Russia reports

http://www.gq.com/story/russia-donald-trump-cnn-report

The reports won’t stop coming.

Donald Trump is in the middle of a non-stop waking nightmare. Every single day finds the nation’s most powerful conspiracy theorist at the center of what might be the biggest conspiracy in our nation’s history. And unlike the theories Trump likes to push (Obama having Trump’s “wires tapped,” Obama not being born in America, etc.), more and more this one seems like the real deal.

Yesterday reports came out that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had worked for a Russian oligarch with the intention of furthering Vladimir Putin’s interests in the United States. That alone would usually make for the latest in a long line of bad weeks for the administration. Not unlike the week where Michael Flynn was fired because of his failure to disclose his Russian connections or the week where attorney general Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself from any Russia investigation due to his lying under oath about his own contact with Russian officials during the campaign. Yes, if that was the last bad news for the administration on the Russia front, it would already have been a shitty week…
It was not the last bad news for the administration on the Russia front.
Last night CNN reported that it looks like the FBI’s investigation into whether or not the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to swing the election may be looking bad for Donald Trump.

The FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, US officials told CNN.
This is partly what FBI Director James Comey was referring to when he made a bombshell announcement Monday before Congress that the FBI is investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, according to one source.

Now at this moment, the investigation is still ongoing and that evidence is not yet conclusive, so we don’t know exactly what happened. But we do know that the deeper everyone (the press and the intelligence community alike) dig into this story, the more and more shady shit they find. And not just that, each revelation has been more damning than the last. If this pattern continues we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Look, I can hear some of you calling me a cuck and a snowflake and saying that this is all circumstantial evidence, and sure, that’s fair. But there are two important things to remember about that. The first is that “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” may be a tired metaphor, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not true. The second is that The White House’s posture in all of this has not been to vindicate itself. Rather, Donald Trump and Sean Spicer have repeatedly lied openly and tried to distract the press with garbage theories and doublespeak. And the closer this investigation gets, the more desperate they’ve become.

Russians are dropping dead like flies.

Putin is cleaning up his end–his way.

Here–the intelligence committee is compromised by Nunes. They will stall until evidence can be buried or destroyed. This country is in big trouble.

I think Trump will get impeached when Republicans calculate that completely distancing themselves from Trump is politically necessary for their own survival. There will, perhaps, come a point at which being perceived to be a Trump supporter will threaten their re-election, and it will become necessary to sacrifice him.

Dunno if/when that happens, but I think that’s the scenario. I mean…it’s not like any of them will do it on principle, since it’s pretty clear they have no principles outside of self-aggrandizement.

Russian comedians are threatening our freedoms:

link:https://off-guardian.org/2017/03/25/weapons-of-mass-derision-is-russian-comedy-the-kremlins-secret-weapon/

The whole Russia hacked the election is just so silly to me. Bots didn’t do and say all those
terrible things from the hacked emails. That was the Clinton machine/DNC. HRC’s campaign chair was freaking John Podesta who along with Brother Tony were Putin’s right hand money men. Palast found very little hacking at all in the General mostly low tech stuff specifically the 2000 style voter purge of Interstate Crosscheck. The Democratic primary on the other hand was hacked to bytes on a massive scale and the media pushing this Russian nonsense was complicit actually holding a secret meeting/election among themselves and proclaiming HRC the winner before CA.the largest state in the union had even voted. There is mountains of evidence that proves this but because HRC is one badass lawyer there is no legal recourse. Now I’m not opposed to removing Trump through legal means iow without deep state fuckery but I have confirmed Russian’s are laughing their heads off at this influencing elections business.

Times Says Devin Nunes’ Secret Sources for Trump-Friendly Intel Were Trump Administration Officials

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/03/30/the_new_york_times_identifies_devin_nunes_white_house_sources.html

The New York Times is reporting that two Trump administation officials helped House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes access material which allegedly revealed that the names of Trump associates may have been inappropriately disclosed in intelligence reports after being caught up in incidental U.S. surveillance of foreign officials.

In a move that now seems bizarre, Nunes subsequently announced his discovery of that information—and briefed Donald Trump on it—without mentioning that he had obtained it at a meeting on White House grounds. (The point of Nunes’ announcement seems to have been to push the administration-friendly idea that Obama officials’ leaks of classified information regarding Trump and Russia are a more troubling problem than whatever contact the Trump campaign may have had with Russian officials.)

