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Wallace had people on who favored Russia? ...LOL... the damn fools!
Comey's 9-year-old neighbor baked him cookies after he was fired: report
By Mallory Shelbourne - 05/13/17 05:49 PM EDT
Former FBI Director James Comey's nine-year-old neighbor reportedly baked and hand delivered chocolate chip cookies to him after he was fired by President Trump this week.
A reporter for NPR recounted a text she received from the little girl’s mom.
"FBI Director Comey lives in our neighborhood, and, as you would imagine - there were a lot of reporters at the foot of his driveway today. Abby thought that was quite inhospitable,” the text said.
“Well - either a 9 year old in a parochial school uniform dress doesn't look very threatening- or the smell of the choc chip cookies was so good that the security detail could smell them from the other side of the gate .... in either case, Abby Grace just hand delivered a dozen cookies fresh from the oven. She walked up, shook the hand of the 6'10" agent, introduced herself, and, hopefully made Director Comey's day a little bit better!"
Trump fired Comey earlier this week in a signed letter calling for “a new beginning” at the FBI.
The mother of the 9-year old, whose name is Abby Grace, told the reported why she thought her daughter baked Comey the cookies.
"We've spent a lot of time talking about how kindness and empathy are the most important ways for us to engage [with] people regardless of if we agree with or understand their positions," the mother wrote.
"In [Director] Comey's case, Abby said 'I wanted him to know we respect him for his career of service.’”
According to a report of the interaction by Food and Wine, the little girl also gave Comey a letter with her cookies that read: “We are proud to be your neighbor and thank you for all you have done for America. Love: Abby Grace."
http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/333282-james-comeys-neighbor-baked-him-cookies-after-he-was-fired-report
Murder in the FIRST!
Warning to all: Beware of the Trump Dignity Loss Event Horizon
By DarkSyde
Saturday May 13, 2017 · 7:01 AM PDT
It may say “Oval Office” outside the oval office, but Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here would be more accurate. Even a brief review of Trump’s past quickly reveals claim after claim of calamities left in his wake. Reports of bills unpaid, [ goo.gl/yRqX4l ] businesses ruined, investors hung out high and dry, lenders left holding the bag, and reputations destroyed are easy to find. But, up until last fall, the pattern was mostly confined to people and organizations who had the misfortune of encountering Trump the private citizen-bully. Now, it’s everyone, the Republican Party, We the People, and anyone under Trump’s teeny-tiny executive thumb:[ http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-wraithing-of-rod-rosenstein ]
Judas, Tax Cuts and the Great Betrayal
Paul Krugman
MAY 12, 2017
Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader. Credit Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press
So you can see why I find myself thinking of Judas.
For generations, Republicans have impugned their opponents’ patriotism. During the Cold War, they claimed that Democrats were soft on Communism; after 9/11, that they were soft on terrorism.
But now we have what may be the real thing: circumstantial evidence that a hostile foreign power may have colluded with a U.S. presidential campaign, and may retain undue influence at the highest levels of our government. And all those self-proclaimed patriots have gone silent, or worse.
Just to be clear, we don’t know for sure that top Trump officials, and maybe even Trump himself, are Russian puppets. But the evidence is obviously enough to take seriously — just think about the fact that Michael Flynn stayed on as national security adviser for weeks after Justice Department officials warned that he was compromised, and was fired only when the story broke in the press.
And we know how to resolve the remaining uncertainty: independent investigations conducted by officials with strong legal powers, insulated from partisan political influence.
So here’s where we stood as of Thursday evening: 138 Democrats and independents had called for the appointment of a special prosecutor; just one Republican had joined that call. Another 84 Democrats had called for an independent investigation, joined by only six Republicans.
At this point, in other words, almost an entire party appears to have decided that potential treason in the cause of tax cuts for the wealthy is no vice. And that’s barely hyperbole.
How did a whole party become so, well, un-American? For this story now goes far beyond Trump.
In some ways conservatism is returning to its roots. Much has been made of Trump’s revival of the term “America First,” the name of a movement opposed to U.S. intervention in World War II. What isn’t often mentioned is that many of the most prominent America-firsters weren’t just isolationists, they were actively sympathetic to foreign dictators; there’s a more or less straight line from Charles Lindbergh proudly wearing the medal he received from Hermann Göring to Trump’s cordial relations with Rodrigo Duterte, the literally murderous president of the Philippines.
But the more proximate issue is the transformation of the Republican Party, which bears little if any resemblance to the institution it used to be, say during the Watergate hearings of the 1970s. Back then, Republican members of Congress were citizens first, partisans second. But today’s G.O.P. is more like a radical, anti-democratic insurgency than a conventional political party.
The political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have been trying to explain this transformation for years, fighting an uphill battle against the false equivalence that still dominates punditry. As they note, the G.O.P. hasn’t just become “ideologically extreme”; it is “dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
So it’s naïve to expect Republicans to join forces with Democrats to get to the bottom of the Russia scandal — even if that scandal may strike at the very roots of our national security. Today’s Republicans just don’t cooperate with Democrats, period. They’d rather work with Vladimir Putin.
In fact, some of them probably did.
Now, maybe I’m being too pessimistic. Maybe there are enough Republicans with a conscience — or, failing that, sufficiently frightened of an electoral backlash — that the attempt to kill the Russia probe will fail. One can only hope so.
