CNN: Trump Folks May Have Possibly Coordinated with Russia, Sources Might Say. Possibly.
The FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, US officials told CNN.
This is partly what FBI Director James Comey was referring to when he made a bombshell announcement Monday before Congress that the FBI is investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, according to one source.
The FBI is now reviewing that information, which includes human intelligence, travel, business and phone records and accounts of in-person meetings, according to those U.S. officials. The information is raising the suspicions of FBI counterintelligence investigators that the coordination may have taken place, though officials cautioned that the information was not conclusive and that the investigation is ongoing.
Wow. So some anonymous sources, based on evidence we can’t see, have inconclusive maybes that suggest possibly there could have been this thing that happened.
After all the stories Big Media presents us with that fizzle out, forgive me if my attitude is: wake me up when you have actual evidence.
I’m really tired of this. And, just to piss off everybody in an equal opportunity fashion: I’m equally tired of all the partisans out there who are declaiming that this Nunes character somehow proved that Donald Trump was surveilled and wiretapped and PEOPLE OWE DONALD TRUMP A BIG APOLOGY!!!!1!!111!!!!1!! (If this confuses you, read Jay Caruso and learn about incidental collection. It ain’t targeted surveillance and it ain’t wiretapping.)
Good Lord. Settle down, people.
[Cross-posted at RedState and The Jury Talks Back.]
What was that damaging information? That someone gave her questions in advance of her debate with Sanders. That NY Times reporters routinely have editing power to the Democrat power brokers. Did anyone this really hurt Hillary? Please refresh my memory because I don’t recall anything of much importance. And if it was that important, shouldn’t the voters learn about it? Did Russia do the heavy lifting that the American media refused to do?
AZ Bob (f7a491) — 3/22/2017 @ 8:45 pmIt does feel like groundhog day, the staybehinders leak the existence of the calls and fill in the content like a chicken chalupa, doesn’t matter how ludicrous.
narciso (6ff44f) — 3/22/2017 @ 8:50 pmMy favorite Wikileak was that the Democrats created fake Craigslist employment ad for Trump in May, 2016. “Like it or not, he may greet you with a kiss on the lips or grope you under the meeting table.”
AZ Bob (f7a491) — 3/22/2017 @ 8:59 pmIt does raise an interesting question: if it turned out to be true what CNN says here, would people here object? Genuine question. I don’t know the answer. Which is kinda weird, but I really don’t.
Patterico (115b1f) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:02 pmUnless you think Nunes lied or was provided with forgeries, yes Trump is owed an apology.
But ok to wait a bit.
Possible not only trump was right but but but they were right to be wiretapping. Maybe something did happen. Maybe grandma had balls too. Maybe.
But forgive me for thinking given the deranged pathological hatred of this flawed man, that conformational bias plays a huge role in what is reported plus it diverts from Nunes Presser today and that any good data on Trump would be buried as deep as possible by those deranged people.
So if good stuff comes out for Trump from the bureaucracy then I am inclined to believe that much more so than negative that is also proof free.
Blah (44eaa0) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:09 pmNot for the criticism responding to his bullshit tweets.
Maybe for the politically motivated dissemination of classified information.
Patterico (115b1f) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:12 pmPatterico,
Except more proof exists Trump is closer to the truth than CNN reports to date.
So I think of things probablistically, and “Trump Russia” smells like a fart from the DNC’s ass.
Might be true, but highly unlikely given the data and testimony provided by Trump haters.
Blah (44eaa0) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:13 pmSources like Ned price, ms ahmed, Susan rice, clapper, it may take a generation to recover from their treachery.
narciso (6ff44f) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:13 pmWell that’s a bigger issue isn’t it, the truth is we have firm idea who nabbed those emails, it’s a wilderness of mirfors
narciso (6ff44f) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:15 pmYou may not like Trump’s tweets but they are genius for the most part.
He focuses the nation and deranged Media on what He wants to talk about.
Not what you want to talk about.
Even CNN constantly talking about his Obama tweet puts focus on the fact they were spying on him and to the Public unless evidenced is produced they will say “damn they spied on the guy for no reason”
Blah (44eaa0) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:16 pm“We called more than thirty members of congress from both parties who had previously mocked the President’s claim that he had been surveilled. None of them agreed to come on [the air with Tucker Carlson].”
Well, isn’t that special.
papertiger (c8116c) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:17 pmTrump and his tweets won him the election because they got everyone talking about topics that help him.
So when he tweets, pay attention and stop reacting.
Blah (44eaa0) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:18 pmExpect forged documents to make their way to CNN alleging Trump himself is a Russian Mole or something.
They won’t go down without a fight and lying is easy for them.
Blah (44eaa0) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:19 pmI’m really tired of this.
INDEED…
“Goddammit, when is somebody going to go on the record in this story?” – Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee [Jason Robards] ‘All The President’s Men’ 1976
DCSCA (797bc0) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:21 pmAZ Bob,
DNC was not a hack. That is a lie. It was an inside job by a Hillary Hater.
And yes Wikileaks did so the job our Media refused to do. And without editorializing much.
