I understand there are “credibility problems” with McCabe and that’s a subject I intend to dive into further this weekend, but the fact is that his view and his reason for starting investigations directly into Trump is perfectly reasonable considering Trump’s own behavior up to that point, and since that time. In fact, it’s a view that James Clapper just minutes later agreed with.
Before both Clapper and McCabe said this on CNN, former Clinton advisor Paul Begala made the exact same point earlier that day.
Here Begala points out that the story that McCabe “leaked” to the Wall Street Journal was, in fact, an anti-Hillary story about how the FBI was continuing to pursue the Clinton Foundation investigation over the objections of the DOJ. It’s notable that this is entirely inconsistent with someone who is “in the tank” for Hillary or “out to get” Trump. He was fired for not admitting that he was responsible for this leak to the Inspector General, which he eventually did admit by voluntarily going to the IG to correct the record on his own. He didn’t have to do that, and also the rationale for him lying about it doesn’t make sense because as Deputy FBI Director he was allowed under the rules to leak something like that if he wanted to.
Be that as it may, the question has been asked and initiated an investigation by Mueller. As McCabe told Colbert — has there been any evidence in the last two years that shows that it isn’t true?
WASHINGTON — In the weeks after he became the Republican nominee on July 19, 2016, Donald Trump was warned that foreign adversaries, including Russia, would probably try to spy on and infiltrate his campaign, according to multiple government officials familiar with the matter.
The warning came in the form of a high-level counterintelligence briefing by senior FBI officials, the officials said. A similar briefing was given to Hillary Clinton, they added. They said the briefings, which are commonly provided to presidential nominees, were designed to educate the candidates and their top aides about potential threats from foreign spies.
The candidates were urged to alert the FBI about any suspicious overtures to their campaigns, the officials said.
[...]
Trump would have been told, "If you see these kinds of contacts please let us know about them so we can keep you updated on the threat picture," said Frank Montoya, a former FBI counterintelligence agent and supervisor who retired in 2016.
The situation was complicated by the fact that the FBI had already become aware of contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russia, and was beginning to investigate further. Former CIA Director John Brennan has said he told the FBI about a pattern of contacts the CIA observed between members of the Trump team and Russians, and former FBI Director James Comey said the bureau then began investigating in July 2016.
Montoya and other former FBI officials told NBC News the FBI would not have wanted to compromise that investigation by saying too much in the counterintelligence briefing of Trump.
By the time of the warning in late July or August, at least seven Trump campaign officials had been in contact with Russians or people linked to Russia, according to public reports. There is no public evidence that the campaign reported any of that to the FBI.
Holding impromptu interventions in Trump’s 26th-floor corner office at Trump Tower, advisers — including Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and designated chief of staff, Reince Priebus — prodded the president-elect to accept the findings that the nation’s spy chiefs had personally presented to him on Jan. 6.
But as aides persisted, Trump became agitated. He railed that the intelligence couldn’t be trusted and scoffed at the suggestion that his candidacy had been propelled by forces other than his own strategy, message and charisma.
Told that members of his incoming Cabinet had already publicly backed the intelligence report on Russia, Trump shot back, “So what?” Admitting that the Kremlin had hacked Democratic Party emails, he said, was a “trap.”
As Trump addressed journalists on Jan. 11 in the lobby of Trump Tower, he came as close as he ever would to grudging acceptance. “As far as hacking, I think it was Russia,” he said, adding that “we also get hacked by other countries and other people.”
As hedged as those words were, Trump regretted them almost immediately. “It’s not me,” he said to aides afterward. “It wasn’t right.”
On Monday, standing next to the Russian president in Helsinki, Finland, Mr. Trump said he accepted Mr. Putin’s denial of Russian election intrusions. By Tuesday, faced with a bipartisan political outcry, Mr. Trump sought to walk back his words and sided with his intelligence agencies.
On Wednesday, when a reporter asked, “Is Russia still targeting the U.S.?” Mr. Trump shot back, “No” — directly contradicting statements made only days earlier by his director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, who was sitting a few chairs away in the Cabinet Room. (The White House later said he was responding to a different question.)
Hours later, in a CBS News interview, Mr. Trump seemed to reverse course again. He blamed Mr. Putin personally, but only indirectly, for the election interference by Russia, “because he’s in charge of the country.”
