Trump's Russian Collusion

[Trinity]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 893638001/

Trump and Putin ride again.

[MDlaxfan76]

.. ...the Cassandra chorus of excuse makers, rationalizing the abuses of the Deep State apparatchiks.

You mean all "none" of them? It's been 2 1/2 years, not one single conviction on anything. Maybe wait until someone is actually indicted before spewing this nonsense again?

Your old game of repeating speculation, pretending it's fact. More tin foil. More of your: the FBI has to follow the rules, but Trump's crew doesn't.

You already put your stake in the ground: breaking the law is ok. Too late to change your position now.

If they were well intentioned partriots, they'd quietly conduct their investigations, without leaking to the media & would not perpetuate the media hype when they couldn't deliver the evidence.

You're so completely full of it. You've been speculating for so freaking long that you've convinced yourself you know exactly what happened.

Has it occurred to you that it's quite possible, and even likely, that dozens and dozens of men and women did their patriotic duty, and one single, solitary high level administrator did all the leaking?

Naaahh. They're all guilty, and you know it. I say: Damn any actual evidence or indictments and just shoot them all. Someone has to learn it's not ok to do their freaking jobs.

“Agencies” . Moving the goalposts are we?

So you’re going to lump all leaking in with the NSA and FISA leaks, and hope I don’t notice, eh?

And what’s this you’re citing? Obama has 39 leaks per year on average?

That’s un-possible!!! We were told the Deep State only existed starting with Trump! No way were their leaks made by the Deep State every year Obama was in office!

Dude. You’re going to lose your secret decoder ring and lifetime supply of Deep State Brand tin foil if you keep this up.

Reminder: leaks only happened to Trump. He’s the only President in our history that had to deal with leaks of classified information. Only Trump had thousands of FBI and DoJ agents working together to bring him down. Get it together, my man! You’re going to lose your street Fred with Sean Hannity.

FTR -- (& your peace of mind). I do not think there's some vast Deep State conspiracy. I think most career officials in the IC & DoJ are true to their oath & do not abuse their powers or access. Political appointees (including career officials in appointed positions) are another story. That's why IG oversight is valuable, even when non-punitive.

Having said that -- I don't necessarily expect sweeping indictments, in large numbers.
I expect more of what we're seeing (so far) with the conduct & actions of Comey, McCabe, Strzok, & L Page.
...& I'll be reassured if their actions were examined & they were held to account,
without penalty or the further criminalization of politics.

A very reasonable post. Clapping hands emoji.

Just wish you would stick with 'reasonable' instead of constantly suggesting that the investigation of Trump was actually improper, actually unwarranted, actually biased. We know way too much for those assertions to be 'reasonable'.

[seacoaster]

Not sure if anyone posted this yet (if so, sorry for the duplication):

https://assets.documentcloud.org/docume ... 4-18-0.pdf

It is long and very detailed; this from page 302, featuring the bête noire of the so-called conspirators against the President:

"We asked Strzok to respond to the accusation that this inaction on the Weiner laptop was a politically motivated attempt to bury information that could negatively impact the chances of Hillary Clinton in the election. Strzok responded:

'No, I’d say quite the opposite.... I think every act was taken with an objective reason to say, okay, here is why we did it, and why it was prioritized the way it was.... [The Midyear SSA] and [FBI Attorney 1] were the ones engaging with New York. You had agents and AUSAs up in New York who were involved in pursuing it, that ultimately, you know, we sat there, and we decided when we found out what was there that we needed to get the case and reopen the case. And if you want to pitch in the conspiracy perspective, everything we pushed to do, the Clinton side is going to say, what you did absolutely killed my chances at the election. So, you know, pick it. Which is your conspiracy?... t angers me because there is not, if there were bias, and there is not bias, if there were bias...it didn’t result in actions which would be indicative of bias.'"