Blah (44eaa0) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:22 pmCNN will taste their own $hit Sandwich and they will be made to like it. They are the same $hitbirds they’ve always been. It’s good to see some people finally waking up and smelling the cat food.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:24 pmWe do know five persons who had access to those emails who answer to perhaps two foreign powers,yet they are rarely mentioned.
narciso (6ff44f) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:26 pmExcept more proof exists Trump is closer to the truth than CNN reports to date.
Alpha Centauri is closer to your own butt than Trump has ever been to the truth.
“And he kids us not.” – Tom Keefer [Fred MacMurray] ‘The Caine Mutiny’ 1954
DCSCA (797bc0) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:27 pmOf course we know now f the press knew this was a vendetta by a bureau supergrade who had coincidentally surveiled those nice weather underground well that might have spoiled thebnarrative.
narciso (6ff44f) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:28 pmDCSCA,
Yeah, Russia, uh huh. Taxes!!!
Again whatever Trump talks about something and keeps doubling down … means it suits him.
As it related to his person, they have nothing.
As I related to Obama spying on him, he has something.
So yes he is closer to the truth than CNN.
Blah (44eaa0) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:33 pmMaybe for the politically motivated dissemination of classified information.
Which remains a scandal that will persist beyond the difference between being the target and incidental collection. And should.
Obama’s legacy is the corruption of every single part of the government.
SPQR (a3a747) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:37 pm“It does raise an interesting question: if it turned out to be true what CNN says here, would people here object? Genuine question. I don’t know the answer. Which is kinda weird, but I really don’t.”
I would not. Because
binary choice.I mean, I would not object, because the information that Hillary Clinton was running a pay-for-play scheme at the State Department (and therefore: the implication is that she intended, as President, to turn the entire Federal government into a pay-for-play operation), and that she was using the Clinton Foundation to dodge taxes, take bribes, peddle influence, and pay her army of lickspittle lackeys, was the single most important piece of information about the candidates that was released during the election.
People who say that Russia “hacked” the election are sore that valid, true, vital information was NOT withheld from the American people. We were able to consider that information, along with the information that Russia might have been behind the leak, and to make up our own minds about who ought to be holding the levers of power.
It reminds me of what you’ve talked about before re: the hypothetical situation of if there were fewer limits on evidence during criminal trials. Except that this isn’t a trial where an accused’s rights are at stake, this is an election where ALL of our futures are at stake. The logic that justifies paternalistic controls on information shared with the jury doesn’t hold up in the circumstance of elections. I don’t trust anyone to be in charge of withholding political information from the American People. ESPECIALLY all of the people who didn’t want me to know what a crook Hillary was.
Here is generally how I would rank a few possibilities, in the order of preference
Daryl Herbert (7be116) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:40 pm1 – Trump has no idea about the leaks before they happen
2 – Trump knows about the leaks before they happen, and does nothing
3 – Trump knows about the leaks before they happen, and coordinates with Putin because they both want to damage Hillary
4 – Trump makes a pee pee tape in exchange for the leaks, and gets blackmailed by Putin
5 – The leaks don’t happen and Hillary becomes President
“…Does this mean that President Trump’s famous tweets were right all along? Not exactly. Trump claimed that the Obama administration had his “wires tapped” in Trump tower. That implies that he or his associates were targets of licit or illicit surveillance, whereas Nunes says the government was spying on someone else and picked up Trump team members’ communications only incidentally.
Of course, this doesn’t rule out the possibility that, apart from incidental communications, the FBI or someone else was specifically targeting associates of Donald Trump for surveillance.
Closer to the heart of the matter may be Nunes’s observation that the identities of Trump associates subject to such incidental surveillance were “widely disseminated.” This “unmasking” is a federal crime, as House members discussed with Comey and Rogers on Monday. So, while President Trump may have been wrong in believing that the Obama administration directed surveillance at him or his associates–the jury is still out on that question–he was certainly right to be angry about the fact that information reflecting badly on his associates, collected through apparently legal surveillance, was leaked to the press in an effort to damage his campaign or his administration.”
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/03/so-were-trumps-tweets-right-after-all.php
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:48 pm@20. Blah, blah, blah.
The only ‘Truth’ this guy’s been close to is a stripper who went by that name in the VIP lounge at Studio 54.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:56 pmComey said this investigation has been going on since July. Almost nine months have gone by. Is there any there there?
AZ Bob (f7a491) — 3/22/2017 @ 10:12 pmI wouldn’t be surprised if the FBI is currently tapping Trump.
AZ Bob (f7a491) — 3/22/2017 @ 10:13 pmFreddoso at The Washington Examiner–(Also a very reasonable person like Randy Barnett) has this tonight.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/in-presser-on-trump-team-surveillance-nunes-referred-to-earlier-spying-on-israeli-officials/article/2618173#.WNMoEZA62_I.twitter?platform=hootsuite
Here is an interesting section where Freddoso quotes from a Wall Street Journal article:
White House officials believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign. They also recognized that asking for it was politically risky. So, wary of a paper trail stemming from a request, the White House let the NSA decide what to share and what to withhold, officials said. “We didn’t say, ‘Do it,’ ” a senior U.S. official said. “We didn’t say, ‘Don’t do it.’ “
Then there is Freddoso’s conclusion:
Perhaps Nunes only brought this up because it was a similar case of incidental intelligence collection on Americans. Or perhaps he brought it up because the surveillance he is discussing, whose dissemination within the government he described as alarming, has something to do with discussions between Team Trump and the Israelis.
