February 3rd - February 4th, 2017. 448-449 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no.45, and 376-377 days since the Jan 20th inauguration.
Bush DOJ lawyer blasts Sessions for being ‘missing in action’ while the rich asshole attacks the FBI
some rich asshole and Jeff Sessions (Photos: Wikipedia and screen capture)
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As President some rich asshole and many of his Republican supporters continue to attack the Justice Department, the attorney general is nowhere to be found — and his lack of response is hurting agency morale.
Jack L. Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and former DOJ counsel under President George W. Bush, told The New York Times that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should be leading the charge to defend the FBI amid GOP allegations of corruption.
“What is unusual is the [FBI] and the Justice Department being attacked, the president leading the charge and the attorney general missing in action,” Goldsmith said. “Why isn’t he sticking up for the department?”
Former and current prosecutors told the Times that Sessions’ “tepid response reflects efforts to appease” the rich asshole at the expense of the department’s resolve.
After the rich asshole declassified the House GOP’s controversial memo alleging abuse within the DOJ and FBI, Sessions circulated a statement to its employees saying that although he has “great confidence in the men and women of this department,” nonetheless “no department is perfect.”
Current DOJ prosecutors told the Times on condition of anonymity that despite the attorney general’s morale-breaking silence, “they remain optimistic that the institution can withstand political attacks, with or without Mr. Sessions’s public support,” particularly in light of a stronger statement by FBI Director Christopher Wray.
“I am determined to defend your integrity and professionalism every day,” the bureau’s director told employees in his own statement. “Talk is cheap; the work you do is what will endure.”
REVEALED: Devin Nunes might release five more memos that claim DOJ worked to undermine the rich asshole
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA). Image via screengrab.
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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) has been teasing that he may drop more controversial memos alleging government abuses — and there may be as many as five.
Axios reported on Sunday that sources close to Nunes’ investigations believe there may be as many as five more memos in the works, and may include journalists Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer, both known associates to the Clinton family, as having colluded with the government to swing the election in favor of Hillary Clinton.
“There are several areas of concern where federal agencies used government resources to try to create a narrative and influence the election,” a Republican congressperson briefed on Nunes’ investigation told Axios. “Some have suggested coordination with Hillary Clinton operatives, Blumenthal and Shearer, to back up the false narrative.”
Shearer is the author of a second dossier alleging collusion between some rich asshole’s presidential campaign and the Russian government, and along with Blumenthal has already become a right-wing talking point as a potential operative working to influence the election in Clinton’s favor.
the rich asshole to Americans on Super Bowl Sunday: 'Stand for the National Anthem'
BY AVERY ANAPOL - 02/04/18 04:21 PM EST
President the rich asshole on Sunday sent a Super Bowl message to Americans that called on them to stand during the national anthem.
In a presidential message, the rich asshole said that Americans “owe” the “greatest respect” to members of the armed forces, adding that their defense of the “American way of life” helps make the Super Bowl possible.
“Their sacrifice is stitched into each star and every stripe of our Star-Spangled Banner,” the rich asshole said. “We hold them in our hearts and thank them for our freedom as we proudly stand for the National Anthem.”
the rich asshole has feuded with the NFL over the league allowing players to kneel during the national anthem. the rich asshole repeatedly attacked the NFL last year, calling for owners to fire any “son of a bitch” who kneels during the anthem.
Conservatives said the kneeling protests were disrespectful to veterans, and many have boycotted the NFL.
Some players have kneeled in protest of police brutality and racial inequality. Others kneeled this season in solidarity for the right to protest.
Commissioner Roger Goodell said that players “should” stand for the anthem, but would not create a league rule requiring players to stand. He said last week that the league may revisit the issue in the off-season.
“We send our best wishes for an enjoyable Super Bowl Sunday,” the rich asshole added in the message. “May God bless and protect our troops, and may He continue to bless the United States of America.”
the rich asshole is currently visiting his private Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he will host a watch party to see the New England Patriots take on the Philadelphia Eagles.
He will also break with the last few years of presidential tradition by not giving a pregame interview.
Asha Rangappa is a senior lecturer at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University and a former FBI agent.
The point of the memo written by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and released Friday afternoon was supposed to be to expose corruption at the highest levels of the FBI. But what the memo actually did — albeit surely not intentionally — was exactly the opposite. In a brief 3½ pages, Nunes managed to confirm that the investigation into the the rich asshole campaign’s possible ties with Russia has a very solid basis and that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III must keep looking into the case.
As a former special agent for the FBI working on counterintelligence, I used to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants, so I’m familiar with the procedures Nunes implies the FBI abused in this case. To initiate surveillance on former the rich asshole foreign policy adviser Carter Page in October 2016, the government would have had to demonstrate that Page was “knowingly engaging in clandestine intelligence gathering activities for or on behalf of” Russia. Importantly, the “knowingly” requirement applies only to “U.S. persons” such as Page, not to foreign nationals — which means the government had a slightly higher burden in his case. It takes months and even years to obtain enough relevant evidence for a FISA application, which can include details from physical surveillance, phone and financial records, items recovered from the target’s trash and intelligence obtained from other sources. So the FISA application would probably have outlined the bureau’s efforts going all the way back to 2013, when Page was approached by the FBI, which warned him, based on recordings of Russian intelligence officers, that he was being targeted for recruitment as a Russian spy. (That same year, Page also reportedly wrote in a letter to an academic publisher that he was an “informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin.”) In counterintelligence investigations, this kind of interview would have been intended to “neutralize” the Russians: The idea is that anyone who was being unwittingly developed as a spy, as Page appeared to be, would be dismayed to realize what was happening and would immediately cease further contact with their intelligence contacts.
That means that three years before the FISA surveillance on him began, Page was on notice regarding exactly whom and what he was dealing with when it came to the Russians. For the FBI to get a warrant to listen to his communications later, the bureau would have had evidence that Page remained in contact with individuals he knew were affiliated with Russian intelligence. And the FBI would have had to demonstrate to the FISA court that Page was engaging in behavior that appeared to be facilitating Russia’s intelligence activities. (Those could include things such as frequent and potentially secret meetings with Russian intelligence officers; utilizing tradecraft like communicating in code; or accepting payments from known intelligence sources.) This time period, of course, covered his participation in the rich asshole campaign: the rich asshole identified Page as an adviser in March 2016 in an interview with The Washington Post, although he had left the campaign in September 2016 following news reports of his connections in Russia. (This means the FBI did not intercept his communications until a month after he stopped working for the rich asshole.) The three years after the bureau first warned Page would have been plenty of time for Russian intelligence to develop him as an intelligence asset and to capitalize on his assessed vulnerabilities, which included his desire to make money and move up professionally.
Nunes’s memo also discloses that the government obtained three renewals of the FISA warrant, which occurred every 90 days after the initial authorization. In order for a judge to allow the surveillance to continue, the government has to demonstrate that the intercepted communications are, in fact, providing foreign intelligence. In Page’s case, the order would have been initially authorized based on the premise that monitoring his communications was necessary to understand what, exactly, Russian intelligence was doing and how Page played a role in those activities. If, 90 days later, the government had not obtained any new information about Page’s contacts and activities and the surveillance had ceased, that would show that Page probably was not working as a spy and that the evidence that had seemed to point in that direction was wrong. Instead, the continued renewals underscore that the government was able to persuade the court that Page continued his contacts and activities.
If Nunes was trying to cast doubt on the basis and motives for the FBI’s interest in Page and in his campaign, he failed miserably. Far from demonstrating that the FBI was out to get the rich asshole, the memo suggests that the rich asshole campaign could have had an active Russian spy working as a foreign policy adviser. Nunes suggests that the FISA applications were flawed because they included some information supplied by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who was hired by an opposition-research firm funded by the Clinton campaign. But as a matter of law, that shouldn’t have made a difference to the court, especially if the affidavit had plenty of other supporting evidence of Page’s activities. Notably, the memo doesn’t even attempt to argue that Page did not, in fact, have ties to Russia.
Even worse for Nunes, he managed to showcase concrete proof that the FBI was looking into the rich asshole’s Russian connections before they heard from Steele. The memo confirms that Australian intelligence was aware of possible ties between George Papadopoulos, another the rich asshole campaign foreign policy adviser, and Russian intelligence, and that the Australians were alarmed enough to alert the FBI, which opened an investigation in July 2016.
Papadopoulos, of course, pleaded guilty in October to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia and has been cooperating with Mueller’s investigation. So has former national security adviser Michael Flynn. the rich asshole’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has been charged with failing to register as a foreign agent for Ukraine even though his firm was paid $17.1 million by a Ukrainian political party with ties to Russia. And then there are all the multiple approaches made by individuals connected to Russian intelligence to some rich asshole Jr., Jared Kushner and Jeff Sessions. Every one of them has lied when asked about their Russian contacts.
So what the memo reveals about Page is cause enough for concern. And in the context of everything else we know so far, it is downright alarming.
Whether there was ultimately any collusion between Russia and individual members of the rich asshole campaign, there can be no doubt after the memo that the government had good reason to investigate Russian attempts to place and recruit assets there. Any American who cares about protecting our elections and democratic processes from foreign interference should want no stone uncovered in exposing how successful Russia was in its efforts. Nunes may have thought he was proving the FBI was out to get the rich asshole. Instead, he proved the FBI was right to worry.
ESPN anchor Jemele Hill accuses the rich asshole of pushing ‘racial pornography’ in tweets aimed at kneeling athletes
February 4, 2018
Matt Naham
Posted with permission from Rare
hill
ESPN’s Jemele Hill, who was suspended for two weeks months ago for calling President Donald Trump a “white supremacist” on her personal Twitter account, appeared on Rev. Al Sharpton’s show “Politics Nation” and accused Trump of peddling “racial pornography.”
