[Washington Insider] The House Intelligence Committee's top Republican, Rep. Devin Nunes, has a tall list of people he still wants to interview about the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton, and the Russian interference.
The list of 32 names has been submitted to the Democratic majority of the panel, and includes the likes of Sidney Blumenthal, a key Clinton ally, former Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan, and Robby Mook, Clinton's 2016 campaign chairman.
Nunes said Sunday it is imperative to speak with them because of their ties to the infamous Trump dossier, which contained compromising, yet unverified claims about President Trump's ties to Russia. Compiled in 2016, the research effort was conducted by ex-British spy Christopher Steele and was funded in part by Clinton's presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
"Why would people in the Clinton campaign be tweeting out messages about [President] Trump's involvement with Russia? It's because they had the dossier," Nunes said during an interview on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures." "They were promoting this message, this dirt, out there in 2016, and we need to ask these Clinton campaign people where they got it from. Did they get it from Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS the dossier they were paying for or do they get it from some Russian friends?"
The list, which also includes Simpson, stems from an exhaustive roll of names Nunes sent to a GOP task force of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committee's last year, which included Clinton allies, current and former Justice Department and FBI officials connected to the Russia investigation, as well as people who served in the White House or State Department under the Obama administration. There were roughly 42 names in all.
"These names are all-important because we need to know if these people were involved in the chain of custody of the dossier," Nunes said. "The dossier makes claims that this information came from Russians, so all the names that are on this list that we didn't get to last year that still need to be interviewed if we're really looking for Russian collusion we need to know if any of those people were actually talking to Russians on behalf of the Clinton campaign or any other operative."
Wait...WHICH Omar Awan? The former Congressional IT guy from Pakistan who, along with this two brothers, got caught spying on congress members at the bequest of his employer, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz? THAT Omar Awan??"
Or as stated in another comment elsewhere:
OK folks connect the dots. One of the Awan Brothers, in a remote control Tesla, body was burned beyond recognition. No possible determination of a cause of death in Broward County....Debbie Wasserman Schultz? What have you to say about your IT pal? Oh your busy with the Cohen fake testimony show.
If the body was burnt beyond recognition, how do they know it is actually Omar Awan?
[Washington Examiner] Former Attorney General Eric Holder, a confidante of former President Barack Obama and a figure of scorn among congressional Republicans, will not run for president in 2020.
Holder said in a Washington Post op-ed Monday morning that he will instead continue his work, with Obama, on an anti-gerrymandering effort aimed at making districts for the House more competitive, ahead of fast-approaching post-2020 rounds of political line-drawing.
Holder would have faced a crowded field in the Democratic scrum, including a swath of high-profile senators, governors, former Cabinet officials, and others ‐ a fact Holder tacitly acknowledged in his op-ed.
[NYT] WASHINGTON ‐ Intelligence officials who brief the president have warned him about Chinese espionage in bottom-line business terms. They have used Black Sea shipping figures to demonstrate the effect of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. And they have filled the daily threat briefing with charts and graphs of economic data.
In an effort to accommodate President Trump, who has attacked them publicly as "naïve" and in need of going "back to school," the nation’s intelligence agencies have revamped their presentations to focus on subjects their No. 1 customer wants to hear about ‐ economics and trade.
Intelligence officers, steeped in how Mr. Trump views the world, now work to answer his repeated question: Who is winning? What the president wants to know, according to former officials, is what country is making more money or gaining a financial advantage.
While the professionals do not criticize Mr. Trump’s focus, they do question whether those interests are crowding out intelligence on threats like terrorism and the maneuvers of traditional adversaries, developments with foreign militaries or geopolitical events with international implications.
"If Trump tailors it to his needs, that is fine and his prerogative," Douglas H. Wise, a career C.I.A. official and a former top deputy at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said of the daily briefing. "However, if he suppresses intelligence through that tailoring, that is not helpful. He is no longer making informed decisions because he is making decisions based on information he could have had but didn’t have."