Freddoso also has some earlier commentary that is very interesting as it looks like–or seems like the Obama Administration was very keen to essentially spy on Congress during the Iran negotiations.
This would dovetail nicely with the idea that members of the Trump administration were over the target and acquiring a lot of flak because they were interested in revealing to the American public the terms of that–the Obama Administration’s Iranian Deal.
Rae Sremmurd (2fd998) — 3/22/2017 @ 10:20 pmSo you think Obama picked targets that would naturally lead to picking up surveillance of members of Congress? Interesting.
AZ Bob (f7a491) — 3/22/2017 @ 10:38 pm@25. Patience.
The Watergate break-in was on June 17, 1972 and it took over two years until the Big Dick resigned on August 9, 1974.
“Impooch With Honor” – souvenir pet food bowl, 1974
DCSCA (797bc0) — 3/22/2017 @ 10:50 pmWe knew the day after the Watergate break in that a crime had been committed.
AZ Bob (f7a491) — 3/22/2017 @ 10:54 pmIs anyone going to get the Scooter Libby treatment? Valerie Plame must be triggered at this point.
Pinandpuller (f72d00) — 3/22/2017 @ 11:33 pmHa. Surely you had occasion to deal with the Feds from time to time in your career as a county prosecutor, AZBob?
There are good folks and difficult folks there, but nobody would say they move fast. We can all agree on that.
Patterico (115b1f) — 3/22/2017 @ 11:33 pm@30. Actually, the night of… but you asked, ‘is there any there there?’
Patience.
“Everyone says, ‘Get off it, Ben,’ and I come on very sage and I say, uh, ‘Well, you’ll see, you wait till this bottoms out.’ But the truth is, I can’t figure out WHAT we’ve got.” – Ben Bradlee, Washington Post Editor [Jason Robards] ‘All The President’s Men’ 1976
DCSCA (797bc0) — 3/22/2017 @ 11:37 pmI am surer about who killed Kennedy than I am about this mess.
Here’s my solution: open up all the evidence and have a public inquiry. Wikileaks will publish it all anyway, so the heck with classification and such. Just put it all out there and let’s see what you got. As it stands, we just have BS on top of BS.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 3/23/2017 @ 12:35 amPart of this is a Democrat hope to find some kind of Watergate, so they can undo the demographic shirt that cost them the WH, and keep the economy trashed for the next 18 months so they don’t lose the midterms.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 3/23/2017 @ 12:38 am*shift
Kevin M (25bbee) — 3/23/2017 @ 12:38 amI was watching news all day yesterday and I was amazed at this breaking story on all the news channels that Paul Manafort did work for a Russian billionaire. Shep Smith breathlessly reported to me the breaking news alert that Manafort “has been” let go by Trump, and it was such a deja vu moment because I thought I remembered all of this being reported months ago.
jcurtis (0a2fce) — 3/23/2017 @ 3:15 amI feel good, ya. I have a inclination “o traitor ryan” is going down and then mcconnell. Bannon is not going to be burned by these two skirt wearers.
mg (31009b) — 3/23/2017 @ 3:48 amThe people who said “Oh, come off it” or words to that effect don’t owe Trump an apology. The Accusation of wiretapping was over the top. It was SUPPOSED to be over the top. It was a countermove to the “Trump and the Russians hacked the election, so our phantasmagorically unpleasant candidate should really have won” nonsense. Trump is, in effect, saying “You wanna play ‘let’s make wild accusations and see what sticks'” OK, here we go!”
The people who reacted to his move by saying he was paranoid DO owe him an apology. They won’t give him one, because they re immune to shame, but they still owe it.
C. S. P. Schofield (99bd37) — 3/23/2017 @ 4:49 am“It does raise an interesting question: if it turned out to be true what CNN says here, would people here object? ”
Hmmmm… turns out to be true what CNN says here… highly unlikely… not impossible… improbable, yes, but not impossible.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 3/23/2017 @ 5:21 am“The facts are what they are.
What appears at this writing is that Trump transition team members and possibly Trump himself had their identities revealed, were “unmasked” in the parlance, while foreign diplomats were being surveilled. The identities of American citizens were not sufficiently “minimized,” as they are required to be by law. This is a crime one would assume would put the perpetrators in prison. So far it hasn’t. More than that, such behavior is a grave threat to a free society, to all of us.
In effect, Trump was wiretapped — if not in the corny, old sense of the word, something very close. Technologically, he was wiretapped, as were several (actually many) others.