#JemeleHill talks Colin Kaepernick and more. #PoliticsNation
Sharpton asked Hill for her response to President Trump’s statement during his State of the Union (SOTU) address that 12-year-old Preston Sharp, a friend to veterans and special guest of First Lady Melania Trump, was a reminder of why we stand for the national anthem.
President Trump recognizes Preston Sharp, a 12-year-old California boy who started a movement to place flags at the graves of military members cnn.it/2FxPM3d #SOTU
“Preston’s reverence for those who have served our nation reminds us why we salute our flag, why we put our hands on our hearts for the pledge of allegiance and why we proudly stand for the national anthem,” Trump said during the speech.
Sharpton asked how Hill felt about Trump “[taking] a shot at people that are standing up about injustices?”
Hill replied that she wasn’t surprised because Trump is a “racial pornograph[er].”
“I wasn’t surprised, and I think this is going to be — a probably, a constant thing for the president, because it’s a very easy dog whistle, it’s low hanging fruit, it’s what I like to call ‘racial pornography,’ because it’s a way to stoke his base,” she said, according to The Sporting News.
The sports news outlet reached out to ESPN for comment about Hill’s MSNBC appearance and ESPN spokesman Mike Soltys replied that “the anthem is a sports issue.”
It’s not clear if ESPN was made aware of Hill’s appearance on “Politics Nation” in advance and approved it, but by officially calling this commentary on a “sports issue,” it seems that the MSNBC segment will not be viewed the same way by the company as Hill’s Twitter comments months ago.
Previously, as we mentioned, Hill was suspended for tweeting that “Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has surrounded himself with other white supremacists,” and that Trump is “bigot” and “the most ignorant, offensive president of [her] lifetime.”
ESPN released a statement in October saying that Hill was suspended for violating the company’s “social media guidelines.”
Hill followed that with an apology for “paint[ing] ESPN in an unfair light.”
So, to address the elephant in the room ... #Facts
The queen of ‘alternative facts’ is upset that people are going on TV and lying ‘under oath’ about the Nunes memo
White House aide Kellyanne Conway wearing an Eagles hat during a Fox News interview on Super Bowl Sunday. Image via screengrab.
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Despite herself coining the phrase “alternative facts” to explain away President some rich asshole’s lies about the size of his inauguration crowd, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway bemoaned pundits on either size lying about the House GOP’s controversial memo on TV.
Discussing House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes‘ (R-CA) memo that alleges surveillance abuses against former the rich asshole campaign aide Carter Page, Conway initially said she’s looking forward to see what Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, comes out within his own memo.
“Go ahead,” she said. “We’re for transparency and accountability.”
She then shifted gears and appeared to attack Democrats and other critical of the memo’s allegations and impact — and mixed up TV interviews with testifying before the FBI in the process.
“You can’t argue this, not under oath through the cable TV wars,” she said. “And that’s what’s happening. People are going on and saying things that are simply not true, hoping that they will come true.”
Watch the strange argument below, via Fox News.
That's not how this works.
some rich asshole couldn’t find time to discuss education during his State of the Union address, and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos recently showed why he might have been reluctant to do so.
DeVos did a round of local news interviews this week, in an attempt to sell the rich asshole’s agenda to local news reporters.
It did not go well.
In one interview broadcast Sunday morning, local Ohio television station WTVG reported on DeVos’ claims, saying “with new opportunities that have been developing with the passage of tax reform, those opportunities, [DeVos] says, will naturally extend themselves to our country’s schools.”
“We are focused and committed to continuing to look at ways to support those at the most local level with innovating and creating new opportunities for the students they’re serving to meet all of their needs,” DeVos told the station.
But when asked for specifics, DeVos had “no comment.”
The absurd claim that the the rich asshole tax scam could have any impact on education was vividly illustrated on Saturday when Speaker of the House Paul Ryan pathetically touted one teacher’s $1.50-a-week increase in take home pay. The only noticeable impact of the tax bill will be to hand over a trillion dollars to billionaires, then cut programs for everyone else when the deficit balloons.
In another interview with a local Maine reporter, DeVos was repeatedly pressed over whether there would be any additional federal funding for education, and could only promise the gutting of federal education regulations.
the rich asshole’s policies may go over well on Fox News, but in the local markets where people are actually being hurt by them, the rich asshole isn’t fooling anyone. And neither is his Cabinet.
the rich asshole's campaign pledge to reduce or even eliminate the national debt is already proving to be yet another broken promise.
some rich asshole didn’t mention the national debt or budget deficits in his first State of the Union address, possibly because his own policies have left him with nothing good to say on the matter.
Thanks to lower tax receipts resulting from the tax scam pushed on the American people by the rich asshole and the GOP, the administration is set to borrow nearly $1 trillion in fiscal year 2018, during the rich asshole’s first full year in charge of the budget.
That’s an increase of 84 percent over last fiscal year — and this from the man who, as a candidate, promised to fully eliminate the national debt in eight years at most.
It was already clear just months into his presidency that such a promise was absurd and unachievable. the rich asshole’s own budget director, Mick Mulvaney, refuted his boss’s absurd pledge in April 2017, telling CNBC that it was “safe to assume [it] was hyperbole.”
Indeed, his debt reduction plan was shown in September 2017 to potentially increase the debt by $5.3 trillion, and the tax scam is estimated to balloon the deficit by as much as $1.5 trillion.
To compensate for those tremendous self-inflicted injuries, the $955 billion that the federal government expects to borrow this fiscal year is the highest such amount in six years, and a massive increase over the $519 billion borrowed last year. And it’s the first time that spending has increased so dramatically in a non-recession year since the Reagan era.
And that’s even before any money is allotted to crucial areas like infrastructure, disaster relief, or the military.
And recent history may already be about to repeat itself.
“Some of my Wall Street clients are starting to talk recession in 2019 because of these issues,” noted Peter Davis, a former tax economist in Congress.
“Fiscal policy is just out of control,” he added bluntly.
And as Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, put it plainly, “We’re addicted to debt.”
“Every time you feed your addiction, you grow your addiction,” he warned.
And despite the rich asshole’s promises on the campaign trail, the self-proclaimed “king of debt” appears ready to do just that.
the rich asshole to Americans on Super Bowl Sunday: 'Stand for the National Anthem'
BY AVERY ANAPOL - 02/04/18 04:21 PM EST
President the rich asshole on Sunday sent a Super Bowl message to Americans that called on them to stand during the national anthem.
In a presidential message, the rich asshole said that Americans “owe” the “greatest respect” to members of the armed forces, adding that their defense of the “American way of life” helps make the Super Bowl possible.
“Their sacrifice is stitched into each star and every stripe of our Star-Spangled Banner,” the rich asshole said. “We hold them in our hearts and thank them for our freedom as we proudly stand for the National Anthem.”
the rich asshole has feuded with the NFL over the league allowing players to kneel during the national anthem. the rich asshole repeatedly attacked the NFL last year, calling for owners to fire any “son of a bitch” who kneels during the anthem.
Conservatives said the kneeling protests were disrespectful to veterans, and many have boycotted the NFL.
Some players have kneeled in protest of police brutality and racial inequality. Others kneeled this season in solidarity for the right to protest.
Commissioner Roger Goodell said that players “should” stand for the anthem, but would not create a league rule requiring players to stand. He said last week that the league may revisit the issue in the off-season.
“We send our best wishes for an enjoyable Super Bowl Sunday,” the rich asshole added in the message. “May God bless and protect our troops, and may He continue to bless the United States of America.”
the rich asshole is currently visiting his private Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he will host a watch party to see the New England Patriots take on the Philadelphia Eagles.
He will also break with the last few years of presidential tradition by not giving a pregame interview.
Ivanka ‘paid leave’ plan steals money from Social Security then forces parents to postpone retirement
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A childcare plan being discussed by Ivanka the rich asshole and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) would require parents to use their Social Security for maternity leave and then put off retirement in the future.
A Politico report published on Sunday explained that Rubio and the president’s daughter had recently been in discussions about how to provide paid family leave to Americans.
The report noted that one of the most popular Republican solutions for funding paid leave is to have parents cut into their Social Security savings. The parents would then be forced to postpone retirement for that same amount of time.
Rubio has barely started crafting a paid leave bill, much less a broader legislative strategy. But he envisions an idea that has recently gained traction in conservative circles: allowing people to draw Social Security benefits when they want to take time off for a new baby or other family-related matters, and then delay their checks when they hit retirement age.For instance, a person who would begin receiving full benefits when he or she turns 67 years old but wants to take six weeks of paid leave wouldn’t draw Social Security checks until six weeks after his or her 67th birthday.
Democrats have suggested raising taxes to pay for new paid family leave legislation. Republicans, however, bristle at the idea of creating a new “entitlement.”
Read the entire report here
Kellyanne Conway actually made a great argument, for a change.
some rich asshole and his surrogates are trying their desperate best to prop up the Republicans’ the already-discredited and widely-mocked FBI smear memo.
But the rich asshole’s his favorite spokesperson tripped herself up in that effort badly Sunday morning.
During an interview with “Fox & Friends Sunday,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway spent several minutes spewing talking points about the memo, but hit a snag when she was asked about the prospect of a rebuttal memo being released.
“I support that as well,” Conway told host Pete Hegseth. “In other words, if the Schiff memo comes forward, then go ahead.”
Conway then made an ironclad argument for her boss to testify under oath, telling Hegseth, “We’re for transparency, but look, you can’t argue this not under oath, through the cable TV wars, and that’s what’s happening.”
