House Intelligence Committee to announce they are done with Russia probe interviews

[Leo123]

Okay, bring on your 'proof' that he is anything other than that which he is known to be: A man of honor and stellar repute.

"during his 11 years as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mueller’s agency routinely violated federal law and the Bill of Rights."

"Mueller took over the FBI one week before the 9/11 attacks and he was worse than clueless after 9/11. "

"Rather than arresting FBI agents who broke the law, Mueller created a new FBI Office of Integrity and Compliance."

Seems your 'golden boy' is a bit tarnished...

Robert Mueller's forgotten surveillance crime spree

 

[Leo123]

From the article you refused to read:

Mueller served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969, was wounded in combat and earned a Bronze Star with a V for valor, a Purple Heart and two Navy Commendation Medals. He got his law degree from the University of Virginia, and after a few years at a white-shoe firm, joined the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Francisco. George W. Bush brought him back to Washington to be No. 2 at Justice, and he was sworn in as director of the FBI seven days before Sept. 11, 2001.

In that job for 12 years, Mueller reshaped the bureau to tackle the growing threat of transnational terrorists, a herculean undertaking for an agency that viewed intelligence and national security as secondary missions to beat-level criminal busts. He crossed swords with the younger Bush’s White House team, twice threatening to resign over matters of principle: once when Justice found a Bush eavesdropping program to be illegal, and again when Bush ordered him to give back to Congress evidence gathered on Democratic Representative William Jefferson, who was later convicted of bribery, racketeering and money laundering.

For all his professional credibility, however, Mueller’s efforts as special counsel have not gone unchallenged. In June, one of Trump’s lawyers publicly entertained the idea that the President might fire Mueller because some said the investigation was expanding beyond its original mandate, which in fact is to investigate any crime he may find. That month, Trump tweeted that the Mueller investigation was a “Witch Hunt” and accused some members of the team of bias. By the fall, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal had called for Mueller to resign.


The pressure has hurt the President more than the prosecutor. Mueller is a lifelong registered Republican, and many in the GOP revere him for his years of service. Two Republican Senators, Thom Tillis and Lindsey Graham, proposed legislation protecting the special counsel from firing, while conservative commentators lambasted Trump for meddling. The heat over the probe may have permanently undermined Trump’s relations with his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, whose decision to recuse himself from the Russia matters—Sessions had been a member of the Trump campaign—opened the door for Rosenstein’s selection of Mueller.

Well good for Muller...I respect his military service. I still think Trump should fire him. He's turned into a political hack.

 

[Leo123]

Did you enjoy yours? All the many many "Oh this time for SURE she's going to be charged!!!"

Never happened. I'm not having a meal. I'm just sitting here smirking.

You may be smirking but you are also supporting criminal behavior.

 

[Leo123]

Dat is not dat. The House Intelligence Committee and Devin Nunes are the ones who has been conducting a witch hunt. They have been dishonest from the beginning and shown they never intended to do a fair and honest investigation unlike the Senate Intelligence Committee. Their report is not worth the trees it takes to make the paper. It was a cover-up.

Then why didn't they shut Shiff's pie hole? He is a ranking member of the HIC. Do you see how low information causes low intelligence?

 

[Valerie]

'The House' and 'intelligence' shall never be used in the same sentence ever again.. shame on them!




The Republican decision to end the House Russia investigation comes as special counsel Robert Mueller's probe appears to be accelerating.


"While the majority members of our committee have indicated for some time that they have been under great pressure to end the investigation, it is nonetheless another tragic milestone for this Congress, and represents yet another capitulation to the executive branch," Schiff said in a statement. "By ending its oversight role in the only authorized investigation in the House, the Majority has placed the interests of protecting the President over protecting the country, and history will judge its actions harshly."

The Senate Intelligence Committee is forging ahead with its investigation into Russian election meddling.


House Republicans break with intelligence community

 

[Valerie]

This outcome was completely predictable from the outset, when the committee’s chairman, Devin Nunes, snuck off to the White House late at night to produce an explosive but eventually debunked charge that Trump had been the victim of nefarious “unmasking” by Obama officials in 2016. Nunes continued to churn out explosive but false counter-charges depicting the Russia investigation as a Deep State conspiracy against the completely innocent Trump campaign.


The House GOP investigation failed to interview Manafort, or his partner Rick Gates, or Michael Flynn, or George Papadopoulos, all of whom have been indicted by Robert Mueller, and the latter three of whom are cooperating with his investigation. Rep. Mike Conaway, the Republican heading the investigation in the wake of Nunes’s quasi-recusal, admitted last week, “I don’t have any clue who George Nader is.” Nader has been the subject of two front-page New York Times stories linking him to a secret post-election meeting between Trump and Russian officials.


