Devin Nunes Implicated in Trump Ukraine Effort

Nunes and Parnas.

I have long viewed Rep. Devin Nunes (R) as little better than an agent of Vladimir Putin and someone utterly unfit for office. Like Donald Trump, Nunes uses lies, deceptions and the undermining of political norms to further causes destructive to American democracy and acts like one of Trump's crime syndicate "soldiers." Now, as CNN is reporting, it appears that Nunes was part of the effort to blackmail Ukraine and fabricate dirt on Joe Biden - all of which was/is a criminal conspiracy. Meanwhile, the slimy, amoral Nunes is striving to protect Trump in the ongoing impeachment inquiry.  Nunes needs to be forced from the House Intelligence Committee now investigating improper actions of which he was/is a part.  The GOP increasingly looks to be little more than one large criminal operation. Here are highlights from CNN:  

A lawyer for an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani tells CNN that his client is willing to tell Congress about meetings the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee had in Vienna last year with a former Ukrainian prosecutor to discuss digging up dirt on Joe Biden.

The attorney, Joseph A. Bondy, represents Lev Parnas, the recently indicted Soviet-born American who worked with Giuliani to push claims of Democratic corruption in Ukraine. Bondy said that Parnas was told directly by the former Ukrainian official that he met last year in Vienna with Rep. Devin Nunes.
 Nunes is one of President Donald Trump's key allies in Congress and has emerged as a staunch defender of [Trump] the President during the impeachment inquiry, which he has frequently labeled as a "circus." Nunes declined repeated requests for comment.
 Bondy tells CNN that his client and Nunes began communicating around the time of the Vienna trip. Parnas says he worked to put Nunes in touch with Ukrainians who could help Nunes dig up dirt on Biden and Democrats in Ukraine, according to Bondy.
 That information would likely be of great interest to House Democrats given its overlap with the current impeachment inquiry into President Trump, and could put Nunes in a difficult spot.

Bondy tells CNN his client is willing to comply with a Congressional subpoena for documents and testimony as part of the impeachment inquiry in a manner that would allow him to protect his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
 Parnas' claims that Nunes met with Shokin, which has not been previously reported, add further context to a Daily Beast report that Parnas helped arrange meetings and calls in Europe for Nunes last year, citing another Parnas' lawyer, Ed McMahon.
 Those revelations came to a head on Thursday when Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell raised the Daily Beast story publicly during the impeachment hearing. Parnas, who was indicted on federal campaign finance charges last month, worked with Shokin and Giuliani to push a pair of unfounded claims: that Ukrainians interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Democrats, and that Biden was acting corruptly in Ukraine on behalf of his son Hunter, who sat on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings.
 "Nunes had told Shokin of the urgent need to launch investigations into Burisma, Joe and Hunter Biden, and any purported Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election," Bondy told CNN.
 There is no evidence that the Bidens acted inappropriately. Nor is there evidence to support the conspiracy theory that Ukraine worked with Democrats to interfere in the 2016 election.
 Yet these claims have been a key part of the public defense of [Trump] the President put forth by Nunes and other Republicans during the impeachment hearings this month.
 Bondy tells CNN that Parnas is also willing to tell Congress about a series of regular meetings he says he took part in at the Trump International Hotel in Washington that concerned Ukraine. According to Bondy, Parnas became part of what he described as a "team" that met several times a week in a private room at the BLT restaurant on the second floor of the Trump Hotel. In addition to giving the group access to key people in Ukraine who could help their cause, Parnas translated their conversations, Bondy said. In the weeks since his arrest, Parnas has become disenchanted with Trump and Giuliani, according to Bondy as well as other sources who spoke to CNN. Parnas, these sources say, was particularly upset when Trump denied knowing him the day after Parnas and his associate Igor Fruman were arrested in October. . . . "He believes he has put himself out there for [Trump] the President and now he's been completely hung out to dry," a person close to Parnas told CNN. On Thursday, Bondy promoted the hashtag #LetLevSpeak on Twitter in response to a number of questions about whether Parnas would testify in front of Congress. Bondy tweeted directly at Republican California Rep. Kevin McCarthy Thursday night after McCarthy accused Schiff of blocking important witnesses from testifying, saying "I don't agree with your premise, but please, if you mean what you say, call my client, Lev Parnas. #LetLevSpeak."

