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^The Democrats never should have cheated Bernie Sanders.
😃
I’m sure that’s what Comey was thinking.
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo — Page 171
This topic has been locked by a moderator.
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and you know this how?
Because the President is not omnipotent nor a dictator. What agency are we talking about here, the FBI? The Director of the FBI is in charge, and everyone in the FBI reports to him. What about the Justice Department? The Attorney General is in charge, and everyone in the Justice Department reports to him/her.
There have been many instances in history, even recent history, where these Presidential appointees were fired for insubordination.
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Because the President is not omnipotent nor a dictator.
Of course not, they merely have the power to declassify any documents they wish.
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Because the President is not omnipotent nor a dictator.
Of course not, they merely have the power to declassify any documents they wish.
If names are masked, the President and the Oval office don’t gather the info, so they have to request the name unmasking from the agency that gathered the intel.
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Because the President is not omnipotent nor a dictator.
Of course not, they merely have the power to declassify any documents they wish.
If names are masked, the President and the Oval office don’t gather the info, so they have to request the name unmasking from the agency that gathered the intel.
Yes, they have the authority to direct the agencies to do that too. I was including that in the declassification powers.
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Well this has certainly been another interesting day.
President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago and proposed an ambitious political strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition across former Soviet republics, The Associated Press has learned. The work appears to contradict assertions by the Trump administration and Manafort himself that he never worked for Russian interests.
Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse.
Manafort pitched the plans to Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006, according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP. Manafort and Deripaska maintained a business relationship until at least 2009, according to one person familiar with the work.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story-fbi-wiretap-russians-trump-tower/story?id=46266198
There, indeed, was an FBI wiretap involving Russians at Trump Tower.
But it was not placed at the behest of Barack Obama, and the target was not the Trump campaign of 2016. For two years ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of unit 63A in Trump Tower in New York.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment of more than 30 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away, and he remains a fugitive from American justice.
The FBI investigation did not implicate Trump. But Trump Tower was under close watch. Some of the Russian mafia figures worked out of unit 63A in the iconic skyscraper — just three floors below Trump’s penthouse residence — running what prosecutors called an “international money-laundering, sports gambling and extortion ring.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/devin-nunes-donald-trump-surveillance-obama-236366
Members of the Donald Trump transition team, possibly including Trump himself, were under U.S. government surveillance following November’s presidential election, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told reporters Wednesday.
Nunes said the surveillance appeared to be legal but that he was concerned because it was not related to the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the election and was widely disseminated across the intelligence community.
“I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show that the president-elect and his team were, I guess, at least monitored,” Nunes told reporters. “It looks to me like it was all legally collected, but it was essentially a lot of information on the president-elect and his transition team and what they were doing.”
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and you know this how?
Because the President is not omnipotent nor a dictator. What agency are we talking about here, the FBI? The Director of the FBI is in charge, and everyone in the FBI reports to him. What about the Justice Department? The Attorney General is in charge, and everyone in the Justice Department reports to him/her.
There have been many instances in history, even recent history, where these Presidential appointees were fired for insubordination.
Just who do you think the Director of the FBI and the Attorney General report to?
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As the sub-headline says…awkward…
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Of course not, they merely have the power to declassify any documents they wish.
How can they declassify something they don’t know exists?
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Of course not, they merely have the power to declassify any documents they wish.
How can they declassify something they don’t know exists?
In the particular matter we’re discussing, Trump either a) knows they exist, or b) is making unsubstantiated shit up again. Because either he knows a factual basis for the claim or he doesn’t. If it exists and he didn’t know about it, that means he still made it up–he just got lucky by the stopped-clock standard.
Also, as Cheney taught us, there are other less-straightforward but equally effective avenues for declassifying info.
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Also, as Cheney taught us, there are other less-straightforward but equally effective avenues for declassifying info.
Threatening to shoot the other person in the face?
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http://abcnews.go.com/US/story-fbi-wiretap-russians-trump-tower/story?id=46266198
There, indeed, was an FBI wiretap involving Russians at Trump Tower.
But it was not placed at the behest of Barack Obama, and the target was not the Trump campaign of 2016. For two years ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of unit 63A in Trump Tower in New York.
The more interesting case to me is a different Russian mob money laundering case (the Prevezon case), which was being investigated by… wait for it… Preet Bharara.
Well, it was heading in interesting directions until the key witness (whoopsie!) fell off the top of a building in Moscow yesterday. Russian news sources say it was an accident, but witnesses seem to disagree. That’s okay, though, the case marches ahead under the new US Attorney. Bharara’s replacement is likely to be the son of a former lawyer for the defendant Prevezon, so I’m sure it’ll work out fine.
FWIW, Bharara’s refusal to resign was neither pointless grandstanding nor some scheme to get some critical work done before he got fired. In the event of impeachment, firing a US Attorney investigating matters related to the cause of impeachment is considered obstruction of justice, another charge to pile on the rest–and if it got to that point, it would be both serious and difficult to refute.
