s a reason they could barely get enough votes to get this bill through a procedural step: People are sick and tired of politicians making it even harder for them to access health care, and they will not stand for it.”
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mike-pence-breaks-senate-tie-to-allow-states-to-defund-planned-parenthood_us_58dd1fd3e4b05eae031da631?tjmz324hovujvy4x6r&
And women REALLY don't want to live in Iowa if this bill gets passed (at least until it's overturned by the courts).
Delete"An anti-abortion bill being offered by Republicans in Iowa would effectively ban all abortions and
***give parents rights over the bodies of unmarried adult daughters***."
Yes folks, you read that correctly. If this bill passes, parents can make medical decisions for any daughter who doesn't happen to have a husband to make those important decisions for her.
It doesn't matter HOW OLD the woman is; if she's not married she has no rights over her own body!
But there's no war on women. Really.
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/iowa-gop-abortion-bill-will-grant-parents-of-unmarried-women-rights-to-control-adult-daughters-bodies/
Wasn't Iowa one of the first states to legalize gay marriage back before the SC got brave?
DeleteOT?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.politicususa.com/2017/03/30/senate-republicans-voted-retirement-accounts-income-workers.html
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/revealed-nunes-got-surveillance-docs-from-flynn-deputy-and-his-own-former-staffer-now-at-white-house/
ReplyDeleteREVEALED: Nunes got surveillance docs from Flynn deputy and his own former staffer now at White House
ReplyDeleteTwo White House officials were involved with the hand over of intelligence information to House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), according to a bombshell report in the New York Times.
We have known that prior to his announcement to the press last week that members of President Donald Trump’s transition team were caught up in “incidental surveillance” of foreign nationals, Nunes visited the White House grounds in order to view confidential information in a SCIF (Sensitive Confidential Information Facility). That information was believed to have been provided to him by his former staffer Michael Ellis — who was hired by the Trump White House on Mar. 7.
Now, the Times says that another White House staffer, a former deputy to disgraced National Security Adviser Mike Flynn named Ezra Cohen-Watnick was also involved with getting the information to Nunes.
“Mr. Cohen-Watnick is a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who was originally brought to the White House by Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser,” the report said.
Flynn was forced to step down after it came to light that he lied to Vice Pres. Mike Pence and to the public about his interactions with officials within the Russian government both before and after the 2016 election.
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/revealed-nunes-got-surveillance-docs-from-flynn-deputy-and-his-own-former-staffer-now-at-white-house/
2 White House Officials Helped Give Nunes Intelligence Reports
...Several current American officials identified the White House officials as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and formerly worked on the staff of the House Intelligence Committee.
A White House spokesperson declined to comment.
Mr. Cohen-Watnick is a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who was originally brought to the White House by Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser. The officials said that earlier this month, shortly after Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter about being wiretapped on the orders of President Barack Obama, Mr. Cohen-Watnick began reviewing highly classified reports detailing the intercepted communications of foreign officials.
Officials said the reports consisted primarily of ambassadors and other foreign officials talking about how they were trying to develop contacts within Mr. Trump’s family and inner circle in advance of his inauguration.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the intelligence, and to avoid angering Mr. Cohen-Watnick and Mr. Ellis. Officials say that Mr. Cohen-Watnick has been reviewing the reports from his fourth-floor office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where the National Security Counsel is based.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/us/politics/devin-nunes-intelligence-reports.html
"Trump's EPA Just Greenlighted a Pesticide KNOWN to Damage KIDs' Brains">
ReplyDeletehttp://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/03/trump-epa-brain-damaging-pesticide
9:52
Deletethat'd be bannon's EPA, that dumb fuk drumph's just a gawd-damned russian puppet and is just along for the ride ..
GOP has to make sure future generations vote Republican. This will ensure it. Uneducated isn't enough any more. They need them brain damaged now.
DeleteNot fast enough.
ReplyDeleteIn the mean time Neil Gorsucks is going to be confirmed. And once he is there will be no way to get him off of the bench. Not even if Trump is found guilty of treason and successfully impeached.
Gosucks will still be a Supreme Court Justice.
And our countries rules, regulations and departments will still be gutted.
The damage will be done, never to be undone.
G.W. Bush lost but was president all the same.
Texas illegally gerrymandered districts but their senators and congressmen didn't lose their seats.
What difference does it make if the Republicans are found to have been complicit in Trump's coordination with the Russians?
NOTHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN!
They aren't going to impeach him. The House does that and it's clear the House isn't going to do squat. They get everything they want with Trump in office and they have Pence in the box ready to step in if Trump dies or steps down or it looks like he won't be re-elected.
They have their election fraud perfected now. They've got gerrymandered districts to guarantee they'll never lose and they've learned at the feet of Putin how to control an election for the outcome they want.
It's over.
We're a fascist state.
Those 8 years of Obama were only a delay. They finished with Trump what they started with Bush.
We went from Rove to Bannon in 10 years.
If these interviews aren't under oath, I don't see how helpful they'll be. Are they under oath?
ReplyDeleteNobody in the history of the world has ever lied under oath, so yeah, I see your point.
DeleteDoesn’t surprise me at all, some of the disgusting lies that were posted here by bernie bros are a perfect example.
ReplyDelete===========================
Russians used ‘Bernie Bros’ as ‘unwitting agents’ in disinformation campaign: Senate Intel witness
At Thursday afternoon’s meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Retired Gen. Keith Alexander — former director of the National Security Agency — said that Russian operatives targeted both liberal and conservative voters in its disinformation campaigns during the 2016 election.
..Democratic committee co-chair Sen. Mark Warner (VA) asked the panel if they had any doubt that Russia had attempted to interfere in some aspects of the 2016 election.
Alexander said not only did he have no doubt, he could get very specific.
“Senator, I think what they were trying to do was drive a wedge within the Democratic Party between the Clinton group and the Sanders group,” said Alexander. “And then in our nation between Republicans and Democrats.”
Supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) reported earlier this month that during the 2016 election, their social media feeds and pro-Sanders Facebook groups were inundated with what they now believe were Russian bots spewing anti-Hillary memes including fake news stories about Clinton using a body double and murdering her ideological opponents. Over time the anti-Clinton online faction became known by the nickname “Bernie Bros.”
On Thursday morning, counterterrorism expert Clinton Watts told the Senate Committee that Russia is still carrying out cyber-operations against the country. Russia, he said, floods Twitter with bots linking to conspiracy theories that will appeal to Trump at times when the president is likely to be online.
The Russians target Trump, Watts said, because they know he is a reliable spreader of fake news.
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/russians-used-bernie-bros-as-unwitting-agents-in-disinformation-campaign-senate-intel-witness/