A fair amount of this happened not long before Barack Obama suddenly changed the rules regarding raw intelligence, for the first time ever allowing the NSA to share its data with 16 other intelligence agencies, thus making the dissemination of said data (i. e. leaking) many times more likely. That was done on January 12, 2017, just three scant days before Trump’s inauguration. Why did the then president finally decide to make that particular change at that extremely late date, rather than on one of the previous seven years and three hundred fifty-three days of his presidency? You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes or Watson to smell a rat.”
https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2017/03/22/time-to-investigate-obama-not-just-trump/
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 3/23/2017 @ 5:28 amcnn fake news anderson cooper propaganda sluts don’t do actual journalism they just regurgitate crap fed to them by people like corrupt fbi sphincter james comey for to advance an anti-trump narrative
this has been clear for some time actually
happyfeet (28a91b) — 3/23/2017 @ 5:43 amHa! Ha!!!!
https://twitter.com/RealJamesWoods/status/844327897871482880/photo/1
Colonel Haiku (8d00c4) — 3/23/2017 @ 6:06 amSo you see a hyena that’s stepped into a snake nest. Who do you root for?
nk (dbc370) — 3/23/2017 @ 6:07 amhttp://www.truthrevolt.org/news/james-woods-delivers-twitter-tko-al-franken
Colonel Haiku (8d00c4) — 3/23/2017 @ 6:08 amRoot for the lawyer.
Colonel Haiku (8d00c4) — 3/23/2017 @ 6:10 amRevelations that some of your people talked to individuals currently under active surveillance is not the same as having your people actively surveilled. Somehow this simple distinction doesn’t matter this morning with Trump’s most ardent supporters or those who don’t care about the truth. Nunes simply claimed the law was broken by releasing sensitive information not that Trump was right, and nothing said in that press conference is evidence that the former President wire tapped Trump, his people, or his tower. But by all means, lets twist words, redefine terms, and continue along the dark path towards becoming just as despicable as the left. Yay!
Sean (41ed1e) — 3/23/2017 @ 6:39 amThe use of the intelligence apparatus as a political cudgel – which appears to be the case here – should matter to people. Just as doing the same with the IRS should’ve bothered people.
Colonel Haiku (8d00c4) — 3/23/2017 @ 6:45 amOur esteemed host asked:
If the Russians were the ones who hacked the DNC and Podesta e-mails, and if they were the ones who gave it to WikiLeaks — whether directly or not — and that information was what kept Hillary Clinton out of the White House, then they did us a favor.
You can bet your sweet bippy — I think I just told y’all how old I am! — that if the situation were reversed, had the harmful information been about Donald Trump, or any other Republican, and it contributed to Hillary Clinton winning the election, the credentialed media would be telling us how the source didn’t really matter, it was the information which was disclosed which was important.
The very realistic Dana (1b79fa) — 3/23/2017 @ 6:55 amTell you what’s operative here. The Dems on the Intelligence Committee had their information system compromised. The story has been reported by everybody but big media. The “staffers” who did the compromising have been fired. We don’t know how much damage they did. And if we depend on the WAPONYTABCNNBCBS folks we won’t find out. That’s important. And possibly treasonous
Bang Gunly (5a4596) — 3/23/2017 @ 6:58 am@49,
I still think the whole “The Russians hacked the election” narrative is a somewhat desperate attempt by the Democrat establishment to distract the Democrat rank and file from something we are absolutely SURE happened; the Democrat establishment hacked the nomination process to put Hillary on top, and then the silly shrew LOST.
The Democrat establishment really, REALLY wants to the rank and file to spend the next four years thinking about just about anything other than that fantastic lapse in judgement. Bad enough to back a loser. But to jigger the nomination process to nominate a loser? If that sinks in the status quo in the Party could get awfully seasick.
C. S. P. Schofield (99bd37) — 3/23/2017 @ 7:03 amAnd it does, but that still does not support nor vindicate Trump’s wild accusation that Obama was wire tapping him. And it’s troubling that people on our side of the aisle are using this to do just that.
Sean (41ed1e) — 3/23/2017 @ 7:08 am49… Dick Martin rides again!!!!!!!
Colonel Haiku (8d00c4) — 3/23/2017 @ 7:10 amI think you are rushing to judgement, Sean. Let’s see a total tamp-down of the festering collusion narrative before worrying about what preoccupies you. I put nothing past Obama and his minions.
Colonel Haiku (8d00c4) — 3/23/2017 @ 7:13 amMr Schofield wrote:
Even Donna Brazile’s admission that yes, she gave the Clinton campaign advance notice of specific debate questions has been almost wholly ignored by the credentialed media. The whole problem, according to the Democrats, is not that it happened, but that it was exposed. Those dirty Russkies wouldn’t let the campaign keep its secrets!
The credentialed media are up in arms that the Russians, or somebody, hacked John Podesta’s e-mails, and have nothing at all to say about Mr Podesta telling someone to “sober (Mrs Clinton) up” before a mid-afternoon meeting. The problem isn’t that Mrs Clinton was drunk at 3:00 in the afternoon, but that the campaign couldn’t keep that secret. Considering how gleeful they were about the “October surprise” in 2000, in which it was exposed that George Bush had a DUI arrest decades earlier, that sort of smells of hypocrisy, or, as I like to call it, Democrisy.
