Adam Schiff accuses Devin Nunes of ‘secretly altering’ anti-FBI memo before sending it to the White House
Rep. Devin Nunes speaks to a crowd at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. Image via CSIS/Creative Commons.
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House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) on Wednesday accused Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) of “secretly [altering]” the anti-FBI memo before sending it to the White House.
“The White House is therefore reviewing a document the committee has not approved for release,” Schiff explained, demanding it be withdrawn and resubmitted for a vote before the House Intelligence Committee.
Schiff levels a major charge against Nunes. In letter, Schiff asserts Nunes made additional changes to the memo after House Intel approved its release and before sending to WH. Members were “never apprised of, never had the opportunity to review, and never approved” of changes
NEW: House Intel Ranking Member Adam Schiff wrote a letter to Chairman Nunes saying he discovered that the version of a controversial memo that members of Congress have been reviewing for weeks is not the version that the White House is currently reviewing nbcnews.to/2DRlvf7
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) issued a statement about Schiff’s claim, demanding Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) “end this charade once and for all.”
EPA Chief Scott Pruitt Claimed the rich asshole Was ‘Abusive To The Constitution’ In 2016 Interview (AUDIO)
Scott Pruitt is currently the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency thanks to a nomination by President some rich asshole, who explained his selection of Pruitt by claiming that the EPA at the time had an “anti-energy agenda that has destroyed millions of jobs” and that Pruitt, “the highly respected Attorney General from the state of Oklahoma, will reverse this trend and restore the EPA’s essential mission of keeping our air and our water clean and safe.”
It seems like President the rich asshole had a lot of faith in Pruitt when he nominated him for the position, a faith that was reciprocated by Pruitt, who remarked that he intended to “run this agency in a way that fosters both responsible protection of the environment and freedom for American businesses” when he accepted the nomination of EPA chief in December, 2016, but it appears that mutual respect wasn’t always present.
In a radio interview on the Pat Campbell Show just prior to the 2016 election that was recently released by watchdog group Documented, Pruitt referred to then-candidate the rich asshole as a “bully” and was concerned by the billionaire reality TV star’s complete disregard for the constitution.
“If some rich asshole is the nominee and eventually the President, he would take, I think, unapologetic steps to use executive power to confront Congress in a way that is truly unconstitutional,” Pruitt said, who was then the Oklahoma Attorney General and serving on Jeb Bush’s campaign.
“I believe some rich asshole in the White House would be more abusive to the Constitution than Barack Obama — and that’s saying a lot,” he continued. “I really believe he would use a blunt instrument. This president at least tries to nuance his unlawfulness.”
“We don’t need to replace [President Obama] with another individual — as you said, our bully — in the White House, to do what he’s done from the Republican side of things,” he concluded.
Obviously, Scott Pruitt has changed his tune a little since his promotion to head of the EPA, claiming in a statement that he no longer agrees with how he previously felt.
“After meeting him, and now having the honor of working for him, it is abundantly clear that President the rich asshole is the most consequential leader of our time,” he said. “No one has done more to advance the rule of law than President the rich asshole. The President has liberated our country from the political class and given America back to the people.”
Pruitt may have done a complete 180° turn on his opinion of the rich asshole since he began working for the President, but he didn’t always hold the Commander in Chief in such high regard and now you can hear him express his earlier doubts, here.
Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images
the rich asshole’s hand in crafting Don Jr’s misleading statement ‘has become a focus’ of Mueller’s probe: report
Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller and President some rich asshole (Photos: Screen capture and AFP)
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Robert Mueller is focusing his special counsel investigation on a meeting abroad Air Force One last July, which resulted in a misleading statement about the June 2016 the rich asshole Tower meeting between top some rich asshole campaign officials and Russian nationals with ties to the Kremlin.
As the New York Times reports, that meeting “has become a focus” of Mueller’s inquiry—specifically about the rich asshole’s role in crafting that statement. Mueller is also reportedly zooming in on current White House Communications Director Hope Hicks’ role in that meeting.
Mark Corallo, who served as a spokesman for the rich asshole’s legal team, is reportedly planning on telling Mueller’s team that Hicks once pledged emails from some rich asshole Jr.—where the president’s eldest son expressed interest in “dirt” on Hillary Clinton—“will never get out.”
Hicks denied she made such a remark.
“As most reporters know, it’s not my practice to comment in response to questions from the media. But this warrants a response,” Hicks’ lawyer, Robert Trout, said. “She never said that. And the idea that Hope Hicks ever suggested that emails or other documents would be concealed or destroyed is completely false.”
‘Stupefying’: Former deputy assistant attorney general says the rich asshole’s loyalty demand to Rosenstein was ‘straight thuggery’
some rich asshole on Instagram (Screenshot)
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Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman slammed the latest reports of President some rich asshole demanding loyalty as “straight thuggery” during a Wednesday appearance on MSNBC with Chris Hayes.
“Harry, let me start with you, because you had you Rod Rosenstein’s job. I want to get your first person sense of how appropriate or inappropriate or unusual it would be to have that asked of you in this circumstance,” Hayes questioned.
“Stupefying,” Litman responded.
“I was a kid at the Department with Rod Rosenstein during the infancy of the Starr investigation. If anything like that had come from the White House, it would have sent shock waves through the building,” Litman suggested.
“This was the President of the United States — the boss of Rosenstein — with a proven track record of firing people he doesn’t consider to be loyal and the main suspect in a criminal investigation, looking him in the eye and ‘saying are you on my team?’ That’s like straight thuggery plain and simple,” Litman charged.
Former Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) agreed.
