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US Politics The Mueller Investigation - report is out

This seems like a big deal...


Steve Bannon subpoenaed to testify in Mueller's Russia investigation – report

Steve Bannon has so far avoided the scrutiny of congressional investigators.
The House intelligence committee on Tuesday questioned Steve Bannon, the one-time confidant to Donald Trump. The New York Times reported, meanwhile, that Bannon has been subpoenaed by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, as part of his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The House panel is speeding toward a conclusion of its investigation into Russian meddling and alleged collusion between Trump aides and Moscow.

Mueller’s investigation, which has led to two indictments and two guilty pleas from Trump campaign aides, has shown no sign of flagging. According to the Times, the subpoena for Bannon to appear before a grand jury was issued last week.

A spokesperson for the former White House aide did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bannon lost the backing of key Republican donors and his position at the hard-right Breitbart News after the publication, first reported by the Guardian, of an explosive book on the Trump White House by the journalist Michael Wolff.

The former White House strategist was a key source for the book, in which he was quoted as calling a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Trump aides including Donald Trump Jr and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner “treasonous”, “unpatriotic” and “bad shit”.

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What are the Trump-Russia congressional inquiries?

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The Trump aides believed the Russians at the meeting had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate for president.

“The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers,” Bannon is quoted as saying in the book, Fire and Fury.

“They didn’t have any lawyers. Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.”

Bannon also gave a prescription for how such a meeting should have been set up and said he believed the Russians would probably have been introduced to Donald Trump.

“The chance that Don Jr did not walk these jumos up to his father’s office on the 26th floor is zero,” he said.

The Trump White House was now “sitting on a beach trying to stop a category five” hurricane, he said, adding that Mueller’s investigators would “crack Don Jr like an egg on national TV”.

Bannon’s interview with the House panel was held behind closed doors. It was be his first appearance before any committees investigating Russian interference.

Trump Jr was interviewed by the House intelligence panel in December, behind closed doors and for roughly seven hours. He was pressed in particular on the nature of the meeting at Trump Tower and his contacts with WikiLeaks, which published hacked emails from the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.

Trump Jr reportedly shared with senior Trump officials, including Bannon, details of his correspondence with WikiLeaks. Democrats on the House committee have expressed a desire to hear from Bannon about what he observed, and why he suggested to Wolff that Mueller would focus on money laundering.

Bannon’s name has also surfaced in other aspects of the investigation. The fianc?e of George Papadopoulos, the former foreign policy aide who has been cooperating with Mueller since July, said Bannon was informed by Papadopoulos of his contacts with Russians.

During the transition, Bannon was forwarded an email pertaining to a pending discussion about US sanctions between then Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Michael Flynn, who had been appointed as national security adviser.
Flynn, who was fired last February for misleading vice-president Mike Pence about his communications with Kislyak, reached a plea deal with Mueller in December. He was charged with lying to the FBI.
Prior to the fallout from Wolff’s book, Bannon was also closely connected to Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, billionaire backers of Trump and conservative causes. The Mercers family is a major investor in Cambridge Analytica, a company that contacted WikiLeaks about Clinton’s emails just before it was hired by the Trump campaign.

Bannon, who also told Wolff he knows no Russians, would not be a witness in any investigations, would not hire a lawyer and would not appear on national TV answering questions, recently retained the same lawyer being used by former Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus.
In the explosion of controversy from Wolff’s book, Trump disavowed “Sloppy Steve” and argued there was no evidence of collusion between his presidential campaign and operatives tied to Vladimir Putin.

Bannon rowed back, saying his remarks about the “treasonous” meeting had only referred to Paul Manafort, his predecessor in charge of the Trump campaign who is one of the four aides indicted by Mueller. Manafort has pleaded not guilty to money-laundering charges. A hearing in that case was also scheduled for Tuesday.
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JahSEEuS said:
what are the GOP doing to go "so hard against Mueller"?
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In the news i see here quite a number of GOP representatives seem to be trying their best to discredit him and the investigation, even though he is a republican. But its your country i am just commenting. It does not affect me in anyway i just find US politics atm to be a fucking circus
 
I don't find anything when searching for GOP discredting mueller. Do you have any links? I don't watch most news feeds here and tend to get my information from smaller local sources, so this may be why. I don't really focus on the political shit anyways. It's mostly fluff and nonsense.
 
Well the latest on the witch hunt. It's beginning to look a lot like Salem...

Mueller is cooking and the kitchen is getting hot

My favorite part is that the Fusion GPS cofounder just starts spilling about Russian money laundering out of nowhere. It's sooooo funny! :D

Fusion GPS cofounder Glenn Simpson answered a host of questions about money laundering, Russian organized crime, and whether Trump could be susceptible to Russian blackmail, according to the House Intelligence Committee's transcript of his testimony, which was released Thursday. The result is a wealth of information for congressional and FBI investigators to scrutinize as they probe Russia's election meddling.
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mueller seems like a tightwad.

dispute over fees at one of Trump's golf courses?