Presidents have long shaped their intelligence briefings based on their interests and the issues of the moment ‐ be it a Cold War with the Soviet Union or Al Qaeda and terrorism. Other presidents have also told intelligence agencies to focus more on economics. After his election, President Bill Clinton told his briefers that he wanted more economic information. And during the recession caused by the 2008 financial crisis, President Barack Obama had an economic intelligence briefing created to supplement the daily intelligence briefing.
Mr. Trump, finding traditional intelligence briefings less helpful than his predecessors, reduced the in-person briefings to about twice a week. Those sessions from Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, and Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director, now feature far more charts and visual aids to appeal to Mr. Trump, according to a senior intelligence official.
"President Trump’s economic focus has been evident, including his emphasis on increasing NATO allies’ burden sharing and pressing allies and partners to do more in support of our common interests," said Garrett Marquis, a spokesman for the National Security Council.
The written reports are still delivered daily to John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, who conveys the highlights to Mr. Trump on days when the intelligence chiefs are not at the Oval Office, according to a former official.
#1
Douglas H. Wise, a career C.I.A. official and a former top deputy at the Defense Intelligence Agency
Excuse me for wondering if this isn't some disgruntled former spook talking to NYT hacks to produce an article that concludes the president is a fool...aka more propaganda from the Deep State.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/04/2019 12:16 Comments ||
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#2
.... disgruntled former spook talking to NYT hacks to produce an article that concludes the president is a fool...aka more propaganda from the Deep State.
#3
Since the intelligence agencies failed at their core purpose (predicting unexpected political events) at an almost 100% rate, President Trump is wise to force them to use a more updated and comparable metric.
#5
Specialists (Number 4s in the hierarchy) generally see things from within their soecialty, instead of the big picture. The ise and clever ones figure out how to present the information in a form their generalist/big picture bosses can use, instead of dwelling on all the to-them exciting details. I am very glad to hear that someone in the intelligence hierarchy has figured this out, no matter how much the lower level specialists might resent having to think outside their blinders.
#6
But yes, the New York Times is trying to get mud to stick to the hated commander-in-chief. This paragraph from the piece entirely undermines their point, though:
Presidents have long shaped their intelligence briefings based on their interests and the issues of the moment ‐ be it a Cold War with the Soviet Union or Al Qaeda and terrorism. Other presidents have also told intelligence agencies to focus more on economics. After his election, President Bill Clinton told his briefers that he wanted more economic information. And during the recession caused by the 2008 financial crisis, President Barack Obama had an economic intelligence briefing created to supplement the daily intelligence briefing.
One must conclude either that this president is perfectly normal, or that he is extraordinarily strong willed in getting the agencies to give him what he needs instead of being trained to accept their usual way of doing things.
[NYT] Mr. Nadler and other top leaders in the Democrat-controlled House are proceeding with caution, and believe that any attempt to bring impeachment charges against the president ‐ or even discuss them as a significant possibility ‐ could prompt a political backlash or lend credence to the president’s charge that the investigation is a witch hunt.
"There may be a lot to find," Mr. Nadler said in an interview with The New York Times on Thursday, discussing the need for investigations rather than impeachment for now. "We’ve got to know what we’re dealing with, and it’s not just about paying off hush money to women about affairs."
"It’s about abuse of power. It’s about obstruction of justice. These are more important, more fundamental things," he said.
When asked how far he was willing to go, Mr. Nadler said: "I’ve been in politics a long time, and I am here to defend civil rights, civil liberties, due process and the rule of law. And if I think that impeachment will help that, I will support impeachment. And if I think impeachment is the wrong way to go to that, I will oppose it."
Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, said on "This Week" immediately after Mr. Nadler’s appearance that the chairman’s caution on impeachment was masking his true intentions.
"I think Congressman Nadler decided to impeach the president the day the president won the election," Mr. McCarthy said. "He talks about impeachment before he even became chairman and then he says, ’You’ve got to persuade people to get there.’ There’s nothing that the president did wrong."
#2
Could be telegraphing that there will be nothing substantial coming out of the Mueller probe. Nadler now feels compelled to keep the ball in motion.