But it’s time to face up to the scary reality here. Most people now realize, I think, that Donald Trump holds basic American political values in contempt. What we need to realize is that much of his party shares that contempt.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/opinion/judas-tax-cuts-and-the-great-betrayal.html?_r=0
they are investigating that bowelbreathe site, alt right, the one that guy walked around saying "stop raping" "stop raping" .. .up and down streets one day when their hater c something was going on ....then I don't remember the time a year two years ... whatever, he was having drinks at his neighborhood haunt ... and got up to walk home and dropped dead ..... I think he was fairly young ... young fifties maybe .. .. but I haven't heard about fox ... ;) ...........
In blow to Trump, GE backs NAFTA and plans growth in Mexico
By Dave Graham | MONTERREY, MEXICO
Fri May 12, 2017 | 3:55pm EDT
General Electric Co's chief executive (GE.N) on Friday praised Mexico as a big part of its future growth and said the company is "very supportive" of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that U.S President Donald Trump has threatened to ditch.
The conglomerate is keen to double its purchases from Mexican suppliers next year, a statement from the office of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said, a move that could upset Trump, who touts a "Buy American" policy and has railed against U.S. firms that move operations to Mexico.
Chief Executive Jeff Immelt, on a visit to Mexico, did not mention GE's interest in ramping up purchases in Mexico in a speech in the northern city of Monterrey, but he said Mexico was a big part of the company's future growth plans.
"We're optimistic about Mexico," Immelt told Mexican officials at the inauguration of an expansion of GE's operations in Monterrey. "We're very supportive of NAFTA."
Earlier this month, Immelt warned the Trump administration to avoid protectionist policies, while calling on it to level the playing field for U.S. companies with tax reform, revived export financing and improved trade agreements.
Immelt's visit coincides with efforts by Mexico and Canada to push U.S. business leaders to defend NAFTA. Immelt sits on a Trump-appointed manufacturing council that Mexico has identified as a target for lobbying to protect NAFTA.
Trump has threatened to ditch NAFTA, a lynchpin of the Mexican economy, if he cannot rework it to secure better terms for the United States. He has also said there would be consequences for U.S firms that move operations overseas as he strives to revive domestic manufacturing.
But, unlike other U.S. firms, GE has not backed off its plans in Mexico, risking the wrath of Trump, who has singled out companies by name on Twitter.
"Immelt ratified the company's confidence in Mexico and its national industry, by expressing his interest in doubling purchases from national suppliers in 2018," the statement by the Mexican president's office said.
Immelt met with Pena Nieto in Mexico City before traveling to Monterrey.
On Thursday, General Electric announced that it won a contract to supply two new gigawatts of power in Mexico and had also signed a separate $120 million, multi-year deal to provide service to gas and steam turbines in Mexican power plants.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-mexico-ge-idUSKBN18829I
so far they are d oing great without Kawhi Leonard .. anyway
I was so mad at pop the other night! oh I hated him, hated him bad.. if I had been around him I would have hit him! ... so sick of these guys having to play with this unequal disbursement of talent ... I mean they have worked Kawhi this year like he's a slave . .it's not worth it .. same thing with Russel and .. and .. and ... .... but anyway . .right now three minutes ago they had 7 points on the rockets ... of course that will fluctuate off and on .. we'll see if they can do it again ... and then what .. who are they facing? .. one more game and then Warrors or Cavs? ... forget about it ..............
have fun see you later.... bye.
Malcolm Nance Warns that Anyone Who’s A Part of the Trump Russia Plot Will Regret It
By Sarah Jones on Thu, May 11th, 2017 at 7:35 pm
"To anyone who may have been part of the plot? They're (the FBI) going to find out and they (the people who colluded with Russia) are going to regret it," counterterrorism analyst and intelligence expert Malcolm Nance said on MSNBC.
Malcolm Nance’s words should send a shiver down the spine of those who are involved in the Trump Russia conspiracy plot as well as those Republicans who are enabling it.
“To anyone who may have been part of the plot? They’re (the FBI) going to find out and they (the people who colluded with Russia) are going to regret it,” counterterrorism analyst and intelligence expert Malcolm Nance said on MSNBC’s Deadline Whitehouse with Nicole Wallace.
Listen ...Arizona has two very informative posts on her board .... I'll post them here .. but don't forget where they came from .. ;)
The FBI Is Talking And They Saying That Trump Is Interfering With The Russia Investigation
By Jason Easley on Thu, May 11th, 2017 at 6:57 pm
Sources inside the FBI are talking are they are saying that there is a lot of interfering going on with the Russia investigation.
Can't get the photo to post!
Just so ugly ...tsk
Sources inside the FBI are talking are they are saying that there is a lot of interfering going on with the Russia investigation.
CBS News reported: [ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/source-there-is-whole-a-lot-of-interfering-in-russia-investigation/ ]
Although President Trump has now stated and written that fired FBI Director James Comey told him on three separate occasions that he was not the subject of an investigation, sources cast doubt on that claim.
It would be out of character for Comey to have made that statement even once, much less three times, to the president, one law enforcement source told CBS News. Along with his firing, the source noted a high level of “interfering” in the Russia probe.
While Trump was babbling to NBC’s Lester Holt about what a bad hombre James Comey is, sources inside the FBI were spilling the beans about what is really going on inside the bureau as they try to investigate the Trump campaign for potential collusion with the Russian government during the 2016 election.