“Without a doubt. And you know, I was for a while the chairman, and for a long time, the top Democrat on the Ethics Committee and I can tell you if a United States senator was under investigation by the Justice Department and they even so much as called to see how am I doing, what’s going on, they would be kicked out of the United States Senate,” Boxer predicted.
“Wait a second, really?” Hayes asked.
“Can’t do it,” Boxer declared.
“What scares me — and even if I seem a little calm, I am so alarmed — is that the lackeys in Congress, those GOPers led by Ryan and Nunes are just in many ways I use a word I don’t mean in a legal sense, colluding and collaborating with a president who obviously is under investigation,” Boxer concluded.
“You don’t buy that this is essentially good faith bumbling as opposed to bad faith interference?” Hayes asked Litman.
“I don’t see how you can,” Litman replied. “When you look someone in the eye and say are you on my team, yes, he doesn’t know the norms, yes, he lacks the protocols but that’s sinister.”
“There’s nothing kind of hokey or folksy about that,” Litman concluded. “That’s a straight out implicit threat.”
Watch:
When CNN's Jim Acosta tried to ask the rich asshole about his anti-FBI smear campaign, he was forcefully shut down by presidential aides.
some rich asshole’s staff is doggedly trying to shield him from questions about the ongoing smear campaign that he and fellow Republicans re-engaging in against the FBI.
CNN reporter Jim Acosta tried to ask the rich asshole to respond to the FBI’s statement Wednesday expressing “grave concerns” about the GOP’s memo and its negative impact on public safety.
The memo, concocted by California Rep. Devin Nunes, smears the bureau’s work and questions its integrity in an attempt to undermine Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into the rich asshole, his campaign, and his inner circle of advisers and aides.
But as Acosta, pool reporter for the day, could not get his questions through.
A press aide repeatedly intoned, “Thank you, Jim,” speaking over Acosta as he and other reporters were ushered out the door. Acosta’s question was drowned out and left unanswered.
Before the media availability, Acosta noted on Twitter, “In his lone scheduled press avail of day, the rich asshole did not answer your pooler’s questions about FBI statement warning against release of Nunes memo.”
the rich asshole and his White House have been absurdly hostile to the media in general and to Acosta in particular. the rich asshole personally kicked Acosta out of the Oval Office earlier this month when Acosta asked about the rich asshole’s “shithole” comments and whether the rich asshole only wanted to allow in white immigrants.
Acosta later said it was a “badge of honor” to be kicked out.
the rich asshole has spent his first year in office largely dodging the press. But as the rate of alarming revelations about his behavior increases, so will the questions about it. The childish antics of his press operation might protect him from reporters, but it won’t protect him from the investigations.
No matter how hard Republicans try to obstruct this investigation, the truth still matters, and it will come out.
For months, the GOP and the pro-the rich asshole media have been hyping a series of text messages between two FBI agents as evidence that the investigation into some rich asshole has been hopelessly biased against him.
But new reporting from CNN puts the last nail in that conspiracy theory’s coffin.
The “scandal” centers around FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was removed from the Russia investigation when special counsel Robert Mueller learned that Strzok had sent messages critical of the rich asshole to a fellow agent.
Despite Strzok’s removal, and the fact that he also sent texts critical of many high-ranking Democrats, Republicans have tried to exploit the issue to undermine Mueller and the FBI.
But it turns out that Strzok helped draft the letter that then-FBI Director James Comey sent to Congress days before the election, announcing the reopening of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time at the State Department.
In fact, according to emails obtained by CNN, Strzok even wrote the first draft.
Comey’s letter would become one of a number of major factors that led to the rich asshole’s narrow win in keys states, even as he lost the popular vote by 3 million votes.
Strzok’s participation in that decision effectively kills the notion that he favored Clinton over the rich asshole or tried to intervene in her favor and against the rich asshole.
This revelation came just minutes after another bombshell report that the rich asshole asked Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein if he was on the rich asshole’s “team” during a December meeting, and hours after the FBI issued a public statement rebuking Republicans’ attempt to release an inaccurate and classified memo to undermine the Russia investigation.
Those revelations effectively kneecap the rich asshole and his minions, just when they are applying maximum pressure to the Russia investigation.
They are also an encouraging sign that no matter how hard Republicans try to obstruct this investigation, the truth still matters, and it will come out.
"Are you on my team?"
some rich asshole has twice attempted to determine whether the top justice officials in the country might be more loyal to him than to the Constitution they have sworn to uphold — and now there is a third.
During a December meeting with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the rich asshole quizzed Rosenstein about the direction of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, and, according to CNN, “wanted to know whether Rosenstein was ‘on my team.'”
Rosenstein replaced Attorney General Jeff Sessions as head of the Russia investigation after Sessions allegedly recused himself, and any order to fire Robert Mueller would fall to Rosenstein.
This marks the third report of the rich asshole seeking the loyalty of high-ranking officials of an independent agency charged with investigating the rich asshole for collusion and obstruction of justice.
Former FBI Director James Comey testified before Congress that the rich asshole asked him for a loyalty pledge while he was still serving in that post, a fact confirmed in separate congressional testimony by the bureau’s deputy director, Andrew McCabe.
Shortly after firing Comey, the rich asshole also tried to figure out whether McCabe might be more favorable to him by asking how he voted in the 2016 presidential election.
This latest disturbing news builds on a pattern of the rich asshole seemingly believing — wrongly — that those charged with enforcing our justice system should put the rich asshole’s interests before the law. Those who fail to do so have publicly faced the consequences of his wrath, with the rich asshole and the Republican Party waging smear campaigns against them in an attempt to undermine and discredit them and their findings.
Many Democrats have warned for the better part of a year that the rich asshole’s attempts to derail investigations should trigger impeachment proceedings. Indeed, only last week, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said news of the rich asshole’s attempt to fire Mueller proved a “constitutional crisis is looming.”