But, for real for real, the fact that mueller was part of the law offices representing Jared Kushner is p funny.
 
JahSEEuS said:
mueller seems like a tightwad.
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Pretty redundant, considering he's a republican. :D

Trump was simply reaching for any excuse he could find to fire the guy investigating him, again. Only a guilty person would be so desperate to close down investigations against them. "Nothing to hide nothing to fear" was the common refrain from republicans for more than a decade, until only very recently, so its only fair that we use their own standards against them.
 
Devin Nunes tried to discredit the FBI. Instead, he proved it’s onto something.
The point of the memo written by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and released Friday afternoon was supposed to be to expose corruption at the highest levels of the FBI. But what the memo actually did — albeit surely not intentionally — was exactly the opposite. In a brief 3? pages, Nunes managed to confirm that the investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible ties with Russia has a very solid basis and that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III must keep looking into the case.

As a former special agent for the FBI working on counterintelligence, I used to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants, so I’m familiar with the procedures Nunes implies the FBI abused in this case. To initiate surveillance on former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page in October 2016, the government would have had to demonstrate that Page was “knowingly engaging in clandestine intelligence gathering activities for or on behalf of” Russia. Importantly, the “knowingly” requirement applies only to “U.S. persons” such as Page, not to foreign nationals — which means the government had a slightly higher burden in his case. It takes months and even years to obtain enough relevant evidence for a FISA application, which can include details from physical surveillance, phone and financial records, items recovered from the target’s trash and intelligence obtained from other sources. So the FISA application would probably have outlined the bureau’s efforts going all the way back to 2013, when Page was approached by the FBI, which warned him, based on recordings of Russian intelligence officers, that he was being targeted for recruitment as a Russian spy. (That same year, Page also reportedly wrote in a letter to an academic publisher that he was an “informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin.”) In counterintelligence investigations, this kind of interview would have been intended to “neutralize” the Russians: The idea is that anyone who was being unwittingly developed as a spy, as Page appeared to be, would be dismayed to realize what was happening and would immediately cease further contact with their intelligence contacts.

That means that three years before the FISA surveillance on him began, Page was on notice regarding exactly whom and what he was dealing with when it came to the Russians. For the FBI to get a warrant to listen to his communications later, the bureau would have had evidence that Page remained in contact with individuals he knew were affiliated with Russian intelligence. And the FBI would have had to demonstrate to the FISA court that Page was engaging in behavior that appeared to be facilitating Russia’s intelligence activities. (Those could include things such as frequent and potentially secret meetings with Russian intelligence officers; utilizing tradecraft like communicating in code; or accepting payments from known intelligence sources.) This time period, of course, covered his participation in the Trump campaign: Trump identified Page as an adviser in March 2016 in an interview with The Washington Post, although he had left the campaign in September 2016 following news reports of his connections in Russia. (This means the FBI did not intercept his communications until a month after he stopped working for Trump.) The three years after the bureau first warned Page would have been plenty of time for Russian intelligence to develop him as an intelligence asset and to capitalize on his assessed vulnerabilities, which included his desire to make money and move up professionally.

Nunes’s memo also discloses that the government obtained three renewals of the FISA warrant, which occurred every 90 days after the initial authorization. In order for a judge to allow the surveillance to continue, the government has to demonstrate that the intercepted communications are, in fact, providing foreign intelligence. In Page’s case, the order would have been initially authorized based on the premise that monitoring his communications was necessary to understand what, exactly, Russian intelligence was doing and how Page played a role in those activities. If, 90 days later, the government had not obtained any new information about Page’s contacts and activities and the surveillance had ceased, that would show that Page probably was not working as a spy and that the evidence that had seemed to point in that direction was wrong. Instead, the continued renewals underscore that the government was able to persuade the court that Page continued his contacts and activities.

If Nunes was trying to cast doubt on the basis and motives for the FBI’s interest in Page and in his campaign, he failed miserably. Far from demonstrating that the FBI was out to get Trump, the memo suggests that the Trump campaign could have had an active Russian spy working as a foreign policy adviser. Nunes suggests that the FISA applications were flawed because they included some information supplied by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who was hired by an opposition-research firm funded by the Clinton campaign. But as a matter of law, that shouldn’t have made a difference to the court, especially if the affidavit had plenty of other supporting evidence of Page’s activities. Notably, the memo doesn’t even attempt to argue that Page did not, in fact, have ties to Russia.

Even worse for Nunes, he managed to showcase concrete proof that the FBI was looking into Trump’s Russian connections before they heard from Steele. The memo confirms that Australian intelligence was aware of possible ties between George Papadopoulos, another Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, and Russian intelligence, and that the Australians were alarmed enough to alert the FBI, which opened an investigation in July 2016.

Papadopoulos, of course, pleaded guilty in October to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia and has been cooperating with Mueller’s investigation. So has former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has been charged with failing to register as a foreign agent for Ukraine even though his firm was paid $17.1 million by a Ukrainian political party with ties to Russia. And then there are all the multiple approaches made by individuals connected to Russian intelligence to Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Jeff Sessions. Every one of them has lied when asked about their Russian contacts.