The Dana somewhat amused by the irony (1b79fa) — 3/23/2017 @ 7:28 amYes he was being surveiled on spurious grounds, that much is clear.
narciso (d004a7) — 3/23/2017 @ 7:28 amSean wrote:
And it does, but that still does not support nor vindicate Trump’s wild accusation that Obama was wire tapping him. And it’s troubling that people on our side of the aisle are using this to do just that.
The Dana who voted for Gary Johnson (1b79fa) — 3/23/2017 @ 7:30 amCrap! Hit the return key, and it sent the message before I was done! Sean wrote:
It’s just the first crack in the façade that the left have put up; other cracks will soon appear.
How, I wonder, does the supposed 2013 FISA order yield 2016 surveillance of Mr Trump’s campaign and transition teams?
Barack Hussein Obama personally approved continuation of the surveillance of German
The Dana who voted for Gary Johnson (1b79fa) — 3/23/2017 @ 7:41 amFührerChancellor Angela Merkel’s phone; why would anybody think that he just wouldn’t do that when it concerned Donald Trump? Who here believes that, if the surveillance was just the continuation of a 2013 investigation, alarm bells wouldn’t have gone off in the intelligence community, alarm bells which pushed up to the political leadership, once Mr Trump declared his candidacy?So on Monday Schiff tells Rachel Madcow they only have circumstantial evidence re: “collusion” and now tells Chuckles Todd they have more than circumstantial evidence?
Puhleeeeeeeze…
Colonel Haiku (8d00c4) — 3/23/2017 @ 7:47 amCut teh crap.
Colonel Haiku (8d00c4) — 3/23/2017 @ 7:48 amI guess someone will need to channel Eliot Ness to find out who the real criminals are… Comey sure isn’t capable, guy couldn’t find his own ass with two hands and a map.
Colonel Haiku (8d00c4) — 3/23/2017 @ 7:51 amSchiff is throwing out chum to distract from Obama Crime Syndicate
Blah Blah (44eaa0) — 3/23/2017 @ 8:18 amLOL
So they were spying on Trump but not wiretapping b/c as you know they all use cell phones and they have no wires.
Navel gazing idiocy but that is what Never Trumpers have fallen into.
Being precise about tiny things though completely wrong on big things.
Obama never “ordered wiretapping” because the phones were cell phones and he could not actually sign the order even if approved his underlings doing so.
Got it.
Blah Blah (44eaa0) — 3/23/2017 @ 8:20 ami see this whole situation very clearly
happyfeet (a037ad) — 3/23/2017 @ 8:21 amNoted Trump Hater, James Clapper: “We have no evidence” after 8 months investigating
NeverTrumpers: “So you tell me we still have a chance?”
Blah Blah (44eaa0) — 3/23/2017 @ 8:24 am#32: Wire-tap law is strict because a wire tap is a substantial invasion of the right to privacy. There are many restrictions in CA that occur after the tap is established. Sending names of non-targets to other agencies is a big no-no as is revealing the names of these people to the media.
Obama did his best to eliminate safeguards so that anyone caught in a contact can be dragged through the mud. Obama’s contribution was to get the names sent throughout the government. He knew it gave his shadow government of Obama loyalists the ability to leak innuendo to the media. And we all know what camp the media sits in thanks to WikiLeaks.
This whole news story is based on the argument that “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” That is the premise behind the former British spy who was hired by Trump opponents to create a “dossier.”
AZ Bob (f7a491) — 3/23/2017 @ 8:29 amPresident Trump invited the Pope for lunch on his mega yacht, the Pope accepted and during lunch, a puff of wind blew the Pontiff’s hat off, right into the water.
It floated off about 50 feet, then the wind died down and it just floated in place.
The crew and the secret service were scrambling to launch a boat to go get it, when Trump waved them off, saying “Never mind, boys, I’ll get it.”
The Donald climbed over the side of the yacht, walked on the water to the hat, picked it up, walked back on the water, climbed into the yacht, and handed the Pope his hat.
The crew was speechless. The security team and the Pope’s entourage were speechless.
No one knew what to say, not even the Pope.
But that afternoon, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, CNN reported: “TRUMP CAN’T SWIM!”
Rev. Hoagie® (785e38) — 3/23/2017 @ 8:29 amRemember the hate crimes against synagogues? Guess the twist.
narciso (d004a7) — 3/23/2017 @ 8:37 am#68 Truth.
Blah Blah (44eaa0) — 3/23/2017 @ 8:38 am#69 Most Identity Politics Reported Crimes are lies.
Blah Blah (44eaa0) — 3/23/2017 @ 8:38 am@67,
*snerk*
Obama is caught on video, signing a deal with the Devil in blood on human skin. Headlines; “Obama signs landmark agreement!”
C. S. P. Schofield (99bd37) — 3/23/2017 @ 8:41 amIt was an Israeli denied enlistment.
narciso (d004a7) — 3/23/2017 @ 8:52 am1. Feds initiate surveillance of Russian govt. officials/gangsters (one and the same).