This latest development is further evidence of how reckless and dangerous the rich asshole is and how deep his disrespect for the rule of law. It is time to protect this country and its Constitution and impeach the rich asshole.
In every way, the rich asshole just can't measure up to President Barack Obama.
some rich asshole’s first official State of the Union speech was not only a dark and depressing litany of lies and smears — it was also a ratings failure, as he lost once again to President Barack Obama.
Preliminary data shows that 40.4 million people watched the rich asshole deliver his speech across broadcast and cable outlets.
In January of 2010, over 48 million people tuned in to watch President Obama’s first official State of the Union.
It is the latest area where the rich asshole falls far behind his immediate predecessor. Attempting to undo Obama’s accomplishments has become one of the driving forces of the rich asshole’s tenure, as he has tried to erase the 44th president’s legacy even if America gets hurt in the process.
The State of the Union failure will now live alongside the rich asshole’s poorly attended and viewed inauguration, along with his record-breakingly awful first year approval ratings — the lowest since it has been measured.
the rich asshole is not liked, his agenda has largely failed to attract votes, and the amount of people who want to see him speak is dwindling.
He has spent the last year wholeheartedly embracing racism while also working to push tax giveaways to the ultra-rich and take away health care from millions.
That’s on top of convictions of his top campaign aides while his own attempts to obstruct an ongoing federal investigation into election meddling continue to come to life.
Congressional Republicans are retiring at a record pace, rather than face a wave of anti-the rich asshole voters, while his own White House staff can’t turn in their resignations quickly enough.
To show how poorly the rich asshole did, he could not even match his own previous performance, with viewership well below his joint address to Congress.
Of course, that speech also underperformed President Obama. By nearly 5 million.
He just can’t measure up. Sad!
The person in charge of the government's anti-smoking programs has been caught personally profiting from investments in a tobacco company.
some rich asshole and his administration have already had to face a number of embarrassing ethical issues in just one year, and now there’s one more humiliation to add to his list.
Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, appointed just seven months ago to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been exposed for trading stocks in Japan Tobacco, a multinational cigarette corporation, while simultaneously heading the CDC.
Fitzgerald is responsible for most of the federal government’s public health measures and responses — including a multi-year federal anti-smoking campaign.
Less than 24 hours after the story broke, Fitzgerald submitted her resignation.
Even before this story broke, Fitzgerald was facing heavy scrutiny for her conflicts of interest that precluded her from fully performing her jobs. She was forced to recuse herself from a wide variety of public health issues, ranging from cancer to the opioid crisis, and had declined to testify to Congress.
This comes at a time when the rich asshole has left hundreds of CDC positions vacant and proposed billions of dollars in cuts to the agency, even as they struggle to cope with flu season.
Fitzgerald had been appointed to her role by the rich asshole’s former Health and Human Services secretary, Tom Price, who was forced to resign last September amid allegations he had blown over $1 million in taxpayer money traveling on private jets.
Fitzgerald’s departure isn’t the end of the conflicts of interest at Health and Human Services. The new secretary, Alex Azar, who is overseeing the rich asshole’s supposed effort to reform prescription drug prices, is a former pharmaceutical executive who gouged diabetics for insulin and tested erectile dysfunction pills on children just to block competitors from developing a generic version.
The people the rich asshole and his team have tapped to manage the health and well-being of the American people have been an absolute disaster. We deserve leaders who approach their job seriously and ethically.
Schiff: Nunes gave the rich asshole edited version of memo
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 01/31/18 10:16 PM EST
California Rep. Adam Schiff (D) claimed late Wednesday that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, (R-Calif.) shared with President the rich asshole an edited version of the Republican-crafted memo alleging corrosive abuse of United States surveillance powers by the Justice Department.
Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, made the claims in a letter to Nunes, accusing the committee chair of making "substantive" changes to the controversial memo before sharing it with White House counsel for release.
Those changes, Schiff said, were not approved by the full committee as protocol dictates.
"Discovered late tonight that Chairman Nunes made material changes to the memo he sent to White House – changes not approved by the Committee. White House therefore reviewing a document the Committee has not approved for release." Schiff said in a tweet.
FBI agent Peter Strzok wrote the first draft of Comey letter reopening Clinton email investigation
Peter Strzok
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Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who’s drawn the ire of conservatives over a series of texts messages critical of some rich asshole, played a key role in drafting the letter by former FBI Director James Comey that re-opened an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, CNN reports.
Strzok “co-wrote” the first draft of Comey’s letter, which effectively announced the FBI had re-opened a probe in October to Clinton’s emails—a pivotal moment in the 2016 presidential election. In text messages, Strzok appeared to deal with the fallout from that letter.
The report dispels a central Republican talking point that paints Strzok as a hyper-partisan pro-Clinton FBI stooge. the rich asshole backers in the GOP have pointed to the messages from Strzok as proof that career intelligence officials were privately working to ensure Clinton was elected.
The president is unwilling or unable to accept that the DOJ is supposed to operate free of political interference.
AARON RUPAR JAN 31, 2018, 4:54 PM
On Wednesday, CNN broke news that President Some rich asshole asked Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein if he’s “on my team” during a White House meeting last month.
Citing unnamed “sources familiar with the meeting,” CNN reports that Rosenstein was “surprised by the President’s questions,” and “responded awkwardly.”
“Of course, we’re all on your team, Mr. President,” Rosenstein reportedly told Some rich asshole.
Some rich asshole’s querying of the deputy attorney general about his political allegiance is part of a pattern of inappropriate comments to officials with the Department of Justice, which is supposed to operate independently of political interference.