In the run-up to this week’s ducking and weaving, Mr. Trump has done all he can to suggest other possible explanations for the hacks into the American political system. His fear, according to one of his closest aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity, is that any admission of even an unsuccessful Russian attempt to influence the 2016 vote raises questions about the legitimacy of his presidency.
After Helsinki MSNBC Analyst Michael Miller reported that since Trump was specifically told about the evidence that Putin ordered the election attack and he insisted on meeting alone with him that Intel Agencies fear he may be a double-agent who provided Putin with classified and sensitive U.S. intelligence.
“One, the fact that the U.S. intelligence had obtained texts and emails of senior Russian officials and made it clear that Putin was involved,” Miller said, “and, two, even more importantly, that there was a human source close to Vladimir Putin who was cooperating with the intelligence community and providing information. That was key to this conclusion that Putin had directly ordered the intervention in the election.”
“That is really the crown jewels of U.S. intelligence, and the fact that it made it out publicly was concerning to me,” Miller said. “I will say, after I found out, after I read that story last night and found that the president has known going back to a year and a half now about what exactly Vladimir Putin did, and he helped him cover up that crime by lying about it it publicly and help him cover up that crime by standing up on Monday and lying about it publicly, and it made U.S. intelligence officials wonder what happened in the meeting.”
Trump insisted on meeting alone with Putin, without any other officials present, and Miller said those conditions would have been highly suspect to anyone who already knew what the Times reported Wednesday night.
“I can’t believe this is something I’m saying about the president of the United States,” Miller said. “But it made me wonder if people are suspicious that he revealed sensitive, classified intelligence, including human source information, to the president of the Russian Federation. That is a real concern that I had after reading the story.”
Bob Woodward explained on the Today show how Trump is a constant threat to national security. “This has not been treated seriously enough,”
Woodward said. “Some of the things Trump did and does jeopardize the real national security. This country does some things in the intelligence world which are so important to protect the country they are astonishing. They are secret. They are called special access programs, and he jeopardizes them.”
The day after Comey was fired Trump shared code-word classified information from Israeli intelligence with Russian Foreign minister Lavrov and then Ambassador Kislyak
President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.
The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.
The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said Trump’s decision to do so endangers cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State. After Trump’s meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and the National Security Agency.
Even worse is that now another year and a half after that Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary claims “she hasn’t seen” the evidence that Russian specifically meddled in the election to help Trump.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Tuesday that she has not seen the U.S. intelligence community’s specific judgment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win.
“I do not believe that I have seen that conclusion,” Nielsen told reporters following a closed-door briefing on election security with members of Congress, though she added that she has "no reason to doubt any intelligence community assessment" in general.
Even though that information was very clearly highlighted in the original intel report that was given to the Trump Team during the transition.
“We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency,” the assessment states.
“We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump,” it states. "We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him."
McCabe’s anecdote that FBI briefers had reported to him that Trump refused to believed that North Korea had developed missiles which could reach the US because “Putin told him” something different is largely backed up by Trump’s Senior Intelligence briefers who came out to publicly to reveal that Trump flies into rages when they give him intelligence reports that he doesn't agree with or chooses not to believe and it's causing a national security crisis.
Multiple officials spoke with Time magazine to warn that the commander-in-chief is endangering U.S. security by disregarding intelligence assessments.
They cited Trump’s “willful ignorance” during briefings.
“What is most troubling, say these officials and others in government and on Capitol Hill who have been briefed on the episodes, are Trump’s angry reactions when he is given information that contradicts positions he has taken or beliefs he holds,” Timereported. “Two intelligence officers even reported that they have been warned to avoid giving the President intelligence assessments that contradict stances he has taken in public.”
During a briefing on a key U.S. airbase on the Diego Garcia atoll in the Indian Ocean, Trump reportedly questioned briefers as to whether the people were nice and the beaches were good.
“Some of us wondered if he was thinking about our alliance with the Brits and the security issues in an important area where the Chinese have been increasingly active, or whether he was thinking like a real estate developer,” on official said.
And that has led to direct dire consequences as NSA Chief Mike Rogers testified that he “hadn’t been given authority to protect the US from Cyber threats” by counter-attacking and In recent weeks Homeland Security has gutted the security task forces that had been assembled to protect our elections prior to the 2020 election.