#8
We are doing everything we can to keep this at a peaceful and civil level. This will push the middle over to a kinetic solution. They better weigh what they are doing with the future of our nation in mind...
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/04/2019 14:19 Comments ||
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#11
Send them paper with all lines redacted along with a cover letter saying we're using the prior administration's SOPs. We'll get to unredacting the newer stuff when the older stuff is likewise cleaned up.
#12
Oh and let's not forget to appoint a special investigator, using a mirror of Mueller's, for each democrat member of the committee, to uncover all the dirty little things like treason we know they are hiding. Borrow some Texas Rangers, I'm sure they can find SOMETHING criminal on each.
[Washington Examiner] Rep. Ilhan Omar has intensified her claims that some Jewish lawmakers have a dual loyalty to Israel, rejecting criticism from Democratic colleagues that she is engaging in anti-Semitism.
"I should not be expected to have allegiance/pledge support to a foreign country in order to serve my country in Congress or serve on committee," Omar tweeted Sunday afternoon. "I am told everyday that I am anti-American if I am not pro-Israel. I find that to be problematic and I am not alone. I just happen to be willing to speak up on it and open myself to attacks."
Omar, an aggressive first-term Democrat hoping to bring left-wing views to the Foreign Affairs Committee, has drawn rebukes from Democratic leaders after her comments about the U.S.-Israel alliance. Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, who is Jewish, urged her on Friday to apologize for suggesting that Israel supporters "push for allegiance to a foreign country," a claim that he dubbed "a vile anti-Semitic slur."
#6
actually I smell University Marxism is a stronger influence than Islam is Omar's tweets
A real Muslim would have difficulty even conceiving of loyalty to Israel (or the US).
She has the marxist way of mistaking one concept (support) for another (allegiance) and a University bred tendency to crave victimhood status in every other sentence.
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/04/2019 13:03 Comments ||
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#8
Let's not dilly dally around. She's a racist and here's why. Understanding the muzzy fundamentalists hate for Jews comes straight from Moohamhead being rejected as a false prophet in Median.
Meanwhile back at the ranch. The Minnesota fraud news is refusing to cover her islamic rants. Complete blackout on air. Dhimmcrats one and all.
[American Thinker] The press has made a big deal about the new class of Democrats rolling into Congress and beyond, touting their 'diversity,' their 'socialism,' their 'sisterhood.'
Most of us look at that group and see 'extremism,' particularly with the kinds of views they've presented, and the obnoxious gaffes they've blundered into, apologized for or not. They're new, after all.
But there's something different about this batch of Democrats we haven't seen much in the past: The corruption accusations and investigations surrounding virtually all of them, most pretty solid-looking. Here's a short list, starting with a Daily Mail report, via GatewayPundit. :
...What do we have here? Lost taxpayer money. Campaign finance violations. Pocket-lining. Illegal money diversions. Expense manipulations. Marriage fraud.
They've been in office as little as two or three months and we are seeing this?
Most of these are the kinds of crimes you see in old-line machine politicians, the kind who have suppurated in office for too long, and whose final game is to get rich before making the grand getaway. Republicans and Democrats in the past who have been charged with these kinds of things have typically been around awhile.
Now we are seeing the new socialist class getting started right away, all of them viewing government as the right way to get rich. It's always been noteworthy how the socialist societies these people champion abroad have always found ways to form nomenklaturas of designated ruling class members with access to vast wealth and special privileges, courtesy of the state. It's seen in socialist rule worldwide.
...And now the current crop of self-declared socialists is jumping right in, too. The one thing you can say about these corruption allegations among these U.S. Democrats who seek to rule us is that the corruption starts early. We are actually seeing it forming now.
#3
I think it was back in high school when I first wondered why someone would spend millions of dollars got get a job that paid $100K. My innocent young self suspected something else was going on.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[NYT] WASHINGTON ‐ Intelligence officials who brief the president have warned him about Chinese espionage in bottom-line business terms. They have used Black Sea shipping figures to demonstrate the effect of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. And they have filled the daily threat briefing with charts and graphs of economic data.