[MDlaxfan76]

Not sure if anyone posted this yet (if so, sorry for the duplication):

https://assets.documentcloud.org/docume ... 4-18-0.pdf

It is long and very detailed; this from page 302, featuring the bête noire of the so-called conspirators against the President:

"We asked Strzok to respond to the accusation that this inaction on the Weiner laptop was a politically motivated attempt to bury information that could negatively impact the chances of Hillary Clinton in the election. Strzok responded:

'No, I’d say quite the opposite.... I think every act was taken with an objective reason to say, okay, here is why we did it, and why it was prioritized the way it was.... [The Midyear SSA] and [FBI Attorney 1] were the ones engaging with New York. You had agents and AUSAs up in New York who were involved in pursuing it, that ultimately, you know, we sat there, and we decided when we found out what was there that we needed to get the case and reopen the case. And if you want to pitch in the conspiracy perspective, everything we pushed to do, the Clinton side is going to say, what you did absolutely killed my chances at the election. So, you know, pick it. Which is your conspiracy?... t angers me because there is not, if there were bias, and there is not bias, if there were bias...it didn’t result in actions which would be indicative of bias.'"

Indeed, this has been the fallacy of the hate Trump help Clinton conspiracy angle all along. If they had actually wanted to help HRC they did all the wrong actions, and conversely if they had wanted to hurt Trump they would have trumpeted what the Russians were doing and the Trump connections to it from the roof tops...prior to the election.

Interesting, of course, that it was 'Moscow Mitch' who, at least in part, put the kibosh on bringing any info forward pre-election after receiving a confidential briefing with 11 others in Senate and House...

https://www.kentucky.com/opinion/editor ... 18538.html

[old salt]

OK. You ran Ratcliffe off. Well Stand the F by.
You want experience. Bring back retired Adm Mike Rogers. He has the intel experience, ...& he knows where the IC bodies are buried.
Clapper & Brennan tried to frag him like they did Flynn, but he outsmarted them.
He was Trump's first choice for DNI anyway.

LP veterans may recall when Flynn entered the campaign, I predicted we would see the war within the IC.
We're seeing it play out now. The rats are running for cover & the MSM flacks they leaked to are providing cover.

Before MDLF76 tries to dismiss this as a right wing blog, look at how all the puzzle pieces now fit together.
...& remember 3 years ago when I warned you what was happening.

https://www.commdiginews.com/politics-2 ... ed-120409/

According to a November 19, 2016 Washington Post report, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper tried to get NSA director Admiral Mike Rogers fired. In a deliberately leaked memo, “senior officials” attacked Rogers’ abilities, questioned his leadership, and otherwise tainted his record.

As the WaPo reported it:
“The heads of the Pentagon and the nation’s intelligence community have recommended to President Obama that the director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, be removed.
The recommendation, delivered to the White House last month, was made by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., according to several U.S. officials familiar with the matter.”

Why Clapper really wanted Rogers fired
The news reports treated Rogers with thinly disguised contempt. They blamed him for intelligence failings against ISIS and the leak of NSA cyber tools. They depicted the leaked memo as a legitimate and normal development. Nothing to see here, folks.

Barack Obama’s shadow government of coup plotters in exile
But there were deeper reasons for the sudden, public move by the now exposed “putsch” leaders, Clapper, Carter, and CIA Director John Brennan.

First, Donald Trump had just been elected President.
Second, the NSA chief had discovered and revealed to FISA Court Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer overwhelming evidence of sustained, illegal use of FISA 702 authority by Brennan and Clapper to employ NSA surveillance systems to spy on Americans. He then put an end to it. He testified about his findings to Judge Collyer on October 26, 2016, four days after Peter Strzok and Andrew Weissmann obtained a FISA warrant on Carter Page.

Briefing President-elect Trump without telling Clapper
Third, and most egregiously, Admiral Rogers had briefed President-elect Donald Trump in Trump Tower. He did it without telling Brennan or Clapper in advance. He told Trump in detail what he knew and what Trump was facing. (Behind the Obama administration’s shady plan to spy on the Trump campaign)
He informed Trump that Trump Tower was under surveillance. Rogers did his patriotic duty to the constitution.
In other words, he exposed the emerging coup de’ tat, waged by the Obama White House against the duly elected incoming president. No wonder Brennan was concerned.
The next day, Trump moved his transition headquarters from Trump Tower to Bedminster Country Club in New Jersey. When Brennan and Clapper learned of the private Rogers briefing, they panicked. They immediately launched counter measures.
The Ben Rhodes media manipulation smear machine kicked into overdrive against Rogers and Trump.