“People are going on saying things that are simply not true, hoping they will come true,” she added, in a statement that could easily be applied to the rich asshole himself and his fantasy that the memo “vindicates” him.
the rich asshole has waffled repeatedly on whether or not he would testify for special counsel Robert Mueller under oath, but for once, Conway is absolutely right. the rich asshole — or Rep. Devin Nunes, or any number of the rich asshole’s accomplices — can say whatever they want on Twitter or cable news, or in dishonest smear memos.
The only way to hold the rich asshole accountable is for him to testify under oath, where his lies really will matter. It seems Conway understands that. Now she ought to convince her boss of it, too.
‘Now’s not the time to wait’: Divorce lawyers urging clients to separate now due to the rich asshole alimony tax law changes
President some rich asshole and First Lady Melania left the White House for Texas early Tuesday. (AFP / NICHOLAS KAMM)
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Deep down in the GOP tax plan signed by President some rich asshole are major changes to alimony tax laws that have attorneys advising clients considering breaking up to speed up the process in order to garner savings that will go away in 2019.
According to a report in Politico, a 76-year-old deduction for alimony payments in the tax code will disappear in 2019 under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed into law by the rich asshole last December. Loss of that deduction — often for thousand of dollars — can have a serious financial impact on a couple already saddled with the financial difficulties that come with setting up separate households.
Lawyer Mary Vidas, the former chair of the American Bar Association’s section on family law, explained the implications of the tax law change succinctly, stating: “Now’s not the time to wait. If you’re going to get a divorce, get it now.”
According to the report, under current law, the deduction substantially reduces the cost of alimony payments — in the case of high-earning couples every dollar they shell out to support a former spouse costs them a little more than 60 cents.
In 2019 that deduction goes away, which had divorce attorneys saying separations are acrimonious enough already when it comes to alimony during the 2017 tax negotiations.
Noting that child support payments are already not deductible, lawyers claim the real victims of the tax law change will be women facing tougher fights in cases where their husbands make substantially more than they do.
“The repeal reduces the bargaining power of vulnerable spouses, mostly women, in achieving financial stability after a divorce,” explained Pittsburgh family law attorney Brian Vertz. “How do I live? Get me before a judge so I can plead my case,” attorney Madeline Marzano-Lesnevich said her clients often ask.
A spokesperson for House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) defended the tax law change in a statement, saying, “This is one of the many provisions of the law that removes special rules applicable only in certain circumstances in order to help simplify the code and reduce tax rates for all Americans. It is unfair to offer a special break to divorcees, saying the repeal prevents divorced couples from reducing income tax through a specific form of payments unavailable to married couples.”
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, there were 813,862 divorces reported in the U.S. in 2017 in the 45 states that submitted data to the agency.
A report in Time stated that divorces in the U.S. declined last year — dropping for the third year in a row and reaching its lowest point in nearly 40 years.
You can read the whole report here
the rich asshole's own party knows the FBI smear memo is a flop.
some rich asshole’s desperation to salvage the embarrassing failure of the Republicans’ false smear memo took another major hit Sunday, as a Republican member of the committee that released the memo rebuked the rich asshole’s own taking points about it.
On Saturday, the rich asshole insisted that the bogus memo “totally vindicates ‘the rich asshole'” in the Russia probe.
But that assertion was rebutted the next morning by Texas Republican and House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Will Hurd on ABC News’ “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”
Stephanopoulos asked Hurd, “So you don’t agree with President the rich asshole when he says this vindicates him in the entire Russia investigation?”
“I don’t,” Hurd replied.
“I don’t agree with some of my colleagues that say, you know, always using the words ‘explosive,'” Hurd added. “I’m not shocked that elected officials are using hyperbole and exaggerations.”
As White House officials feared in advance of the memo’s release, the smear effort was a self-evident failure.
But now, the rich asshole has a member of his own party, from the very committee that composed and released the memo, admitting that its import was exaggerated, and that it does not vindicate the rich asshole.
And things don’t figure to get any better for the rich asshole and his memo anytime soon. Republicans have now been forced to support the release of a Democratic intel report that will further destroy this sham, and shine another brilliant spotlight on this attempt to obstruct the Russia investigation.
the rich asshole 2020 adviser goes berserk: the rich asshole gets credit for Obama jobs because he’s the real ‘Yes We Can’ president
Alex Witt and Bruce Levell (MSNBC/screen grab)
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Bruce Levell, an adviser to President some rich asshole’s 2020 campaign, told MSNBC on Sunday that President Barack Obama should not get credit for jobs created during his administration because the rich asshole is the real “Yes We Can” president.
During an interview with Levell, MSNBC host Alex Witt noted that the rich asshole has recently taken credit for record-low black unemployment, a trend which started under Obama.
“Do you think, Bruce, it is a bit disingenuous to say that this has happened, that black unemployment has happened under President the rich asshole, when look at what’s on the screen right now?” Witt said pointing to a graphic showing that black unemployment dropped far more under Obama than under the rich asshole.
“How is it that President the rich asshole takes credit for it?” she wondered.
“When you are the president of the United States, you know as well as I do, you get the credit, good or bad,” Levell replied. “President the rich asshole is the president of these United States of America. The numbers speak for themselves. But what I’m trying to tell you is that you have a leader here in the Oval Office who’s putting out this cheer and putting out this euphoria of ‘Yes We Can.’ We can do all this and we can build this nation, we can build our business. That spills over into our American democracy that people want to make a better change. So, he gets the credit for this! We’re not looking back, we’re looking forward.”
“Do you give the credit to Barack Obama as well?” Witt asked.
“No!” Levell exclaimed. “We’re talking about now.”
“You don’t give the credit to Barack Obama for the prior seven years?” Witt pressed.
“He did not grow the GDP!” Levell shouted. “The only thing President Obama grew was $9 trillion of debt.”
Watch the video below from MSNBC.
Lawmakers dispute ‘vindication’ for the rich asshole in Intel memo
BY MALLORY SHELBOURNE - 02/04/18 02:28 PM EST
Democrats on Sunday argued that the release of a controversial memo accusing the Justice Department of surveillance abuses does not vindicate President the rich asshole in the Russia investigation — and Republicans are also avoiding declarations of the rich asshole's exoneration.
the rich asshole made the claim that the memo "totally vindicates" him in the Russia investigation in a Saturday tweet following the memo's release the day before.
But Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC on Sunday that he doesn't believe the memo vindicates the rich asshole. Several other Republicans argued that the memo was not about the ongoing investigation.
The memo, released on Friday upon the rich asshole’s authorization, roiled Washington, D.C., as Democrats labeled the Republican-led push to publish the document an effort to undermine law enforcement agencies as well as the special counsel probing Russia’s election meddling and any potential ties between the rich asshole campaign members and Moscow.
Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) on Sunday dismissed the rich asshole’s assertion that the memo vindicates him.
“No, of course it does not,” Durbin told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“And the fact that the Republicans in the House refused to allow a minority report, the Democratic response to their memo, is an indication that this — they're just bound and determined to continue to find ways to absolve this president from any responsibility," he continued.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the Intelligence panel, in both a Saturday op-ed and a Sunday appearance on ABC’s “This Week” said the memo does not provide the rich asshole with any vindication.
“The memo’s release provided none of the vindication the president sought or would claim, but it was hugely consequential nonetheless, in how it undermined the system of checks and balances designed to insulate the FBI from White House meddling established in the wake of Watergate,” Schiff wrote for Esquire.
Republicans on Sunday emphasized that the memo provided evidence of the Justice Department's abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in order to gain a warrant — rather than proof of the president's innocence from allegations of collusion.
“I think this is a separate issue,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN’s “State of the Union” when asked if he agreed with the president’s view of the memo.
“In my opinion, what we're dealing with is a situation within our FISA court and how we process within our government agencies," he said. "And I don't think it really has anything to do with that.”
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who is also a member of the Intelligence Committee, argued that the memo had nothing to do with the Russia investigation.
"I actually don't think it has any impact on the Russia probe," he told CBS's "Face the Nation."
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Sunday seized on Republicans’ refusal to agree that the memo exonerated the rich asshole, blasting out clips of interviews with GOP members of Congress in an email that argued “even Republicans agree that the Nunes memo does nothing to discredit the Russia investigation."
For example, Hurd instead highlighted his worry about FISA abuse.
“I’m not shocked that elected officials are using hyperbole and ... exaggerations,” he told ABC’s “This Week.” “But this is about, for me, what kind of information should be used in a Title III court in order to spy on American citizens. Our civil liberties are important.”
The concern refers to the surveillance warrants obtained on former the rich asshole campaign aide Carter Page. The memo states that information from a politically-funded dossier assembled by a former British spy “was an essential part of the Carter Page FISA application.”
Gowdy, in defending the Russia investigation, argued Sunday that while he doesn't think the warrant would have been acquired without the dossier — something Democrats also contest — the Russia probe would still exist without it.
That dossier includes unverified claims about the rich asshole and was partially funded by the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Republicans have argued that the funding makes the material politically biased and that the origins of the dossier were not disclosed on the FISA application or its renewals.
The Democrats have compiled a countermemo based on the same classified materials as the GOP memo that reportedly argues, among other things, that the dossier's funding was disclosed in the warrant.
"There was a barrage of evidence that they presented to the court including a disclosure that the Steele dossier had a political motivation," Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), another member of the House Intelligence Committee, during his own Sunday interview disputed the notion that the FISA application relied on the dossier.
“Just because it was opposition research doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. In fact, we wouldn’t pay a penny for opposition research if it is biased,” Himes told CNN. “I think when the facts are out here, this will turn out to be a very, very small and insignificant thing.”
Democrats are now pushing to release their own memo, which aims to counter the Nunes document. The House Intelligence Committee is expected to vote Monday on whether to release that document. If the panel votes to make it public, it will likely undergo vetting and the rich asshole will have to sign off on its release.