Mark Warner: "Enormous Amounts of Evidence’ of Possible Russia Collusion

While Donald Trump continues to lie to the delight of his foul base and today tweeted “I am an innocent man being persecuted by some very bad, conflicted & corrupt people in a Witch Hunt that is illegal & should never have been allowed to start" two leading Congressional Democrats stated very different tales on TV news shows this morning. One was Virginia Senator Mark Warner and the other was Congressman Adam Schiff, each of whom stated that evidence of collusion has been revealed.  Warner backed off from a formal declaration but Schiff felt no such reluctance.  A piece in Politico looks at the development.  Here are highlights:

The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday lawmakers have found "enormous amounts of evidence" into potential collusion between the presidential campaign of Donald Trump and the Russians during the 2016 election.

Mark Warner of Virginia made his remarks in response to an assertion that there is "no factual evidence of collusion" from the Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who is chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

As evidence, Warner cited on NBC's "Meet the Press" ongoing negotiations about Trump Tower and the dump of WikiLeaks material.

"Where that evidence leads, in terms of a conclusion ... I'm going to reserve judgment, until I'm finished," Warner said.

But he added: "There's no one that could factually say there's not plenty of evidence of collaboration or communications between Trump Organization and Russians."

Warner's House Intelligence Committee counterpart, Adam Schiff, said Sunday on CBS‘ "Face the Nation" that there's both "direct evidence" and "abundant circumstantial evidence" of collusion with Russia. Asked Sunday by NBC host Chuck Todd whether a Russia conspiracy without any actual evidence of a crime being committed could lead to impeachment of the president, Warner again said he would wait to reach his conclusion but qualified his statement by looking at history.

"I have never, in my lifetime, seen a presidential campaign, from a person of either party, have this much outreach to a foreign country and a foreign country that the intelligence community, and our committee has validated, intervened, massively, in our election and intervened with an attempt to help one candidate, Donald Trump, and to hurt another candidate, Hillary Clinton," he said.

Warner also said that some of the "key people" the Senate committee wants to talk to are "caught up" in the Mueller criminal investigations.

Are Republicans Already Beginning to Worry About the Judgment of History?

Democrats condemning GOP white washing - will history do likewise?

Yesterday, the Republican members of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee released a report finding that the committee had found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.  The report was released over the protests of Democrat members of the committee and after the Republican majority had refused to interview witnesses and/or review other evidence that might have led to a contrary finding.   Driving home I happened to catch statements of former RNC chair Michael Steele who suggested that history might be far less than kind to these Republicans.  Indeed, in my own mind - and I am a former Republican myself - the House Intelligence Committee Republicans opted to side with possible, if not likely, treason.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at some GOP members of the committee who seem to be trying to cover their despicable behinds.  Here are article excerpts:

The leader of the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation seemed to back off Tuesday from the most surprising finding in the GOP’s report that Russia was not trying to help President Trump, as the panel’s top Democrat trashed the product as a political gift to the White House.

Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.) told reporters Tuesday that “it’s clear [Russian officials] were trying to hurt Hillary [Clinton]” by interfering in the 2016 election and that “everybody gets to make up their own mind whether they were trying to hurt Hillary, help Trump, it’s kind of glass half full, glass half empty.”

That equivalence stands in sharp contrast to the conclusions of a 150-page GOP-drafted report Conaway announced to the news media on Monday that concludes that the intelligence community “didn’t meet the standards” of proof necessary to determine that Russia meddled in the 2016 election with the aim of helping Trump.

His comments came after other panel Republicans, including Reps. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and Thomas J. Rooney (R-Fla.) gave interviews in which they stressed that there was evidence that Russia had tried to damage Clinton’s candidacy.

The report’s findings on Russia’s intentions in interfering is just one area of the document with which Democrats on the panel took issue Tuesday after being presented with it in the morning.

The panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who called the report “not a serious work,” said the document was proof that Republicans were willing only to “go through the motions of an investigation . . . to give the pretense of trying to find the truth.”