From the Times:

Several current American officials identified the White House officials as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and formerly worked on the staff of the House Intelligence Committee …
Mr. Cohen-Watnick is a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who was originally brought to the White House by Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser. The officials said that earlier this month, shortly after Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter about being wiretapped on the orders of President Barack Obama, Mr. Cohen-Watnick began reviewing highly classified reports detailing the intercepted communications of foreign officials.
The backgrounds of the men identified do not undercut the appearance that Nunes’ ostensibly independent investigation is being conducted with the intention of helping the White House politically. Ellis is a former Nunes staffer, while Politico reported earlier this month that Trump’s political advisers intervened to overrule national security adviser H.R. McMaster when McMaster asked to move Cohen-Watnick to a different job.

Nunes had reportedly refused to tell even the other members of the House Intelligence Committee who had given him the information he saw at the White House and denied to Bloomberg’s Eli Lake that his source had been a “White House staffer,” telling him instead that he had been aided by an “intelligence official.” After being asked on March 23 whether anyone at the White House had given Nunes access to the classified documents, Trump press secretary Sean Spicer dodged the question by pointing out that Nunes had later briefed Trump on the matter. “I don’t know why he would come up to brief the president on something that we gave him,” he said. “That doesn’t really seem to make a ton of sense.”

==

2 White House Officials Helped Give Nunes Intelligence Reports

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG, MAGGIE HABERMAN and ADAM GOLDMANMARCH 30, 2017

link: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/us/politics/devin-nunes-intelligence-reports.html

WASHINGTON — A pair of White House officials helped provide Representative Devin Nunes of California, a Republican and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with the intelligence reports that showed that President Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies.

The revelation on Thursday that White House officials disclosed the reports, which Mr. Nunes then discussed with Mr. Trump, is likely to fuel criticism that the intelligence chairman has been too eager to do the bidding of the Trump administration while his committee is supposed to be conducting an independent investigation of Russia’s meddling in the presidential election.

It is the latest twist of a bizarre Washington drama that began after dark on March 21, when Mr. Nunes got a call from a person he has described only as a source. The call came as he was riding across town in an Uber car, and he quickly diverted to the White House. The next day, Mr. Nunes gave a hastily arranged news conference before going to brief Mr. Trump on what he had learned the night before from — as it turns out — White House officials.

The chain of events — and who helped provide the intelligence to Mr. Nunes — was detailed to The New York Times by four American officials.

Since disclosing the existence of the intelligence reports, Mr. Nunes has refused to identify his sources, saying he needed to protect them so others would feel safe going to the committee with sensitive information. In his public comments, he has described his sources as whistle-blowers trying to expose wrongdoing at great risk to themselves.

That does not appear to be the case. Several current American officials identified the White House officials as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and was previously counsel to Mr. Nunes’s committee. Though neither has been accused of breaking any laws, they do appear to have sought to use intelligence to advance the political goals of the Trump administration.

Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, refused to confirm or deny at his daily briefing that Mr. Ellis and Mr. Cohen-Watnick were Mr. Nunes’s sources. The administration’s concern was the substance of the intelligence reports, not how they ended up in Mr. Nunes’s hands, Mr. Spicer said.

The “obsession with who talked to whom, and when, is not the answer,” Mr. Spicer said. “It should be the substance.”

Jack Langer, a spokesman for Mr. Nunes, said in a statement, “As he’s stated many times, Chairman Nunes will not confirm or deny speculation about his source’s identity, and he will not respond to speculation from anonymous sources.”

Mr. Cohen-Watnick, 30, is a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who served on the Trump transition team and was originally brought to the White House by Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser.

He was nearly pushed out of his job this month by Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who replaced Mr. Flynn as national security adviser, but survived after the intervention of Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist.

The officials who detailed the newly disclosed White House role said that this month, shortly after Mr. Trump claimed on Twitter that he was wiretapped during the campaign on the orders of President Barack Obama, Mr. Cohen-Watnick began reviewing highly classified reports detailing the intercepted communications of foreign officials.

There were conflicting accounts of what prompted Mr. Cohen-Watnick to dig into the intelligence. One official with direct knowledge of the events said Mr. Cohen-Watnick began combing through intelligence reports this month in an effort to find evidence that would justify Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts about wiretapping.

