Monday, May 08, 2017

The Sally Yates Senate Testimony Open Thread. Update!

Trump has already started to do damage control ahead of this testimony, here is his tweet from this morning which he found so nice he posted it twice.
A good place to remind people that if somebody had not leaked this information that Michael Flynn might very well still be Trump's National Security adviser.

Whoever leaked that information is a national hero.

And here is the White House strategy according to Axios
  1. Brand Yates as a Democratic operative who was out to get Trump from the beginning and willing to torque the facts to advance her agenda; 
  2. Put as much distance as possible between Flynn and the man whose side he rarely left during the campaign (which could be a tall order.) 
  3. Portray Flynn, and no one else, as responsible for this mess.
Portraying Yates as a Democratic operative may turn out to be a challenge since she cut her teeth by prosecuting both conservatives and liberals.

Trump's troll army has already started questioning her ethics, politics, and intelligence.

I imagine it will only get worse from there.

Update:


Update 2: Interesting and not unexpected.
Update 3: A must see.
Damn, did I love that!

49 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:56 AM

    "Portraying Yates as a Democratic operative may turn out to be a challenge since she cut her teeth by prosecuting both conservatives and liberals."

    The error in your logic is the idea that these people care about facts or the truth.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous11:01 AM

      9:56 AM You wouldn't know logic if it slapped you in your silly face.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous12:24 PM

      11:01.. I think they were being sarcastic.

      Delete
  2. Anonymous10:02 AM

    Trump and stumps are clearly GUILTY AS SIN. Rattle on old liar rattle on tweet away old ugly liar tweet away.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous10:03 AM

    Trump is such an asshole. He looks like the idiot he has proven himself to be. I hope this testimony screws him royally!

    He's afraid, very afraid!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous10:17 AM

    Donald Trump may have just violated federal witness intimidation laws with tweet about Sally Yates‬
    http://palmerreport.com/politics/intimidation-sally-yates-trump/2664/

    "Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates is set to testify before Congress today in Donald Trump’s Russia scandal. Naturally, Trump isn’t too thrilled about Yates revealing how she warned him that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was dirty on Russia, and how Trump fired her days later. That’s led Trump to let loose on Twitter with what sounds like a rather severe threat if she goes through with her testimony.

    According to Cornell Law School, here’s what federal law says in part about federal witness intimidation laws:
    “Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person, with intent to— (1) influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding; (2) cause or induce any person to— (A) withhold testimony, or withhold a record, document, or other object, from an official proceeding; (B) alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal an object with intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; (C) evade legal process summoning that person to appear as a witness, or to produce a record, document, or other object, in an official proceeding; or (D) be absent from an official proceeding to which such person has been summoned by legal process; or
    (3) hinder, delay, or prevent the communication to a law enforcement officer or judge of the United States of information relating to the commission or possible commission of a Federal offense or a violation of conditions of probation supervised release, parole, or release pending judicial proceedings;
    shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

    ...sounds like some of the above applies to Donald Trump’s attempt at intimidating Sally Yates before her testimony by falsely accusing her of a crime, and thus tacitly implying he might try to use his office to punish her for it. "

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous10:18 AM

    Sally is going to shove a glass rod up Trump's ass and then break it apart.

    Donald will feel this shortly.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous12:45 PM

      Thanks for the perfect description. Love it!

      Delete
  6. Anonymous10:38 AM

    IMPEACH, IMPEACH, IMPEACH! The man is nothing more than a liar and fraud...not to be trusted as far as you could throw his fat ass.

    He's rancid and deplorable as they come. The majority of Americans throughout the land did not elect him potus! They chose Hillary Clinton! We would be so much better off today had she taken the oath of office as POTUS! Thank God, we have President Obama making statements now....he knew Trump was an idiot!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous11:08 AM

    http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/yates-flynn-timeline-shows-how-trump-administration-may-have-been-engaged-in-coordinated-cover-up/

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous11:35 AM

    Donald Trump privately asked GOP Senators at last minute to cancel today’s Sally Yates testimony
    "...as it turns out, Trump and his team were trying to prevent the testimony right up until just about literally the last minute. According to Scott Dworkin of the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, his sources on Capitol Hill told him today that the Donald Trump White House “contacted multiple GOP Senators TODAY asking them to cancel Yates hearing” (link). This remarkable development points to just how eager Trump and his team were to prevent Yates from sharing her story with the Senate and the public." http://www.palmerreport.com/news/donald-trump-privately-asked-gop-senators-to-cancel-todays-sally-yates-testimony-at-last-minute/2665/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous12:07 PM

      How is this not illegal?