2. Trump surrogates engage in communication with Russian govt. officials/gangsters.
3. Feds incidentally collect those communications.
4. Moronic pumpkin person thinks its a good idea to tweet about this, accuses Obama of a “tapp,” inadvertently outs his own corrupt surrogates.
5. Trumpkins assert that moronic pumpkin person is engaged in 3-D chess.
Leviticus (efada1) — 3/23/2017 @ 9:03 am@55,
Exactly! Trump is a loudmouth, and a showman, and quite possibly a jackass. None of which changes that the Progressive Left really stepped on their collective schlong this past election. In cleats. And hopped.
The charge that they “Wiretapped” is probably unsustainable. But saying that Obumbles let loose the hounds or Hell re-invasion of privacy, early in his ‘most transparent administration’, while true, lacks punch. It can be argued that so have the last several Presidents, nicely muddying the waters. It requires a nuanced understanding of several matters.
The wiretapping charge may not technically be true, but it has more substance than the hacking and collusion charges. A lot more substance. Enough substance to put the Democrats on notice that two can play the ‘wild charges’ game.
Especially since the hacking was largely revealing just what kind of hacks are running the Democrat party.
C. S. P. Schofield (99bd37) — 3/23/2017 @ 9:05 amGood article on LawFare blog explaining what Nunes is probably referring to, why its not surprising, and why MAYBE it should be a little bit alarming.
First, the source of the “incidental” interceptions is likely signals intelligence gathered by the NSA. The NSA vacuums up everything pretty much involving non-US actors whether they are communicating inside the US or outside the US. During the transition, the Trump foreign policy team was pretty much operating outside normal channels of cooperation with the State Dept in terms of him making contact with foreign leaders. Calls to the President of Taiwan, Israeli leadership, the President of Egypt, etc., were all arranged by the Trump transition without going through the State Dept. Communications by all these folks are monitored by NSA, and that would include the communications by Transition staff to set up the arrangements for those later calls.
So, its no surprise that there are “incidental interceptions” — all lawful — of transition officials with foreign government representatives.
And, remember that in the waning days of the Obama Admin., Obama signed the EO authorizing wider distribution of raw signals intelligence FROM NSA to other intelligence agencies.
What the Lawfare blog writer points out as the potential problem is the “unmasking” of the US persons caught up in the signals intelligence, and the potential for inappropriate use of the signals intelligence when it is of no legitimate national security or counter-intelligence purposes.
What Nunes is probably seeing is the first instances of that raw signals intelligence, with the US persons being unmasked, being passed around intelligence circles in circumstances where Nunes doesn’t see a legitimate national security or counter-intelligence reason for doing so.
For example, communications between Israeli government officials and the incoming Trump transition team on the issue of the UN resolution condemning continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank. The calls could have been discussing how US policy might be shifting during the Trump Admin., and how Israel might prepare for that shift. Such conversations would not involve national security or counter-intelligence, so if the NSA raw intelligence was being passed around the intelligence community with the US persons identified by name, that would be a violation of law.
shipwreckedcrew (56b591) — 3/23/2017 @ 9:06 am“So they were spying on Trump but not wiretapping b/c as you know they all use cell phones and they have no wires.”
– Blah blah
They were spying on Russians, and happened to spy on Trump’s people meeting and interacting with them, and moronic pumpkin person thought it was a good idea to put that on twitter.
We’ll see how that works out for him.
Leviticus (efada1) — 3/23/2017 @ 9:06 amBasically, there is a direct correlation between the plausibility of the “tapp” allegation and the plausibility of the “collusion” allegation. Which explains why the Trumpkins are having such a hard time understanding the concept of incidental collection.
Leviticus (efada1) — 3/23/2017 @ 9:09 amWhich came first, the CI collection or the FI incidental collection and unmasked reporting?
The Nunes reaction to whatever fell in his lap seems like an eye-opening moment into how Comey, Clapper, Brennan, and Rogers can be selectively truthful while defending their fiefdoms against allegations of impropriety or illegality. He’s not alone, either. Note the sudden change in Hayden’s tone as he attempts to explain the inner workings of lawful collection.
Clinton put up the Gorelick Wall to prevent information exchanges between LE and the IC without top level approval during the investigation of the first WTC bombing and Bush tore it down after 9/11. After over a decade of near-total collection and parallel construction it’s time to re-examine WTF they’re doing with the unchecked power Congress has given them. Nunes sounds like he had the similar thoughts yesterday. That’s likely why he went to the WH for a face-to-face conversation with POTUS rather than one subject to possible electronic collection.
Meanwhile nobody in Washington is working harder than McCain to continue to push the Trump-Russia oppo stuff some GOP primary candidate originally paid for and later pushed to the Dems and FBI and nobody cared about until the can’t lose candidate lost.
crazy (d3b449) — 3/23/2017 @ 9:16 amKhalid masoud, is the fellow gchq should have kept their eye on.
narciso (034dee) — 3/23/2017 @ 9:53 amSo one black Muslim convert, a couple of black yoots in Arizona and one Israeli teenager, any apologies to trump?
narciso (034dee) — 3/23/2017 @ 10:16 amEven if the collection was incidental – once it was unmasked and disseminated – it became an illegal act, that is the Obama administration illegally targeted Trump for surveillance. So… was what was done not against the law and did it not amount to Trump being illegally spied on?