But another person who was briefed on the events said Mr. Cohen-Watnick came upon the information as he was reviewing how widely intelligence reports on intercepts were shared within the American spy agencies. He then alerted the N.S.C. general counsel, but the official said Mr. Cohen-Watnick was not the person who showed the reports to Mr. Nunes.

That person and a third official said it was then Mr. Ellis who allowed Mr. Nunes to view the material.

The intelligence reports consisted primarily of ambassadors and other foreign officials talking about how they were trying to develop contacts within Mr. Trump’s family and inner circle before his inauguration, officials said.

The officials all spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the intelligence and to avoid angering Mr. Cohen-Watnick and Mr. Ellis. Officials say Mr. Cohen-Watnick has been reviewing the reports from his fourth-floor office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where the National Security Council is based.

The officials’ description of the intelligence is in line with Mr. Nunes’s characterization of the material, which he said was not related to the Russia investigations when he first disclosed its existence.

According to Mr. Nunes, who served on the Trump transition team, he met his source on the grounds of the White House. He said he needed a secure location where people with security clearances could legally view classified information, though such facilities could also be found in the Capitol building and at other locations across Washington.

The next day, Mr. Nunes gave a news briefing at the Capitol and then returned to the White House to brief Mr. Trump on the information before telling other committee members about what he had reviewed. His actions have fueled criticism that the committee, under his leadership, is unable to conduct a serious, independent investigation.

On Thursday, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he needed clarification on whether White House officials had pursued “a circuitous route” to feed Mr. Nunes the materials so he could then hand them to Mr. Trump.

“If that was designed to hide the origin of the materials, that raises profound questions about just what the White House is doing that need to be answered,” he said. He later said he accepted an invitation on Thursday to review the same materials that Mr. Nunes had seen.

Yet even before Thursday, the view among Democrats and even some Republicans was that Mr. Nunes was given access to the intelligence reports to divert attention from the investigations into Russian meddling, and to bolster Mr. Trump’s debunked claims of having been wiretapped.

On both counts, Mr. Nunes appears to have succeeded: The House inquiry into Russian meddling that he is leading has descended into a sideshow since he disclosed the information, and the administration has portrayed his information as vindicating the president’s wiretapping claims.

Yet Mr. Nunes has dismissed Democratic calls to step aside. Instead, he has canceled all committee hearings for now, stalling his own investigation, which opened last week with a hearing during which James B. Comey, the director of the F.B.I., publicly disclosed that the bureau’s investigation into Russian meddling included an examination of any evidence that Trump associates had colluded in the effort.

The chaotic situation prompted the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is running its own investigation, to bluntly state on Wednesday that their work had nothing to do with the House inquiry. And television news programs have been dominated by arguments about whether the incidental intelligence gathering of Mr. Trump and his associates was the real issue, or simply a distraction from the Russia investigations.

Mr. Nunes has acknowledged that the incidental intelligence gathering on Trump associates last year was not necessarily unlawful, and that it was not specifically directed at Mr. Trump or people close to him. American intelligence agencies typically monitor foreign officials of allied and hostile countries, and they routinely sweep up communications linked to Americans who may be taking part in the conversation or are being spoken about.

The real issue, Mr. Nunes has said, was that he could figure out the identities of Trump associates from reading reports about intercepted communications that were shared among Obama administration officials with top security clearances.

He said some Trump associates were also identified by name in the reports. Normally, intelligence agencies mask the identities of American citizens who are incidentally present in intercepted communications, though knowledgeable readers can often figure out the identities in context.

Well my own take on the Russian ‘hacking/influencing’ story is a little different.

I mean, i actually watch a lot of the RT stuff and a lot of it is good. A lot of it isn’t. I would definitely say if Joe-average-citizen were to watch RT plus MSM-American stuff they would be ‘better informed’ than if Joe-average-citizen only watched the corporate american-MSM.

I mean, the thing is, these stories always act like the american-msm is all about truth and accuracy and the russians are all about evil-distortions. The truth of course is much different. Sometimes the MSM gets closer to the truth, sometimes russia, sometimes both, sometimes neither, etc.

A lot of times RT vids talk about the American-plutocracy or oligarchy etc — now is that in an effort to ‘destabalize’ the american system? Well, i dont care, since its a message americans need to hear. Etc, and so forth. I could go on about this.

I have yet to see a single article on this subject that reflects my point of view on this russia thing.

And btw, i would not trust any of those six ‘experts’ that were doing the talking that gave rise to that article.

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