If he hadn’t before, Trump just made an enemy out of the FBI when he fired James Comey, and Democrats investigating the Russia scandal better pay attention because the FBI is blowing holes in every cover story that the Trump White House is coming up with.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131289657
you all drool .......and drop your panties
He will never make seven years . . just look at him, It's sad
you deplorables! keep this as it won't be long before these
pictures are all you have of him ............he aint gonna be
around much anymore... no no..he just can't make it ..
what makes those bags so pronounced under his eyes? Is it
blood pressure? Hell I don't know , but I'd like to know ..
how scary................for anyone who loves him . .my god
surely the surgeon could do something ? .. IF NOT, then we
KNOW there is something really really wrong with him .. besides
old age I mean ..........is he seventy yet? I don't know, maybe
he isn't old .. .I'll have to go look it up ..
heck for all we know his disease could be something we could all catch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Comey Has ‘Broad Support’ in F.B.I., Acting Chief Says
By THE NEW YORK TIMES 18 minutes ago
In Senate testimony, Andrew G. McCabe rejected the White House’s claim that James B. Comey, the
former F.B.I. director, had lost the backing of its agents.
He also called the investigation into whether Trump associates colluded with Russia in the election “highly significant.”
...............
Trump Calls Firing ‘Showboat’ Comey His Decision Alone
By PETER BAKER and MICHAEL D. SHEAR 16 minutes ago
In an NBC interview, President Trump called Mr. Comey “a showboat” and said he would have fired him regardless of the Justice Department’s advice.
EVEN to clear himself, Oh my God! he can't even shut up! such a little pussy! phew.....
WASHINGTON — President Trump offered on Thursday a new version of his decision to fire James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, saying he would have dismissed him regardless of whether the attorney general and his deputy recommended it.
In his first extended comments on a move that has roiled Washington, Mr. Trump castigated Mr. Comey, calling him “a showboat” and “a grandstander” who had created turmoil at the bureau. But the president’s description of his decision-making process conflicted with the account provided previously by his aides.
The White House previously said that Mr. Trump acted only after Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, came to him and recommended that Mr. Comey be dismissed. In the letter dismissing Mr. Comey that Mr. Trump signed, it said he was acting on their recommendation. And Vice President Mike Pence, talking to reporters, also said the president had been following the Justice Department officials’ advice.
But in an interview with NBC News on Thursday, Mr. Trump said that Mr. Rosenstein’s opinion had not mattered.
“I was going to fire Comey — my decision,” he told the anchor Lester Holt. “I was going to fire regardless of recommendation. He made a recommendation. He’s highly respected, very good guy, very smart guy. The Democrats like him. The Republicans like him. He made a recommendation. But regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey.”
The president’s comments were the latest shift in the White House account of the episode. They could have been aimed at reassuring Mr. Rosenstein, who has been reported to be upset at the original White House narrative that made it appear the firing was done at his instigation.
Mr. Rosenstein made a trip to Capitol Hill on Thursday for a previously unannounced meeting with the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In a brief hallway conversation with a reporter, Mr. Rosenstein denied reports that he had threatened to quit.
The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, leaving the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington on Thursday. Al Drago/The New York Times
In the NBC interview, Mr. Trump elaborated on his claim in the letter to Mr. Comey that the F.B.I. director had told him on three occasions that the president himself was not under investigation. The F.B.I. has been investigating whether associates of Mr. Trump and his campaign coordinated with Russia as Moscow orchestrated an effort to intervene in the American election and tilt the election to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump said Mr. Comey reassured him first at a private dinner and then two other times during phone conversations. He acknowledged that he had directly asked the F.B.I. director if he was being investigated.
“I said, ‘If it’s possible, would you let me know if I’m under investigation,’ ” Mr. Trump said. “He said, ‘You are not under investigation.’ ”
He said Mr. Comey had requested the dinner early in his administration to ask to keep his job, which an F.B.I. director does not have to do because under law he has a 10-year term. “He wanted to stay on as the F.B.I. head,” Mr. Trump said. “I said: ‘I’ll consider. We’ll see what happens.’ But we had a very nice dinner and at that time, he told me I wasn’t under investigation, which I knew anyway.”
In explaining his decision to fire Mr. Comey, Mr. Trump went beyond the reasons outlined earlier in the week about the F.B.I. director’s handling of last year’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, making clear he had personal antipathy toward Mr. Comey. [ OH MY GOD! he's jealous of him too and doesn't have the good sense to not share that with us . .christ! maybe all these people are right who say he needs to go into treatment? ]
“He’s a showboat,” Mr. Trump said. “He’s a grandstander.”
He added that “the F.B.I. has been in turmoil” since last year, apparently a reference to the controversy over how the Clinton investigation was managed, and “it hasn’t recovered from that.”
Correction: May 11, 2017
An earlier version of this article misstated the middle initial for the deputy attorney general. He is Rod J. Rosenstein, not Rod S. Rosenstein.
Things are much much worse with him .. come on republicans take this spectacle out of The Worlds site!
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/us/politics/trump-comey-showboat-fbi.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
o.k .. top article front page of the New York Time -
Second article, the one I had no intention of posting, immediately below the top one ...
I was just looking at the times .. they posted . 45 was two mins.. earlier than the times . .I just thought it odd but probably not .. ;)
anyway . .the front Page of The New York Times!
https://www.nytimes.com/?action=click&contentCollection=Politics®ion=TopBar&module=HomePage-Button&pgtype=article
When Nixon Sent Dean To Camp
This is the most stupid man in public political life that I have ever seen.. He's outright STUPID!
dumber than we thought or at least dumber than I thought ..
well really, I never thought of dumb in degrees before.. !