But the House Republican investigation is not going to exert itself to extreme measures like learning the names of major figures involved in the case. Even publicly-available evidence, like the 2016 Trump Tower meeting in which leading campaign officials eagerly met with a Russian promising dirt on Hillary Clinton, or the public boasting by Papadopoulos that the campaign had obtained Russian dirt on its opponent, have failed to move his allies in the lower chamber. Trump was just a big-hearted business tycoon who wanted to help some Russian orphans and maybe give down-on-his-luck lobbyist Paul Manafort a job (unpaid.) For all that, they seem to believe, he has been smeared by the notoriously left-wing American intelligence apparatus as a dupe for a foreign country that didn’t even necessarily want him to win the election!

House Republicans Conclude Pretend Russia Investigation, Declare Trump Innocent

 

[Valerie]

Papadopoulos says that Trump personally encouraged him to arrange meeting with Putin, new book reports

Papadopoulos says that Trump personally encouraged him to arrange meeting with Putin

 

[Valerie]

in early January 2017 when Vice President Joe Biden was briefed about intelligence reports on contacts between various players in the Trump orbit and the Kremlin, he had a visceral reaction. “If this is true, it’s treason,” Biden exclaimed.

 

[Leo123]

This outcome was completely predictable from the outset, when the committee’s chairman, Devin Nunes, snuck off to the White House late at night to produce an explosive but eventually debunked charge that Trump had been the victim of nefarious “unmasking” by Obama officials in 2016. Nunes continued to churn out explosive but false counter-charges depicting the Russia investigation as a Deep State conspiracy against the completely innocent Trump campaign.

Do you get paid for posting this leftist, DNC, Marxist propaganda? If not, you are being used.

 

[Leo123]

Papadopoulos says that Trump personally encouraged him to arrange meeting with Putin, new book reports

Papadopoulos says that Trump personally encouraged him to arrange meeting with Putin

Did you miss this in your own link?

"according to a new book being published Tuesday." Gee now who do you suppose is the author.....Oh yeah...Micael Isikoff and David Korn.....Radical leftist commentators...You poor moron.

 

[Lakhota]

TRUMP GLOATS IN HOUSE COVER-UP

This is what TREASON looks like.

 

[Valerie]

Did a shadowy Russian banker close to Vladimir Putin illegally give money to the National Rifle Association to support the presidential campaign of Donald Trump? That's the subject of an active FBI investigation, according to an explosive report by McClatchy.

The Trump-Russia-NRA Connection: Here’s What You Need to Know



Unprecedented Trump Support

The National Rifle Association spent tens of millions of dollars backing Trump's presidential bid in 2016. The NRA endorsed Trump in May 2016. And the NRA disclosed it spent at least $30 million on Trump's behalf and attacking Hillary Clinton. That level of support is unprecedented – more than twice what the NRA disclosed it spent on Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential run.

The true sum the NRA spent to install Trump in the White House may be far higher. Campaign finance disclosures do not cover spending on unregulated Internet advertising or voter mobilization; citing two sources close to the gun group, McClatchy suggests the NRA may have spent upwards of $70 million on Trump's presidential bid.

President Trump is clearly indebted: "You came through for me, and I am going to come through for you," Trump promised the NRA at its 2017 convention. "I will never, ever let you down."

Dark Money
In the age of Citizens United and unlimited campaign donations, the NRA has emerged as an important "dark money" hub in Republican politics. Under its tax code designation, the NRA is a "social welfare" organization, largely exempt from disclosing its donors. To skirt disclosure, other big-dollar political players – including a SuperPAC linked to Karl Rove and a "chamber of commerce" controlled by the Koch Brothers – have routinely steered money into the NRA, confident that the gun group's spending will advance the GOP cause.

It is illegal, however, for foreign money to be used to influence U.S. elections. According to McClatchy, the heart of the FBI investigation is whether the NRA became a conduit for Russian cash, linked to the Kremlin, that bolstered Trump.

The Banker and "Godfather"

The key figure in the NRA/Russia investigation, McClatchy reports, is Alexander Torshin. Torshin is a longtime Putin ally who previously served as a top Russian senator. He is now a deputy governor of Russia's central bank, where his purview includes cracking down on the outflow of dirty money.

That's ironic, because Torshin has been linked to money laundering. Bloomberg reported

As a result of this investigation, Spain convicted a Torshin underling – who reportedly called Torshin "boss" and "godfather" in recordings – and sentenced this man to nearly four years in prison for illegal transactions totaling more than $1.8 million. Torshin himself was not charged; a Spanish official told Bloomberg that Russia won't cooperate in cases against top politicians. Toshin has denied any wrongdoing.