James Comey
Last January, Some rich asshole infamously told then-FBI Director James Comey, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” Comey later told Congress that after an uncomfortable silence, he told Some rich asshole, “You will always get honesty from me.”
Some rich asshole, apparently dissatisfied with his inability to bring Comey under his control, fired him in May.
Andrew McCabe
The day after Some rich asshole fired Comey, the president reportedly grilled the bureau’s acting director, Andrew McCabe, about who he voted for in the 2016 election. According to the Washington Post, McCabe responded by saying he didn’t vote, and later told officials he found the interaction “disturbing.”
Earlier this week, McCabe — who Some rich asshole repeatedly attacked on Twitter as an ally of Hillary Clinton — announced he’s leaving the DOJ.
Jeff Sessions
Some rich asshole believes the role of the Justice Department is to protect him. During an interview with the New York Times last month, Some rich asshole compared Attorney General Jeff Sessions unfavorably with former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder, and said, “I don’t want to get into loyalty, but I will tell you that, I will say this: Holder protected President Obama… And I have great respect for that, I’ll be honest.”
Some rich asshole reportedly fumed at Sessions after he recused himself from the Russia investigation, which paved the way for Rosenstein to appoint Robert Mueller as special counsel following Comey’s dismissal.
Rod Rosenstein
According to CNN, Rosenstein headed to the White House for his meeting with Some rich asshole because he “wanted Some rich asshole’s support in fighting off document demands from House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes.” Nunes has been leading the Republican effort to publicly release an intelligence memo that purportedly discusses FBI misconduct related to the bureau’s investigation of the Some rich asshole campaign.
On Wednesday, the FBI took the unusual step of releasing a strongly-worded statement asking the White House to stop the release of the memo, citing “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” But Some rich asshole has seemingly already made up his mind to allow the memo to be released publicly. Following his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, Some rich asshole was caught on a hot mic telling a House Republican that he “100 percent” supports the memo’s release — despite the fact that at the time, Some rich asshole hadn’t even read it yet.
Hot mic catches Some rich asshole promising to ‘release the memo’ he hasn’t read
Some rich asshole appears to have been unsatisfied with Rosenstein’s response to his question about which team he’s on, and intends to use the memo to do something about it. On Tuesday evening, the Washington Post reported that Some rich asshole “has told close advisers recently that the memo could provide him with grounds for either firing or forcing Rosenstein to leave, according to one person familiar with his remarks.”
Rosenstein is the only U.S. official with the authority to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is overseeing the investigation into the Some rich asshole campaign. Multiple outlets reported that last week that Some rich asshole tried to fire Mueller in June of last year.
Rosenstein or whoever replaces him as deputy attorney general will also ultimately make the decision about whether or not Mueller’s investigatory findings will be made public.
Conway met with African diplomats to do damage control, but instead bragged about some rich asshole
One ambassador said they were surprised a member of some rich asshole's team "actually met" with them.
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway held a meeting with African diplomats on Tuesday, hoping to do damage control in the wake of President the rich asshole’s derogatory “shithole” comments earlier this month. That plan seems to have backfired: according to Foreign Policy, Conway made little to no mention of Africa itself during the meeting, opting to discuss the president’s State of the Union speech instead.
The meeting was originally intended to patch the relationship between the White House and several African nations, which the rich asshole had referred to as “shithole countries” during a bipartisan meeting with lawmakers on January 11.
“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” he said at the time, referring to immigrants from Africa, Haiti, and El Salvador. Several lawmakers subsequently confirmed the president’s comments to reporters, although the White House disputed the story later.
On Tuesday this week, the White House, attempting to mend fences, dropped the ball again.
According to Foreign Policy’s report, throughout the meeting, Conway — who has stayed away from any major diplomatic initiatives thus far — spoke mostly of the rich asshole’s speech and his “achievements” from the past year. She shied away from any real policy talk and hardly mentioned Africa at all, sources said.
One ambassador who spoke to the outlet on the condition of anonymity was shocked that someone from the president’s team had “actually met” with them at all. They added, however, that the meeting was otherwise positive.
In the aftermath of the January 11 meeting, African leaders issued a swath of statements condemning the rich asshole’s “shithole” comments. Macky Sall, president of Senegal, tweeted that he was “shocked by the words of President the rich asshole on Haiti and Africa” and that he “reject[ed] them and condemn[ed] them vigorously.”
“Africa and the black race deserves the respect and consideration of all,” he wrote.
The African Union, a group of African ambassadors to the United Nations, also issued a statement expressing “disappointment and outrage” in the rich asshole’s words.
“The African Union Mission wishes to express its infuriation, disappointment and outrage over the unfortunate comment made by Mr. some rich asshole…which remarks dishonor the celebrated American creed and respect for diversity and human dignity,” they wrote. “[We demand] a retraction of the comment as well as an apology, not only to the Africans, but to all people of African descent around the globe.”
Despite initially denying reports about the comments and tweeting that he had simply used “tough” language during the meeting, the rich asshole later attempted to make amends, issuing a letter to the African Union on January 25 and later obtained by Foreign Policy, in which he praised its partnerships with the United States.
“The United States profoundly respects the partnerships and values we share with the African Union, member states, and citizens across the continent,” he wrote. “I want to underscore that the United States deeply respects the people of Africa, and my commitment to strong and respectful relationships with African states as sovereign nations is firm. …In the coming year, I look forward to building on [those] relationships…[and] welcoming many of you to the White House.”
The rich asshole administration has found itself in hot water over a number of diplomatic gaffes in recent months. In addition to Conway’s bungled meeting on Tuesday, the White House has faced strong criticism from several Middle Eastern nations upset with the rich asshole’s decision to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel and move the U.S. embassy there. Palestinian leaders had warned the administration that such a move would effectively kill any future peace talks between itself and Israel.