READ THIS! when you have some time and tea..
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/us/politics/live-briefing-james-comey-andrew-mccabe.html
lies all time .. here's a big one!
McCabe: You Cannot Stop 'The FBI From Doing The Right Thing'
May 11, 20179:49 AM ET
Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe prepares to testify during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats on Thursday.
The absence of former FBI Director James Comey loomed large over the Senate Intelligence Committee's hearing with top U.S. intelligence leaders, but his temporary replacement, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, assured lawmakers he would not bend to pressure from the White House.
"You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing, protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution," McCabe said.
McCabe directly contradicted White House assertions that one of the reasons Comey was let go was because he had lost the respect and support of rank-and-file FBI agents.
"Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day," McCabe said, saying he holds Comey in the "absolute highest regard."
McCabe also said that the FBI's ongoing probe into Russian involvement in the 2016 elections and possible collusion with the Trump campaign was "highly significant," disputing a White House characterization that the investigation "was one of the smallest things that they've got going on their plate."
Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., noted that Comey's absence was atop his mind and that he had plenty of questions for McCabe and the other intelligence leaders about the Russia probe.
"It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the president's decision to remove Director Comey was related to the Russia investigation," Warner said, "and that is truly unacceptable."
McCabe assured Warner that he would alert the committee if anyone tried to influence the FBI probe into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. He also said later he would not update the White House on the ongoing Russia investigation.
Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., made it clear in his opening statement that he wanted the hearing to be about more than just Russia and reiterated there are other global threats of concern. But questions about Russia and the ongoing investigation have so far largely dominated the hearing.
In his own first question to McCabe, Burr asked the acting FBI director about one of the more puzzling and surprising statements in Trump's termination letter to Comey — that the law enforcement chief told the president on three separate occasions that he was not under investigation in regards to Russia.
"Sir, I can't comment on any conversations the director may have had with the president," McCabe responded.
He later told Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, that it was not standard FBI practice to notify someone if they are not under investigation.
While Trump has continued to cast doubt on the intelligence community's findings that Russia did seek to influence the U.S. elections to benefit his campaign, the intelligence leaders were unanimous in their assessment that Russia had indeed interfered with the election.
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was unequivocal in his conclusion that there was meddling in his written testimony submitted to the committee:
I know he doesn't drink, but I never believed a drunk in my life!
oh 45???? .. .. are you the alcoholic who denies everything while
drinking yourself into sweats every day? Is this why you look so horrible?
Yesterday, meeting with the Russians, who 'COULD' have the ORIGINAL tape/PHOTOS of 45
......... joining the girls 'tinkling' on Obama in your bed? Mr. trump? What say you?
Have you noticed how horrible he looks? sheesh..all beet red with splotches of white here and
there...the photos that the russians got show it the best............he's getting real scary!
To all:
I have long believed that a President can fire an FBI Director for any reason, or for no reason at all. I’m not going to
spend time on the decision or the way it was executed. I hope you won’t either. It is done, and I will be fine, although
I will miss you and the mission deeply.
I have said to you before that, in times of turbulence, the American people should see the FBI as a rock of competence,
honesty, and independence. What makes leaving the FBI hard is the nature and quality of its people, who
together make it that rock for America.
It is very hard to leave a group of people who are committed only to doing the right thing.
My hope is that you will continue to live our values and the
mission of protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution.
If you do that, you too will be sad when you leave, and the American people will be safer.
Working with you has been one of the great joys of my life. Thank you for that gift.
Jim Comey
James B. Comey sent a farewell letter to colleagues Wednesday, a day after he was fired as FBI director by President Trump. CNN was first to obtain the letter. We have annotated Comey's message, using Genius. To see an annotation, click on the yellow, highlighted text.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/10/james-comeys-farewell-letter-to-his-fbi-colleagues-annotated/?utm_term=.9b25cedb60c9
that's beautiful ...
please delete mine .. I'd rather have the complete real beautiful deal on this board .. ;) and once again .. Thank YOU!
First on CNN: In ltr to FBI staff, Comey says he's "long believed a president can fire an FBI director for any reason or no reason at all"
First on CNN: In ltr to FBI staff, Comey says he's "long believed a president can fire an FBI director for any reason or no reason at all" pic.twitter.com/AxKWwyk1PZ
— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) May 11, 2017
Was the Firing of James Comey Obstruction of Justice?
By Helen Klein Murillo
Wednesday, May 10, 2017, 2:56 PM
Following the abrupt firing of FBI Director James Comey there is widespread speculation about whether the episode constitutes obstruction of justice. At Just Security, Ryan Goodman suggests that “f President Donald Trump orchestrated the decision to fire the Director of the FBI to subvert or undermine the integrity of investigations into the Trump campaign’s possible coordination with Russia, it may amount to obstruction of justice.” Ryan highlighted that if Jeff Sessions or Rod Rosenstein “knowingly participated in such a plan, they too would be in legal and political jeopardy.”
Now is a good time to review the legal definition of obstruction of justice and how it might apply to the firing of the FBI Director.
In March, I wrote an explainer on the law of lying—highlighting when lying to law enforcement or Congress in the Russia investigation might constitute a criminal offense and what various statutory provisions say about lying. In that post, I wrote about obstruction of justice:
Trump's approval rating slips to 36 percent
By John Bowden - 05/10/17 02:44 PM EDT
President Trump's approval rating has reached near-record lows, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.