So what the memo reveals about Page is cause enough for concern. And in the context of everything else we know so far, it is downright alarming.

Whether there was ultimately any collusion between Russia and individual members of the Trump campaign, there can be no doubt after the memo that the government had good reason to investigate Russian attempts to place and recruit assets there. Any American who cares about protecting our elections and democratic processes from foreign interference should want no stone uncovered in exposing how successful Russia was in its efforts. Nunes may have thought he was proving the FBI was out to get Trump. Instead, he proved the FBI was right to worry.
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Transcript: Rep. Trey Gowdy on "Face the Nation," Feb. 4, 2018
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-South Carolina, was one of the key authors of the House Intelligence Committee's now-declassified memo about the application under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to surveil former Trump official Carter Page.

Gowdy was tasked by committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes to assess the intelligence that underlies the memo's claims, specifically that federal investigators failed to disclose the origin of information compiled in the so-called "Steele dossier" that formed part of the justification for the surveillance order. Gowdy joined us to discuss what the memo does and doesn't say, and what its impact on the broader Russia probe could be going forward.

The following is a transcript of the interview with Gowdy airing Sunday, Feb. 4, 2018, on "Face the Nation."

MARGARET BRENNAN: Saturday, President Trump tweeted that the memo "totally vindicated Trump" in the Russia probe. We sat down earlier with South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy, a key House Intelligence investigator and asked him if he thought the president had been vindicated.

REP. GOWDY: I actually don't think it has any impact on the Russia probe for this reason --

MARGARET BRENNAN: The memo has no impact on the Russia probe?

REP. GOWDY: No-- not to me, it doesn't -- and I was pretty integrally involved in the drafting of it. There is a Russia investigation without a dossier. So to the extent the memo deals with the dossier and the FISA process, the dossier has nothing to do with the meeting at Trump Tower. The dossier has nothing to do with an email sent by Cambridge Analytica. The dossier really has nothing to do with George Papadopoulos' meeting in Great Britain. It also doesn't have anything to do with obstruction of justice. So there's going to be a Russia probe, even without a dossier.
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This is how everyone should strive to be:
REP. GOWDY: I just-- I-- I see multiple sides of a single issue. And the fact that someone disagrees with me, does not make me challenge their love of the country. It doesn't make me believe that they're corrupt. I've got a lot of friends on the other side of the aisle. We disagree on this issue, but-- but I don't question their love for the country and I don't-- I-- I just-- I don't think the end justifies the means. I think the manner in which we get places matters, and in politics too often winning is the only thing that matters. And look, every hero I have has lost. Every one of them. So losing is not the worst thing in the world. Not knowing what you believe and not caring enough about it to fight for it? That's the worst thing in the world.
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Gowdy is actually somewhat interesting.
He is known for leading the BENGHAZI investigation.
Nunes 'subcontracted' the actual reading of the FISA warrant and underlying intelligence that the memo is (loosely) based on to Gowdy, who is not towing the party line about the memo.

Gowdy, Chairman of House Oversight Committee, surprised everyone (apparently) when he announced that he wasn't seeking re-election after serving five terms. He wasn't very kind in his assessment of politics.

So in this light, Gowdy is more free to speak his mind. And he seems to be speaking it.

Gowdy finally had it with Washington
 
Special Counsel Issues Indictment Against 13 Russian Nationals Over 2016 Election

WASHINGTON The special counsel investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election charged 13 Russian nationals and three Russian organizations on Friday with illegally trying to disrupt the American political process, including efforts designed to boost the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump and hurt that of his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

The indictment represents the first charges by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, for meddling in the 2016 presidential election, the fundamental crime that he was assigned to investigate.
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Trump emphasized in Tweets how these efforts had nothing to do with him and no collusion. It would be refreshing to have a president who at least pretended to care about Russia or other foreign entities interfering with the election process.

You know, like how the Nunes memo exonerated him. Except it didn't.

Hopefully, we will get more individuals elected who care about the integrity of American elections from foreign influence, including Republicans, Democrats, and Third Party Candidates.
 
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Former Trump aide Richard Gates to plead guilty; agrees to testify against Manafort, sources say

This is huge! Rick Gates was indicted with Manafort and when Papadopolous was revealed to be a cooperating witness.

So Mueller handed 13 indictments that no one saw coming. No leaks. Now Gates is flipping (they actually have a prosecutor who "specializes" in flipping witnesses). Trump must be losing his mind. He has no idea what Mueller does and doesn't know. He might have enough for criminal charges without his testimony.

Allegedly real estate is a great way to launder money and the Trumps have lots of Russian buyers.

Manafort is going to trial soon, so the optics of him going in and out of court were going to be bad for Republicans. I can't imagine the convictions are going to be.

(You don't get a deal from prosecutors like Mueller and his team unless you have something to trade. And that has to be backed up by documents, etc.)

This is going to be white-collar crime awesome!
 
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