So clearly Kislyak was (and is) running the human assets in the operation. The cyber assets are probably run out of Moscow. What isn’t clear yet is how much control they have and what their larger plan is now that they have control of our government.
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To borrow a phrase from Mr. Lahey of the Trailer Park Boys - the shithawks are watching. I suspect a significant portion of Congress is starting to enter cover-your-ass mode, and they’ll be eager to throw anyone they can under the shitbus to avoid being linked to this shitstorm.
Frankly, I am concerned that the Dems are not doing enough to tie Trump to the larger party, and that the GOP will again weasel their way out of a disaster as they did so few years after Bush. The Dems are still too focused on Trump - it’s time for a full-court press on the entire GOP.
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Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, please amend the documentation of #1.
Fool me three times, please amend the documentation for #2
Fool me four times, I’ll celebrate your storied career
Fool me five times, the Democrats will take over Congress and throw your elfin ass in the slammer.
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Oh, I think it’s quite clear.
Destabilize NATO
Prop up the Russian economy with US assets
Gain power in the Far East
Form oil alliances
etc.
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Here is one problem with this that jumps out at me. FISA stands for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. “Foreign” is the operative word here.
The FISA court has no jurisdiction over purely domestic surveillance. All the Trumpers allegedly caught up in FISA surveillance where overheard talking to Foreign nationals who were the targets.
This blurb claims no foreign targets which makes it very likely fantasy, OR, an actual 4th Amendment warrant(s) was issued with affidavits of probably cause, etc. all of which would be made public once any charges become public.
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A lot to learn and fear in the “etc.”
“likely fantasy”
Sounds good to me. With Rupe’s chattels involved, “fake news” is more than just a cliche.
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It is unfortunate that anonymous sources whose credibility will never face public scrutiny are continuously trying to hinder that process by peddling false stories to the mainstream media.
I have to say that when they stumbled onto that argument it was the single most creative and effective policy to come out of the GOP in decades.
He also did not list the meetings in his security clearance application, though the Justice Department said that Sessions was instructed by FBI investigators not to list those meetings.
Honest to God, if he didn’t get those instructions from the Ghouliani New York FBI, I cannot imagine a single circumstance under which that would be appropriate.
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Ku Klux Keebler *
*Saw it on Twitter yesterday. Permission to use granted by author (anon).
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Absolutely amazing. These morons lied when they didn’t HAVE to. They could have shrugged so much of this off. THEN they lied to cover up the lie and now they say defensively ‘Yeah well nothing was ILLEGAL!’ Possibly but holy cow, you lied on legal forms and to investigators. Did Martha Stewart teach you nothing?
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His explanation of his first two meetings seemed plausible, but if true, this undisclosed third meeting moves Sessions out of the presumed innocent category right into the center of the Russia conspiracy.
The RepubliKKKlan Congress looking into Sessions meeting with Russians. We know what will come of that–NOTHING!
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Truly remarkable.
These guys get caught in a lie, then rush to “set the record straight”…only we find out later, they still withheld information.
And it’s always about Kisliak, a known Russian agent. If I didn’t know better, I might think there was collusion or worse going on.
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That’s what first caught my attention. I’ll wait for more information from other outlets to come out.
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Yeah, I’m surprised Mediaite just picked it up, which means I’ll have to cast a weather eye in that direction too.
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The vacuum of gop leadership.
JBS III could be happily purging voters, suppressing civil rights, encouraging police executions, and otherwise destroying democracy to further the republican dreams of eternal power. But he like all the good little republicans has been compromised by Russian operatives who drew them in with the promise of a permanent republican majority. Anonymous money thanks to Citizens United, opposition intelligence, and information technology targeted to individual voters easily seduced the whole party. And so we see JBS Three Sticks still in office after multiple lies about his Russian partners. The majority party investigatory committees allow do overs and slipsies every time one of their team screw ups is revealed.
In the beginning candidate DJT looked like the main player. Then along came his hand picked very good reason to not impeach toting the same baggage. The silence of Congress gop leaders and rank and file incumbents screams deep involvement on their part. What could have been a thriving gop three way majority is reduced to covering and ignoring their involvement with a hostile nation. The Russians simply bought the U.S. government’s power from the party of “whatever it takes.” Putin’s primary puppet has alienated our former allies, and hobbled our intelligence community. It only took him 9 days on a road trip. Those former friendly European nations have already decided to go on without us. United they are stronger. Divided we are weaker.
And just today China has stepped up to lead the world back from global warming. The prestige of the position and the power to shape immense events in the very near future could so easily have been America’s. We could have been a contender.
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Yes, is that really a thing? I thought FISA warrants were granted in secret. Shot over the bow?
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Donnie also keeps people around if they’ve got the goods on him. So even if he fires Sessions (unlikely), he won’t actually go anywhere or be out of contact with the boss. Eg. “Stay strong.”
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No, it really didn’t. He offered up the blanket assertion that he had no meetings with Russians, completely on his own, with the most probable motive for that act, an attempt to build a narrative that nobody in the Trump campaign had any interactions with Russian agents.
He knew what he said was a lie at the time, and he knew the broader narrative he was attempting to support was a lie.
His “explanation” fits the exact some model that we see in every.single.case. They deny it outright, until the real story comes out, then they admit some details, until yet another shoe drops…like this one. Stop treating these as “isolated incidents”, they aren’t. Look at the bigger picture, and you see that EVERY Trumper that has been tied to Russians has repeatedly lied about those contacts until the facts overwhelm them.
Lets not forget, btw, that he admitted he knew he was lying, and for “punishment” he would voluntarily recuse himself from the Russian investigations. Yet, there he was just weeks later sitting in on a Comey briefing about the Flynn investigation. There he was urging and building the justification for the President to fire the lead investigator, Comey, of the Russian investigations. Here he is actively involved in hiring Comey’s replacement to continue the Russian investigations. And here he is going to the FISA Court to get sealed warrants to investigate reporters reporting on the Russian investigations.
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OT (but with our privacy under assault in the Trump era, it’s not entirely irrelevant…)
I ran across this article on my way work this morning via a personal finance blog entry below. Good opportunity to check it out and opt out.
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