The survey of registered voters found that 36 percent say they approve of Trump's job performance, compared to 58 percent who disapprove. Trump's approval has fallen from the 40 percent recorded in the same poll released in mid-April.
"There is no way to spin or sugarcoat these sagging numbers," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. "[These] are red flags that the administration simply can't brush away."
Trump's favorability ratings slipped among some demographics that carried him to victory in the 2016 presidential election against Hillary Clinton, including white voters without college degrees, white men and independent voters.
Trump's approval rating is near its lowest mark since he took office, which was 35 points in early April, according to Quinnipiac.
Gallup said last month that Trump’s average approval rating was the lowest since it began presidential approval surveys in 1953. According to Gallup, the average approval of presidents is 61 percent.
According to Quinnipiac's poll, Trump's biggest drop in support this month was from white voters who didn't go to college. Just 47 percent now approve of Trump's administration, compared with 57 percent in April.
Among voters surveyed, 58 percent said Trump's first 100 days in office have been "mainly a failure," compared with just 38 percent who say it has been successful.
Other findings in the survey centered on Trump's treatment of the media and vice versa. The poll found that 58 percent of the voters polled do not approve of the job the news media has done covering Trump's White House. But a majority, 65 percent, also disapproved of Trump's treatment of the press.
Quinnipiac's poll was conducted from May 4 to 9 and surveyed 1,078 voters. The poll has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/332787-poll-trumps-approval-ratings-among-voters-near-record-lows
I'm glad Comey is not working for the walking dead, I liked seeing him this way ..;)
YES! .. when life was sweet and innocent ..you get it all back Mr. Comey! mr. Comey is a GIANT! 6ft 8!
The Nightmare Scenario: Trump Fires Comey, the One Man Who Would Stand Up to Him
Benjamin Wittes, Susan Hennessey
Tuesday, May 9, 2017, 7:46 PM
snip~
Make no mistake: The firing of James Comey as FBI director is a stunning event. It is a profoundly dangerous thing—a move that puts the Trump-Russia investigation in immediate jeopardy and removes from the investigative hierarchy the one senior official whom President Trump did not appoint and one who is known to stand up to power. One of the biggest dangers of Comey’s firing is that Trump might actually get away with it, ironically, because of Comey’s unpopularity among Democrats and on the political left.
We warned about this danger immediately after the election.
On November 10, we wrote that that Trump’s firing of Comey would be a “a clear bellwether to both the national security and civil libertarian communities that things are going terribly wrong.” At the time we wrote those words, Comey was deeply unpopular with both the Left, which blamed Hillary Clinton’s defeat on his eleventh hour letter to Congress, and the Right, which criticized his decision to recommend that Clinton not be charged over her handling of government emails. Whatever the merit of Comey’s actions during the campaign, the fact that he managed to anger both sides of the political spectrum demonstrated his storied political independence. And that political independence, we argued, would serve as a critical check against any efforts on the part of President Trump to trample the rule of law.
The FBI Director serves a ten-year term precisely in order to insulate against the whims of a President who does not like what—or whom—the FBI is investigating. While the President has legal authority to fire an FBI director, the fact that Trump has done so under circumstances of an active FBI investigation of the President’s own campaign violates profoundly important norms of an independent, non-political FBI. The situation has no parallel with the only previous FBI director to be removed by a president: President Clinton’s firing of William Sessions, whose ethical misconduct was so extensive that it resulted in a six-month Justice Department investigation and a blistering 161-page report detailing his illicit activities, including flagrant misuse of public funds. Trump’s firing Comey at a time when Comey is investigating Russian intervention in the election on Trump’s behalf and the specific conduct of a number of people close to Trump undermines the credibility of his own presidency. And it deeply threatens the integrity of and public confidence in ongoing law enforcement and intelligence operations.
Trump’s offered rationale does nothing to assuage the fears we expressed in November regarding the meaning of this event.
Continued here -
https://lawfareblog.com/nightmare-scenario-trump-fires-comey-one-man-who-would-stand-him
.@SenWarren: "Comey was not fired because of Hillary.
Comey was fired because of the Russians."
#inners https://t.co/3TPzv9zxzx
— All In w/Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) May 10, 2017
Donald Trump Is Lying Again, Now About James Comey
David Leonhardt MAY 9, 2017
Doug Mills/The New York Times
The president of the United States is lying again.
He is lying about the reason he fired James Comey, the F.B.I. director. Trump claimed that he was doing so because Comey bungled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email, which meant that Comey was “not able to effectively lead the bureau.”
There is no reason to believe Trump’s version of the facts and many reasons to believe he is lying. How can I be so confident?
First, it’s important to remember just how often Trump lies. Virtually whenever he finds it more convenient to tell a falsehood than to tell a truth, he chooses the falsehood.
An incomplete list of the things he has lied about include: Barack Obama’s birthplace, Obama’s phone “tapp,” John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Sept. 11, the Iraq war, ISIS, NATO, military veterans, Mexican immigrants, Muslim immigrants, anti-Semitic attacks, the unemployment rate, the murder rate, the Electoral College, voter fraud, the size of his inaugural crowd, his health care bill and his own groping of women.
Second, Trump previously praised Comey for reopening the Clinton email investigation, which was the core of Trump’s rationale for the firing, as Igor Volsky noted.
