Skip one to these fifteen. Heh, yeah "some of", yet each add a bit of scent (sense) to this our dwelling on dealing with sleaze. Have only watched all the YouTubes this time.
Blumenthal: There is a credible obstruction case against Trump
The Rachel Maddow Show 1/25/18
Senator Richard Blumenthal talks with Rachel Maddow about the revelation that Donald Trump ordered the firing of Robert Mueller over the summer, and the need to protect the special counsel with legislation.
Trump Is Up For 'Doing It Under Oath' With Mueller
Published on Jan 26, 2018 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert President Trump told reporters he was 'looking forward' to his interview with Robert Mueller. Same. [originally aired January 25, 2018] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRGXdVZSmZk [with comments]
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The Secretive FBI Secret Society Is No Longer A Secret
[y]tq8XzWBadFiU[/yt] Published on Jan 26, 2018 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Newly released text messages between FBI agents show an elaborate plan to joke about creating a secret society. [originally aired January 25, 2018] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8XzWBadFiU [with comments]
Senate to release transcripts on Russian lawyer meeting A US Senate committee plans to release transcripts of interviews with Trump aides who attended a 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42825428
Republicans Claim Surveillance Power Abuses in Russia Inquiry https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/us/politics/republicans-surveillance-trump-russia-inquiry.html Trump and the great GOP abdication Something remarkable is happening in our politics right now. On multiple fronts, it has fallen to Democratic elected officials to step up and defend the integrity and basic functionings of our government — against Republican efforts to pervert and manipulate them in service of the goal of shielding President Trump from accountability. At the same time, in some cases Democrats have escalated their tactics in a kind of guerrilla operation designed to smuggle as much basic information about this great GOP abdication out to the public as possible. Today, I’m told, Sen. Mark Warner (Va.) — the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee — will publicly say that classified information debunks the arguments reportedly made in the now-notorious secret memo by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), which bolsters the idea that the Russia investigation is a Deep-State Coup against Trump. Nunes has made this memo available to members of Congress, in what Democrats charge is a selective cherry-picking of intelligence designed to arm Republicans with talking points to discredit the Russia probe. “Senator Warner will say publicly that unlike almost all of the 200 GOP congressmen who’ve seen the memo, he has actually read the underlying documents,” Rachel Cohen, a spokeswoman for Warner, emailed me this morning. “He is confident that there was nothing improper like what this memo seems to allege.” Nunes, at the urging of Trump’s allies, may soon release the memo, which purports to show that the FBI and Justice Department abused the surveillance process to target the Trump campaign, apparently to show that the Russia probe is an illegitimate abuse of power. The memo by Nunes — the chair of the House Intelligence Committee — reportedly says the application for a FISA surveillance warrant to target campaign adviser Carter Page was improperly based on information from former British spy Christopher Steele that was bankrolled by Democrats. But it appears that the underlying application undermines this case. Warner is prepared to say this today, and the New York Times also reports new information on this front: People familiar with the underlying application have portrayed the Republican memo as misleading in part because Mr. Steele’s information, which was also compiled into a notorious dossier, was insufficient to meet the standard for a FISA warrant. The application, they said, drew on other intelligence that the Republican memo misleadingly omits — but revealing that other information to rebut the memo would risk blowing other sources and methods of intelligence-gathering about Russia. If this is true, then the Nunes memo not only falsifies the role of the “Steele dossier” in securing the warrant; it also self-secures its own cherry-picking against outside scrutiny. That’s because the underlying information that would reveal why the warrant was granted cannot be revealed for national security reasons. In another effort to counter the apparent Nunes disinformation campaign, Rep. Adam Schiff — Nunes’s Democratic counterpart on the House Intelligence Committee — announced that he would produce his own report purportedly debunking the Nunes memo and will ask the committee to allow members of Congress to view it, too, in effect (again) smuggling bits of counter-information out to the public. Meanwhile, the Justice Department released a letter to Nunes arguing that the memo’s release would compromise intelligence operations and would deviate from a “good faith” arrangement on the terms of access to classified info negotiated between the Justice Department, the House Intelligence Committee and House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office. It is unclear whether Ryan has blessed the “release the memo” strategy, but it probably wouldn’t go forward without his tacit approval. Given that the Justice Department says its release would be dangerous and would violate a deal Ryan himself entered into, I asked Ryan’s office today whether he disputes that claim and whether he supports the memo’s release. I got no response. [...] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/01/25/donald-trump-and-the-great-gop-abdication/