According to a Wednesday Daily Beast report, the task forces formed in response to Russia’s meddling in 2016 have been gutted. The teams were created primarily to ensure that other countries don’t change American vote counts, and to expose efforts by foreign actors to sway political opinions on social media.
DHS employees are reportedly frustrated that such a critical area of security is being neglected as the White House forces a massive (and disproportionate) amount of energy to be spent at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“We know Russia is going to be engaged. Other state actors have seen the success of Russia and realize the value of disinformation operations,” a DHS official told the Daily Beast. “So it’s very curious why the task forces were demoted in the bureaucracy and the leadership has not committed resources to prepare for the 2020 election.”
Meanwhile, Mike Pence is going out to the EU to berate them for not following along with Trump’s trashing of the Iran Nuclear deal and that split is making Russia practically giddy.
Vice President Mike Pence had a rough time in Europe over the weekend, after leaders gave him the cold shoulder. According to the New York Times, that lackluster response extends beyond the Pence performance.
“Two years of Mr. Trump, and a majority of French and Germans now trust Russia and China more than the United States,” said longtime analyst of German-American relations Karl Kaiser.
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov was elated with the new rift as his country stands to benefit from Trump’s self-made crisis.
Lavrov “happily noted the strains, remarking that the Euro-Atlantic relationship had become increasingly ‘tense,'” the Times reported.
The Treasury Department announced Wednesday that it would lift financial sanctions on Deripaska’s aluminum company, United Co. Rusal, as well as En+ Group plc and JSC EuroSibEnergo in 30 days, after Deripaska agreed to reduce his ownership stake in each of the companies to below 50 percent.
Deripaska, a billionaire aluminum magnate with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, will remain sanctioned and his property blocked.
“Treasury sanctioned these companies because of their ownership and control by sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, not for the conduct of the companies themselves,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.
Mnuchin ignores here that Deripaska may not have less than 50% ownership of these companies, he made this change by selling shares to members of his own charity and family who are likely to vote in concurrence with him on ownership issues although they claim to be “independent.”
Another small portion of Deripaska’s stake will go to Volnoe Delo, a charity he founded, which will be able to benefit financially from the stake, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the exact terms of the agreement aren’t public. The shares will be voted by a third party -- a Russian citizen -- and Deripaska is leaving the foundation’s board.
[...]
According to the person familiar, other terms of the agreement include:
- Deripaska’s ex-wife and ex-father-in-law’s shares will also be voted by an independent third party, but they plan to sell them in due course. Per the latest filing, the two together hold 7.5 percent of EN+.
Lastly, the Nuclear Power-plant deal with Saudi Arabia using a Rosatom which had been originally negotiated by Michael Flynn is still going forward despite legal concerns.
The House of Representatives Oversight Committee report said former national security adviser Michael Flynn and two aides promoted the plan with Tom Barrack, the chairman of Trump’s inaugural committee, and a consortium of U.S. firms led by retired military commanders and former White House officials.
The effort, the report said, began before Trump took office and continued after his inauguration in January 2017 despite National Security Council staff warnings that a proposed transfer of U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia was being fast-tracked around a mandatory approval process in possible breach of the Atomic Energy Act.
John Eisenberg, the top NSC lawyer, had ordered the work halted because of concerns that Flynn could be breaking a conflict of interest law as he advised the consortium while serving on Trump’s campaign and transition team, said the report, which is based on documents and whistleblower accounts.
Administration support for the project, however, appears to have continued to the present, with Trump meeting consortium representatives in the Oval Office last week, the committee report said.
[...]
Working with the U.S. government, the consortium would build dozens of power reactors in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other U.S. Arab allies, according to the IP3 website. In doing so, the project would help restore U.S. influence in the Middle East while boosting regional economic and political stability, according to the website.
“The Cummings report notes that one of the power plant manufacturers that could benefit from a nuclear deal, Westinghouse Electric, is a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, the company that provided financial relief to the family of Jared Kushner,” the Post writes. “Brookfield Asset Management took a 99-year lease on the family’s deeply indebted New York City property at 666 Fifth Avenue.”
- Carter, Reagan, and both Bushes were tougher on Russia than Trump has been.