Third, Trump claimed that he was merely following up on a Justice Department recommendation and released a letter from the department to bolster his case. Yet the timing doesn’t make sense — and Trump aides have already undercut their boss, by acknowledging that he wanted to fire Comey.
As Bill Kristol pointed out, the Justice Department letter was dated the same day as the firing, and the official who wrote it has been on the job for just two weeks — not enough time for a serious review that could have reversed Trump’s previous position.
As Bill Kristol pointed out, the Justice Department letter was dated the same day as the firing, and the official who wrote it has been on the job for just two weeks — not enough time for a serious review that could have reversed Trump’s previous position.
“So there was no real recommendation from DOJ,” Kristol wrote. “Trump wanted to do it, and they created a paper trail.” Kristol, a conservative, added, “One can be at once a critic of Comey and alarmed by what Trump has done and how he has done it.”
Even more damning, White House sources also admitted on Tuesday night that Trump himself initiated the firing. The White House charged Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, with coming up with a reason to fire Comey, as The Times and others have reported.
Finally, and most obviously, Trump had a very big motive to fire Comey and install a loyalist. Comey was overseeing the investigation into the Trump campaign’s numerous strange ties with the Russian government.
“The firing of James Comey as F.B.I. director is a stunning event,” Benjamin Wittes and Susan Hennessey, two of the sharpest observers of the Russia case, wrote for Lawfare. “It is a profoundly dangerous thing — a move that puts the Trump-Russia investigation in immediate jeopardy and removes from the investigative hierarchy the one senior official whom President Trump did not appoint and one who is known to stand up to power.”
The president is lying about firing a top law enforcement official, and he is almost certainly lying to protect himself and his aides from a full investigation into their own activities.
Brian Schatz, a Democratic senator from Hawaii, wrote on Tuesday night, “We are in a full-fledged constitutional crisis.”
It’s now clear that Trump’s Justice Department has no independence. Both Sessions, and Sessions’s deputy, Rod Rosenstein, are acting like Trump enforcers. And now the F.B.I. is compromised as well.
The only way to unwind the constitutional crisis is an independent inquiry, completely free of Trump’s oversight. Several Republican members of Congress expressed concern about Comey’s firing, but words aren’t enough.
Members of Congress need to give Americans reason to believe the Russia investigation isn’t a charade with a predetermined outcome. They need to make clear that while the president may think he is above the truth, he is not above the law.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/opinion/donald-trump-is-lying-again-now-about-james-comey.html
The Knives Are Out for Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster
In the White House “Game of Thrones for morons,” Steve Bannon is trying to turn the president against his national security advisor.
Inside the White House, opponents of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Donald Trump’s second national security advisor, want him out. This week, they’ve made their campaign against him public, leaking to reporters details about the rocky relationship he has with his boss and trying to paint him as someone hellbent on overseas nation-building projects that are doomed to fail. The timing isn’t accidental. The effort to damage McMaster comes as the Trump administration decides what its policy should be in Afghanistan, a debate that’s pitting McMaster against Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist.
“McMaster is pushing this Afghanistan policy through. I think some people are giving him the rope to get it through, hoping he hangs himself with it,” one senior intelligence official said.
The Afghanistan strategy McMaster is pushing, with the support of Defense Secretary James Mattis, would send roughly 3,000-5,000 U.S. and NATO troops to Afghanistan, according to a separate source familiar with the internal deliberations. These troops would be sent to help bulk up the Afghan National Security Forces, which, after years of U.S. assistance, are still struggling against the Taliban, al Qaeda, and a small Islamic State presence in the country.
According to the Washington Post, the new strategy “would authorize the Pentagon, not the White House, to set troop numbers in Afghanistan and give the military far broader authority to use airstrikes to target Taliban militants.” The hope is that by increasing pressure on the Taliban, it will force them to the negotiating table with more favorable terms for Kabul and Washington. Sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan follows a decision made last year by then-President Barack Obama, who announced in July that 8,400 U.S. troops would remain in Afghanistan through January 2017 because of the “precarious” security situation there, undoing his previous plan to draw down to 5,500 by the time he left office.
The Post reported that “those opposed to the plan have begun to refer derisively to the strategy as ‘McMaster’s War,’” and this particular criticism is repeated in a handful of negative stories about McMaster that have already cropped up this week. For those plugged into the dicey world of Trump administration power plays, this slur has the hallmarks of a hit job by Bannon’s team. (It’s worth noting that the same people who oppose McMaster are no fans of Mattis’s moderating influence on the president, but he’s seen as politically untouchable for now.)
Attack dogs online
The first story aimed at weakening McMaster came Sunday from blogger Mike Cernovich, whose reporting has served as a conduit for the alt-right wing of the White House to air its grievances and get ahead of policies it doesn’t like. Cernovich has pushed conspiracy theories and threatened to smear members of the Trump White House if Bannon is ever removed. Still, the White House has given him press credentials, and he attended a White House briefing last month.
In a May 7 blog post, Cernovich suggested McMaster had become too big for his britches and that Trump intended to put him in his place at a meeting between the two on Monday. Trump’s daily schedule for Monday included a meeting with McMaster at 10 a.m. in the Situation Room.
Cernovich is intent on portraying McMaster as a crony of retired Gen. David Petraeus, which, in this depiction, means a fan of big counterinsurgency campaigns that require billions of dollars and thousands of ground troops. Cernovich’s list of McMaster’s wrongs include that he’s pushing “for a ground war in Syria and massive new surge in Afghanistan,” which, according to the source familiar with the White House’s internal deliberations, does not accurately portray the policy option McMaster is proposing. It does, however, reflect Bannon’s characterization of it, as well as his own isolationist foreign-policy views.