Triggering alarm bells in the Obama White House
As the Washington Post reported it exclusively, from their highly placed leaked sources:
“The news comes as Rogers is being considered by President-elect Donald Trump to be his nominee for director of national intelligence to replace Clapper as the official who oversees all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies. In a move apparently unprecedented for a military officer, Rogers, without notifying superiors, traveled to New York to meet with Trump on Thursday at Trump Tower. That caused consternation at senior levels of the administration, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal personnel matters.”
The real threat was Brennan
The Post article suggests that Rogers violated the chain of command and overstepped his authority. He was a loose cannon trying to curry favor with the new president. The truth was worse.

Rogers was going to tell the truth.
Durham has questions for Brennan, NSA’s Mike Rogers has the answers
Rogers was a threat to the very core of the Obama White House. He had already exposed the secret of illegal NSA surveillance to the FISA Court. He had Already briefed the target of the coup, Donald Trump.
He couldn’t tell Brennan and Clapper what he was doing in advance. They were the criminals perpetrating the very actions he was warning Trump about. Rogers, who retired in 2018 after four years at the helm of the NSA, was following his duty to the country as an American.

Smearing Rogers in the press
The timing is just too coincidental for this to be a typical turf fight, though that is just how the Washington Post portrays it. The Post got the exclusive because of their close relationship with the very officials who laid the groundwork for the Russia hoax, Brennan and Clapper. These are the men who leaked the Steele dossier all over Washington and who spread leaks about Michael Flynn.
Now they had Admiral Rogers in their sights.
Rogers was a mortal threat to the perpetrators of the attempted coup against Trump. He remains a mortal threat to Brennan, Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey, and many others. The attempt to fire Rogers so close to Trump’s election, so soon after they knew of their FISA court exposure, leaves no other explanation.
Rogers had to be taken out of the way.

The crux of the Russia hoax: Covering up illegal spying on Americans
For at least four years, the Obama White House had been illegally using FISA 702 authority to access NSA surveillance systems to spy on American citizens. Comey had personally authorized the illegal surveillance by three contractors working directly for Clapper and Brennan.

In late 2015, Rogers became aware of the illegal protocols they were using to access the NSA systems. He ordered a preliminary audit and cut off access to the three contractors in April, 2016. He then ordered a complete audit.
In October, 2016 Rogers presented the findings to FISA Court Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer.

NSA Director Rogers Disclosed FISA Abuse Days After Page Warrant Was Issued
On March 9, 2016, Department of Justice (DOJ) oversight personnel learned that the FBI had been employing outside contractors who had access to raw Section 702 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) data, and retained that access after their work for the FBI was completed.
The ruling of the FISA Court: Illegal surveillance was systematic and large-scale
Rogers found, with Collyer agreeing, that the illegal use of NSA systems began no later than 2012. It continued for at least four years. In her ruling to the Attorney General in April of 2017, Collyer found that of 40,000 queries into the NSA data base, 85 percent, or 32,500, of them were illegal and unauthorized.
Judge Collyer ruled that there were systematic violations of the law and the Fourth Amendment, as well as the civil rights of every American illegally spied on. Every one of the 32,500 illegal inquiries was an intentional criminal act.
She found that the three contractors frequently used the same names in multiple queries. They had spied on thousands of prominent Americans. They did so illegally, consistently, and for extended periods of time.
Collyer found that they reported directly to Brennan and Clapper. She confirmed that the authorization was illegal, and that FBI Director Comey was behind its authorization. She described the actions and conduct of the DOJ in this matter as “institutional dishonesty”.

The “eyes only” Brennan memos
Brennan took the fruits of the illegal surveillance and compiled “eyes only” briefings for President Obama. Obama received them in sealed envelopes. The materials excluded from regular national intelligence briefings.
The briefings were regular reports on the Americans who were illegally spied on. These certainly included Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Chief Justice John Roberts, Antonin Scalia. There were journalists. And there was Donald Trump.
That is the dirty secret behind the Steele dossier and the framing of George Papadopoulos by Brennan and agents of Italian, Australian and British Intelligence. It is the source of the illegal FISA warrants on Carter Page and the Andrew Weissman – Peter Strzok “insurance policy.”
It is the basis of the entire Mueller inquisition.
It was all necessary to hide the illegal activities of the Obama White House, the overt weaponization of government agencies against political opponents and the flagrant abuse of NSA surveillance systems to illegally spy on Americans.

