[HOT AIR] Thus opens a new can of worms. Assuming there is an order, does this amount to White House interference with an ongoing DOJ investigation?
But a senior White House official said that Donald F. McGahn II, the president’s chief counsel, was working to secure access to what Mr. McGahn believed to be an order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing some form of surveillance related to Mr. Trump and his associates.
The official offered no evidence to support the notion that such an order exists. It would be a highly unusual breach of the Justice Department’s traditional independence on law enforcement matters for the White House to order it to turn over such an investigative document.
Any request for information from a top White House official about a continuing investigation would be a stunning departure from protocols intended to insulate the F.B.I. from political pressure.
Another question: How does this square with the White House’s new position that Congress should investigate wiretapping as part of its Russia probe and that it’ll have no further comment on the matter? Does that mean McGahn is giving up his search for the order, or does it mean he discovered that there is no order and this is his and Trump’s way of punting?
[ENGLISH.ALMANAR.LB] From Colorado’s state Capitol to Trump Tower in New York and the Washington Monument, groups of hundreds of people rallied for President Trump on Saturday, waving "Deplorables for Trump" signs and even carrying a life-size cutout of the president.
The March 4 Trump demonstrations were held around the country, and supporters clashed with generally smaller groups of counter protesters.
In Berkeley, Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,, Mr. Trump’s supporters fought counter-protesters during a march in support of the president. People wearing goggles, cycle of violence helmets, gas masks or with their face half-covered with bandanas are pushing each other, throwing punches and hitting each other with the sticks holding their signs.
Berkeley police said they made 10 arrests including five for battery, four for assault with a deadly weapon (including one with possession of a dagger) and one for resisting arrest.
Paramedics have helped at least two men, one bleeding from the head and the other with cuts on his face, CBS the Socialist paradise of San Francisco ...where God struck dead Anton LaVey, home of the Sydney Ducks, ruled by Vigilance Committee from 1859 through 1867, reliably and volubly Democrat since 1964... reports.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/06/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
So when the riots involved Trump supporters the Berkeley police will make arrests?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/06/2017 11:10 Comments ||
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#2
Yes - they arrest the Trump supporters, in this case Based Stick Man (Kyle Chapman), who will be arraigned tomorrow on 5 felony counts. The local LE were given orders similar to the last AntiFa riot. They, along with the other local tribes were not expecting Trump supporters so show ready to meet force with force. (something I said in an earlier post about gaming out the next 3 scenarios comes immediately to mind) Will be very interesting to see LE RoE during next protest.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
03/06/2017 12:54 Comments ||
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[NYTImes] The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not released any such statement.
Mr. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the F.B.I. broke the law, the officials said.
Or, perhaps because it lays bare just how political the FBI has become...
A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment. Sarah Isgur Flores, the spokeswoman for the Justice Department, also declined to comment.
Mr. Comey’s request is a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president, putting the nation’s top law enforcement official in the position of questioning Mr. Trump’s truthfulness. The confrontation between the two is the most serious consequence of Mr. Trump’s weekend Twitter outburst, and it underscores the dangers of what the president and his aides have unleashed by accusing the former president of a conspiracy to undermine Mr. Trump’s young administration.
Yet in other columns at the NYT and WaPo we read of Mr. Obama setting up an operation to do just that, and that ValJar will be all but living there.
The White House showed no indication that it would back down from Mr. Trump’s claims. On Sunday, the president demanded a congressional inquiry into whether Mr. Obama had abused the power of federal law enforcement agencies before the 2016 presidential election. In a statement from his spokesman, Mr. Trump called “reports” about the wiretapping “very troubling” and said that Congress should examine them as part of its investigations into Russia’s meddling in the election.
Along with concerns about potential attacks on the bureau’s credibility, senior F.B.I. officials are said to be worried that the notion of a court-approved wiretap will raise the public’s expectations that the federal authorities have significant evidence implicating the Trump campaign in colluding with Russia’s efforts to disrupt the presidential election.
Or that there was no collusion, that it was all fake news and phony accusations by the butt-hurt Democrats. That likely would be a worse outcome for the FBI...
One problem Mr. Comey has faced is that there are few senior politically appointed officials at the Justice Department who can make the decision to release a statement, the officials said. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself on Thursday from all matters related to the federal investigation into connections between Mr. Trump, his associates and Russia.
Mr. Comey’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering is certain to invite contrasts to his actions last year, when he spoke publicly about the Hillary Clinton email case and disregarded Justice Department entreaties not to.
It is not clear why Mr. Comey did not issue the statement himself.
He's tired of being a pinball in an arcade game?
He is the most senior law enforcement official who was kept on the job as the Obama administration gave way to the Trump administration. And while the Justice Department applies for intelligence-gathering warrants, the F.B.I. keeps its own set of records and is in position to know whether Mr. Trump’s claims are true. While intelligence officials do not normally discuss the existence or nonexistence of surveillance warrants, no law prevents Mr. Comey from issuing the statement.
It does make you wonder if what Mr. Comey is doing is trying to get off the hook here -- last thing he wants to do is disclose a FISA warrant.
In his demand for a congressional inquiry, the president, through his press secretary, Sean Spicer, issued a statement on Sunday that said, “President Donald J. Trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016.”
Mr. Spicer, who repeated the entire statement in a series of Twitter messages, added that “neither the White House nor the president will comment further until such oversight is conducted.”