Colonel Haiku (8d00c4) — 3/23/2017 @ 11:00 amDid Allen Drury write this election?
gbear (c97ba2) — 3/23/2017 @ 11:48 amOr Charles McCarry, you get that vibe.
narciso (86e9a3) — 3/23/2017 @ 11:56 am“Khalid masoud, is the fellow gchq should have kept their eye on.”
– narciso
If only they hadn’t been busy spying on Donald Trump through his microwave.
Leviticus (efada1) — 3/23/2017 @ 11:57 am“A New Low for the Partisan Fanatics at CNN
—Ace
Many are dismissing Nunes’ disclosures as being too vague, too filled with “may be’s” and “could be’s,” too reliant on Nunes’ subjective assessment that the intel reports seem make him “uncomfortable” and strike him as “inappropriate.”
Fair enough.
But is that the standard the media uses in examining all such leaks?
No it is definitely not — this tough standard of review goes out the window when the leaks being discussed are anti-Trump.
At Powerline, check out CNN’s maybe-kinda-sorta “breaking news.”
The FBI is now reviewing that information, which includes human intelligence, travel, business and phone records and accounts of in-person meetings, according to those U.S. officials. The information is raising the suspicions of FBI counterintelligence investigators that the coordination may have taken place, though officials cautioned that the information was not conclusive and that the investigation is ongoing.
Odd how CNN comes together as a single mind to declare Nunes’ claims as “too speculative” and not sufficiently backed by evidence which is disclosed and open to examination, while at the same time they essentially make up reasons to re-re-report the same unevidenced “suspicions” their Obama loyalist sources feed to them…”
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/368983.php
Colonel Haiku (8d00c4) — 3/23/2017 @ 12:32 pmColonel H @81, unmasked dissemination would not be illegal if it was lawfully collected, essential to understanding what was collected and authorized by the few officials given the authority to do it. FBI’s CI investigation provides a convenient authority to lawfully beat the bushes in search of anything on just about anybody in support of the CI investigation. It remains to be seen if Comey’s really chasing spies or running a CI investigation that conveniently casts a wide net and shares its raw contents way more widely than it should. How else can the government conduct warrantless collection of US persons lawfully?
crazy (d3b449) — 3/23/2017 @ 12:59 pm22. Daryl Herbert (7be116) — 3/22/2017 @ 9:40 pm
But that information, or information that might kead you to such aconclusion, did not come from Russia.
A lot of it came from the New York Times (the existence of the server, which had been uncpvered by the Benghazi committee because it asked questions of what it recoeoived in response to a subpoena)
Some information came from Freedom of Information Act requests, from the Western Journalism Center, from the Associated Press and from the Republican national Committee (the RNC found the Haiti smoking gun = an email adking for a Clinton Foundation person to please tell a new person who was a Friend of Bill so she could give requests for Haiti relief contracts special handling)
Sammy Finkelman (3ea6b3) — 3/23/2017 @ 1:11 pm6 – Trump had no idea about the leaks before they happened, but he did, almost explicitly, in public, in a press conference, ask Russia to find and leak Hillary’s deleted emails.
He didn’t promise anything in twreturn. he said the media would reward them. You can read that as signalling.
Sammy Finkelman (3ea6b3) — 3/23/2017 @ 1:15 pmSome important points:
1. IF Trump asked Russia publicly to hack Hillary Clinton, that is almost proof that he was not communicating with them in private, and also proof that there was no co-ordination, except in the way that sometimes they try to make a case for in antitrust cases.
2. Russia did not in fact find or release Hillary Clinton’s deleted e-mails, so any co-rdination was stillborn.
3. This is so even if the reason they didn’t release them is that they never had them, (because, as I have argued, there never was an e-mail account in the history of e-mail that was as secure as Hillary Clinton’s private server – there was no way to get in, either by phishing or by physcal contact.)
Sammy Finkelman (3ea6b3) — 3/23/2017 @ 2:55 pmThe surmise of the Lawfare Blog guys is looking more and more accurate.
And we now have a reason for today’s CNN story on a “connection” between Trump and Russia.
Fox says the House Intel Committee will be given intel reports tomorrow which reflect that “unmasking” of Trump transition officials in “raw” intel data collected in the ordinary course, was done for no obvious reason other than political motives.
Read the Lawfare Blog for a better understanding, but here’s my amateur version:
NSA routinely collects communications all over the world. Many times this intel gathering includes conversations between people in the US and foreign officials. When this info is pushed out to the intel community, the ID of the US persons is supposed to be hidden UNLESS there is a legitimate national security or counter-intelligence purpose for “unmasking” the US person.
In the late stages of the Obama Admin, Obama expanded the number of intel agencies who were allowed to access the “raw” intel gathered by NSA — rather than only the sanitized data. That means more agencies had the ability to “unmask” the US persons caught up in the data collection.