Admiral Mike Rogers: American Hero
Thats why they had to try to fire Mike Rogers. He was the man who knew too much.
Rogers played his role with integrity. He is the good guy in this whole sordid story. He’s the man who moved to save America when he reported what he knew to the FISA Court.
Rogers has testified to Inspector General Michael Horowitz. He will certainly meet with U.S. Attorney John Durham as Durham’s investigation into the

Russia Hoax expands.
John Durham is probing “unauthorized” and “political surveillance”
Durham is looking at it all: The NSA surveillance abuse; the use of the Steele dossier to obtain FISA warrants and in the John Brennan / Peter Strzok Intelligence Community Assessment of October 2016; the use of Foreign intelligence agencies to spy on the Trump campaign.
Brennan’s “eyes only” briefings for President Obama will come under scrutiny, as will the actions of Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Valerie Jarrett and other putsch planners in the White House.
Durham will look into all of it. Admiral Mike Rogers, American hero, will be an essential witness as the truth finally comes out. His testimony will be central when justice is finally served to the coup plotters.

[a fan]

FTR -- (& your peace of mind). I do not think there's some vast Deep State conspiracy. I think most career officials in the IC & DoJ are true to their oath & do not abuse their powers or access. Political appointees (including career officials in appointed positions) are another story. That's why IG oversight is valuable, even when non-punitive.

I'd go further: permanent oversight from another branch of government.

Having said that -- I don't necessarily expect sweeping indictments, in large numbers.
I expect more of what we're seeing (so far) with the conduct & actions of Comey, McCabe, Strzok, & L Page.
...& I'll be reassured if their actions were examined & they were held to account,
without penalty or the further criminalization of politics.

Of all the folks I've read about, Strzok and the "Missus" are in the clear, and did nothing wrong. It's legal to hate Trump. I'm sure far greater numbers couldn't stand Obama.

As for the "further criminalization of politics", we have to rely on Burr to do his job, and stay out of the politics. I'm hopeful.

[Trinity]

Rogers knew of all those secret campaign contacts with Russians and warned Trump he was being watched? Or he didn’t know what he did not know and warned Trump? Neither one sounds good to me.

[MDlaxfan76]

OK. You ran Ratcliffe off. Well Stand the F by.
You want experience. Bring back retired Adm Mike Rogers. He has the intel experience, ...& he knows where the IC bodies are buried.
Clapper & Brennan tried to frag him like they did Flynn, but he outsmarted them.
He was Trump's first choice for DNI anyway.

LP veterans may recall when Flynn entered the campaign, I predicted we would see the war within the IC.
We're seeing it play out now. The rats are running for cover & the MSM flacks they leaked to are providing cover.

Before MDLF76 tries to dismiss this as a right wing blog, look at how all the puzzle pieces now fit together.
...& remember 3 years ago when I warned you what was happening.

Yup, a ridiculously extreme right blog.
Used to be part of the Washington Times, which itself is hard right but spun off and went way out on the conspiracy theory wing.
Won't disclose ownership.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/communit ... ital-news/

Overall, we rate Communities Digital News Right Biased based on story selection that always favors the Right and Mixed factually due to promotion of conspiracy theories and very poor sourcing.


I rate it: BOGUS RIGHT EXTREME

not as bad as Infowars, but approaching.

[Typical Lax Dad]

OK. You ran Ratcliffe off. Well Stand the F by.
You want experience. Bring back retired Adm Mike Rogers. He has the intel experience, ...& he knows where the IC bodies are buried.
Clapper & Brennan tried to frag him like they did Flynn, but he outsmarted them.
He was Trump's first choice for DNI anyway.

LP veterans may recall when Flynn entered the campaign, I predicted we would see the war within the IC.
We're seeing it play out now. The rats are running for cover & the MSM flacks they leaked to are providing cover.