Schiff added that the report was “little more than another Nunes memo in long form,” . . . . Democrats accused Republicans of using the Nunes memo to undermine the Russia investigation — a charge they also applied to Tuesday’s GOP report.
 Schiff and other Democrats on the committee released a 22-page “status update” Tuesday night, listing the various witnesses, firms and documents the panel had declined to subpoena or otherwise examine, along with the reasons that each would be relevant to the investigation. It also lays out areas of inquiry that the minority members say the GOP abandoned by terminating the probe earlier than Democrats would have liked. Democratic committee members pledged to forge ahead with the investigation and eventually issue their own report, although they do not have the ability to subpoena witnesses and other information without the panel chairman’s buy-in.

They reserved special vitriol for the GOP’s decision not to more aggressively pursue uncooperative witnesses such as former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, whom Conaway had previously considered holding in contempt.

Schiff said. “This majority doesn’t want to know the answers, and it has set a precedent now that will affect future congresses’ ability to get answers from the executive.”

Like too many Republicans of today, German politicians in the late 1920's ands early 1930's sold their souls to Hitler and the Nazi Party for what they saw as short term advantage.  Long term they sold their souls and have been damned by history and left their descendants  bearing a burden of shame.   I truly do not understand the mindset that predominates within today's Republican Party. 

Hope Hicks, Long Time Trump Aide Resigns After Admitting to Lies

Only a day after she admitted telling "white lies" for Donald Trump while testifying before the House Intelligence Committee, Hope Hicks - Trump's long time associate and until yesterday White House Communications Director - is resigning her position.  It goes without saying that there is lots of speculation over what the "backstory" behind her resignation might be.  Did Trump want her out?  Did her attorneys tell her it was time to bail?  Was the cost of lawyering up in the face of the Russiagate investigation becoming too much? Does she know where the proverbial bodies are buried?  We do know (i) that she sent a memo about making sure damning emails about Russian communications with Trump, Jr., not getting out, and (ii) she played a role in preparing the false statement drafted on Air Force One by Der  Trumpenführer about the Trump Tower meeting with apparent Russian agents.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the swirling questions.  Here are highlights:

We were just speculating as to why President Trump seemed particularly agitated over the past 24 hours, reaffirming his reelection plans and then lashing out at his attorney general. Now we learn (coincidence?) from a New York Times report that longtime confidante Hope Hicks is leaving the White House. When one leaves to pursue other opportunities, but doesn’t identify any, chances are there is a backstory to the departure.

The timing is curious, to say the least. She told the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that she’s told “white lies,” but not on anything “substantive” for Trump. Whether that remark or something else she said in the presence of Trump’s favorite errand boy, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), may have triggered her departure is unknown, nor is it clear on what topics she declined to provide answers. Her resignation also comes the day after Jared Kushner’s day from hell,. . . . four foreign government have spoken about using his financial interests (recall, he’s heavily in debt) to gain influence with the administration. (Might this have been an effort to draw attention away from that fiasco?)

It is hard to believe that Trump, who’s depended on her assistance for years — well before the 2016 campaign — wanted her to go. . . . . but chances are it was she who wanted to leave, not anyone in the White House who wanted her to go. Now, the reason for her decision, if it was her choice, may be innocuous. It’s exhausting working in the White House, especially this one. 

Will her departure matter? On a political level, likely not.  . . . Her departure, however, may be bad news for Trump from a legal standpoint. She is a direct witness to much of the day-to-day goings on in the White House. She was present on Air Force One for a critical episode in the Russia affair. She reportedly was involved in the drafting of a memo that did not accurately recount the reason for the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016. Beyond that we do not know what more she has heard or has knowledge of regarding either “collusion” or Trump’s repeated attempts to throw the Russian investigation off track.

 [S]he has already spoken to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, . . . She also, and this is key, worked with Trump in his real estate business — in fact she knew very little about politics before the 2016 campaign. As Mueller begins to delve deeper and deeper into Trump’s financial affairs and his connection to Russian money, she may have an unusual inside account as to how he operated and the people with whom he interacted.