NRA Connections

Torshin helped establish a Russian gun group called Right to Bear Arms, whose president calls Torshin "a great gun lover." Torshin is also a life member of the NRA – and forged ties to its leadership after attending the NRA's national convention in 2013. McClatchy reports that, in 2015, Toshin hosted "a high-level NRA delegation" during a week-long Moscow trip "that included meetings with influential Russian government and business figures." An attendee describes a debauched week: "They were killing us with vodka and the best Russian food," he told McClatchy. "The trip exceeded my expectations by logarithmic levels."

 

[Valerie]

The book chronicles the efforts of Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s central bank and a close Putin ally, and his assistant, Maria Butina, to curry favor with the Trump campaign — including their own attempt to set up a Trump-Putin meeting in Moscow.

Those efforts began as early as July 2015, when Butina showed up at FreedomFest, a conservative gathering, in Las Vegas, where Trump was speaking. During a Q&A session, Trump called on Butina, who asked him about his stance on Russia and the sanctions imposed by the Obama administration on the country — eliciting the first response from the new GOP candidate on an issue that was a top priority of Putin’s government.

“I know Putin,” Trump replied during the course of a five-minute answer. “I believe I would get along very nicely with Putin, OK? I don’t think you’d need the sanctions.”

Later in the campaign, the book reports that two top Trump officials — Steve Bannon and Reince Preibus — discussed a video of the Las Vegas event and wondered how Butina gained such quick access to Trump’s ear.

“How was it that this Russian woman happened to be in Las Vegas for that event? And how was it that Trump happened to call on her?” Isikoff and Corn write. “And Trump’s response? It was odd, Bannon thought, that Trump had a fully developed answer. Priebus agreed there was something strange about Butina. Whenever there were events held by conservative groups, she was always around.”

In the spring of 2016, Torshin and Butina — who had close ties to the National Rifle Association — made a direct play to gain influence with the Trump campaign, floating their own proposal for a Trump-Putin summit during an international conference in Moscow on the plight of persecuted Christians, organized by Franklin Graham.

In an email to Trump campaign officials, Rick Clay, a conservative activist, described Torshin as a “very close friend of President Putin” and encouraged the Trump team to strongly consider the offer.

“Please excuse the play on words, but this is HUGE!” Clay wrote, according to a copy of the email...

Papadopoulos says that Trump personally encouraged him to arrange meeting with Putin, new book reports

 

[IsaacNewton]

Huh, and they kept the HRC investigation that found nothing going for 4 full straight year right up until the 2016 election.

Why do you suppose that is.

Soulless people are all that are left in the Republican Politburo. They have no country, only party .Like the old Soviet Union communists.

 

[Valerie]

The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor—with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers,” Bannon is quoted as saying in Fire and Fury. “Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the F.B.I. immediately.” Bannon reportedly speculated that the chance the eldest Trump son did not involve his father in the meeting “is zero.”

When Bannon’s comments became public, Trump excoriated his former strategist, whom he accused of having “lost his mind.” But while Bannon has since apologized for the remarks and sought to walk back a number of the quotes, he’s stopped short of denying that he viewed the Trump Tower meeting as treasonous. Instead, he’s merely shifted the blame away from Trump Jr. and onto Manafort. “My comments were aimed at Paul Manafort, a seasoned campaign professional with experience and knowledge of how the Russians operate. He should have known they are duplicitous, cunning, and not our friends.


Though the Trump Tower meeting took place before Bannon joined the Trump campaign, Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House panel, told CNN last week that he plans to question Bannon about “why this meeting at Trump Tower represented his treason and certainly unpatriotic at a minimum.”



Jared Kushner’s “greasy shit”

Wolff also quotes the former White House strategist as saying, “This is all about money laundering. [Robert] Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr., and Jared Kushner . . . It’s as plain as a hair on your face.”

Bannon then zeroed in on Kushner specifically, adding that “t goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit. The Kushner shit is greasy. They’re going to go right through that. They’re going to roll those two guys up and say play me or trade me.”

He and Trump’s son-in-law have never seen eye to eye; their White House feuds were a poorly kept secret, and following his ouster, Bannon has given numerous interviews knocking Kushner, including one to my colleague Gabriel Sherman in which he questioned Kushner’s maturity level. If Bannon has dirt on Kushner, he will likely get his chance to reveal it; Schiff also declared his intent to question Bannon on “the basis of his concern over money laundering.”

Mike Flynn and WikiLeaks

Trump Tower meeting aside, there are a series of other critical moments during the Trump campaign, transition, and administration for which Bannon was present, ones that are likely of interest to congressional investigators. According to The New York Times, Bannon was forwarded an e-mail from K. T. McFarland, who served as an adviser to the Trump transition, that detailed Mike Flynn’s plan to discuss the retaliatory election-related sanctions the Obama administration leveled against Moscow at the end of December 2016.