- Obama crushed Russia’s economy with sanctions in retaliation for Crimea.
- Obama really confronted Putin, threated “Armed Conflict” and planned for a Cyberwar to deter Russia’s election attacks.
- Donald Trump’s administration tried multiple times to end Obama’s Russia sanctions.
- Trump tried to water down congressional sanctions against Russia, whined about them and slow-walked their implementation.
- Trump has so far only implemented sanctions that came from Obama or Congress over Crimea but blocked others over Syria.
- Trump was angry about the ejection of 60 Russian diplomats in retaliation for the nerve-attack in Britain.
- Trump gave Ukraine weapons that they aren’t allowed to use against Russia.
- The fight between U.S. Forces and Pro-Assad Russian Mercenaries wasn’t ordered by Trump.
Russia is getting everything they could possibly ever want from this White House on just about every level starting with the fact that Trump refuses to admit that they’ve committed crimes against the U.S. to his benefit.
If Trump isn’t a Russian asset, how exactly can any of this be explained?
Here are the rest of the daily events for the next month.
- February 12th —
- Trump and Beto plan dueling rallys across the street from each other in El Paso.
- Northam launches a “listen tour” to rehab his image.
- Former Astronaut Mark Kelly launches a campaign for John McCain’s senate seat.
- Mark Meadows isn't overjoyed with the border security compromise since it only has $1.35 Billion in barrier spending and limits CBP detention beds to 40,000. However Fox and Fools celebrates the deal.
- 8 Migrant families sue DHS for $Millions because of separation crisis trauma. [Oh, this is going to go class action.]
- Trump’s ex-lawyer John Dowd claims he knows more than Mueller knows because of the joint-defense agreements. [So that means they saw Rich Gates, Michael Cohen and MIchael Flynn flipping from a mile away?]
- Mitch McConnel supports the border security deal and hopes Trump will sign it. He also attempts a stunt vote on the Green Jew Deal to try and scare Dems.
- Hogan Gidley, whose name still isn't Tidley, says the WH hasn't seen the border deal yet. Trump apparently isn't thrilled. “I can't say I’m happy.” Then he say’s Omar’s apology was “lame” and insincere, and that she should resign from congress or at least leave the Foreign Affairs committee. [As if anything she said was like Steve “Cantaloupe Calves/White Supremacy” King has been spouting for years and gotten away with up until last month.]
- El Chapo is convicted on all charges.
- BBC requests a security review of the Trump rally where their cameraman was assaulted.
- WHCA calls on Trump to condemn violence against reporters. [Good luck with that.]
- Roger Stone’s wife is soliciting donations to his legal defense fund from Gingrich’s email list.
- WH asks Trump rally goers to “be respectful” after attack on BBC Cameraman. [We’re two fracking years into this merde and they JUST NOW decide to say their people should “be respectful”? That’s like hanging up a “Don’t Rape” sign in the dorm, because you finally noticed that’s a THING.]
- Dozens of members of the White Supremacist Prison Gang New Aryan Empire from Arkansas are indicted on Violence, Meth, and RICO charges.
- Senate votes to end debate on the Barr nomination, meaning it cam now more to a floor vote.
- Howard Schultz has a Presidential Town Hall on CNN even though he hasn’t declared he's running for President yet. [So I guess Beto will get the next Town Hall since he hasn't announced either, right?]
- He doesn’t support Medicare-For-All because he claims “You won't be able to keep your doctor” which would only be true if they don’t accept Medicare and nobody makes MediGap plans. He says we should just “fix” the ACA to bring down prices — but that problem is being caused by States who didn't fully implement the ACA.
- He doesn't support wealth taxes.
- He supports Gun Control.
- He claims he grew up in the projects and “doesn’t see color.” [So he can't tell puce from purple?]
- He’s basically a Republican-Lite.
- Trump’s pal and Inauguration Chair Tom Barrack defends the Murder and dismemberment of Khashaggi. Asked about Khashoggi’s murder, Barrack said “whatever happened in Saudi Arabia, the atrocities in America are equal, or worse …” [What!!?]
- Senate Intel Chairman Richard Burr says their probe has found “no collusion”, but Ranking member Mark Warner says he’ll “reserve judgment” until the probe is complete.