“Jerusalem is the key to achieving peace and stability in the region and the world,” King Abdullah II, of neighboring Jordan, said in a statement in early December, shortly after the move was announced. “The adoption of this resolution will have serious implications for security and stability in the Middle East, and will undermine the efforts of the American administration to resume the peace process and fuel the feelings of Muslims and Christians.”
Poof. There goes Republicans’ favorite conspiracy theory about the FBI.
It's a bad day to be Sean Hannity.
For weeks, Republicans have been obsessed with FBI agent Peter Strzok, suggesting that he was part of a cabal inside the agency who sought to rig the 2016 presidential election for Hillary Clinton. To support this theory, the GOP has seized upon texts between Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page that were sometimes critical of the rich asshole. (Strzok and Page were having an affair.)
Last week, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) suggested that Strzok and Page formed a “secret society” to undermine the the rich asshole campaign. “What this is all about is further evidence of corruption — more than bias — but corruption of the highest levels of the FBI… There is so much smoke here,” Johnson said.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the rich asshole accused Strzok of “treason.” If you watch Fox News, the supposed anti-the rich asshole bias of Strzok is discussed daily, if not hourly.
But on Wednesday, CNN reported that Strzok supported reopening the Hillary Clinton email investigation days before the election — and wrote the first draft of the letter from former FBI Director James Comey that made the decision public.
Strzok, who co-wrote what appears to be the first draft that formed the basis of the letter Comey sent to Congress, also supported reopening the Clinton investigation once the emails were discovered on disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s laptop, according to a source familiar with Strzok’s thinking. The day after Strzok sent his draft to his colleagues, Comey released the letter to Congress, reigniting the email controversy in the final days of the campaign.
The letter drafted by Strzok played a key role in swinging momentum back to the rich asshole in the closing days of the campaign. Political analyst Nate Silver wrote that the was a decisive factor in the outcome.
Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28. The letter, which said the FBI had “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” into the private email server that Clinton used as secretary of state, upended the news cycle and soon halved Clinton’s lead in the polls, imperiling her position in the Electoral College.
The text cited by Silver was actually written by Strzok. In other words, if Strzok was part of an FBI conspiracy to deliver the election to Clinton, he did a very poor job.
It appears the rich asshole not only owes Strzok an apology but a thank you card.
some rich asshole Jr. attacks Joy Reid for criticizing his dad — and it backfires spectacularly
some rich asshole Jr. gets interviewed by WTAE in Pennsylvania (Screen cap).
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some rich asshole Jr. is going after Joy Reid over comments she made criticizing the president’s State of the Union address. The MSNBC host denounced the “1950s-era nationalism” President the rich asshole presented Tuesday night. “Church … family … police … military … the national anthem,” Reid tweeted, calling the way the rich asshole presented the concepts as “terms of the bygone era his supporters are nostalgic for.”
Church ... family ... police ... military ... the national anthem ... Trump trying to call on all the tropes of 1950s-era nationalism. The goal of this speech appears to be to force the normalization of Trump on the terms of the bygone era his supporters are nostalgic for. #SOTU
The president’s eldest son, who Americans were told was not going to be a part of his father’s political machine, hit back at Reid, falsely claiming those concepts are institutions “the left hates.”
Apparently Church, Family, Police, Military, and The National Anthem are things the left hates. I think we would all be a lot better off if we embraced those values that allowed us to become the greatest nation in the world. twitter.com/joyannreid/sta…
But Reid was just getting started.
One by one she supported her criticisms with details, examples, and facts.
Reid went on to criticize the president for his hypocrisy on those ideals, including the recent revelation the rich asshole allegedly had a year-long affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels, which some say is why the First Lady arrived separately from her husband Tuesday night.
The fun part is, Trump doesn’t actually embody any of the values he’s harkening back to. Faith? He panders to the religious far right but claims he’s never even asked God for forgiveness. Family? He has flouted his marriage vows with porn stars and is accused by multiple women
“the rich asshole is putting on a show,” Reid noted, “allowing his base to reminisce about an Ozzie and Harriet past they don’t even really value anymore,” she said.
of sexual harassment and worse. Law enforcement? Sure, he is leading the culture war against NFL players who kneel to oppose police killing black civilians, but he and House Republicans are also waging war on federal law enforcement.
She noted the rich asshole’s exclusion of immigrants when speaking of family values.
He offers a promise to bring back the past, but no vision for the future. And strangely, his version of “family values” excludes the families of immigrants.
Bottom line: the first half of Trump’s #SOTU speech was pure pabulum: GOP family values boilerplate that the party traded in for demographic rage and reality show vulgarity by backing him. The second half was the dark matter Trumpism actually represents:
And concluded:
Bottom line: the first half of Trump’s #SOTU speech was pure pabulum: GOP family values boilerplate that the party traded in for demographic rage and reality show vulgarity by backing him. The second half was the dark matter Trumpism actually represents:
some rich asshole Jr. has yet to respond.
Ex-Obama spokesman righteously goes off on GOP memo clown show: ‘This is government by conspiracy theory’
Josh Earnest (MSNBC/screen grab)
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Josh Earnest, President Barack Obama’s former press secretary, lashed out at President some rich asshole and House Republicans for planning to release a memo which the FBI has condemned as dangerous and misleading.
“This is an outrage!” Earnest told MSNBC’s Chris Jansing on Wednesday. “And this is government by conspiracy theory, that right now what you have is, is you have the White House conspiring with a Republican stooge on Capitol Hill, Devin Nunes, to try to drum up some evidence of a conspiracy inside the Department of Justice against some rich asshole.”