Cernovich’s story also contained a detail about McMaster “falling up” into a four-star job in the military (possibly as vice chief of staff of the Army or as the top commander in Afghanistan) as a way to get him out of the White House. According to the source familiar with White House politics, this comes directly from Bannon’s camp.
Bloomberg’s Eli Lake had a more devastating (as well as far better sourced) story on Monday about McMaster’s difficult relationship with Trump, who has spoken derisively to McMaster in meetings. According to Lake, Trump screamed at McMaster on a phone call for undercutting the president’s effort to get South Korea to pay for a missile defense system for which the United States had already agreed to foot the bill.
Bannon’s critique of McMaster also makes a cameo: “On policy, the faction of the White House loyal to senior strategist Steve Bannon is convinced McMaster is trying to trick the president into the kind of nation building that Trump campaigned against.”
On Monday night, Cernovich wrote a second negative post about McMaster; this time, slamming him for supposedly referring to 28-year-old Hope Hicks, the White House director of strategic communications, as a “high schooler.”
In response to these stories, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who has his own White House sources, tweeted: “Several WH sources say the Gen McMaster stories are coming from Bannon and are false. Trump has full confidence in McMaster. ‘He loves him.’”
According to sources inside and out of government, these stories do reflect an effort by McMaster’s opponents, including Bannon, to set the stage for McMaster’s ouster, but Scarborough gets one thing wrong: They are not entirely false.
The outsider in the White House
It’s true that it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for McMaster and Trump, but, in many ways, that friction was built into the job from the start.
“[McMaster] will always be on the outside looking in from so many circles,” the senior intelligence official said. “He isn’t family. He’s not a Bannon guy, and he’s still surrounded by Flynnstones.”
“Flynnstones” is the nickname given to people hand-picked to serve on the National Security Council by McMaster’s predecessor, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. After Trump reluctantly removed Flynn in February, a handful of Flynn’s people also headed for the exits, but plenty still remain in their jobs.
Following the forced resignation of Flynn, a Trump die-hard who started advising the president during the campaign, McMaster joined the NSC in February under unusual and difficult circumstances. In selecting McMaster, Trump sidestepped K.T. McFarland, the deputy national security advisor, and retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, the NSC’s chief of staff, who served as acting national security advisor after Flynn’s firing.
“McMaster is surrounded by people who want him out, at least eventually,” said the source with knowledge of internal White House politics.
According to the senior intelligence official, McMaster and Kellogg, an early Trump supporter, “don’t see eye to eye.” McMaster has also had difficulty in choosing his own second in command. Coming into the job, McMaster naturally wanted to pick his own deputy, but this meant moving McFarland, a former Fox News commentator and Pentagon speechwriter in the Ronald Reagan administration, to a new post.
In early April, she was offered the job of U.S. ambassador to Singapore, but a month and a half later, McFarland shows no sign of decamping for Asia. Instead, McFarland still remains in the White House inner circle. As Lake reported, “Over the weekend, McMaster did not accompany Trump to meet with Australia’s prime minister; the outgoing deputy national security adviser, K.T. McFarland, attended instead.”
“We need K.T. to hurry up and get out of the way,” the senior intelligence official said.
But some McMaster allies are urging him to abandon this battle because it’s becoming a liability with Trump, who likes McFarland and has openly questioned why she’s leaving.
Other efforts to build his own trusted team have gone much better for McMaster. He appointed Dina Powell, who was already Trump’s senior counselor for economic initiatives, as a deputy national security advisor for strategy. He also brought in Fiona Hill, “a well-respected scholar and sober critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin,” as White House senior director for Europe and Russia and Nadia Schadlow to be senior director for strategy.
These appointments, in addition to McMaster’s own professionalism, have improved the functioning of the NSC considerably since the days of Flynn, according to sources inside and outside of government.
A professional among ideologues
But the NSC is not walled off from the internal power politics of the Trump White House, and staffers reading the tea leaves see they still need to curry favor with people like Bannon and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, if they’re to have their voices heard and survive in what one source described as the White House’s “Game of Thrones for morons.”
Being allied to Bannon is what saved Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the NSC’s 30-year-old senior director for intelligence, handpicked by Flynn for the job. It also might ultimately save Sebastian Gorka, who doesn’t serve on the NSC staff but as a national security aide to the president. It was widely reported that the White House was looking to move Gorka, a former editor at Breitbart and friend of Bannon’s, to a new post — if not out of the government completely — but for now he remains in his current job.
Plenty of controversy surrounds Gorka, thanks to his Islamophobic policy prescriptions and reported association with a far-right group in Hungary, but the real issue is his security clearance, said the source familiar with White House discussions about his role. Gorka was granted an interim clearance, but it has always been suspected that the CIA would deny him a permanent one, the source said. If the clearance doesn’t come through, the White House has limited options: move him to a job where he doesn’t need clearances, leave him in his current post where he can keep being Trump’s television bulldog, or the president can intervene and get him clearance, which would allow Gorka to actually work on national security issues behind the scenes.