      Delete
    2. Anonymous12:12 PM

      Because it didn't happen 12:07... Scott Dworkin.....Palmereport...lol.

      Delete
    3. Anonymous12:19 PM

      Trump is a disgusting terrible liar. He is not the USA president. He is a treason traitor and must resign today. He is a disgrace to this nation.

      Delete
    4. Anonymous12:38 PM

      12:12 PM You are a trump troll, lol.

      Delete
    5. Anonymous1:16 PM

      You are practicing what Jane Austen termed "willful self-deception" 12:38.

      It is endlessly amusing being called a Trump troll just for stating reality.

      Delete
    6. Anonymous3:54 PM

      12:12pm, Palmer report is not the only place reporting that.

      Delete
    7. Anonymous4:30 PM

      Oh, is the twitter also 'reporting' this 3:54? Maybe Louse Mensch and her 'reporting' (probably, since that is where Bill Palmer gets his 'reporting'? Kieth Olberman?

      See where this is going lol.....

      Delete
    8. Anonymous4:49 PM

      This troll is just terrified,lol. Too bad he put his faith in a giant lying imbecile who uses Russian banks to finance his lifestyle like my husbands aunt who runs up CC debt and then declares bankruptcy multiple times does her CC.

      Delete
  9. Anonymous11:39 AM

    This is jjeffwrson. Throw the bum out.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous12:15 PM

    If Only>

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkTQri3a4Gg

    peace

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous12:17 PM

    From the elevator ride trump was clearly in collusion with putin to rig and disrupt the democracy of this nation. As the scam began before that day. Trump was in on it and his kids were in on it. Several liars around the nation in every state were in on it. Crooks and Liars rigged the election using laundry money to bribe, extort, threaten and harass many people. They committed crime after crime. All of them should come forward and explain what happened to them under oath and why they did it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous1:00 PM

      'Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.'

      Delete
    2. Anonymous2:35 PM

      I just posted a comment about the Flynn/Trump relationship timeline. Even though so many have said that Trump never expected to win, it feels like shady dealings were going on right from the start. Reports are always saying "2016" when talking about hacking going on, but it really dates back to 2015. Why would Trump have spent 90 minutes in Trump Tower with Flynn in August of 2015, nit that long after his escalator ride? My own belief is that the Trumps and Flynn, as well as others, were somehow involved in the Russia mess in 2015. Doesn't matter if they were all in conscious collusion. They were, at the very least, being groomed by Putin.

      Delete
    3. Anonymous3:55 AM

      I agree with you, Anon at 2:35 pm. This mess is only getting stinkier and stinkier the more we learn.
      Beaglemom

      Delete
  12. Anonymous1:04 PM

    S.Y. uses the word 'trumps'. Perfect.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous1:50 PM

    http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/05/08/republican-just-tried-scold-sally-yates-defying-trump-response-perfect/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous6:36 PM

      The GOP senators were unable to believe that a woman could be smarter than them. So many of the senators (including cruz and kennedy) looked like partisan fools today.

      Delete
  14. Anonymous2:28 PM


    What I would like is for people who have the ability to pretty easily put together a contact timeline between Trump and Flynn, to do just that so that we can get a better sense of how often Flynn and Trump had contact during the first few months after meeting one another. We keep seeing partial timelines, and these are later in the game. I'm interested in what happened from the very first day that Trump met Flynn. Talking Points Memo (see link below) has a timeline, but I still would like details on the Trump/Flynn contact times in 2015 if that info is available out there somewhere. Trump announced his candidacy 6/16/2015. Flynn first met Trump sometime (I don't have the date) in August of 2015. So, not all that long after the announcement. For whatever reasons, it was deemed important that these two meet, and we know that their meeting was expected to last a half-hour but lasted ninety minutes. What could they have been talking about for so long? At some point Flynn received word about being invited to Russia for the RT thing with Putin. He made his speech there on 12/10/15. The RT gala pic we are now familiar with was taken several days later, on 12/15. Sometime in February 2016, Flynn was officially part of the Trump campaign.

    We now know that Flynn was paid fees amounting to 68k in Russian money. There is no way in hell Flynn and Trump, both talkers who like to brag and who are shady, had a 90-minute meeting in August and they never talked at all about an interest in Russia. And there is no way I will ever believe that Trump didn’t know what Flynn’s upcoming December 2015 trip to Russia was about. No way didn’t he know that Flynn was getting paid. And when Flynn got back to the US, no way didn’t he talk to Trump, who he would go on to be so absolutely devoted to. There has got to be more to be found out about Trump/Flynn interaction from Day 1, that day when Flynn went to Trump Tower and met with Trump.

