May 21, 2018: A "Spy" Infiltrates the Trump 2016 Campaign - As Do the Russians!

 

5/21/18: Following his Sunday Twitter tantrum, Donald J. Trump in part gets his way. The Department of Justice agrees to look into whether or not the F.B.I. “infiltrated” his campaign or put a “spy” in strategy meetings or set up a hidden camera to watch Melania daube on her makeup. 

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“Donald Trump had more Russian connections than Aeroflot.” 

Gary Kasparov

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Even the nit-wittiest nitwit could figure this out if they devoted five minutes to cogitation. A source, now revealed as a result of right-wing yapping, “inside” the Trump 2016 campaign, talked to three people. One was George Papadopoulos who has since pled guilty to lying to the F.B.I. 

A second was Carter Page, who shows up in the infamous Steele dossier, allegedly for traveling to Russia and talking to individuals with direct links to Vladimir Putin. Page now admits he did go to Moscow during the 2016 campaign. At first, Page denied telling anyone on the Trump team about his trip. Later he admitted he did. Then he said he didn’t meet with any high Russian officials. 

Then he said, okay, I did. 

Carter Page did travel to Russia during the campaign.

The third individual contacted was Sam Clovis. Clovis described the extent of his contacts with the “spy” during the campaign. “The meeting was very high level; it was like two faculty members sitting down in the faculty lounge talking about research. There was no indication or no inclination that this was anything other than just wanting to offer up his help to the campaign if I needed it.” No cloaks were involved. No daggers. The pair talked in a hotel lobby. Clovis didn’t have a hidden gun or a pencil that could spray chemicals. He had a cup of coffee and a notebook. 

According to Clovis he never bothered with notes. Isn’t that convenient, if you might be investigated! 

Clovis then blew a giant hole in the idea that this source was spying on everyone for the run amok F.B.I. “I’m not going to name the individual, I know exactly who it is...but I will say this: That person had nothing to do with the campaign. They were not part of the campaign.” 

So, it would seem the “spy” did not spy on Trump Sr., or Trump Jr. or Ivanka or even Barron Trump.

 

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“I don’t question Bob Mueller’s honesty or his integrity.” 

ANOTHER RABID DEMOCRAT comes to the defense of Robert Mueller and…Oh wait, he’s a Republican. It’s the man who briefly led the Trump transition team, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. 

In a speech at the University of Chicago, he tells the audience, “Bob Mueller himself is not a partisan, he’s an honest guy, he is a hard working guy, he’s smart and you can’t argue that the investigation hasn’t been effective so far.” 

Trump’s biggest problem, says Christie, including the fact he’s a pathological liar, is Trump. “There’s no way to make an investigation like this shorter,” Christie says he warned the president, “but there’s lots of ways to make it longer. He’s executed on a number of those ways to make it longer.” 

“I don’t question Bob Mueller’s honesty or his integrity,” Christie says finally, “never have, and having worked with him for years, I still wouldn’t.” 

 

* 

“The sad news is propaganda works.” 

SPEAKING AT a conference in New York, former Russian chess champion Gary Kasparov warns that Vladimir Putin will attack our elections again. Putin is not a democratically elected leader, Kasparov says. “He’s a dictator.” For seventeen years, Kasparov notes, the Russians have been trafficking in lies and false stories on the internet and they’re good at what they’re doing. “The sad news is propaganda works,” he told his audience. “Fake news works.” 

Did he believe our president was in the pocket of Putin? “Donald Trump had more Russian connections than Aeroflot,” he replied. “While I believe in coincidences, I also believe in the KGB.”

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: Right-wing news will eventually begin describing Christopher Steele’s dossier as “discredited.” Bob Woodward, in his book Fear, will note that John Brennan, Director of the C.I.A. “said the information,” in Steele’s report, “was in line with their own sources, in which he had great confidence.” (Fear, p. 64.)