McFarland, Cohen-Watnick, and Gorka are all still in their jobs despite McMaster’s efforts to remove them, thanks to pushback from Bannon and even the president. But McMaster has further made enemies by refusing to fire members of his staff that certain administration officials want gone. Lake reported in his story that Derek Harvey, a Flynnstone and the top Middle East advisor on the NSC, compiled a “list of Obama holdovers at the National Security Council who were suspected of leaking to the press.” Bannon and Trump then pushed McMaster to fire them, but he said no, asserting it was ultimately his decision who worked for him.
However, according someone aware of the incident, Harvey’s list, which included people who didn’t work for him in other directorates, had nothing to do with leaking to the press. Instead, the targeted staff had written a memo on key issues in the counter-Islamic State campaign and sent it directly to McMaster (a “flattening of the process” McMaster encouraged), and Harvey became upset that they didn’t run it through him first.
In addition to these cutthroat internal politics, McMaster is “often saddled with impossible tasks,” the intelligence official said.
For example, when Trump or White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer says something that infuriates foreign allies, McMaster is left trying to patch things up.
One example of this is the dust-up over the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile defense system, which Lake reported in his Monday column. Trump stunned officials in South Korea when he told Reuters last month that the South Koreans should pay for the system, ignoring an agreement signed between the two countries that commits the United States to shouldering the cost of deployment after South Korea provides the site and infrastructure. To ease tensions, McMaster quickly told his South Korean counterpart that nothing had changed and that Washington would still pay.
A similar situation arose after Spicer repeated an allegation that the Obama administration had turned to the British spy agency GCHQ for surveillance of Trump during the campaign. This caused an immediate mini-furor in the United Kingdom and led McMaster to offer an apology to the British government for the baseless and harmful allegation. The White House later denied such an apology had been given.
These kinds of situations inevitably put McMaster in an impossible position of trying to mend fences while not being seen as undermining his boss, the president of the United States. Compounding this is the fact that he’s an active-duty three-star general, overseeing a cabinet and military full of four-star generals.
“He struggles to stand up to Mattis and the Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford, which further undermines him with the rest of the principals,” the intelligence official said. And if it appears he’s always turning to the Defense Department for military solutions to problems, it’s largely because the State Department is in disarray and understaffed under Secretary Rex Tillerson, the official added.
Despite these obstacles, McMaster is “holding his own,” the intelligence official said … for now.
This article is cross-posted with Just Security.
Many embedded links here!
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/09/the-knives-are-out-for-hr-mcmaster-trump-bannon-nsc/?utm_content=buffer4c277&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
read this one for even more details/bull S! -
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/us/politics/james-comey-fired-fbi.html
F.B.I. Director James Comey Is Fired by Trump
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and MATT APUZZOMAY 9, 2017
James B. Comey last week during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington.
Credit Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — President Trump has fired the director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, over his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, the White House said on Tuesday.
Mr. Comey was leading an investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
White House Announces Firing of James Comey
The White House announced the firing of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, on Tuesday. It distributed a news release, a letter from President Trump, a letter from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a memorandum about the decision. MAY 9, 2017 Related Article
Go Read the Document here [ https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/09/us/politics/document-White-House-Fires-James-Comey.html ]
“While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau,” Mr. Trump said in a letter to Mr. Comey dated Tuesday.
“It is essential that we find new leadership for the F.B.I. that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission,” Mr. Trump wrote.
Officials at the F.B.I. said they were not immediately aware of Mr. Comey’s dismissal, which Mr. Trump described as effective immediately.
Comey Tried to Shield the F.B.I. From Politics. Then He Shaped an Election.
As the F.B.I. investigated Hillary Clinton and the Trump campaign, James B. Comey tried to keep
the bureau out of politics but plunged it into the center of a bitter election.
In a separate letter released at the White House, spokesman Sean Spicer said that the president informed the director that he has been “terminated and removed from office.”
Memos released by the White House show that Rod J. Rosenstein, the newly sworn-in deputy attorney general, recommended that Mr. Comey be fired over how he disclosed the investigation into Mrs. Clinton.
Mr. Comey broke with longstanding tradition and policies by discussing the case and chastising the Democratic presidential nominee’s “careless” handling of classified information. Then, in the campaign’s final days, Mr. Comey announced that the F.B.I. was reopening the case, a move that earned him widespread criticism.
“The F.B.I. is one of our nation’s most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement,” Mr. Trump said in the statement.
A longtime prosecutor who served as the deputy attorney general during the George W. Bush administration, Mr. Comey came into office with widespread bipartisan support.
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a post on Twitter that Mr. Comey “should be immediately called to testify in an open hearing about the status of Russia/Trump investigation at the time he was fired.”
what an absolute punk .. I know what you are doing, you will not suceed
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/us/politics/james-comey-fired-fbi.html
Great Post F6! ... the best ever . .. ;) thank YOU
yes ,, it is fake, by intent. It was not Obama's intent to lie ..
but to find that out you would have to do a little research and this lie works for you ----so .......you won't research anything
Washington Loves General McMaster, But Trump Doesn't
The national security adviser has lost sway.
The White House says everything's fine.
by Eli Lake
May 8, 2017, 7:44 AM PDT
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-08/washington-loves-general-mcmaster-but-trump-doesn-t
we'll end up with bolton yet ... then we're all going to Cuba.. ;)
Canada Free Press publishes information that cannot be validated and that is anti scientific fact. The information provided should be regarded as speculative opinion or propaganda and cannot be substantiated by fact or evidence. It is among the most untrustworthy sources in the media.
http://www.fakenewschecker.com/fake-news-source/canada-free-press