Eric Boehlert (MSNBC/screen grab)
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An MSNBC panel on Sunday pointed out that a controversial memo from House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) ended up being a “dud” even though Republicans coordinated with Fox News and Russian bots to hype the document.
MSNBC host Joy Reid observed during the panel discussion that Fox News was the first media outlet to get Nunes’ memo, which attempts to smear the FBI over surveillance of Carter Page, a former the rich asshole campaign staffer.
“The big reveal was kind of a let down,” Reid explained. “Because the most compelling evidence against their hysterical claims about the Nunes memo was the distinctly underwhelming content of the memo itself. That irony, however, was lost on our friends [at Fox News].”
Shareblue Media writer Eric Boehlert noted that the memo “imploded one week after the secret society” conspiracy theory.”
“A week ago Friday, Fox News and the GOP were pushing this idea there was a rogue enterprise within the FBI that was trying to undo the rich asshole’s presidency,” he explained. “Turned out that was a joke text. And that kind of imploded. Everything they do is a joke, everything they do implodes.”
“The whole memo charade is essentially a Kremlin production,” Boehlert continued. “And so it’s the fog of unknowability. Right? You throw out so much garbage, etc., etc. And even if there isn’t a direct connection, this whole memo charge came the same week the rich asshole refused to impose sanctions against Russia.”
“Everything the rich asshole does points to he is panicked over what Putin has,” he noted. “He’s panicked over what Russia has and Fox News has become an incredibly important part of that. And Russian bots, which launched the #ReleaseTheMemo [hashtag] has become an important thing.”
“Russian bots literally were pushing the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag,” Reid replied. “Which is amazing coordination for an administration that is denying they coordinate with the Russians.”
“They coordinate with radicals in the House, they coordinate with Fox News and they coordinate with Russian bots,” Boehlert remarked. “That is the firepower they had and it still was a dud.”
Watch the video below from MSNBC.
"Do you think Sean Hannity is talking to the rich asshole from some super-secret, super-secure location?"
some rich asshole’s campaign to release the Republicans’ FBI smear memo could be as much of a risk to national security as the memo itself, Shareblue Media senior writer Eric Boehlert pointed out on Sunday.
Republicans staked everything on the release of the much-hyped intelligence memo that the rich asshole’s own Justice Department and FBI warned could compromise national security. When the memo turned out to be an embarrassing flop, no one was angrier than Fox News host Sean Hannity, who had pushed the release for weeks.
But as it turns out, Hannity was also privately advising the rich asshole on the memo, egging him on to support its release. On MSNBC’s “AM Joy” Sunday morning, Boehlert called out the rich asshole’s hypocrisy in discussing a classified memo with Hannity.
“Do you think Sean Hannity is talking to the rich asshole from some super-secret, super-secure location?” Boehlert asked. “No.”
“Who do you think is listening to every one of those phone calls?” Boehlert continued. “Ask national security experts. They’ll tell you. The Russians.”
Boehlert and host Joy Reid then pointed out the consternation that surrounded the mere possibility that Hillary Clinton might have made sensitive information vulnerable (which she did not do), and contrasted it with the recklessness surrounding this memo.
“This is classified information!” Reid exclaimed, indicating the memo.
the rich asshole is known to use his own, non-secure phone for communications, and there’s no reason to assume that Hannity was using a secure phone, either. the rich asshole receives classified briefings on a regular basis, and has access to other classified information, and there is no telling what he discussed with Hannity on those calls — or as Boehlert noted, who else was listening.
But we do know that when the rich asshole and Fox News started to hype this memo, an army of Russia-linked social media bots joined in to promote the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag.
The memo fiasco has exposed so much that is phony about Republicans’ efforts to shield the rich asshole, but nothing quite so phony as their alleged concern for our security.
Protesters shut down transit lines to Super Bowl
People without a Super Bowl ticket were banned from public transit.
Protesters identifying with Black Lives Matter have blocked a number of transit lines in Minneapolis in the hours before Super Bowl 52. The protesters explained their rationale in a statement:
Activists are using this moment to stand with athletes who have protested throughout the past two football seasons calling attention to the murder of Black people by police and to the City of Minneapolis’ banning city residents from using public transit without a Super Bowl ticket.
About 100 protesters shut down West Bank station.
As game time approached, policed moved in with plans to disperse the protesters.
Speaker at #BlackLivesMatter #SuperBowl light rail blockade: "The city of #Minneapolis has deliberately cut off funds for our communities" while moving "mountains" of public $$$ to facilitate #SuperBowl52. We're #LIVE: unicornriot.ninja/live-channel/ #SuperBowlLII #SBLIIBLACKOUT #SBLII pic.twitter.com/WNPM4QL7AM
Police at the #Minneapolis #SuperBowl #BlackLivesMatter light rail blockade said over a loudspeaker "anyone on the platform will be arrested" but nobody seems to be going anywhere. #SuperBowl52 #SBLIIBLACKOUT #SuperBowlLII #SuperBowlLive unicornriot.ninja/live-channel/ #SBLII #SBL pic.twitter.com/9Jf86GWTEu
Some protesters physically locked themselves near the tracks.
The NFL has been a political lightning rod this year, with some athletes kneeling in protest of police brutality and the rich asshole attacking the players — and the league for failing to silence them.
UPDATE: At around 5:30, an hour before kickoff, police were able to clear at least one station of protesters.
Police struggle to clear last protester from tracks, locked to fence with bike lock. Light rail tracks at West Bank station now clear #SuperBowl2018
At least 17 people were arrested.
Chief Harrington, Metro Transit PD Chief told our @KSTP crew they've made about 17 arrests as of now.
This is a breaking news post and will be updated.
Priebus: Ryan is achieving goals with the rich asshole he’s worked on 'since he was 21'
BY BRETT SAMUELS - 02/04/18 11:40 AM EST
Former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said Sunday he thinks Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will decide in the spring whether to run for reelection, but touted what Ryan and President the rich asshole have accomplished together.
“I do think that Paul’s view of what fundamentally is getting accomplished under President the rich asshole … when you take away what the media wants to focus in on, which is the decision-making process and some of the drama, but you actually look at what decisions are being made and the fundamentals, the president’s doing a remarkable job,” Priebus said on NBC's “Meet The Press.”
Speculation swirled late last year that Ryan would not seek reelection in 2018. Confidants indicated he might want to go out on "a high note" if Republicans were able to pass tax reform, long a legislative priority of Ryan's.
Ryan refuted the reports, telling reporters he's "not going anywhere anytime soon."
Priebus, a fellow Wisconsinite who previously served as chairman of the Republican National Committee, has long been an ally of Ryan.
Priebus on Sunday noted the Republican tax-cut bill, regulation cuts and court appointments as key accomplishments during the rich asshole’s first year in office. He pushed back, however, on the notion that Ryan might think it’s “mission accomplished.”
“My point is he’s accomplishing the things that he’s worked since he was 21 on. They’re happening now under President the rich asshole,” Priebus said. “And as wild as that ride has been both for Paul Ryan and people like myself, you cannot escape the fact that the president is doing a remarkable job on the fundamentals of what being president is all about.”
‘Like an extra dollop of gruel’: Joy Reid slams Paul Ryan for his gleeful tweet about a $1.50 per week raise
MSNBC's Joy Reid
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While most of the internet got in their shots at Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan’s tone-deaf tweet on Saturday that hyped the GOP tax cut with an apocryphal tale of a school employee was thrilled at seeing $1.50 more in her paycheck, MSNBC host Joy Reid had to wait until Sunday morning to literally roll her eyes at the lawmaker.
Sharing a screenshot of the tweet — because Ryan or his social media person deleted it after a massive backlash — the MSNBC host lambasted the Republican by comparing him to a Dickensian villain.
“$1.50 a week!” Reid exclaimed with mock enthusiasm, “that’s like an extra dollop of gruel for Oliver Twist! Quick, someone fetch me my monocle and top hat. I think little Oliver and his friends are dancing at the prospect of an extra dollop of gruel.”
“Ryan quickly deleted the tweet,” the AM Joy host deadpanned. “But it did not stop him from being dragged on Twitter for the rest of the day. His gaffe came a day after the stock market took its biggest dip in two years.”
“It’s interesting that the rich asshole, so quick to credit when the market is booming, has been conspicuously silent about the drop,” she added.
Watch the video below via MSNBC:
"If you are anti-Russia, if you are pro-law enforcement, if you are pro-rule of law, the Republican Party is not the place for you."
The Republican Party has gone all-in on attacking law enforcement now that supporting the FBI would be detrimental to the GOP’s political stances and future.
And that glaring, unpatriotic hypocrisy was called out in no uncertain terms by someone who left the party after too many of its members “lost their minds.”
Jennifer Rubin, a long-time conservative journalist, told MSNBC’s Joy Reid that a recent poll showing 47 percent of Republicans have an unfavorable opinion of the FBI, alongside other similar polls, “is why I left the Republican Party.”
“If you are anti-Russia, if you are pro-law enforcement, if you are pro-rule of law, the Republican Party is not the place for you,” she continued.
“They’ve lost their minds.”
Polls like this, along with others showing a sudden affinity toward Russia and Vladimir Putin among Republicans, “suggest that some rich asshole really has sort of brainwashed — together with Fox — brainwashed public opinion,” Rubin noted sharply.
She also pointed out how “bizarre” it is to think that the FBI would have held any preference for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign, considering the fact that former FBI Director James Comey’s baffling decision to send a letter to Congress seemingly reopening the probe into Clinton’s email server just 11 days before the election was one of the biggest factors in the rich asshole’s Electoral College victory.