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Also, as Cheney taught us, there are other less-straightforward but equally effective avenues for declassifying info.
Threatening to shoot the other person in the face?
Simply leaking the classified info yourself and burning our intelligence contacts in the process. i.e. Plame’s contacts re: weapons proliferation.
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http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/22/europe/london-uk-parliament-incident-latest/index.html
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Also, as Cheney taught us, there are other less-straightforward but equally effective avenues for declassifying info.
Threatening to shoot the other person in the face?
Simply leaking the classified info yourself and burning our intelligence contacts in the process. i.e. Plame’s contacts re: weapons proliferation.
I can’t tell if you missed the joke or just ignored it.
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As the sub-headline says…awkward…
More:
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/03/supreme_court_sets_higher_bar.html
The Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously raised the bar for the educational benefits owed to millions of children with disabilities in one of the most significant special-education cases to reach the high court in decades.
The opinion rejected a lower standard set by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit and used in a subsequent case by President Donald Trump’s nominee to the high court, Neil Gorsuch, during his tenure on the appeals court. The high court’s ruling quickly became the focus of questions on Wednesday at Gorsuch’s confirmation hearing.
In its unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court said a child’s “educational program must be appropriately ambitious in light of his circumstances” and that “every child should have the chance to meet challenging objectives” even if the child is not fully integrated into a regular classrooms.
The justices said the standard used by the 10th Circuit set the bar too low for students. A student offered such a minimal level of education “can hardly be said to have been offered an education at all,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s 16-page opinion.
It’s fairly amazing that it was 8-0. I guess if Gorsuch had been confirmed it would have been 8-1.
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This raises far more questions than I have space to ask at the moment, but among them are: Did Manafort’s $10-million-a-year contract to advance Russian interests ever end, and if so, when? He took no salary to run the Trump campaign, so who was paying him at that time? What was his role in removing tough language on Russia’s aggression in Ukraine from the Republican platform? How did Trump come to hire Manafort in the first place?
Manafort confirmed that he worked for Oleg Deripaska but says it involved only “business and personal matters in countries where he had investments.” But if AP’s reporting is true in its entirety, the man who ran Donald Trump’s presidential campaign had worked secretly to advance the interests of Vladimir Putin’s regime.
And Manafort is only one piece of the Trump-Russia puzzle. Why is it that so many Trump advisers have connections to Russia, often financial ones? Why has Trump gotten so much money from Russian oligarchs and mob-connected individuals? What’s the full extent of the measures the Russian government took to help Trump get elected, and was there any coordination with any Americans, including those connected to Trump?
In order to answer those questions we need an independent commission with subpoena power, because Republicans in Congress have made it clear they have no intention of conducting anything resembling an investigation. If we ever get that commission, this could turn out to be the biggest scandal in the history of American politics.
What separates truly monumental scandals from the more mundane ones that most administrations experience is the personal involvement of the president. We don’t yet know exactly what the extent of Trump’s involvement in this scandal is, or what his motivations were. All of this might end up amounting to very little, or it could prove to be enormously consequential. Whatever it is, hopefully we’ll be able to figure it all out.
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Also, as Cheney taught us, there are other less-straightforward but equally effective avenues for declassifying info.
Threatening to shoot the other person in the face?
Simply leaking the classified info yourself and burning our intelligence contacts in the process. i.e. Plame’s contacts re: weapons proliferation.
I can’t tell if you missed the joke or just ignored it.
Clarified for other listeners. Shooting an old guy in the face and then having that guy apologize to you is still a pretty high water mark for impunity, even in this day and age.
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Of course not, they merely have the power to declassify any documents they wish.
How can they declassify something they don’t know exists?
In the particular matter we’re discussing, Trump either a) knows they exist, or b) is making unsubstantiated shit up again. Because either he knows a factual basis for the claim or he doesn’t. If it exists and he didn’t know about it, that means he still made it up–he just got lucky by the stopped-clock standard.
Also, as Cheney taught us, there are other less-straightforward but equally effective avenues for declassifying info.
Well, my insinuation for several posts has been that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
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http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/22/europe/london-uk-parliament-incident-latest/index.html
Hoping all of our UK members are safe.
Where were you in '77?
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Also, as Cheney taught us, there are other less-straightforward but equally effective avenues for declassifying info.
re: weapons proliferation.
That sounds familiarly Obama, Syria, LOL.
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So are we still maintaining the narrative that Trump Tower was not under surveillance?
😉
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So are we still maintaining the narrative that Trump Tower was not under surveillance?
😉
Since your use of the wink is unclear, I’ll answer just in case you’re serious.
That was never the narrative.
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So are we still maintaining the narrative that Trump Tower was not under surveillance?
😉
Since your use of the wink is unclear,
My use of the wink is the same use everyone else here uses it for … 😉