COVER-UP! This is What a cover-up looks like in plain (black and white) terms. I believe this has the potential to eclipse the Watergate scandal, it involves treason, obstruction of justice and collusion with an enemy of state... among other criminality.
Now Devin Nunes says he (won’t) show members of the House Intelligence Committee the “secret” files that he used to try to exonerate Trump and his slanderous and libelous Obama accusations.
The entire Trump election and transition team seems to be complicit in criminal activity, from Nunes to Manafort, to Sessions, to Kushner/Ivanka Trump to Trump Jr. to Bannon to Priebus to Flynn to Roger Stone to Carter Page to Sergey Kislyak to Putin to Trump himself. It’s like a crime syndicate, a treasonous and/or criminal crime syndicate.
Lawyers for President Donald Trump tried to prevent former acting Attorney General Sally Yates from testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on links between Trump campaign staff and Russian officials, according to correspondence first obtained by The Washington Post.
In a series of letters last week, Yates’ lawyer, David O’Neil, accused the Trump Justice Department of trying to silence Yates by asserting that “all information Ms. Yates received or actions she took in her capacity as Deputy Attorney General and acting Attorney General are client confidences that she may not disclose absent written consent of the department.”
www.huffingtonpost.com/...?
Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, says a hearing set for Tuesday with former acting Attorney General Sally Yates — which was canceled by Republicans — would have featured explosive testimony on Michael Flynn’s efforts to "cover up" his conversations with Russia’s ambassador.
www.politico.com/...
But John Dean, a former White House counsel under former President Richard Nixon who was charged with obstruction of justice for his role in Watergate, said it's Trump – not Obama – whose behavior reminds him of the scandal that forced Nixon from office.
Dean pleaded guilty to a single felony count in exchange for cooperating with prosecutors in the Watergate trial. In an appearance on MSNBC Monday, he said the White House is "in a cover-up mode" amid renewed questions about alleged connections between members of Trump's campaign team and Russian operatives.
www.usnews.com/…
Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called for its chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, to recuse himself from "any investigation" into President Donald Trump's campaign and transition team after news of the Republican's secret White House meeting on the issue emerged.
"This is not a recommendation I make lightly," Rep. Adam Schiff wrote in a statement of his counterpart on the committee investigating Russia's inference in the 2016 election. "I believe the public cannot have the necessary confidence that matters involving the President's campaign or transition team can be objectively investigated or overseen by the Chairman."
www.nbcnews.com/…
Sen. John McCain called on House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes to explain his decision to brief President Donald Trump on possible “unmasking” of Trump transition officials, suggesting that Nunes has undermined the credibility of the panel by not first communicating with fellow committee members.
“I think there needs to be a lot of explaining to do,” McCain said Tuesday on "CBS This Morning." “I’ve been around for quite a while, and I’ve never heard of any such thing. Obviously, on a committee like an intelligence committee, you’ve got to have bipartisanship; otherwise, the committee loses credibility. And there’s so much out there that needs to be explained by the chairman.”
www.politico.com/…
“The problem that he’s (Nunes) created is he’s gone off on a lark by himself, sort of an Inspector Clouseau investigation here,” Lindsey Graham said. “The only way this thing can be repaired is he tells his colleagues on the House intel committee who he met with and what he saw and let them look at the same information.”
The South Carolina senator said the series of events revolving around Nunes are “bizarre,”
www.politico.com/…
WASHINGTON ― Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) on Tuesday abruptly canceled all House Intelligence Committee meetings scheduled for this week, according to committee members, raising further questions on whether its investigation into ties between President Donald Trump’s administration and Russia can proceed.
“Not only [has] this investigation sort of had a shadow cast on it, but the committee has been put into suspended animation,” committee member Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) said on MSNBC, confirming previous reports that Nunes, the committee chair, had canceled the meetings.
www.huffingtonpost.com/...?
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statementMonday that Nunes’ actions had “tarnished” his committee chairmanship.