July 22, 2018: A Sunday Whine-Fest on Twitter, Plus a Threat of War

 

7/22/18: Sunday turns into a whine-fest when the president starts tweeting about how unfairly he’s being treated by pretty much everyone in the Department of Justice. He even puts the word “Justice” in quotes. 

In this case, Trump is tweet-moaning about the FISA courts and how the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. and the Brownies are all out to get him. But first, they must get Carter Page to get to him. 

Let’s go to the tweets. The president’s Twitter Day begins at 5:28 a.m.: 

Congratulations to @JudicialWatch and @TomFitton on being successful in getting the Carter Page FISA documents. As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of “Justice” and FBI misled the courts. Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam! 

 

A series of Twitter howls punctuates the president’s morning. According to Trump, the FISA courts are rigged. So is the Mueller investigation, and the Steele dossier is fake, and Carter Page should never have been under surveillance. 

Then for good measure, he tweets: “I had a GREAT meeting with Putin and the Fake News used every bit of their energy to try and disparage it. So bad for our country!” 

Now let’s go to the evidence and see how Trump’s tweets hold up. First, the president’s loyal fans should understand that Carter Page was being surveilled under a FISA warrant in 2014. 

That would be before Trump ran for office.

 

Second, the president keeps calling the Mueller investigation a “witch hunt.” Apparently, he never listens to F.B.I. Director Wray, who insisted a few days ago that the investigation was not a witch hunt. (See: 7/18/18.) 

Third, Trump keeps insisting that the F.B.I. and Department of Justice were working to help Hillary Clinton win the election. Even a babbling idiot should be able to figure this out. By the summer of 2016, the F.B.I. was worried because several members of the Trump campaign had had questionable contacts with Russians. Trump’s worst “enemy” in the F.B.I., Peter Strzok, knew an investigation had been launched. Still, no one in the “Justice” Department leaked that story which might have destroyed Trump’s pussy-grabbing campaign for good. 

Fourth, we might note that Trump likes to talk about the “13 angry Democrats” who work for the Mueller team. (Sometimes he goes with “13 very angry Democrats” just to mix it up.) Here a sensible observer might note that the president does not mention the FISA judges’ political backgrounds. All four involved in granting warrants to surveil Page were Republican appointees. Mueller is a Republican. So is Rod Rosenstein, the man in charge of the “witch hunt,” which F.B.I. Director Wray, another Republican, says is a witch hunt only in Trump’s imagination.

 

* 

TRUMP’S BUSY DAY ends before 11 p.m. He dons his bunny slippers (Playboy themed), hunkers down in bed and decides to tweet. 

Hey, why not threaten some other nation with war! No. Not Canada! Not another one of our allies. Trump shows rare restraint. Iran! Yes, Iran! His base will love his bellicose bedtime blather. 

He tap-taps: 

To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS! 

 

With visions of Hiroshima-type mass destruction and “fire and fury” dancing in his head, the President of the United States flicks off the TV and the bedside lamp and drifts off to a contented sleep.

When Trump thinks about war, there are no dead in his story. So we get bluster.

December 9, 2019: Inspector General's Report Find's Russia Probe Was Justified

 

12/9/19: The Inspector General’s report is out regarding the F.B.I. investigation into the Trump 2016 campaign. 

This is the report that is going to prove that everyone in the F.B.I. hated Trump, and hated America, and that a coup was plotted. The “Deep State” was so slick in those days that the “Fake News” New York Times was first to announce, on March 2, 2015, that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a private email server, in violation of State Department rules. 

Way to stick it to Trump!

 

The coup gathered force on July 5, 2016, when the diabolical James Comey, Director of the F.B.I., announced that Secretary Clinton had been “extremely careless” in handling classified information on her private server. 

Another body blow to…Trump!!

 

That investigation was closed in July; but Comey decided to knife Trump in the back again, on October 28, 2016. This time, he announced that the investigation had been reopened and Clinton was under suspicion again. 

Yes, sticking it to….Trump…just ten days before voters went to the polls!!! 

(Sound of diabolical Comey laughter.)