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-timeline-2

    ReplyDelete
  15. Anonymous2:42 PM

    I hadn't even though about the Palins for the past couple weeks, but then did, and saw that Brissy had her latest.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Anonymous3:21 PM

    Shadowy tech firm that helped Trump win could be paid to build ‘Minority Report’ crime prediction database

    The shadowy tech firm connected to Trump megadonor Robert Mercer is using mass-collected data to employ psychological warfare techniques to alter elections and build a total surveillance state.

    There are strict laws governing the data the government can collect on Americans — but private companies are free to gather any information they want using social media and other tools, reported Carole Cadwalladr for The Guardian.

    Cambridge Analytica lawfully gathered mountains of data on Facebook users and then created psychological profiles for each of them, matched to their home addresses, phone numbers and email addresses — which the company used to individually target them with political messaging.

    Congress made data gathering even easier in March, when lawmakers repealed rules that would have required internet service providers to obtain customer permission to collect, use and sell information about individual online habits.

    “This is military-funded technology that has been harnessed by a global plutocracy and is being used to sway elections in ways that people can’t even see, don’t even realize is happening to them,” said Tamsin Shaw, a New York University philosophy professor who has studied the military’s psychological research. “It’s about exploiting existing phenomenon like nationalism and then using it to manipulate people at the margins. To have so much data in the hands of a bunch of international plutocrats to do with it what they will is absolutely chilling.”

    Cadwalladr links a handful of obscure data companies — whose only common thread are ties to Mercer, Cambridge Analytica and its former vice president, Steve Bannon — to show possibly illegal coordination by campaigns advocating for Britain’s exit from the European Union.

    Vote Leave paid £3.9 million — more than half its £7 million budget — to the obscure Canadian tech firm AggregateIQ to “micro-target” voters on social media during the Brexit referendum campaign.

    Mercer purchased the intellectual property of AggregateIQ, which also worked for the Trump campaign, and is friends with former UKIP leader Nigel Farage — as are Trump and Bannon.

    “If AggregateIQ is involved then Cambridge Analytica is involved, and if Cambridge Analytica is involved, then Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon are involved,” said one former Cambridge Analytica employee.

    That former employee, identified only as Paul, told Cadwalladr that Cambridge Analytica underwent an abrupt transformation ahead of the lead-up to the Brexit referendum.

    “It was so … messed up,” Paul said. “It happened so fast. I just woke up one morning and found we’d turned into the Republican fascist party. I still can’t get my head around it.”

    http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/shadowy-tech-firm-that-helped-trump-win-could-be-paid-to-build-minority-report-crime-prediction-database/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous3:53 AM

      The Mercer clan is the newest Koch family. Rich billionaires with very questionable values who do their worst to influence political outcomes. The power of the extremely wealthy in politics is scary. It's one thing if a very rich person runs for office; it's another thing if they hide in the shadows to affect outcomes. While they donated more than anyone else to Trump, I'm sure that no one in the Mercer clan would want to be seen anywhere neat any of the Trump white-poor-"working class" supporters.
      Beaglemom

      Delete
  17. Anonymous3:22 PM

    During the Sally Yates hearing on Monday, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz tried to best Sally Yates with the law, only to be humiliated by her legal knowledge.

    Crus was not concerned with Russia, but with Yates having been fired for refusing to defend Donald Trump’s immigration travel ban executive order (Muslim ban) in court because she was concerned it wasn’t constitutional.

    With a calm and cool demeanor that brought back the no drama Obama years, Yates schooled Ted Cruz and finished him off by bringing out religious freedom in her defense.

    Watch here:

    http://www.politicususa.com/2017/05/08/sally-yates-humiliates-senator-cruz-cornyn-knowledge.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous7:13 PM

      Small note: Cruz ALSO managed to ascertain that no other campaign----his own?---was hacked. It seemed to be a HUGE relief to him.

      Delete
  18. Anonymous3:23 PM

    After Getting His Butt Kicked By Sally Yates, Ted Cruz Doesn’t Return For Second Round Of Questioning

    Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) got his head handed to him by Sally Yates during the first round of questioning, so he didn't bother to show up for round two.…

    http://www.politicususa.com/2017/05/08/butt-kicked-sally-yates-ted-cruz-return-questioning.html

    ReplyDelete
  19. Anonymous3:32 PM

    "The question now is why. Why, after being told by the outgoing president that Flynn was bad news -- "


    Trump had no choice but to ignore President Obama and Yates regarding Flynn being a traitor to America.