“Speaker [Paul] Ryan must insist that Chairman Nunes at least recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation immediately,” she said. "That leadership is long overdue.”
thehill.com/…
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), another member of the committee, said Nunes’ White House meeting was “the last straw.” She suggested he had “colluded in a desperate attempt to salvage the president’s credibility, after the president’s bogus wiretapping claims were debunked by his own FBI director.”
She told CNN on Tuesday that she believes “there is an effort under way to shut this committee down, by the president.”
“I don’t think he can just recuse himself and still chair the committee,” Speier said of Nunes. “I think that the writing is on the wall. It might make a good spy novel. It doesn’t make a good investigation.”
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said Nunes has damaged the panel’s ability to fairly conduct a probe of Russia’s election meddling last year.
“Chairman Nunes should no longer be anywhere near his investigation, let alone leading it,” he said in a statement.
“For the sake of our duty to independently find the truth, and for the sake of his ability to chair the committee in its other important duties, he should recuse himself from our committee’s Russia investigation.”
thehill.com/…
“This is done because the White House wanted it to be done,” the California Democrat said. “And this is what a cover-up to a crime looks like. We are watching it play out right now.”
If Nunes wanted to view classified materials, Swalwell said, there are secure facilities for doing so at the Capital, making a trip to the White House unnecessary. “If this was done the proper way, they could have brought it over, shared it with both parties of the committee,” he said.
Swalwell also wondered aloud why Nunes has been unwilling to share the source of his information when committee members have “always been on the same team up until now.”
Rep. Eric Swalwell, member of the House Intelligence Committee
www.politico.com/…
Earlier Friday, Intelligence Committee member Rep. Jim Himes, D-Connecticut, accused Nunes of persistently serving "the interests of Donald Trump," but stopped short of calling him to step down from the probe into ties between the Trump White House and Russia.
www.cnn.com/…
Jeremy Bash, who used to be chief of staff at Defense Department and CIA during the Obama administration, told Brian Williams this morning,
“The real story, the real issue here, is not so much about the midnight run by the chairman onto the White House grounds, it’s really that they wanted to cancel the hearing this week.”
“The hearing this week was going to hear from Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general, and I’m told that she had some very interesting things to tell the committee, to tell the public about when she told the White House counsel that Mike Flynn had, in fact, been lying to the vice president. She was only going to be able to speak those things in the context of a congressional hearing, and so the White House and the chairman needed to shut her down. This was an elaborately choreographed gag order on Sally Yates.”
www.politicususa.com/…
Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-CA) call for House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) to recuse himself from the Russia investigation “came as panel staffers speculated on the possible identity of Nunes’ White House source, focusing on Michael Ellis, a lawyer who worked for Nunes on the intelligence panel and who was recently hired to work on national security matters at the White House counsel’s office,”
“A White House official and spokesman for Nunes declined to comment on whether Ellis was involved in providing information to Nunes, as did a spokesman for Schiff.”
www.yahoo.com/…
The White House Counsel’s Office was informed this month that the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, wanted to question Mr. Kushner about meetings he arranged with the Russian ambassador, , according to the government officials. The meetings, which took place during the transition, included a previously unreported sit-down with the head of Russia’s state-owned development bank.
Until now, the White House had acknowledged only an early December meeting between Mr. Kislyak and Mr. Kushner, which occurred at Trump Tower and was also attended by Michael T. Flynn, who would briefly serve as the national security adviser.
Later that month, though, Mr. Kislyak requested a second meeting, which Mr. Kushner asked a deputy to attend in his stead, officials said. At Mr. Kislyak’s request, Mr. Kushner later met with Sergey N. Gorkov, the chief of Vnesheconombank, which the United States placed on its sanctions list after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia annexed Crimea and began meddling in Ukraine.
www.nytimes.com/...
“There’s no question that there was a very serious effort made by Mr. Putin and his government, his organization, to interfere in major ways with our basic fundamental democratic processes. In some quarters that could be considered an act of war.”
— Former Vice President Dick Cheney
www.businessinsider.com/...
Because you can’t say Cover-UP enough times….