Before MDLF76 tries to dismiss this as a right wing blog, look at how all the puzzle pieces now fit together.
...& remember 3 years ago when I warned you what was happening.

Yup, a ridiculously extreme right blog.
Used to be part of the Washington Times, which itself is hard right but spun off and went way out on the conspiracy theory wing.
Won't disclose ownership.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/communit ... ital-news/

Overall, we rate Communities Digital News Right Biased based on story selection that always favors the Right and Mixed factually due to promotion of conspiracy theories and very poor sourcing.


I rate it: BOGUS RIGHT EXTREME

not as bad as Infowars, but approaching.

The media ran that liar off.

[old salt]

Is this the sort of thing that got Mike Rogers nixed by Trump the first go round?

Rogers, who retired in 2018, put this belief in accountability in practice after a serious situation arose and President Obama needed to be notified. He said he gathered in the White House situation room with the National Security team, cabinet members, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President. Rogers told them the situation had “significant” implications for the country and “quite frankly, we have failed.”

Rogers told the room he was willing to step down to restore the nation’s confidence in the mission. But in “one of the greatest lessons in leadership I ever saw, [President Obama] stops me for a minute and he says, ‘Admiral, let there be no doubt in your mind, I have the ultimate accountability.’ And I just thought to myself, ‘That is a leader. That is someone who understands [that] you’re there when things are going well, and when things aren’t going so well, you stand up and take a round for your team.”

“You could never be a leader without being accountable.”

Here's some info on the war within the IC & the part Adm Mike Roger's has played :

https://themarketswork.com/2018/05/05/a ... s-retires/

[Trinity]

The writer’s most recent article directs our suspicions in The Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal away from President Trump and toward Bill Clinton. Almost like he was there.

[old salt]

More on Adm Mike Rogers eventful tenure at NSA.
Amazing he lasted all 4 years.

https://news.usni.org/2018/02/01/nsa-ch ... eplacement

[old salt]

Trump should nominate retiring Rep Will Hurd, who has experience in the field. Do something for America for once.

This evening Hurd said it was unfortunate -- that his friend & fellow Intel Comm member Ratcliffe would have made a good DNI,
...but then what does Hurd know ?

So Trump says that he lets the press, not the WH, vet his nominees. Press does a good job at that and saves lots of money as compared to having the WH staff actually do their jobs. But in this case, the press did a bad/unfair job on the Rat.

Forking moron.

Ratcliffe was as qualified as Coats for the DNI job. He just wasn't part of the Senate old boys club.
He was stigmatized as a FNC defender of Trump. He became a pinata for the anti-Trump NBC/ABC/WP/NYT MSM as soon as he defended Trump during the Mueller hearing. Dead man walking -- he didn't even survive to the yearbook search phase.

Here's some depth on Ratcliffe's involvement with the Holy Land case & his anti-terrorism experience as a US Attorney :
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/donald- ... orism-case
https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/30/fo ... tion-case/

We haven't heard the last from Ratcliffe. When the House holds hearings on the IG & DoJ investigations of the investigators, he'll be the leading (R) prosecutor.

[Trinity]

He’s so right for this important job, Trump should have fought for him. But instead, he was abandoned. Now he joins Bridgegate Chris Christie, lying KT. McFarland, 9-9-9 Herman Caine and the always ridiculous Stephen Moore on the clown-pick reject shelf.

[MDlaxfan76]

Trump should nominate retiring Rep Will Hurd, who has experience in the field. Do something for America for once.

This evening Hurd said it was unfortunate -- that his friend & fellow Intel Comm member Ratcliffe would have made a good DNI,
...but then what does Hurd know ?

So Trump says that he lets the press, not the WH, vet his nominees. Press does a good job at that and saves lots of money as compared to having the WH staff actually do their jobs. But in this case, the press did a bad/unfair job on the Rat.

Forking moron.

Ratcliffe was as qualified as Coats for the DNI job. He just wasn't part of the Senate old boys club.
He was stigmatized as a FNC defender of Trump. He became a pinata for the anti-Trump NBC/ABC/WP/NYT MSM as soon as he defended Trump during the Mueller hearing. Dead man walking -- he didn't even survive to the yearbook search phase.