 

Now the report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz is out. When the smoke clears, we learn that the F.B.I. was sloppy in investigating Team Trump. Some of the information they relied on was no good. Some sources were biased. Some were not totally reliable. One agent tampered with an email to make it easier to get a FISA warrant to eavesdrop on Carter Page, a Trump campaign aide. We even learned that Christopher Steele, of Steele dossier fame, had previously had a “personal” relationship with…dun dun dun…Ivanka Trump. 

Meaning: Ivanka was part of the “Deep State?” 

(Sound of diabolical Ivanka laughter.)

 

Politico neatly summed up the main takeaways from the Horowitz report: 

First, the F.B.I. did not use the Steele dossier as the basis for opening its Russia investigation as Trump and his allies have long insisted. The first critical warning came from an Australian diplomat.

Second, the F.B.I. was initially “waved off” when it requested a FISA warrant on Page. The F.B.I. then used the Steele dossier to bolster support for a claim that a warrant was justified. According to I.G. Horowitz, he “did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the F.B.I.’s decision to seek FISA authority on Carter Page.” 

Third, “Lovely Lisa” Page, as President Trump has often portrayed her, and Peter Strzok, “her lover,” did indeed have an anti-Trump bias. They did not lead the investigation. Bill Priestap, head of the F.B.I. counterintelligence division, was in charge. Priestap used his “exercise of discretion in opening the investigation” and “was in compliance with Department and F.B.I. policies.”

 

Again, Horowitz “did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted] influenced his decision.” 

Some agents had a pro-Trump bias. The day after the election a supervisor volunteered to work on any special probe into the Clinton Foundation. He compared Trump’s victory to “watching a Superbowl comeback.” 

As Politico explained, another F.B.I. agent wrote, simply, “Trump!” A colleague replied, “Hahahah. Shit just got real.” Then they added a message from a third agent to their thread: “I saw a lot of scared MFers on…[my way to work] this morning. Start looking for new jobs fellas. Haha.” 

 

They all earned their felonies, fair and square. 

Fourth, Carter Page was the only Trump official under FISA surveillance. None of the six Trump officials convicted of felonies (so far) were illegally surveilled. They all earned their felonies, fair and square. 

Fifth, the F.B.I. had initiated an investigation into Paul Manafort by January 2016, two months before he joined the Trump campaign. Manafort was suspected of money laundering and tax evasion – related to  his payments from corrupt Ukrainian politicians and sleazy oligarchs. 

Sixth, the Carter Page warrant was handled badly and at least one F.B.I. lawyer may have committed a crime in altering documents.

 

Seventh, the F.B.I. dropped Steele as a source, after he revealed information to reporters. But Bruce Ohr, an attorney for the Department of Justice, met with Steele multiple times to discuss findings. The IG’s report finds Ohr “committed consequential errors in judgment.”  

Eighth: The F.B.I. had a source inside the Trump campaign; but that source did not play a role in the Russia probe.

 

* 

“An intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign.” 

AS MIGHT HAVE BEEN EXPECTED, different observers studied the glass and decided it was half full, or spilling over with toxic sludge, or insisted that the glass was a bathtub filled with bootleg gin. 

NBC went with this headline: “Internal Justice watchdog finds that Russia probe was justified, not biased against Trump.” 

Fox News went with: “F.B.I. demons plotted against God’s Chosen One.” (Okay, that’s a joke.) 

Attorney General Bill Barr, that pillar of unbiased rectitude, gets mad at Horowitz, who he put in charge, and tells reporters, “The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the F.B.I. launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.”

 

President Trump goes bonkers, claiming, that the findings are “far worse than anything I would have even imagined. This was an overthrow of government,” he howls. “This was an attempted overthrow, and a lot of people were in on it, and they got caught. They got caught red-handed.” 

Actually, the one agent who tampered with documents got caught if anyone did. As for Trump and his pals? George Papadopoulos, General Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Cohen, and Roger Stone have all since been convicted of felonies of different colors, shapes, and sizes. 

All six lied in service to Donald J. Trump.

    

    

Six felons is a lot.