“It really is black is white, white is black with these people,” Rubin declared, adding that she is “both saddened but resigned [that] there’s about 30 percent of the American people who would, at this point, believe anything.”
“And I think it’s incumbent upon the rest of us to be sane and critical and analytical, and defend those institutions that need defending.”
The Republican Party has touted itself as the “law and order” party since time immemorial. some rich asshole himself claimed to be the “law and order candidate” during the campaign.
But his own actions, and the abject willingness of much of the GOP to go along with them, prove just how hollow such self-serving statements have become.
Attacking and smearing the men and women of the FBI for doing their jobs and defending the nation against threats to our democracy — from both outside and within our borders — shows not an appreciation for law and order, but rather a reckless belief that the GOP is in fact above the law.
But they are no such thing, and stubbornly insisting on it will do nothing to dissuade special counsel Robert Mueller from making sure they know it.
‘Deep-state conspiracy crank’: CNN panel hands Rick Santorum his ass for ranting memo conspiracy theories
Rick Santorum and Jennifer Granholm (CNN/screen grab)
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Conservative CNN contributor Rick Santorum got shot down on a CNN panel on Sunday after he asserted that there was a conspiracy between President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the FBI to take down some rich asshole.
During an panel discussion on CNN’s State of the Union, host Jake Tapper asked Santorum if he agreed with some rich asshole Jr. that the controversial GOP memo smearing the FBI’s Russia was “sweet revenge” for the rich asshole supporters.
“The FBI is to blame here,” Santorum said. “You can say this is partisan attempt by Republicans, but it’s a partisan attempt to counter a narrative that’s out there.”
Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm (D) took issue with Santorum’s attack on the FBI.
“When you say the FBI has been hiding information, it gives this whole deep-state conspiracy crank stuff more oxygen,” she insisted.
“When you say stuff like that, when the president says the stuff he does,” Granholm continued, “you’ve got a poll out this weekend that says 38 percent of Republicans have an unfavorable view of the FBI, which has plummeted.”
According to Santorum, Republicans “see this as a real problem within the Obama administration politicizing, not just the DOJ, but the IRS and every other agency of government to come after conservatives and Republicans.”
“Oh my God!” Granholm exclaimed. “These were Republican FISA judges [who approved surveillance on a former the rich asshole staffer], all appointed by George Bush, there were four of them. The head of the FBI is a Republican appointed by the rich asshole. This is like Alice in Wonderland. It is totally topsy-turvy.”
“If they were really in the tank for Hillary Clinton as you’re suggesting,” she told Santorum. “Why wouldn’t they have leaked that there was an investigation ongoing about some rich asshole instead of 10 days before the election, a memo comes out about Hillary Clinton’s emails. It is a ridiculous argument.”
Watch the video below from CNN.
CSPAN caller reads stunned Sebastian Gorka the riot act for defending ‘white supremacist, right-wing traitor’ the rich asshole
Sebastian Gorka on CSPAN -- screenshot
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An appearance on C-SPAN didn’t go very well for former White House adviser Sebastian Gorka on Sunday morning after he was told to keep quiet as a caller launched to a full-throated denunciation of President some rich asshole as a “white supremacist” and a “traitor.”
Following a discussion on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the rich asshole White House, a C-SPAN caller was patched in from Michigan who first warned Gorka not to interrupt him.
“First of all, I would like to try and establish ground rules,” the caller — identified as Henry — began. “I would like to be allowed to make my comment without interruption by Sebastian because these clever right-wingers have a way of interrupting you and if I am interrupted, I would like to be able to rebut and not be cut off.”
As a stunned Gorka looked on, Henry continued.
“First, I would like to say that the elections in 2018 is perhaps the most consequential in our history because we have to stop and impending dictatorship by this white supremacist, right-wing traitor,” he lectured. “And some rich asshole, make no mistake, is a traitor, along with everyone in his orbit.”
“We have to look at this relationship with the Russians. Some rich asshole is owned by the Russian oligarchs because they funded him when U.S. banks wouldn’t,” Henry claimed. “They have compromising information on him. So 2018 will be a very consequential election.”
A subdued Gorka chose to not address the claims about Russian involvement in the rich asshole campaign, saying, “I am saddened by the people who live in an alternate universe who use words like dictatorship, white supremacist and traitor — that is inflammatory as well as dangerous language.”
“As a person who has worked for the president, he does not have a racist bone in his body,” Gorka asserted. “The one thing that came through to me most clearly working for him is he does not care whether you voted for Hillary or Bernie, he does not care if you did not vote or stayed at home. He wants two things for you: he wants you to be safe, and for you and your family to prosper. That is who President the rich asshole is.”
Watch the video below via CSPAN:
Schumer to the rich asshole: Refusing to release Dems’ countermemo would confirm Americans’ ‘worst fears’
BY OLIVIA BEAVERS - 02/04/18 11:16 AM EST
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Sunday called on President the rich asshole to release the Democratic House Intelligence Committee memo, a classified document that is said to counter the recently released GOP memo, saying it is a matter of "fundamental fairness."
Not releasing the memo "will confirm the American people’s worst fears" that the release of the GOP memo was motivated by partisan politics, Schumer wrote in a letter to the rich asshole.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, wrote his own version of a classified memo in response to the four-page document drafted by the staff of Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). Nunes's memo alleges that the Justice Department and FBI abused one of the nation's surveillance programs.
Republicans are expressing concern that top officials made politically motivated decisions in an attempt to damage the rich asshole's presidential campaign.
Democrats say the memo left out key context that their memo will clarify.
"A refusal to release the Schiff memo in light of the fact that Chairman Devin Nunes’ memo was released and is based on the same underlying documents will confirm the American people’s worst fears that the release of Chairman Nunes’ memo was only intended to undermine Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation," Schumer wrote.
"I strongly urge you to sanction the public release of Ranking Member Adam Schiff’s memorandum that was recently made available to all members of the House of Representatives as soon as possible. I believe it is a matter of fundamental fairness that the American people be allowed to see both sides of the argument and make their own judgements," he continued.
The White House as well as the other top GOP leaders have signaled an openness to having Schiff's classified document released if certain sources and methods are redacted.
“If it is scrubbed to ensure it does not reveal sources and methods of our intelligence gathering, the speaker supports the release of the Democrats' memo,” AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), said in a statement on Friday.
Republican lawmakers reject the rich asshole’s claim that the memo ‘vindicates’ him
Not the response the rich asshole was hoping for.
President some rich asshole has taken to Twitter to claim the infamous Nunes memo “totally vindicates” him in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether the rich asshole’s campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. If only Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee felt the same.
Ignoring the FBI’s “grave concerns” over its accuracy, House Republicans voted last week to declassify a biased memo written by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) that attempted to argue former the rich asshole adviser Carter Page was only subject to surveillance because the FBI was politically biased and based its decision to do so on intelligence in a dossier that was by funded by Democrats.
The memo left out key pieces of context; for instance, Page bragged about acting as an adviser to the Kremlin in a 2013 letter and that he had relationship with a Russian intelligence agent under diplomatic cover, who was later charged, according to Time. On NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, former Central Intelligence Director John Brennan lambasted Nunes for releasing the partisan memo and accused him of abusing his power.
A number of Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee that voted to release the memo took to the Sunday morning news airwaves to counter the president’s assertion. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) said on CBS’s Face the Nation he helped draft the memo and did not think it had any impact on the Russia probe and debunked key talking points made by fellow Republicans.
“There is a Russia investigation without a dossier. So to the extent the memo deals with the dossier and the FISA process, the dossier has nothing to do with the meeting at the rich asshole Tower,” Gowdy said. “The dossier has nothing to do with an email sent by Cambridge Analytica. The dossier really has nothing to do with George Papadopoulos’ meeting in Great Britain. It also doesn’t have anything to do with obstruction of justice.”
“So there’s going to be a Russia probe, even without a dossier,” he said.
When asked by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week if the memo vindicates the rich asshole from the Mueller investigation, Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX), another member of the House Intelligence Committee, said he did not. He then said his colleagues in the House who characterized the memo as “explosive” were exaggerating its contents.
“I’m not shocked that elected officials are using hyperbole and exaggerations,” Hurd said, while simultaneously defending the committee’s decision to release the Nunes memo and not a memo drafted by Democrats that counters it.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) told Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union that he did not think the memo vindicated the rich asshole from the Mueller investigation, rather it raised concerns about why the FISA court signed-off on the surveillance of Page.
“This is a separate issue. In my opinion we are we’re dealing with is a situation within our FISA court and how we process in our government agencies. And I don’t really think this has anything to do with that,” Wenstrup said.
Lastly, House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace that it would be a “mistake” for anyone to suggest that Mueller shouldn’t finish his investigation.
“I support his work. I want him to finish it. I hope he finishes it as quickly as possible,” Stewart said. “This memo has frankly nothing at all to do with a special counsel. It was one of the criticisms of people last week and before that who had never seen the memo who said, you know, this is to impugn the integrity and the work of the special counsel.”
Stewart added, “As you know now, Chris, it has nothing to do with at all with that. They’re very separate. I hope the special counsel will complete his work and work to the American people.”
‘A small victory for sanity in a lunatic world’: the rich asshole’s extreme environmental nominee is out
Kathleen Hartnett White tried to put a positive spin on rising carbon emissions.
After increased scrutiny on her history of fringe anti-science beliefs, the White House will withdraw the nomination for Kathleen Hartnett White to lead its Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the Washington Post reported Saturday evening.
Hartnett White was widely considered an extreme choice to head CEQ, even in the context of the rich asshole’s other energy and environment nominees, most of whom deny basic climate science, favor increased fossil fuel production, and are pushing for a widespread regulatory rollback.