Here's some depth on Ratcliffe's involvement with the Holy Land case & his anti-terrorism experience as a US Attorney :
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/donald- ... orism-case
https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/30/fo ... tion-case/

We haven't heard the last from Ratcliffe. When the House holds hearings on the IG & DoJ investigations of the investigators, he'll be the leading (R) prosecutor.

Good lord, you actually think the Rat was remotely qualified???
As a liar, yes, but not DNI.

Coats was indeed not very well qualified for the position, relative to his predecessors and relative to the job description. True. But way, way, way more qualified than the Rat. 15 years on the Senate Intelligence Select Committee, 4 years as an Ambassador to Germany, 6 years as a Congressman, served in the Army. The Rat? No military service, 4 years on the highly politicized House Intelligence and Homeland Security Committees. Bunch of false statements, tweets, his only 'qualification' was his his partisanship. "stigmatized"? He's a jerk and a liar, with no real experience or long term perspective. Own it.

This is the sort of baloney, along with your continuous postings of right wing blogs that propound quite unsubstantiated, indeed often disproven, conspiracy theories, that undermines so greatly any credibility you might otherwise have.

Yup, the Rat will undoubtedly be the jerk he is, at every opportunity. But now that the public actually knows that he's a liar and a complete partisan, his credibility in any such 'prosecutor' effort will be seen for what it is.

Re Hurd, you grossly misrepresent what he said. He indeed says some nice things about his capabilities to absorb lots of information, something that the next DNI will need, but he doesn't say he would have been a good DNI or a qualified choice, indeed he pivots to endorsing Sue Gordon for her 'vast experience' in intelligence, then he describes his own immense experience, and tremendous respect for the work and people of the IC. Big contrast with his 'friend' Ratcliffe.

Of course, that's why Trump apparently never considered Hurd. "Doesn't know him".

[seacoaster]

Opinion from Quinta Jurecic in the Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/opin ... e=Homepage

Like most good detective stories, the report actually tells two stories at once. First, there is the tale of what happened: The Russian government worked to reach out to Mr. Trump’s circle and, once he began running for president, his campaign; then, when the F.B.I. and later Mr. Mueller began investigating, Mr. Trump repeatedly sought to undercut the probe.

But nestled in the citations and prosecution or declination decisions for each section, there is the second story, which is closer to what most people think of when they think of a detective novel — the drama of how Mr. Mueller and his team came to uncover that first narrative and what they made of it. Examining footnotes, the reader can trace which information came from which witness — and discover, for example, that Don McGahn, then the White House counsel, provided Mr. Mueller’s office with hours of interviews about the conduct of the president.

Detective stories are usually about order and the collapse of order: The world is shattered by an act of violence, and the detective sets about making things right by turning the crime into something that can be explained. As Ms. Kakutani writes, “At the end of detective stories, order is usually restored with the solving of a crime, and with the identification and prosecution of the perpetrators.”

The Mueller report does provide a framework for understanding just what has happened to America in 2016 and the years since.

More than a tale about the restoration of order, though, the Mueller investigation is also about the limits of what can be known. Consider, for example, what the report says about Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s erstwhile campaign chairman. Mr. Manafort, writes Mr. Mueller, shared polling data produced by the campaign with a man known very likely to be connected to Russian military intelligence. The subplot is full of possibility, but it ends up leading nowhere. Mr. Mueller writes that his office “could not reliably determine Manafort’s purpose” in sharing the information, in part because Mr. Manafort and his colleagues used encrypted messaging to communicate with one another.

Or there’s the question of what Mr. Trump knew or didn’t know about his campaign’s communications with individuals linked to the Russian government, and whether he was truthful in his written answers.

In this, the Mueller report fits neatly into a subgenre known as the “metaphysical detective story” — stories that take Sherlock Holmes’s triumphant cracking of the case and turn it upside down, so the detective’s efforts end in the same disorder with which they began. These are mysteries about the impossibility of ever really solving a mystery, or perhaps of knowing anything at all.