“There’s no evidence for that,” he added. “So, what they literally have to do is, they’re making it up. And that’s why you’re seeing the FBI indicate that there are egregious omissions of fact that actually give people a mistaken impression of about the work the FBI has been doing.”
Earnest concluded: “That is all that’s happening here. And it is unthinkable that something like that would have happened in the Obama White House. But also, let’s be clear about this, it’s also unthinkable that something like that would have happened in the Bush White House. This is not normal.”
Watch the video below from MSNBC.
‘CO2 is the gas of life!’ the rich asshole environmental nominee exposed as bizarre climate change conspiracy theorist
Kathleen Harnett White, the rich asshole's nominee for the White House's top environmental post. Image via screengrab.
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Kathleen Hartnett White, who is President some rich asshole’s nominee to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), has been exposed as a conspiracy theorist who believes that nothing bad will happen if human beings flood the atmosphere with carbon dioxide.
The Daily Beast reports that White — who has been renominated after the Senate declined to consider her nomination in the wake of a disastrous confirmation hearing in which she could not say whether water expands as it’s heated — has a long history of spouting scientifically illiterate theories about climate change.
In a 2015 op-ed, for example, White calls carbon dioxide “the gas of life” and is “an essential nutrient for plant growth on which human life depends.”
Of course, the issue is not whether CO2 is a necessary gas for life on Earth, but whether putting too much of it in the atmosphere will cause the Earth’s temperature to rise in ways that will make for more extreme weather.
In the same op-ed, White said that climate scientists were lying about rising temperatures and sea levels because they were part of a “grand scheme to decarbonize human societies.” She has also called climate science “the Left’s secular religion,” and is part of a “totalitarian” aim to enslave humanity.
Kellyanne Conway attempts damage control with African diplomats — but leaves them bewildered
Kellyanne Conway (MSNBC)
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Kellyanne Conway attempted damage control in a hastily thrown-together meeting with African ambassadors after President some rich asshole slurred their countries as “sh*tholes” — but it didn’t go well.
The White House adviser met privately with the diplomats in Washington — but Conway did not discuss Africa, reported Foreign Policy.
Conway instead previewed the State of the Union address and focused on the rich asshole’s achievements in his first year in office, diplomatic sources said.
Some participants were confused because Conway said almost nothing of the president’s priorities for Africa, but one ambassador told the magazine the meeting was positive because a member of the rich asshole’s inner circle had “actually met” with the diplomats.
the rich asshole sent a letter days earlier to the African Union affirming the United States “profoundly respects” its relationship with member states and people across the African continent.
The president also met with his Rwandan counterpart and incoming AU Chairman Paul Kagame last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
‘Things are scary for them’: Dem who busted Nunes says GOPer has never stopped ‘coordinating’ with White House
Brianna Keilar speaks to Mike Quigley (CNN/screen grab)
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Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) said on Wednesday that he believes House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) has been conspiring with the White House for months to undermine the Russia investigation.
According to reports, Quigley confronted Nunes at a closed-door meeting this week about writing a memo that allegedly aims to discredit an investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Nunes reportedly refused to deny that he had worked with the White House to write the memo.
During an interview with CNN’s Brianna Keilar, Quigley recalled that Nunes had also been caught colluding with the White House to undermine the Russia investigation last year.
“So, hey, why not ask him the same questions about this memo?” Quigley explained. “I asked the chairman did he work with [the White House] — coordinate, discuss — and he said, ‘Not to my knowledge.’ And I asked him, did your staff? And then he became quite agitated and said, ‘I’m not answering that.'”
“I fully believe that Chairman Nunes has not changed his tactics,” he continued. “He began this investigation as a subsidiary of the White House, as someone who was coordinating with them rather than being an independent investigator.”
The congressman added: “I don’t believe there has ever been a time when Chairman Nunes didn’t believe his responsibility in this investigation didn’t rest with whatever the White House wanted him to do.”
Quigley said that he has come to believe Nunes was “coordinating with the White House all along.”
“The memo is part of a pattern,” he noted. “Things have gotten very scary for them.”
Former White House ethic chief Norm Eisen warned this week that Nunes has opened himself up to obstruction of justice charges by coordinating with the White House to undermine the Russia investigation.
Watch the video below from CNN.
‘Stormy weather perhaps?’: The View wonders if Melania the rich asshole is trolling her husband with ‘low key shade’
Yvette Nicole Brown, Melania the rich asshole and Sunny Hostin (Photo: Screen capture)
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The women of “The View” stood in solidarity with First Lady Melania the rich asshole in wake of Tuesday’s State of the Union address.
“The First Lady broke tradition and arrived separately from him,” Whoopi Goldberg said. “She did not, I thought, look all that happy to be there, but maybe it was just me.”
“I don’t know that she’s very happy right now, Whoopi, she seems very upset. I don’t know what could be happening right now in her marriage for her to be upset about though,” joked guest host Yvette Nicole Brown.
“Stormy weather perhaps?” said co-host Sunny Hostin.
She went on to say that it seems like Mrs. the rich asshole has been trolling her husband in subtle ways. Some said that the fact that she wore a cream suit was curious because last year Democratic women wore white to the speech and Hillary Clinton wore white during her DNC acceptance speech.
“You know, like throwing some low-key shade, like she hasn’t appeared publicly with him,” Hostin said. “She appeared separately from him. She wasn’t standing and clapping.”
Meghan McCain said that she feels bad for Mrs. the rich asshole because as someone who was in a political family it’s difficult to have troublesome things happening and then have to come out on stage with a smile.
She said that Hillary Clinton also came separately to the State of the Union once while her husband was speaking, though Raw Story cannot confirm that is true. McCain also did not clarify if it was after Mrs. Clinton found out about her husband’s affair.