“A small victory for sanity in a lunatic world,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) tweeted in response to the news. “Not that the next one will be much better, but you do what you can.”
Hartnett White is currently a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), which has received funding from ExxonMobil, Chevron, the Koch network, and the Heartland Institute. She has long cast doubt on widely accepted climate science. Not content to stop there, Hartnett White has actually argued on multiple occasions that increased carbon emissions in the atmosphere are beneficial to humans.
“Whether emitted from the human use of fossil fuels or as a natural (and necessary) gas in the atmosphere surrounding the earth, carbon dioxide has none of the attributes of a pollutant,” Hartnett White wrote in a 2014 paper. “Global warming alarmists are misleading the public about carbon dioxide emissions.”
While scientists are quite clear that human-caused emissions are driving global warming that in fact poses an extreme danger to humanity, Hartnett White stuck to her script during her Senate confirmation hearing last November. She told members of the Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) that carbon dioxide has none of the characteristics of the pollutants that have a “direct impact on human health.” Instead, it is “an atmospheric gas” that serves as a “plant nutrient,” Hartnett White said.
While several other the rich asshole nominees with close ties to the fossil fuel industry and a record of climate science denial were able to win confirmation in the Republican-controlled Senate, Hartnett White proved too controversial. In December, Democrats on the committee wrote to Hartnett White asking for additional information after discovering that many of her written responses were cut-and-pasted from two other the rich asshole nominees.
Her nomination didn’t move forward at the end of last year, meaning the rich asshole was forced to renominate Hartnett White and several other nominees in January.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), the top Democrat on EPW, vowed to fight her nomination anew. “This is not just another the rich asshole nominee. In the 17 years I have been in the Senate, I have never sat through a hearing as excruciating as Ms. White’s,” Carper said in January. “Even if the administration insists on doubling down on candidates who have proven to be so clearly unacceptable, those of us in the Senate must still be able to recognize when someone is overwhelmingly unfit for such a crucial position.”
Her long history of hard-line beliefs — many of which fly in the face of science and history — and overwhelming lack of qualification for the position she sought gained new attention this week with a rundown in the Daily Beast.
It was abundantly clear that leading the White House Council on Environmental Quality wasn’t the right job for Kathleen Hartnett White. I often say when you think you’re right, when you know you’re right, you must never give up. That’s what we did here. wapo.st/2s5iUNk?tid=ss…
To begin tackling #climatechange, we need a CEQ leader who has a deep respect for science, for environmental laws on the books and for those who hold different views than their own.
It's past time for @POTUS to nominate an environmental and public health champion to lead CEQ.
The White House, it seems, couldn’t justify the fight any longer. While Carper and others who opposed Hartnett White’s nomination welcomed the news, the key question will be who the rich asshole finds to nominate next.
Gowdy: Memo has no impact on Russia probe
BY REBECCA SAVRANSKY - 02/04/18 08:09 AM EST
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said during an interview airing Sunday that the previously classified memo alleging abuse of government surveillance powers by the Justice Department has no impact on the ongoing Russia probe.
During an interview on CBS's "Face The Nation," Gowdy — the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee — was asked about the recent comments of President the rich asshole, who claimed the memo "totally vindicates" him in the Russia probe.
"I'm sure the president is frustrated. You know, [Rep.] Adam Schiff [D-Calif.] prejudged the investigation before we interviewed the first witness," Gowdy, a former prosecutor, said during the interview.
CBS's Margaret Brennan pressed Gowdy on whether he believes the memo has "no impact on the Russia probe."
"Not to me, it doesn't — and I was pretty integrally involved in the drafting of it," Gowdy, who recently announced he will not seek reelection, said.
"There is a Russia investigation without a dossier. So to the extent the memo deals with the dossier and the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] process, the dossier has nothing to do with the meeting at the rich asshole Tower. The dossier has nothing to do with an email sent by Cambridge Analytica."
He added that the dossier has "nothing to do with George Papadopoulos's meeting in Great Britain."
"It also doesn't have anything to do with obstruction of justice. So there's going to be a Russia probe, even without a dossier," he said.
The memo, released Friday, accuses senior Justice Department officials of improperly using information from the so-called Steele dossier to obtain surveillance warrants on Carter Page, a member of the the rich asshole transition team and former the rich asshole campaign adviser.
Republicans have seized on the memo’s release, saying it proves the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion between the rich asshole's campaign and Moscow, led by special counsel Robert Mueller, is tainted by bias.
But it also says the Russia investigation was triggered by information the bureau obtained about Papadopoulos, a former adviser to the campaign, rather than by Page.
Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee are pushing to release their own memo rebutting the GOP document.
— This report was updated at 9:02 a.m.
Ex-the rich asshole Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on Russia: ‘I never felt I was involved in something nefarious’
Reince Priebus speaks to NBC (screen grab)
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Reince Priebus, former chief of staff to President some rich asshole, said on Sunday that he never felt that the rich asshole campaign or the rich asshole administration was involved in anything “nefarious.”
During an interview on Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd asked Priebus if he felt “misled” when he was told that some rich asshole Jr.’s meeting with Russians was about adoptions even though it was later revealed that it was about getting dirt on the Clinton campaign.
“Not in the end,” Priebus opined. “The people involved truly believed it was a nothing meeting, totally about these issues of Russian adoptions. I don’t know what the motivations were. Okay? So, I only know what I know.”
“I never felt that I was involved in something nefarious,” he added. “The whole way through, from beginning to end. So, you can understand the frustration of the president when he’s told he’s not under investigation.”
Watch the video below.
Polls swing toward GOP, easing fears of midterm disaster
BY ALEXANDER BOLTON - 02/04/18 06:00 AM EST
Republicans are feeling better about their prospects in the midterm elections, buoyed by recent polls that show their numbers improving.
An ebullient President the rich asshole touted the shift in public sentiment reflected in recent polls during a joint Senate-House Republican retreat in West Virginia this week.
“I just looked at some numbers, you’ve even done better than you thought,” the rich asshole told lawmakers, citing poll numbers he discussed Thursday with National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) Chairman Steve Stivers (R-Ohio).
“The numbers are pretty good and that’s one example of how things are getting better,” Stivers told reporters after discussing polling numbers with the rich asshole.
Stivers said the bump in the rich asshole’s approval rating is a good sign for Republicans running for reelection.
GOP lawmakers discussed the favorable turn in poll numbers during their retreat.
Pollsters David Winston and Myra Miller of the Winston Group gave a presentation to lawmakers Wednesday evening entitled “Middle Class Americans’ Views of the Tax Plan: The Opportunity for 2018.”
A Monmouth University Poll released Wednesday showed that the rich asshole’s approval rating had jumped 10 points compared to last month, while the Democratic advantage on the generic ballot had shrunk to 2 percentage points.
A nationwide Monmouth survey in December showed Democrats with a 15-point advantage on the generic ballot.
The generic ballot question, which asks respondents if they would be more likely to vote for a Democratic or Republican candidate in their own district, is considered an indicator of future wave elections.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Wednesday showed that the rich asshole’s approval rating has ticked up in the past week.
Another Reuters/Ipsos poll shows voters think Republicans have a better plan for jobs and employment than Democrats, by a margin of 37.6 percent to 27.8 percent.
“The numbers for or against Republicans in different states have moved dramatically favorable, where two months ago there was a much lower rating,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.). “There were about four or five polls they listed out.”
The swing in the polling numbers has been matched by a swing in sentiment.
That failure raised doubts over the rich asshole’s ability to work with Congress to deliver accomplishments.
Meanwhile, public attention was fixed on the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate allegations of collusion between the rich asshole’s inner circle and Russian government officials, as well as potential obstruction of justice by the president.
the rich asshole’s approval rating hit a low of 33 percent in the Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll on Dec. 13, a week before Congress passed the final version of the tax package.
Democrats on Friday dismissed the optimistic talk from Republicans, arguing that, while the rich asshole’s numbers have improved, they’re still low.
“President the rich asshole’s numbers are abysmal, and it’s dragging down vulnerable House Republicans deep into the map. Any slight uptick is starting at a very low bar,” said Tyler Law, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Democrats need a net gain of 24 seats to recapture control of the House and two seats to win back the Senate.
Democrats say House Republicans are vulnerable because they have suffered a spate of retirements and face trouble recruiting strong candidates to make up for those losses.
“For the candidates that the NRCC has touted in their ‘Young Guns’ program, they have either completely failed to launch or fizzled out. Simply put, House Republicans’ offensive opportunities are nonexistent — a bad sign for an already imperiled Republican majority,” Law said.
Republicans have also faced trouble convincing top potential Senate recruits to run against vulnerable Democratic senators.
“Republicans spent the last year working to raise health care costs and then give a tax break to millionaires and big corporations while middle class voters foot the bill,” Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman David Bergstein said in a statement. “No wonder they lost their first, second, third and in some cases fourth choice recruits and are now struggling through divisive and nasty primaries.”
A Democratic wave looked all but inevitable two months ago. Some in the party were talking in mid-December about a 40-seat pickup, but a tsunami of that magnitude now looks much less likely.
Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), a former NRCC chairman, said the environment is looking “much better” for his party compared to two months ago.
“I think you’re seeing all the data improve,” Walden said.
Walden believes Democrats made a tactical mistake by taking a hard stance against the tax bill. It passed the Senate and House without a single Democratic vote in either chamber.
“The Democrats have completely overplayed their hand. When [House Democratic Leader] Nancy Pelosi [Calif.] says $1,000 or $2,000 is ‘crumbs,’ people in West Virginia, rural Oregon go, ‘$1000 is a lot of money to me,’ ” Walden said.
He argued the tax victory also saved the party’s standing with its conservative base, which threatened to desert them following the health-care debacle.