In addition, The Atlantic reported that Bannon was among the senior officials Trump Jr. e-mailed in September 2016, informing them that WikiLeaks had made contact with him over Twitter.



Cambridge Analytica

Bannon’s relationship with Robert and Rebekah Mercer, who partly own the data analytics company used by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, is also likely to be of interest to the panel. In December, The Wall Street Journal reported that Cambridge Analytica had turned over e-mails from any employees who worked on the campaign to Mueller. And that same month, the company’s C.E.O., Alexander Nix, who reportedly contacted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, testified before the House Intelligence Committee via teleconference.


Erik Prince’s “backchannel”

The former Breitbart News chief also has close ties with Erik Prince, Blackwater founder and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. In April, The Washington Post reported that Prince served as an unofficial envoy to the Trump campaign in a secret meeting brokered by the United Arab Emirates in early January 2017, in order to establish a backchannel between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump. The meeting took place shortly after Kushner and Bannon met with the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who arranged the meeting along with his brother.

Will Steve Bannon’s Testimony Bring Down Jared?

 

[Valerie]

 

[Valerie]

How much is Trump worth? Mueller's Deutsche Bank subpoena could solve the mystery


“This is all about money laundering. [Robert] Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr., and Jared Kushner . . . It’s as plain as a hair on your face.”

Bannon then zeroed in on Kushner specifically, adding that “it goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit. The Kushner shit is greasy. They’re going to go right through that. They’re going to roll those two guys up and say play me or trade me.”


Is Donald Trump’s dark Russian secret hiding in Deutsche Bank’s vaults?

 

[Valerie]

The Trump-Russia-NRA Connection: Here’s What You Need to Know


Trump Connections

At the May 2016 NRA convention in Louisville, Kentucky, where Donald Trump accepted the group's endorsement, Torshin shared a table at dinner with the candidate's son Donald Jr. According to Bloomberg, Torshin claimed to also have met now-president Trump at the convention, and that: "He keeps photos of the event on his computer tablet."

The 2016 NRA convention came off just as Russians were actively seeking contact with the Trump campaign – just weeks earlier, a Russian conduit told Trump staffer George Papadopoulos that Russia had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, including thousands of her emails. – and hoping to set up a meeting with Trump and Putin.

According to the New York Times, Torshin tried to set up a dinner meeting in Louisville at the time of the NRA convention with then-candidate Trump – with the aim of connecting Trump with Putin. The request was conveyed through a Trump ally in the Christian conservative world, who reportedly sent the campaign an email with the subject line: "Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite."

Separately, an NRA member, Paul Erickson – who had been part of the 2015 NRA delegation to Moscow – wrote an email titled, "Kremlin Connection," to Trump campaign adviser Rick Dearborn, according to the New York Times. Erickson reportedly told the campaign that Russia was "quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the U.S." and would be seeking "first contact" at the NRA convention.

Weeks later, in early June 2016, the trio of Donald Trump Jr., then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner took a meeting with a Putin-connected lawyer who had offered incriminating material on Hillary Clinton. Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon has dubbed that meeting "treasonous."

A Potential Game Changer

The allegation that Russia funneled money into the NRA – to directly support Trump's presidential bid – is staggering. Until now, we've understood the Russian support of Trump to have been oblique, delivered by a cadre of Facebook and Twitter trolls, and by the release of hacked DNC and Clinton campaign emails through Wikileaks.

The notion that the Kremlin was supporting Trump's presidential bid financially – and through an organization that holds itself up as a paragon of American patriotism – is almost unreal.


If the allegation bears out, it raises unsettling questions:

How much money did Torshin deliver?

Did the NRA understand that this money was coming from Moscow?

Did the Trump campaign?

Did Russian funds only support Trump – or did the money infiltrate the NRA's broader mission of electing Republicans? (In total, the NRA spent nearly $52 million in the 2016 general election on dozens of House and Senate races.)

Does Russian influence have anything to do with the fascistic turn in NRA messaging?





https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2017-08-01/im-a-gun-lover-and-the-nra-has-lost-its-mind



the NRA's rhetoric shifted its focus from working with lawmakers across the country to defend Second Amendment rights, to recasting the group as the front-line warrior in a crusade against the entire progressive movement in a culture war that they claimed had engulfed the country.



The Kremlin's Troll Army

 

[Lakhota]

Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) told CNN that “there is evidence” the Russians worked to help Trump.

GOP Lawmaker Breaks Ranks On Russia Report: ‘We’ve Lost All Credibility’

No shit, Sherlock.

 

[Lumpy 1]

Liberal nazi-bots sucking up parasite news crap to the very last drop... how sweet..