“I don’t want to be flippant because my ire is for what the man did not for what Melania is going through,” Brown said. “Sometimes people joke, but I feel like Melania is in a hostage situation. Let me explain, I don’t want to make light of hostage situations. I don’t think she wanted this. I don’t think she thought this would happen. And I think she’s been doing the best she can with the situation she’s found herself in and so she has to publicly go out and deal with the stuff he’s doing. I can agree with you and I think she looked beautiful yesterday.”
After the commercial break, McCain said that she feels for Mrs. the rich asshole but that if the affair happened the public deserves to know.
“There are real ramifications for these accusations,” McCain said.
“But if he did this, it’s his fault that she’s in this,” Hostin said.
McCain wants to see Daniels come out and be honest. Hostin explained that often non-disclosure agreements say that there will be a fine or you must return the money. The alleged $130,000 settlement could easily be covered by a major news outlet that wants the exclusive, but if the fine is more than the settlement it might be the reason Daniels stays silent and plays coy.
Watch the clip below:
the rich asshole officials discussed forcing undocumented teen girl to undergo ‘reversed’ abortion: lawsuit
Sad girl crying with a hand covering her face (Shutterstock.com)
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Officials at the Office of Refugee Resettlement last year discussed forcing an undocumented immigrant teenager to undergo a medically unproven procedure that is intended to “reverse” the process of getting a chemical abortion.
Vice News reports that Scott Lloyd, a rich asshole appointee who heads up the agency that oversees undocumented minors who come into the United States without a parent, discussed forcing an undocumented teenage girl to be treated with the hormone progesterone as a way to “reverse” a chemical abortion she was having.
Lloyd admitted that this procedure was discussed during a deposition that was part of a lawsuit filed against the rich asshole administration by the American Civil Liberties Union.
In his deposition, Lloyd says he “may have” discussed the procedure, although the attorney questioning him subsequently got him to acknowledge that he discussed it with his transition staff and attorneys.
When asked why he would discuss such a procedure, he replied that it would be “to save the life of the baby.”
In addition to this, the publication writes that “emails obtained by Vice News… also mention progesterone explicitly and show that officials had questions about the feasibility of using it ‘for the purpose of aborting a chemical abortion process.'”
There is no evidence that the rich asshole administration officials actually forced the undocumented teen to undergo the procedure, which Vice says has no credible science backing up its effectiveness, and which many medical experts believe amounts to conducting unsafe experiments on women’s bodies.
Watchdog requests investigation of Paul Ryan for allowing the rich asshole to use State of the Union feed for fundraising
Paul Ryan (CBS News)
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The watchdog group Public Citizen on Wednesday requested that the U.S. Congress launch an immediate investigation into Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) after President some rich asshole was allowed to use live video of the State of the Union address to raise funds for his campaign.
In a statement released on Wednesday, Public Citizen said it had filed a complaint to have the House Ethics Committee and Office of Congressional Ethics to “investigate whether Speaker Paul Ryan violated House rules by allowing the rich asshole campaign to use a broadcast of the State of the Union address for campaign fundraising purposes.”
According to the statement, the rich asshole’s use of the live feed may run afoul of House rules.
Rule V of the Rules of the House of Representatives states that the speaker is responsible for administering official broadcasts and recordings of floor proceedings and that these official audio and visual transmissions shall not be used for partisan campaign activities. The State of the Union address was broadcast from the floor of the House, which was then livestreamed on the rich asshole’s reelection campaign Facebook page and Twitter feed. New donors were encouraged to make a campaign contribution in exchange for having their names listed in a crawl at the bottom of the screen.
“some rich asshole commercialized and corrupted yet another national institution, making this just the latest disgraceful degradation by the rich asshole of the presidency and our public institutions,” Public Citizen President Robert Weissman said. “This blatant selling of the presidency also appears to violate rules, which is why we are filing today’s complaint. Putting donors’ names on the screen essentially says, ‘This presidency is brought to you by Goldman Sachs, Dow Chemical, Koch Industries and Murray Energy.’”
FBI publicly slams Nunes memo as intentionally inaccurate and misleading
Congressman Devin Nunes (Screenshot)
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In an unusual move, the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday publicly slammed the controversial memo written by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and called it out for factual inaccuracies.
In a statement posted by ABC News’ Mike Levine, the FBI said it only had limited time to review the memo’s contents before the House Intelligence Committee voted to release it.
“As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,” the statement concludes.
The Nunes memo, which alleges a conspiracy within the FBI to bring down President some rich asshole, has been slammed by Democrats for allegedly being misleading and for cherry picking intelligence to justify sweeping, unsupported conclusions. House Democrats were pushing to release their own memo countering the assertions made by Nunes, but they were voted down this week by their fellow colleagues on the House Intelligence Committee.
The release of the memo was also reportedly opposed by FBI Director Christopher Wray, as Bloomberg reports that he believes the memo’s conclusions are faulty.
Historian creeped out by the rich asshole’s ‘fascist’ story about cop adopting addict’s baby — here’s why
Ryan Holets and President some rich asshole
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President some rich asshole praised a New Mexico police officer in his State of the Union address for adopting a heroin addict’s baby — but a historian noticed some disturbing parallels in the anecdote.
The president highlighted Albuquerque police officer Ryan Holets, who while on duty in September encountered a pregnant, homeless woman as she prepared to inject heroin.
“When Ryan told her she was going to harm her unborn child, she began to weep,” the rich asshole said. “She told him she did not know where to turn, but badly wanted a safe home for her baby. In that moment, Ryan said he felt God speak to him: ‘You will do it — because you can.’ He took out a picture of his wife and their four kids. Then, he went home to tell his wife Rebecca. In an instant, she agreed to adopt. The Holets named their new daughter Hope.”