What Fox is reporting is that NSA will be providing to the House Intel Comm intelligence reports that have “unmasked” Trump transition folks in conversation with foreign officials where there is no obvious national security or counter-intelligence purpose for exposing their identities.
So, depending on the intel report subjects, and the names of the transition officials involved, a claim could be made that function of unmasking them was political.
shipwreckedcrew (56b591) — 3/23/2017 @ 5:09 pm@32 — but but but …. you’re right.
shipwreckedcrew (56b591) — 3/23/2017 @ 5:11 pmshipwreckedcrew (56b591) — 3/23/2017 @ 5:09 pm
But they could have been seriously worried, and/or convinced by some not quite honest and politically motivated colleagues, that they ought to be seriously worried, that Donald Trump had some Russian agents working for him and maybe wasn’t even against that.
If you thought Donald Trump might be a sort of Manchurian candidate what would you do?
Sammy Finkelman (3ea6b3) — 3/23/2017 @ 5:29 pmFrankly Sandy, my view is that Donald Trump was elected — Manchurian candidate or not. There is NO mechanism in the US government system to undo an election, even if we elect an agent of a foreign power. Its not the job of the intel community to undermine the incoming administration regardless of their suspicions.
Lets assume the worst — that Trump’s election was being actively promoted and supported by Putin and Russia. Once the votes were cast, what difference does it make?
The only mechanism that exists is impeachment, and that’s a political act for the Congress to take. Its not the job of the Intel Community to lay the factual foundation for Congress to act. Such a function would simply turn the Intel Community into a US version of the KGB — an intelligence community to be used to subvert domestic political enemies.
shipwreckedcrew (56b591) — 3/23/2017 @ 5:35 pmshipwreckedcrew (56b591) — 3/23/2017 @ 5:35 pm
Well, there is the impeachment process, which would take care of that, since all agree Mike Pence is no such agent.
It’s not their job, but they could volunteer. They are still citizens. But another question is, were they being honest? And also – what about the opposing candidate, Hillary Clinton? Who had foreign connections of her own, and strong ones – they gave Bill and Hillary money – seemingly to every other dictatorship in the world except Putin’s, and she used to have that too until Putin turned against her. Probably in 2014, not 2011.
That’s not the worst, and it is undeniably true. So true and so obvious I think it actually hurt Trump. What is not true is that anything Russia did mattered. Comey likes to say they don’t evaluate things like that. As if they could do it reliably. It’s people in politics who can evaluate that.
The story that mattered was Hillary Clinton’s secret email server, and that was not uncovered by the Russians, even if the Russians perhaps provided the first clue, back in 2013, when they hacked Sidney Blumenthal’s email and leaked the email address hdr22@clintonemail.com, because I think Guccifer 1.0 was a Russian agent.
But it’s no big deal that someone has a personal e-mail address. The big deal was that she didn’t have any official one.
Russia pretty much gave up hope two or three weeks before the election – then Trump surprised them and won, and intelligence agencies are repprted to have found out that there people in official Russian positions in Moscow celebrating after Trump won the election. But people celebrate after a sports team wins – that doesn’t mean they gave the team valuable help, even if they tried.
But I mentoned there is another worse thing possible. That is, that Putin had planted some agents in Trump’s campaign, and gotten Trump to endorse or half endorse, some policies or ideas Putin wanted the U.S. to do. (even if that actually hurt Trump’s election prospects, although the foreogn agents could arrue the opposite)
Like that NATO and the alliances with Japan weren’t worth having, that we needed to have Russia as an ally in the fight against ISIS, that refugees from Syria were particularly dangerous, and maybe that the dispute over Ukraine should be settled on the basis of the status quo. Trump certainly changed the Republican platform about Ukraine in a way that was more favorable to Russia.
Sammy Finkelman (3ea6b3) — 3/23/2017 @ 6:23 pmI do think Obama was not decided on this question, and he also thought Donald Trump should be given more credit than some Democrats were trying to make out. Any president would do X and Y and so on like that, and Donald Trump was not a foreign agent, even if he got help.
The intel community – and some Obama holdovers at DOJ including Sally Yates – did get rid of Mike Flynn, and maybe that was good. We still don’t know for certain, maybe.
Mike Flynn started to lie to other people working for Trump and the Vice President. But if they hadn’t leaked the fact there was a telephoen call to the Russian Ambassador, Mike Flynn would have had no occasion to lie about the fact that they did discuss sanctions. And if Sally Yates had not forwarded a referral to the White House Jan 26 nobody would have had any occasion to check his story.
Mike Flynn didn’t say anything wrong, though, in the conversation.
I also think some of them were very partisan or biased. They tried to get Obama to go some place he didn’t want to go and he didn’t.
Obama did decide, though, that Trump might suppress the evidence so he decided to order them to pull everything together and make a report on Russian meddling and hacking, and scatter it all across the U.S. government. Obama also wanted to make it clear that the voting itself and the counting had not been tampered with.
Sammy Finkelman (3ea6b3) — 3/23/2017 @ 6:39 pm