Democratic Memo Discredits Nunes, GOP

Lost somewhat in the noise surrounding CPAC, the battle against the NRA and the constant lies flowing from the Trump/Pence regime is the release of the Democrat memo that responded to Devin Nunes' fictional and disingenuous memorandum that sought to discredit the FBI and CIA to undermine the serious issues surrounding the investigation into Trump campaign collaboration with Russian intelligence operatives to throw the 2016 presidential campaign to Trump and also undermine American democracy in general.  As expected, the Democrat memo debunks the fictions pressed in the Nunes memo, a memo many believe was drafted with input from the White House.  A column in the Washington Post looks at  the quiet release of an important document.  Here are highlights:

The House Intelligence Committee released on Saturday a redacted version of a Democrat-authored memo rebutting GOP allegations that federal law enforcement agencies used politically-biased information to conduct surveillance on one of the president’s former campaign aides.” The memo, as Democrats promised, does debunk and undermine many of the allegations made in the memo released by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).

[T]he memo from committee ranking member Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) states there was ample evidence to conduct surveillance of Carter Page entirely apart from the dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, including “contemporaneous evidence of Russia’s election interference; concerning Russian links and outreach to Trump campaign officials; Page’s history with Russian intelligence; and … Page’s suspicious activities in 2016, including in Moscow.”

 

Notice that the memo says the suspicious activities included not merely the trip itself but activities in Moscow. If the FBI had detailed knowledge of Page’s activities beyond his bizarre pro-Russia speech, that could provide insight into the interaction between the Trump campaign and the Russian campaign for then-candidate Donald Trump. Those activities reportedly include meeting with Igor Sechin, a close associate of Russian president Vladimir Putin, to discuss energy deals if sanctions were lifted and meeting with a senior Kremlin official who disclosed that the Russians had compromising information on Hillary Clinton and that such information might be released to the Trump campaign. 

 

In short, not only did the dossier play a minor role in obtaining the surveillance of Page, but Page’s own actions provide an extraordinary window into communications from and to the Russians about dirt on Clinton. Do we think Page kept all this to himself when he returned?

The memo confirms that the FBI investigation began on July 31, 2016, well before the receipt of the dossier, and that it was based not only on information about George Papadopoulos’s  efforts to reach out to Russians but also on information about “Russia’s aggressive covert operations to influence our elections, which the FBI was already monitoring.” Schiff goes on to explain that by the time it received the dossier there were “sub-inquiries” into multiple people linked to the campaign. (The exact number of these is redacted.)

While the memo is heavily redacted, it does state that the Justice Department provided additional information in FISA renewals obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborated Steele’s reporting. What is intriguing here is that nearly the entire section supporting that conclusion is blacked out. What parts were confirmed? How were they confirmed? We still don’t know, but the prospect of ample corroboration of the dossier’s allegations (salacious or not) should be extremely troubling to the Trump team.

The memo also states that “Russian agents previewed their hack and dissemination of stolen emails.” Was this a heads-up to Roger Stone? If they were previewing the email release to anyone associated with the Trump campaign, that surely constitutes collusion by anyone’s definition.

In sum, the memo seems to undercut the gravamen of Nunes’s conspiracy theory, namely that the entire investigation was premised on a partisan dossier financed by the Clinton campaign. Even more important, it also hints at a wealth of information not yet revealed that may substantiate ties between the Russians and the Trump campaign. The more of these ties, the more people involved and the more detailed these interactions were, the more likely, of course, is that someone, at some point told Trump or his inner circle about them. If Schiff intended to whet our appetite for more details and confirm the extent of the Trump campaign-Russia ties, he succeeded.

Deputy AG, FBI Director Make Unannounced Visit to Paul Ryan

Rod Rosenstein

As numerous media outlets have reported, GOP Rep. Devin Nunes has done all he can do to sabotage the House Intelligence Committee's Russiagate investigation and appears to be colluding with the White House to obstruct the committee's investigation and perhaps that of special counsel Robert Mueller.  Indeed, at some point one has to wonder when Nunes is going to be indicted for obstruction of justice himself.  His sole agenda is to keep the truth about Trump/Russia collusion and possible money laundering from being revealed. It is in this situation that Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Chris Wray paid an unannounced visit to Speaker Paul Ryan's office.  The focus of the meeting appears to have been about requests from Nunes for sensitive documents that Nunes likely would have turned over to the White House and/or used to further subvert the Russiagate investigation.  Politico looks at Nunes' improper actions:

Nunes (R-Calif) has mounted an aggressive push — with the threat of contempt citations for members of the FBI and Justice Department — to glean more information about how the FBI handled a disputed dossier alleging illicit ties between President Donald Trump and the Kremlin. 