The uncertainties that hover around the Mueller report evoke similar themes. How much can be known about what Donald Trump had in mind when he fired James Comey? Was Mr. Trump intent on stopping the Russia investigation, or was his goal to remove an F.B.I. director who irritated him for other reasons? Will the question of what Paul Manafort was up to remain forever unanswered, the information crucial to solving the puzzle lost? And if the full story of the Russia affair remains beyond the reach of explanation, to what extent does this cast doubt on the whole project of restoring order in the first place?

As in the metaphysical detective story, these factual gaps raise broader questions about the detective’s inability to reconstruct the story of the crime. Put crudely, this is the question of what it means that Robert Mueller can’t save the country. It’s how to understand the effect on the stability of American democracy of both the president’s relative impunity at the end of an investigation that strongly implied he may have committed serious crimes and the nation’s inability to come to grips with the fact of interference by a foreign power in an election.

Or to put it another way: Does anything matter?

Mr. Mueller clearly thinks it does. Testifying before the House Intelligence Committee, he became most animated when he spoke about election interference: “I hope this is not the new normal,” he said, “but I fear it is.”

In this way, the Mueller report may turn out to be more of a film noir than anything else. The detective successfully uncovers the plot, only to discover that the society around him is too rotten to do anything about it. For all the missing pieces in this story, the issue is less whether it can be told and more whether anyone cares to listen."

[Trinity]

It’s a crappy detective story that leaves the Roger Stone-Trump-WikiLeaks coordinations redacted because of harm to ongoing investigations. Or can’t explain why the President‘s son was not questioned. A good writer, when he gets to the crux of the matter, slows the pace and does not rush through it or deflect from it. Barr does not want that at all. Seeing Trump, Gates and Cohen in a limo asking Stone on the phone for the leak schedule might change a few minds. Especially juxtaposed with Trump’s public denials and obstructions, his attack on the Investigation, his defense of Putin.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Trump should nominate retiring Rep Will Hurd, who has experience in the field. Do something for America for once.

This evening Hurd said it was unfortunate -- that his friend & fellow Intel Comm member Ratcliffe would have made a good DNI,
...but then what does Hurd know ?

So Trump says that he lets the press, not the WH, vet his nominees. Press does a good job at that and saves lots of money as compared to having the WH staff actually do their jobs. But in this case, the press did a bad/unfair job on the Rat.

Forking moron.

Ratcliffe was as qualified as Coats for the DNI job. He just wasn't part of the Senate old boys club.
He was stigmatized as a FNC defender of Trump. He became a pinata for the anti-Trump NBC/ABC/WP/NYT MSM as soon as he defended Trump during the Mueller hearing. Dead man walking -- he didn't even survive to the yearbook search phase.

Here's some depth on Ratcliffe's involvement with the Holy Land case & his anti-terrorism experience as a US Attorney :
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/donald- ... orism-case
https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/30/fo ... tion-case/

We haven't heard the last from Ratcliffe. When the House holds hearings on the IG & DoJ investigations of the investigators, he'll be the leading (R) prosecutor.

I never realized so many people find lying no big deal. No wonder our kids have the problems they do.

[runrussellrun]

MDLAX wrote:

Yup, a ridiculously extreme right blog.
Used to be part of the Washington Times, which itself is hard right but spun off and went way out on the conspiracy theory wing.
Won't disclose ownership.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/communit ... ital-news/

Overall, we rate Communities Digital News Right Biased based on story selection that always favors the Right and Mixed factually due to promotion of conspiracy theories and very poor sourcing.


I rate it: BOGUS RIGHT EXTREME

not as bad as Infowars, but approaching.

THREE sides to every story their Dartmouth Lax of Baltimore. fact check the fact checkers, and then check THEM out.

https://www.cjr.org/innovations/measure ... rtisan.php

and

https://www.palmerreport.com/politics/s ... edia/2342/


trust everyone to be untrustful and life will be fine.

[seacoaster]

He was stigmatized as a FNC defender of Trump. “He became a pinata for the anti-Trump NBC/ABC/WP/NYT MSM as soon as he defended Trump during the Mueller hearing. Dead man walking -- he didn't even survive to the yearbook search phase.“

I’m pretty sure he was “stigmatized” because he engaged in what employment lawyers call resume fraud, and exaggerated his experience and qualifications. He couldn’t get through a Senate that seems especially equipped to say, “umm, sure, whatevs.”