A spokesman for Mr. Obama and his former aides have called the accusation by Mr. Trump completely false, saying that Mr. Obama never ordered any wiretapping of a United States citizen. I doubt he ever had to order milk or butter for the White House kitchen either.
“A cardinal rule of the Obama administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice,” Kevin Lewis, Mr. Obama’s spokesman, said in a statement on Saturday.
And if you can't believe the spokes boy for a former president waist-deep in chicanery, just who can you believe?
Mr. Trump’s demand for a congressional investigation appears to be based, at least in part, on unproved claims by Breitbart News and conservative talk radio hosts that secret warrants were issued authorizing the tapping of the phones of Mr. Trump and his aides at Trump Tower in New York.
The claims are speculative unless Breitbart has evidence that they have yet to share. But the notion that this couldn't possibly have happened wears a little thin when we 1) know just how willing FISA was to grant warrants 2) just how politicized the Holder/Lynch DoJ was 3) just how the CIA/NSA deep intelligence state has been wanting to take Trump down and 4) just how politicized Mr. Comey himself is. He can't issue statements about investigations into the Clinton campaign -- not once but twice -- and then claim that he's a spring chicken when it comes to the Trump campaign.
In a series of Twitter messages on Saturday, the president seemed to be convinced that those claims were true. In one post, Mr. Trump said, “I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!”
That's some hyperbole right there: not Obama personally, but perhaps some folks in the White House. We first have to know that FISA did indeed authorize a warrant, and then who got the information, and then how it spread. Knowing that Obama, in his last days, allowed a "loosening of restrictions" on sharing information makes plausible -- not proved, plausible -- that people on the political side of the administration got to see things that they weren't supposed to see.
And it isn't about the Russians. If the wiretappers had access to Trump campaign communications they could have ferreted out a fair bit of what his fall campaign strategy was. If communicated to Hillary's people (and if they were smart enough to use it, which may have been Trump's saving grace), that would be quite the boon to the Democrats. There's your Watergate right there -- remember, Nixon was trying to get info on Democratic party donors.
On Sunday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White House press secretary, said the president was determined to find out what had really happened, calling it potentially the “greatest abuse of power” that the country has ever seen. Yes, "greatest abuse' pretty well sums it up.
“Look, I think he’s going off of information that he’s seen that has led him to believe that this is a very real potential,” Ms. Sanders said on ABC’s “This Week” program. “And if it is, this is the greatest overreach and the greatest abuse of power that I think we have ever seen and a huge attack on democracy itself. And the American people have a right to know if this took place.”
The claims about wiretapping appear similar in some ways to the unfounded voter fraud charges that Mr. Trump made during his first days in the Oval Office.
Except that now we're discovering that they were, indeed, founded. Perhaps you don't want to go there, Mr. Journolist.
Just after Inauguration Day, he reiterated in a series of Twitter posts his belief that millions of voters had cast ballots illegally — claims that also appeared to be based on conspiracy theories from right-wing websites.
As with his demand for a wiretapping inquiry, Mr. Trump also called for a “major investigation” into voter fraud, saying on Twitter that “depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!” No investigation has been started.
Senior law enforcement and intelligence officials who worked in the Obama administration have said there were no secret intelligence warrants regarding Mr. Trump. Asked whether such a warrant existed, James R. Clapper Jr., a former director of national intelligence, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, “Not to my knowledge, no.”
That's not a resounding no. "Not to my knowledge" is one of the standard weasel phrases used in political circles.
“There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time as a candidate or against his campaign,” Mr. Clapper added.
Clapper -- oh yeah, he's the guy who lied to Congress, right?
Mr. Trump’s demands for a congressional investigation were initially met with skepticism by lawmakers, including Republicans. Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said he was “not sure what it is that he is talking about.”
“I’m not sure what the genesis of that statement was,” Mr. Rubio said.
Pressed to elaborate on “Meet the Press,” Mr. Rubio said, “I’m not going to be a part of a witch hunt, but I’m also not going to be a part of a cover-up.”
Fair statement. It's too early yet to know.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/06/2017 00:00 ||
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[6 views]
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#1
From the same set of people who said Benghazi, and the murder of an U.S. Ambassador, was due to a video.
#2
Comedy's credibility went down the toilet after the fix was in with Bill Clinton, Loretta Lynch, and Obama. He has no respect from his FBI agents. Divide and conquer goes on. And this the evil we face today.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/06/2017 0:51 Comments ||
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#3
Alright then, if no one was 'listening in'.... why did Mike Flynn have to step down ?
#10
We can strip a former president of his pension and other perks, right?
Belisarius lost his bodyguards for suspicion of trying to set himself up as king of Italy -- Obama's abuse of national security personnel to conduct a political operation should see him stripped of Secret Service protection.
At the least.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
03/06/2017 11:39 Comments ||
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#11
Unfortunately, the media would use Trump's forcing Comey to resign as another red herring to divert the public attention away from the real issues.
#14
Oh and another thing, The NYT had a front page story back in January that wire tapped data on Trump associates was used as part of the FBI investigation into the Russia thingee.
#16
Unfortunately, the media would use Trump's forcing Comey to resign as another red herring to divert the public attention away from the real issues.
For preemptive surrender to MSM see Dane-geld, results of paying same explained by Rudyard Kipling.
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[NYTImes] The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not released any such statement.