Nunes is seeking details about meetings between FBI officials and those who helped compile the dossier. He also demanded interviews with a slate of top FBI officials. And he's floated the notion of issuing contempt resolutions against Rosenstein and Wray if they fail to comply.

Trump has called the dossier false, even as investigators sought to corroborate some of the allegations within it. But Republicans remain skeptical about whether the FBI used unverified information as it began pursuing its investigation of Trump campaign ties to Russia.

It was not immediately clear what Rosenstein and Wray sought from Ryan. But they've been increasingly at odds with Nunes over his demands to produce documents related to the Russia probe and the use of the dossier. Nunes is also leading a subset of GOP members of the intelligence committee to investigate the Justice Department, with an eye on what some Republicans in Congress have characterized as corruption and political in its top ranks.

But that effort itself has divided Republicans, many of whom are allies of the FBI and are concerned that the escalation of a discrepancy over documents — fanned by Trump allies in Congress and media — could result in lasting damage to the perception of the agency as an independent arbiter of the law.

Remember that both the DOJ and FBI are supposed to be independent agencies not under the thumb of either the White House or members of Congress.  The Washington Post looks at what apparently came out of the meeting.  Here are highlights:

The meeting in Ryan’s offices took place just hours before a deadline Wednesday that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) set for the FBI and DOJ to turn over documents related to how the agencies used information in a now-famous dossier as part of an investigation into alleged ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials. Nunes said in a statement Wednesday night, “After speaking to Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein this evening, I believe the House Intelligence Committee has reached an agreement with the Department of Justice that will provide the committee with access to all the documents and witnesses we have requested.”
 House and Senate Republicans defensive of the president have pointed to the fact that the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid for research that ended up in the dossier as reason to discredit it. Scrutiny of the dossier and the government’s reliance on it are also part of a wider GOP effort to look at whether political bias affected the FBI’s and DOJ’s conduct in a series of Obama-era investigations, including the Clinton email probe. In a letter obtained by Fox News last week, Nunes wrote to Rosenstein that the DOJ’s and FBI’s “intransigence” on those subpoenas “can no longer be tolerated,” accusing both agencies of being “disingenuous at best” with the intelligence committee about the existence of documents they had requested. Other Republicans have criticized Nunes’s past threats to issue contempt citations. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), whose panel is investigating whether allegations of bias at the FBI affected the Clinton email probe, said last month that he was “interested in getting access to the information and not the drama” when asked about Nunes’s contempt threats. Gowdy strongly suggested that Ryan was also critical of Nunes’s efforts. On Tuesday, the founders of Fusion GPS penned an op-ed in the New York Times pushing back on accusations that the dossier had prompted the DOJ’s and FBI’s scrutiny of Trump’s alleged Russia ties, and accusing Republicans in Congress of perpetuating “fake investigations” into their activities.

Nunes needs to be removed from his position on the House Intelligence Committee and needs to be under investigation himself.   As for the comments of Lindsey Graham, a/k/a the Palmetto Queen, in the piece - which I have not quoted - I think it is time that the South Carolina LGBT community gets the goods on Graham, "outs" him, and ends Trump's ability to possibly blackmail him. 

How Bad is the Republican Coverup on Trump and Russia?

GOP Rep. David Nunes and his Senate GOP counterparts continue to sabotage Russiagate investigations.

The last post yesterday looked at an op-ed in the New York Times that focused on the efforts of Congressional Republicans to cover up evidence damaging to Donald Trump and/or Mike Pence and to hide evidence of the real ties that existed between the Trump and/or his campaign and Russia and of collusion to throw the 2016 presidential campaign to Trump.  And that doesn't even begin to address the issues of possible criminal money laundering by Trump entities or the disturbing individuals with whom Trump has routinely done business.  Now a piece in the Washington Post raises questions of just how aggressive have Republicans been in covering up Trump/Russia collusion.  Here are some story highlights:

As we head into 2018, one big, looming unknown is this: Just how far will congressional Republicans go to prevent a full accounting of Russia’s interference in our election and any possible Trump campaign conspiracy with it?

Certain House Republicans are already working to frustrate the House Intelligence Committee’s ongoing investigation. Do Democrats have any recourse? The answer is yes — but within limits.

Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut — the No. 2 Democrat on the House intel committee — said that Democrats are seriously exploring the possibility of issuing a minority report that details (among other things) the degree to which Republicans tried to impede a full investigation, should that end up happening. In this scenario, the public would at least have a clear sense of just how far Republicans went to protect President Trump and his top officials from accountability. Rep. Devin Nunes, a Trump loyalist, may be wielding his influence as chairman of the intel committee to block critical lines of inquiry. Democrats have been alarmed by his tactics, especially the fact that despite his public recusal from the probe, he “never relinquished his sole, unchecked authority” to sign off on — or kill — efforts by Democrats to subpoena top Trump officials for more testimony:

People familiar with the committee’s work estimated that Nunes’s effective veto cost Democrats dozens of requests for interviews and documents that were never sent out, despite repeated entreaties from the minority side.

This includes requests for subpoenas to obtain additional testimony from key figures in the probe who Democrats say were not forthcoming enough in interviews — among them Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. Democrats surmise they might have compelled them to return if not for Nunes’s resistance.

In our interview, Himes confirmed that numerous Democratic requests to bring in witnesses haven’t been acted upon. . . . . Democrats want to ask Trump Jr. about a phone call he held with his father about his June 2016 meeting with the Russian lawyer, which he took in the expectation of receiving dirt on Hillary Clinton supplied by the Russian government. Trump Jr. and his dad discussed this meeting just after news of it broke in July 2017. When questioned about this call by committee Democrats, he invoked attorney-client privilege. Democrats want to subpoena Trump Jr. to compel his testimony, which could shed light on what happened at that meeting and how far Trump has gone to prevent the truth about it from coming out.

It appears Nunes may have killed that effort. Meanwhile, Nunes’s investigative zeal is directed elsewhere: Politico recently reported that Nunes is quietly leading a group of House Republicans in an effort to build a case that senior Justice Department and FBI officials improperly handled the explosive “Steele dossier,” which describes links between Trump and Russia.

Trump today called on the Justice Department to target FBI officials for unnamed acts, generally furthering the narrative — fed by Nunes and conservative media — that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia probe shows Trump is the victim of a corrupt “deep state” plot to reverse the election, and that the perpetrators of that plot should be prosecuted. 

Himes confirmed to me that Democrats want to call Trump Jr. and Sessions back in to ask whether Papadoupoulos communicated to top campaign officials the existence of this Russian dirt on Clinton, and whether that is related to the June 2016 meeting to get said dirt from the Russian government. But it looks unlikely that Republicans will agree, and Himes said that if Republicans do end up frustrating a full inquiry more generally — and keep pushing the narrative of a deep-state coup against Trump — Democrats may issue a minority report detailing what Republicans really did here.

[W]e can empirically evaluate whether Republicans are — or aren’t — making a good-faith effort to interview all the witnesses necessary to establish the full truth about Russian interference and possible conspiracy with it. So far, there is reason for concern that they aren’t.

Republicans may be able to prevent the full truth from coming out, but they cannot prevent the full truth about their own efforts to frustrate an accounting from seeing the light of day. At which point, the Democrats’ recourse will be political — to further the cause of accountability, they will need to win the House in 2018.

Today's Republican Party is seemingly now the party of treason and subversion of American democracy.   

CNN:: Classified Documents Contradict Nunes Surveillance Claims

In addition to the breaking news abut the FISA warrants issued against Trump adviser Carter Page, CNN has a new story that undercuts the claims of GOP House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes seeking to give cover to Der  Trumpenführer's claims that the Obama White House ordered wire tapping of Trump Tower.  Sadly, like most things coming out of the mouths of Donald Trump, Sean Spicer and a host of Trump apologists, the claims of Nunes appear to be lies. Brace yourself for extreme White House efforts to change the topic this morning.  Here are excerpts from CNN:

After a review of the same intelligence reports brought to light by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides have so far found no evidence that Obama administration officials did anything unusual or illegal, multiple sources in both parties tell CNN.

Their private assessment contradicts President Donald Trump's allegations that former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice broke the law by requesting the "unmasking" of US individuals' identities. Trump had claimed the matter was a "massive story."