“Our base said, ‘OK, you guys actually could come together and get something big done.’ So you’re seeing that reflected in the generic ballot that has gone from double digits down to single digits,” he said.
“It feels like it’s bottomed out and we’re coming back up,” he said. “We will have a very good record to run on.”
He also noted that the rich asshole’s numbers “are getting better.”
Walden acknowledged that House Republicans don’t have many pickup opportunities, but argued that the party is focused on playing defense, not offense, this year.
“Let’s face it: in the last two cycles you had a 247-seat majority and 241-seat majority. Those are the biggest Republican back-to-back majorities in the history of the country,” he said. “It’s holding in a time like this. The marginal gain is limited.”
Vice President Pence and GOP leaders urged rank-and-file members to stress whenever possible the economic impact of the $1.5 trillion tax package Congress passed last year.
“We made history in 2016, and we’re going to make history in 2018 when we reelect Republican majorities in the House and Senate,” he said. “We got our work cut out for us, but we have a story to tell.”
the rich asshole, speaking to Republicans the next afternoon, stressed the creation of 2.4 million jobs since he took office and the nation’s 4.1 percent unemployment rate, near a record low.
GOP strategists are heartened by a belief that the U.S. and global economy are poised to kick into overdrive, as well as by big commitments from wealthy conservative donors.
The Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor's 500 index are up nearly 6 percent year to date after posting big gains in 2017.
At the same time, every one of the world’s major economies is expanding — the first time there has been synchronous global growth since the Great Recession hit a decade ago.
A massive pledge from a network of groups and donors affiliated with industrialists Charles and David Koch to spend $400 million on conservative causes and candidates in 2018 has also made Republicans more optimistic about the midterms.
The promised investment would be 60 percent more than the network spent in the 2016 presidential cycle.
Republicans also say congressional districts drawn to favor Republicans will give them another advantage.
“Seldom do you have a wave election year, 2010, followed by a redistricting year, and we had that in 2011. So a lot of these seats are pretty baked in,” said Walden.
House Democrats want to make the midterms a referendum on the rich asshole, but Republicans say they will counter that by tying Democratic candidates to Pelosi, as they did in last year’s special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District.
“We were able to use Nancy Pelosi to help win that race, and you’ll probably see that in other places,” Stivers said.
the rich asshole-supporting governor proudly proclaims ‘Stand for the Flag Super Bowl Sunday’
They aren't letting this go.
Fueled by President some rich asshole’s racist rants, right-wing politicians and pundits have been criticizing NFL players all season long for protesting police brutality and racial injustice by kneeling during the national anthem. Super Bowl Sunday gave several the rich asshole allies the opportunity to resume these attacks, despite the fact that no Philadelphia Eagles player took a knee the entire NFL season, and that the Patriots have close ties to the rich asshole. No player from the Eagles or Patriots has protested during the national anthem in any form since Week 12.
Nonetheless, Gov. Pete Ricketts (R-NE), a proud the rich asshole supporter, announced this weekend that he was officially proclaiming Sunday “Stand for the flag Super Bowl Sunday.” Gov. Henry McMaster (R-SC) issued a similar decree earlier this week.
In an interview from the Super Bowl, the rich asshole adviser Kellyanne Conway told Fox News she didn’t think there would be any players kneeling in protest ahead of the sport’s premiere event. “In my house and I think in many households across this country, we say you take a knee for the Lord and you stand for the flag — it’s a very simple calculation,” Conway said.
Rep. Diane Black (R-TN), currently a candidate for governor, announced she was releasing a new ad Sunday asking people to stand for the national anthem. “It’s too bad that the league doesn’t respect the patriotism of our national anthem,” Black says.
Check out my new ad “Patriotic” that will air right before the Super Bowl on Sunday! #PleaseStand #SBLI
The misconception that athletes kneeling during the national anthem is an act of disrespect toward the flag and members of the armed services has been exacerbated by the rich asshole for months. “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘get that son of a bitch off the field right now. He is fired. He’s fired!,'” the rich asshole said during a rally in reference to former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, the first player to take a knee.
The president, along with many of his supporters in politics and media, continued to bash the players and mischaracterize their protests — but the kneeling continued regardless, with players explaining that they were using their platform to speak out against injustice.
And the movement started by Kaepernick spread well beyond the confines of the NFL. ThinkProgress tracked “the Kaepernick effect” for more than a year and found evidence of more than 3,500 people taking steps to join the cause in 41 states and four countries.
Sunday is football's biggest game. Here in Nebraska, I've officially proclaimed the day as Stand for the Flag #SuperBowl Sunday. RT to spread the word! #SBLII
Ricketts backed the rich asshole in the 2016 election and has since praised the president as “forward-thinking.” Ricketts’ parents, Joe and Marlene, gave $1 million to a pro-the rich asshole super PAC. And his brother, Todd, was nominated by the rich asshole to be deputy commerce secretary before withdrawing his nomination. Todd was named the Republican National Committee’s next finance chair this week.
Black’s campaign website proudly proclaims that she is “happy” to stand next to the rich asshole, “despite criticism of his coarse language and colorful past with women.” (At least 21 women have accused the rich asshole of sexual misconduct.)
Contrary to the rich asshole's claims of "vindication," Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy says, "There is a Russia investigation without a dossier."
some rich asshole apparently thought that the fraudulent Republican intelligence memo would give him the cover he needed to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, but that hasn’t been working out for him this weekend.
On Saturday, the rich asshole desperately insisted that the memo “totally vindicates” him in the Russia probe, but he was the only one singing that tune. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose ostensible recusal placed Rosenstein in charge of the Russia probe, felt compelled to praise Rosenstein after the rich asshole’s plotting against him.
And on Sunday morning, one Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee flatly disagreed that the memo vindicated the rich asshole, while one of the memo’s authors, South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, completely blew that notion apart.
On CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” host Margaret Brennan asked Gowdy if the memo indeed “vindicated” the rich asshole.
“I actually don’t think it has any impact on the Russia probe, for this reason …” Gowdy replied.
“The memo has no impact on the Russia probe?” Brennan interrupted.
“No, not to me, it doesn’t,” Gowdy answered, adding, “There is a Russia investigation without a dossier.”
Gowdy then ticked off just some of the damaging evidence that the investigation has uncovered, independent of the memo’s contents.
“(T)he dossier has nothing to do with the meeting at the rich asshole Tower,” Gowdy said. “The dossier has nothing to do with an email sent by Cambridge Analytica. The dossier really has nothing to do with George Papadopoulos’ meeting in Great Britain. It also doesn’t have anything to do with obstruction of justice. So there’s going to be a Russia probe, even without a dossier.”
Gowdy spent the balance of the interview trying to justify the release of a memo that even the rich asshole’s FBI and Justice Department say is inaccurate and a danger to national security, which makes it all the more remarkable that even he refused to go along with the rich asshole’s claims.
the rich asshole may still try to use the memo as an excuse to fire Rosenstein, but so far, very few Republicans appear willing to go out on that reckless limb with him.
They can hide from the rich asshole's lies, but not from the truth.
some rich asshole spent his weekend spewing lies about the Republicans’ false intelligence memo, but he and the rest of his administration hid out from anyone who might ask tough questions about it.
While the rest of the world greeted the smear-filled memo with deserved mockery, the rich asshole insisted that it “totally vindicates” him in the Russia probe.
But there were conspicuously few White House officials willing to defend that view on Sunday.
Just days after the rich asshole’s first State of the Union address, not a single White House official was booked to appear on any of the five major Sunday news programs, a rarity for any weekend. Even rarer, though, is the fact that no other Cabinet official, agency representative, or spokesperson appeared on any of the shows.
The only appearance by a rich asshole official anywhere on cable news this weekend was Kellyanne Conway, who only ventured as far as the friendly turf of “Fox & Friends Sunday,” where she still managed to make a mess of her interview.
the rich asshole himself broke with tradition and refused to sit for a pre-Super Bowl interview — a decision which predated the memo’s release, but which conveniently prevented him from having to answer questions about the fiasco.
Chief among the questions the rich asshole and his surrogates would like to avoid is whether the rich asshole still intends to use the memo as an excuse to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
the rich asshole hinted at that threat on Friday when he was asked if he still had confidence in Rosenstein and told reporters “You figure that one out.”
Since then, even the Republicans who created the false memo have refused to give the rich asshole any cover, and have pushed back against the rich asshole’s insistence that the memo “vindicates” him. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, on Saturday, glowingly praised Rosenstein’s leadership during a speech, further complicating the rich asshole’s campaign to fire the deputy AG.
The complete dearth of administration officials willing to defend the rich asshole this weekend could be an indication that the White House is rethinking Rosenstein’s ouster in the face of this embarrassment, or it could simply mean that no one is willing to have their name and face attached to it.
In either case, they can’t escape the fact that plot could be seen as yet another attempt to obstruct justice, and that justice is coming for them anyway.
Trey Gowdy slaps back at the rich asshole’s ‘vindication’ claim: Nunes memo has no bearing on Russia investigation
Rep. Trey Gowdy -- screenshot
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Appearing on Meet the Press, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) parted ways with President some rich asshole, saying the Nunes memo does not vindicate the president in the Russia probe being conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller.
According to the outgoing chairman of the House Oversight Committee, “It [the memo] doesn’t have anything to do with obstruction of justice. So there’s going to be a Russia probe, even without a dossier.”
“I’m sure the president is frustrated. You know, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) prejudged the investigation before we interviewed the first witness,” Gowdy said in the interview with host Margaret Brennan.
“So I’m sure that that instructs some of what he said. I actually don’t think it is has any impact on the Russia probe for this reason,” Gowdy continued, before adding, “To me, it doesn’t — and I was pretty integrally involved in the drafting of it [the memo].”