“Ryan and Rebecca: You embody the goodness of our nation,” the president added. “Thank you, and congratulations.”
Historian Angus Johnson couldn’t help but notice the contrast between the language the rich asshole used to tell that story and his rhetoric against Latino and other immigrants brought to the United States as children.
“In the context of the full speech, of the rich asshole’s presidency, this story is a question and an answer,” Johnson tweeted. “What do we do with the children of those we despise? If they’re brown, we expel them from our land. If they are white, we take them for ourselves.”
In the context of the full speech, of Trump's presidency, this story is a question and an answer: What do we do with the children of those we despise? If they're brown, we expel them from our land. If they are white, we take them for ourselves.
The City University of New York professor paid attention to the details the rich asshole’s speechwriters chose to omit from Holet’s story, and those they chose to highlight.
“We don’t know what process was followed in this adoption,” Johnson said. “We don’t know where the mother of this child is now, how she’s doing, what her relationship with her kid is. the rich asshole’s people could have said. They chose not to. They chose to erase her.”
Johnson drew a parallel between the presidential anecdote and the history of los desaparecidos — or, the disappeared — Argentinians who vanished after a military junta took over in 1974, and many of the political prisoners’ babies were stolen and given to party loyalists.
“The children of subversives were seen, (historian Marguerite) Feitlowitz explained, as ‘seeds of the tree of evil,'” reported New York magazine. “Perhaps through adoption, those seeds could be replanted in healthy soil.”
Johnson pointed out the baby’s mother was still homeless as of December and not in contact with her child or the adoptive family — and the historian was disturbed by the way the rich asshole wrote the woman out of her own story.
“That erasure wasn’t accidental,” Johnson said. “It wasn’t merely rhetorical. It was ideological. It was an expression of a specific kind of ethno-natalism we’ve seen before. It was fascist.”
Here are 6 concealed, backhanded comments targeting people of color in some rich asshole’s State of the Union speech
some rich asshole and the Congressional Black Caucis
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Former speechwriter to Barack Obama David Litt noted that the State of the Union address from President some rich asshole Tuesday was a “white-nationalist wish list.” The anger and resentment the president has for people of color in some places was subliminal and in others overt.
Over the course of the lengthy speech, the rich asshole bashed Colin Kaepernick and falsely took credit for the low African-American unemployment. He alluded to the idea immigrants were dangerous and would come to kill Americans and he blamed Black Americans for the opioid crisis killing white people in rural and suburban areas. Finally he embellished the Black homeownership rate and demanded the Black and Latino special guests stand up as if he was trying to prove he had black friends.
As Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star pointed out, black unemployment has been declining for the last decade. Under Obama, the number dropped from 12.7 percent to 7.8 percent. Under the rich asshole it has dropped just 1 percent. Still, because the rate is so low, the rich asshole is claiming the victory over Obama and taking the victory lap.
Wages have been rising since 2014.
Black unemployment dropped from 12.7% to 7.8% under Obama. It has dropped from 7.8% to 6.8% under Trump. The area to the right of the red line is the Trump era. pic.twitter.com/YI6AJYreXJ
At the same time, Dale explained that the rich asshole’s jobs numbers only add up to around 2 million, “probably less,” but not 2.4 million. To get to that number, the rich asshole had to have included the final few months of the Obama administration, before the rich asshole was inaugurated.
With Colin Kaepernick, the rich asshole made a backhanded comment about “why we stand for the national anthem.” He tried to make it about soldiers, the flag and people of color not having enough respect. He neglected to say that the protest is about police brutality, not soldiers, not the flag and certainly not a little boy who puts flags on the graves of fallen military members.
The notorious DREAMer line was celebrated by white supremacists and denounced by people of color. Equating them with the Mexican gang MS-13 horrified some while others worshiped it.
“Thank you President the rich asshole. Americans are ‘Dreamers’ too,” founder of the Louisiana-based Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, tweeted during the rich asshole’s speech.
“Whether or not the president meant it this way, this is how fringe far-right bigots heard that ‘Dreamers’ line last night,” tweeted CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) called the rich asshole’s equating DREAMers with MS-13 “completely irresponsible.”
"To equate that with Dreamers and DACA was completely irresponsible. And it was scapegoating and fear-mongering. And it was wrong."@KamalaHarris responds to President Trump invoking MS-13 at #SOTU
Watch more: on.msnbc.com/2GzAbBl
When discussing the opioid epidemic, the rich asshole fell back on language that presumes people of color are pushing opioids on vulnerable whites.
“We must get much tougher on drug dealers and pushers if we are going to succeed in stopping this scourge,” the rich asshole said. Pushers and drug deals in this case are doctors and pharmaceutical companies, but that’s not how the rich asshole said it.
Finally, the rich asshole demanding the people of color stand up and be recognized. Some said it was as if he wanted to talk about “My African-American.” Others noted special guest Corey Adams didn’t even have a seat.
"Corey (Adams) please stand" feels a lot like "'Look at my African-American over here." #SOTU #WURDsotu #StateOfTheUnion
Why is special guest Corey Adams sitting on the stairs? #SOTU
The ONLY ONLY person Trump said "please stand up" to, was a black man, a welder, no one else was told to please stand, why is that? #SOTU
Meanwhile, Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) members appeared at the speech wearing Kente cloth to highlight the fact that the rich asshole allegedly called African nations “sh*hole countries.” They sat mostly in silence.
Members of Congressional Black Caucus offer no reaction as Pres. Trump says "African-American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded" in #SOTU address cbsn.ws/2BEsu9m
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