- Scott Jennings finally admits Trump's racism after Erin Burnett rolls him a supercut of all the bigoted shit he’s been saying for years now.
- Former CIA Director John Brennan says that finding “Criminal Violations" is not the job of the Senate Intel Committee.
- Feburary 13th —
- Klobachar raises $1 Million in donations after her snowy announcement rally.
- National Debt hits $22 Trillion.
- Trump tweets support for the border security deal.
- After railing against it on Day One, Hannity softens on the deal on Day Two.
- House Dems consider issuing a subpoena for the interpreter notes from Trump's private meeting with Putin. [Trump probably took them and tore them up, which would violate the Presidential Records Act.]
- Santorum on Border Deal: Trump is “clearly not a winner.” [So then “So much winning” is already over?]
- CNN reports that Trump will accept the deal, then use Executive Action for more wall.
- Pence jumps on the Omar bash-wagon. “There should be consequences.”
- Omar [finally] hits back at Trump: “You have trafficked in Hate your whole life.”
- While Pence and Trump are jumping all over Omar, neither one of them has said a thing about Steve King. SHuckabee is the one who condemned King.
- Roger Stone demands a hearing on the conspiracy theory that Mueller tipped off CNN so they could film his arrest. [Yeah, people that are not YOU Roger, don't operate like low-life gangster wanna-bes.] His lawyer claims that received a text from CNN’s Sarah Murray with a link to the indictment at 6:22 am saying was still sealed at that time, but the SCO Office had posted the indictment on their site at 6:17 am. [CNN actually had multiple stake outs in multiple locations that morning.]
- Manafort again says to the court that he didn't lie to Mueller, although he did have a secret meeting at a Cigar Bar with Rick Gates and Kilimnick in August of 2016 on the top of 666 Park Ave. where he gave him inside polling data from the Trump campaign. That would be the campaign sharing election information with a Russian GRU asset. [Collusion!!]
- Senate Homeland Committee delays vote on Trump’s ICE nominee Ronald Vittieto because of a “NeoKlanist" tweet. [Oh vey.]
- Trump gets a new $50,000 Golf Simulator to make his “Executive Time" less sucky.
- Reports are the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov bragged about calling and berating SecState Pompeo over the Skripal Sanctions. [So are guys are taking tongue lashings from Russians after they try to murder someone now?]
- Rep. Ilhan Omar questions Trump envoy to Venezuela Elliot Abrams asking him if he’ll support the same type of death squads and massacres in Venezuela that he previously supported in El Salvador during the 80’s.
- Lobbyist Sam Patten is scheduled to be sentenced in April for being an unregistered foreign agent and straw donor for a Ukranian Oligarch to attend the inaugural. Patten had also worked with Cambridge Analytica’s parent company as well as Manafort, Gates and Kilmnick. [This sentencing date indicates that Mueller doesn't need his cooperation anymore.]
- Unsealed documents involving the Mueller Grand Jury indicate that the subpeona case involving an unknown company which they have been fighting also includes prosecutors for the DC US Attorney's Office.
- House minority leader McCarthy slams Omar without mentioning the 13 years that the GOP ignored Steve King's racist bullshit.
- Tom Barrack apologizes for his disturbing comments dismissing the murder of Jamal Khashoggi
- Tomi Lahren says if Trump signs the Border deal he can “forget about 2020.”
- House Freedom Caucus calls for a clean CR — again — to avoid a “bad border deal.”
- FEMA Administrator Brock Long resigns.
- FEC begins inquiry into $1 Million which was funneled and not reported through Manafort linked Pac.
- GOP Rep Drew Ferguson from Georgia had a racist book about Robert .E. Lee open to a page that talked about how Africans were better off under slavery under a glass display in his office.
- Judiciary Chair Nadler threatens to formally depose Whitaker because several items in his House testimony contradicts other information. Whitaker claimed that Trump didn't lash out at him over Michael Cohen’s guilty plea, when their are several witnesses who say otherwise. He said he hadn’t shared his views of the Mueller investigation with anyone, but he’d also interviewed to be a defense attorney for Trump against Mueller — so how’d that work?
- Federal Judge determines that Manafort lied to Mueller in 3 out of 5 cases mostly involving his communications with Kiliminick and his plea deal agreement is voided which allows him to be sentenced to to the fullest extent of the law.