You can watch the video below via Twitter.
Carter Page Touted Kremlin Contacts in 2013 Letter
7:05 PM EST 02-03-2018
Former the rich asshole campaign adviser Carter Page bragged that he was an adviser to the Kremlin in a letter obtained by TIME that raises new questions about the extent of Page’s contacts with the Russian government over the years.
The letter, dated Aug. 25, 2013, was sent by Page to an academic press during a dispute over edits to an unpublished manuscript he had submitted for publication, according to an editor who worked with Page.
“Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda,” the letter reads.
Page is at the center of a controversial memo from Republican Congressman Devin Nunes, released this week. The Nunes memo claims that in Oct. 2016 the FBI improperly received court permission to spy on Page, whom the rich asshole had named as an adviser to his campaign in March 2016. The Nunes memo says the FBI based its request for eavesdropping permission on information provided by former British spy Christopher Steele while Steele was working for Democrats.
House Democrats, the FBI and the Justice Department have all raised questions about what they say are omissions and misleading analysis in the Nunes memo. They argue the FBI presented multiple pieces of evidence, beyond the Steele dossier, in their request for a warrant against Page from the secretive FISA court. But President some rich asshole argued after declassifying the memo that it showed that “a lot of people should be ashamed of themselves.”
At the heart of the debate is the question of who, exactly, is Carter Page. the rich asshole’s defenders argue that he was simply a low-level consultant to the campaign who has overstated his role as an adviser as well as his Russian contacts. The Steele dossier claims that during a trip to Moscow in July 2016, Page held secret meetings with a senior Kremlin official and a senior Putin ally that included conversations about helping the rich asshole and hurting Hillary Clinton in the presidential campaign. The Steele dossier does not identify its sources and Page has denied any wrongdoing.
In interviews with reporters over the past year, Page has given inconsistent accounts about his contacts with the Russians.
In January 2013, Page met a Russian diplomat named Victor Podobnyy at an energy conference in New York City, according to court documents. The two exchanged contact information, sent each other documents on energy policy and met several more times to discuss the topic, the documents allege. Two years later, in January of 2015, Podobnyy was charged in absentia — along with two other Russians — with working as a Russian intelligence agent under diplomatic cover.
Court records include a transcript of a conversation where Podobnyy talks about recruiting someone named “Male-1” by making “empty promises” about “connections in the [Russian] Trade Representation.” Page now acknowledges that he was “Male-1.” Podobnyy and one of the Russians had diplomatic immunity and left the U.S. The third Russian was arrested and eventually expelled from the U.S. in April 2017.
In messages to TIME after the Nunes memo was released, Page said that in the first nine months of 2013 he “sat in on and contributed to a few roundtable discussion with people from around the world.” He said the meetings started when one of Russia’s representatives was in New York at the United Nations. He provided an April 15, 2013, briefing document authored by Russian trade diplomat, Ksenia Yudaeva, on Russia’s priorities for a summit of the 20 richest countries in the world to be held in St. Petersburg in Sept. 2013. Page says he had subsequent similar meetings, describing them to TIME as “really plain-vanilla stuff.”
Says Page, “Does that make me an evil villain, as some of your sources would like to have you think?” Page has not been charged with any crimes.
In June 2013, the FBI interviewed Page regarding his contacts with the Russians, Page says. The FBI believed that Russian intelligence services had attempted to recruit Page as an agent with promises of business opportunities in Russia, according to the 2015 court documents.
Page told the FBI at their June 2013 meeting that the officers might better spend their time investigating the Boston Marathon bombing, which had occurred the previous April, according to a letter Page sent to Democrats on Nunes’ committee last May. Page says that thereafter the FBI began a retaliatory campaign against him. According to published reports, the FBI obtained a first FISA warrant to eavesdrop on Page’s electronic communications during 2013. And they have been paying attention to him, on and off, ever since.
Two months after his meeting with the FBI, Page sent the letter claiming to be a Kremlin adviser. In addition to his work as an energy consultant, Page has studied and written on Russian affairs, and had submitted a book for publication by the academic press. Page felt frustrated by the fact that he had revised his manuscript about Russian relations is Central Asia and it had not been reviewed again, according to the editor who has worked with Page in the past and who requested anonymity due to the confidential nature of the matter.
The letter to the manuscript reviewer is not the first example of Page touting his relationship with Russia. McClatchy reported last year that in 2008, the U.S. Embassy in Turkmenistan sent a cable to the U.S. State Department describing how Page had met with government officials in the country, which was formerly part of the Soviet Union, about possibly working for their oil companies. The cable described how he touted his work with the Russian-run company Gazprom.
The editor said that Page’s views on Russia were notably different from other scholars. “He wanted to make the argument that we needed to look more positively at Russia’s economic reforms and Russia’s relationship with Central Asia,” says the editor. “I didn’t think it was so weird, it was just contradictory to most mainstream Russian specialist’s views.”
The editor thinks Page was ultimately harmless in terms of national security threats. “I would never have seen him in the center of concern like this, or playing a role or being seen as an intermediary between the Russian government and a political candidate,” the editor said. “He struck me just as someone who had developed some strange academic views … and wanted to have them published,” the editor says.
“I just came to see him as a kook,” the editor says.
With reporting by Pratheek Rebala/Washington
Russia Is Developing A ‘Doomsday’ Intercontinental Nuclear Torpedo As the rich asshole Shirks Sanctions
some rich asshole recently refused to implement sanctions against Russia, which is bad thing for a number of reasons — but one of the major ones is the fact that he’s turning a blind eye as news breaks that the Kremlin is developing a “doomsday weapon” that has the capability of leveling U.S. cities from across the world.
On Friday, the rich asshole administration released a report on the state of America’s nuclear arsenal. NPR reports:
But buried in the plan is a mention of a mysterious Russian weapon called “Status-6.” On paper, at least, Status-6 appears to be a kind of doomsday device. The report refers to it as “a new intercontinental, nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered, undersea autonomous torpedo.”“The radius of total or near-total destruction is the size of a pretty large metropolitan area, actually,” says Edward Geist, a Russia specialist at the Rand Corp. who has spent time looking at the weapon. “It’s difficult to imagine in normal terms.”Status-6 made its first public appearance in 2015, while Russian President Vladimir Putin was visiting with his generals in the city of Sochi.Russia state television reported on the visit. The camera shows Putin seated at a long table. Then it cuts to a shot over one of the general’s shoulders. He is looking at what appears to be a drawing of a new nuclear weapon called the Oceanic Multipurpose System Status-6.
The torpedo is…big. About 1/3 the length of a large Russian submarine big. It’s also nuclear-powered, so it can “roam for months and possibly even years beneath the ocean without surfacing” — which is exactly what you don’t want to hear when the subject is a warhead “thousands of times more powerful than the bombs dropped at the end of World War II and more powerful than anything currently in the U.S. and Russian arsenals.”
“The only possible U.S. targets are large port cities,” says Mark Schneider, a senior analyst with the National Institute for Public Policy. “The detonation of Status-6 in any of them would essentially wipe out their population into the far suburbs.”
The rich asshole alliance with the Kremlin is getting out of hand — especially if we are ignoring very real threats like this.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) took a drubbing on social media Saturday after touting a Pennsylvania secretary's $1.50-a-week raise as proof that the GOP tax bill is helping middle-class workers.
Ryan, of Janesville, tweeted a link to an Associated Press story on salaries following passage of the bill, adding: "A Secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, PA, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week...she said [that] will cover her Costco membership for the year."
The tweet was removed, but not before it set off a firestorm of criticism against Ryan, whose fundraising committee "Team Ryan," received $500,000 from billionaire businessman Charles Koch and his wife, Elizabeth, shortly after the bill passed in December.
It took no time for Ryan's Democratic challenger Randy Bryce, to jump in. He tweeted that Ryan was out of touch and urged supporters to send him $1.50 "to help us repeal and replace Ryan permanently this November."
Moments ago, @PRyan deleted this tweet after we told him just how out of touch he was. Show Paul Ryan what you think of his tax bill. Chip in $1.50 now to help us repeal and replace Ryan permanently this November.secure.actblue.com/donate/1.50?ut…
Spokespersons for Ryan and Bryce did not immediately respond to telephone calls and emails from the Journal Sentinel.
Others joined the fray, with many referencing the Koch payments.
if this were 1897 that $1.50 a week raise would totally be a big deal twitter.com/pryan/status/9…
Big deal @PaulRyan. How much did you get from that fat tax cut? You should be ashamed to have tweeted that. Of course in your mind, regular hard working people should just be satisfied with whatever they get, right? #EBoehlert
Paul Ryan deleted the below tweet after we responded with: "It will only take four and a half years for her raise to cover a single one of @PRyan’s $350 bottles of wine.” So RT if you want.
Paul Ryan: It’s ok I gave billionaires tax breaks because a secretary got $1.50 shareblue.com/paul-ryan-its-… via @shareblue
@PaulRyan Will use this as justification to cut her Medicare and Social Security "A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, PA, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week … she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for the year."
The Ryan flap came days after his Democratic counterpart, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, was criticized for likening companies' $1,000 employee bonuses to "crumbs."
Critics of the tax cut plan, signed by President the rich asshole in December, characterize it as a massive giveaway to corporations and the wealthy built on the backs of the poor and middle class.
The bill includes a permanent 40% tax cut for corporations, a change Republicans say is long overdue and needed to make America more competitive in the global economy.
The bill also lowers tax rates for individuals and families temporarily, while increasing the standard deduction and the child tax credit. But because the bill also kills or limits key tax deductions — most notably reducing the amount of state and local taxes that individuals can deduct on their federal tax returns — the impact on individuals will vary.
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