    It's too late for Trump to go against Putin with all the dirt Putin has on Trump.

    Not even Russian Golden Showers can cleanse Trump of the dirt all over his face and hands.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Anonymous3:38 PM

    Melania tell us what you know. Any spouse of a president would be proud but something didn't sit well with you. Melania didn't want to be part of the Trump/Flynn/Manafort/Tillerson/Eric/Donnie Jr/ and the rest of them anti-Americans.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Anonymous3:41 PM

    Me thinks Trump is a flight risk and should have his passport revoked.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous3:45 PM

      Uh okaaaaaaaay. lol.

      Delete
  22. Anonymous3:47 PM

    I just read online that Trump had his ban comments taken down from his site finally b/c of the Yates hearing today bringing that matter up, but it was also a point of discussion in appeals court today. And, duh, Trump's people finally realized they should remove the content.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Anonymous3:51 PM

    Why the Sally Yates Hearing Was Very Bad News for the Trump White House

    The president just lost his favorite piece of spin for countering the Russia scandal.

    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/sally-yates-clapper-russia-trump-hearing-michael-flynn

    ReplyDelete
  24. Anonymous3:56 PM

    Mother Jones:
    ...On February 9, the Washington Post revealed that Flynn had indeed spoken with Kislyak about the sanctions. And still the Trump White House backed him up. Four days later, Kellyanne Conway, a top Trump White House official, declared that Trump still had "full confidence" in Flynn. The next day—as a media firestorm continued—Trump fired him. Still, the day after he canned Flynn, Trump declared, "Gen. Flynn is a wonderful man. I think he has been treated very, very unfairly by the media, as I call it, the fake media in many cases. And I think it is really a sad thing that he was treated so badly." Trump displayed no concern about Flynn's misconduct....


    Kellyanne Conway? Where in the world is Kellyanne Conway? She used to be this cool double talking cucumber Trump defender but after several missteps on her part, she's not the face of Trump anymore or of those Russian sympathizing hooligans in the White House.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Anonymous4:03 PM

    CNN
    The many paths from
    Trump to Russia

    By Marshall Cohen and Tal Yellin

    The FBI and both chambers of Congress are investigating whether there were improper contacts between the Trump orbit and Russia during the 2016 election. Here is a summary of known connections between Trump associates and Russia

    (SEE DIAGRAM AND FLOWCHART HOW TRUMP'S INNER CIRCLE AND FAMILY MEMBERS TIE HIM TO PUTIN)

    http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/politics/trump-russia-connections/

    ReplyDelete
  26. Anonymous4:46 PM

    The center of this investigation is about Flynn.

    Why are the Republicans questioning Yates about leaks to the press?

    Oh that's right. Trump's tweets told the Republicans to question Yates about the leaks.

    The questioning of leaks brought up by Trump is his attempt to distract America with his shiny object defense.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous3:47 AM

      They are trying to "destroy the messenger." It's what Republicans do when faced with an intelligent, honest woman who has done nothing wrong but do her job well. Think Hillary Clinton and the tyranny of the Congressional investigations into Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi and then the emails which were never a real issue. It's how Republican men deal with adversarial women. They try to scare them into submission but it doesn't work. Ever.
      Beaglemom

      Delete
  27. Anonymous7:10 PM

    And so it begins. I've been worried about our democracy but perhaps that 'checks and balences' thing is actually going to save our stupid asses. Trump's a traitor. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. And chickens do come home to roost.

    OAFMMC.

    GeorgiaPeach

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous7:17 PM

      Damn, misspelled balances. Corrected.

      GeorgiaPeach

      Delete
  28. Anonymous7:48 PM

    And if Trump were really smart he would STFU and stop tweeting. 'Cause everything he tweets is like a bullseye on exactly that of which he is guilty. What a doofus. Like $arah. No sense, way too much reactive emotion.

    GeorgiaPeach

    ReplyDelete
  29. Anonymous4:04 PM

    So you are ok with these leaks, but not ok with leaks showing us how horribly our government is spying on us?

    So you pick and choose when to be indignant based on whose side is doing the leaking?

    I say anybody leaking or whistle blowing on government over reach and corruption is good. No matter who looks bad in the end.

    ReplyDelete

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