However, over the last week, several members and staff of the House and Senate intelligence committees have reviewed intelligence reports related to those requests at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

One congressional intelligence source described the requests made by Rice as "normal and appropriate" for officials who serve in that role to the president.

And another source said there's "absolutely" no smoking gun in the reports, urging the White House to declassify them to make clear there was nothing alarming in the documents.

Rice is among the list of witnesses that House and Senate Intelligence officials want to interview as part of its probe into Russian attempts to meddle with the US elections. House Democrats and Republicans on the Intelligence Committee are near agreement on the list of witnesses to interview, with the GOP mostly focusing on people who may have leaked classified information and the Democrats hoping to question Trump associates who may have ties to Russia.

But the House review has been thrown into turmoil after Nunes last month expressed alarm about the unmasking of US persons, including Trump advisors, caught up in incidental collection. He reviewed the documents on White House grounds with the help of White House officials, despite House Speaker Paul Ryan saying Nunes informed him that the information came from a "whistleblower."

Critics said Nunes appeared to be giving political cover to Trump in the aftermath of the president's unsubstantiated tweet last month that Obama ordered wiretaps of Trump Tower to spy on him during the campaign.

Nunes' office has not responded to CNN's request for comment.

Nunes last week abruptly recused himself temporarily from the Russia investigation as the House Ethics Committee announced it is investigating whether he revealed classified materials, but he is still serving as chairman of the panel. 

Nunes needs to (i) be removed from the chairmanship, and (ii) subjected to an FBI investigation since he has (A) arguably released classified information, and (B) was part of the Trump transition.  I continue to believe that beneath all of the smoke there is actual collusion by Trump and/or his campaign with a foreign hostile power.  Impeachment does not begin to be an adequate punishment if these treasonous actions occurred.  

Trump/Russia Collusion - Dwindling Odds of Coincidence

We continue to live in frightening times.  In the White House we have a malignant narcissist who continues to obfuscate, engage in tweet storms of lies, and shout out "fake news" to distract the media, but especially his supporters from the reality that he and his circle of henchmen and cronies may be guilty of treason and colluded with a foreign enemy to throw the 2016 presidential election to himself.  One of the tools?  Fake news of the type he decries orchestrated by Russian operatives in Russia which targeted states he "won" by razor thin margins.  While the Senate Intelligence Committee appears to be trying to conduct  a legitimate investigation of Trump and company, sadly the House Intelligence Committee chair appears driven to protect and collude with the target of the committee's investigation.  Nonetheless, the chances of that all of the smoke revealed so far being mere coincidence is dwindling.  A column in the New York Times looks at this reality.  Here are excerpts:

We are still not conclusively able to connect the dots on the question of whether there was any coordination or collusion between members of Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russians who interfered in our election to benefit him, but those dots do continue to multiply at an alarming rate.

First, and we have to keep saying this because this fact keeps getting obscured in the subterfuge of deflection, misdirection and ideological finger-pointing about what has yet to be proven: It is absolutely clear that the Russians did interfere in our election. This is not a debatable issue. This is not fake news. This is not a witch hunt. This happened.

The investigations, rightly, are seeking to figure out exactly how and to what degree, and those questions obviously depend on knowing more about campaign contacts with Russian meddlers.

We continue to learn of new contacts between people in Trump’s orbit and Russians during the campaign.

t doesn’t truly surprise me that Flynn would want immunity, although according to his own words, requests for immunity can often signal guilt. I am tantalized by this “story” he has to tell. What does that mean? It feeds the beast of speculation lurching around this administration.

Also last week The Times reported:

“A pair of White House officials helped provide Representative Devin Nunes of California, a Republican and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with the intelligence reports that showed that President Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies.”

This signals another area of possible collusion — related not only to what happened during the election but also about the independence and impartiality of the investigation into what happened during the election.

There is something here . . . . To be sure, Donald Trump is a despicable man and an awful president who deserves whatever he gets. He is crude, a liar, a bully and a cheat. He is vainglorious and vengeful.

It is not clear to me that America — and indeed the world — can survive a full-term Trump presidency.

But there are no real winners here, regardless of what the current investigations reveal. Russia has already unveiled an incredible vulnerability in our electoral process — the relatively cheap vehicles of information disclosure and propaganda advancement — and the damage that has already been done to faith in the system will not only be hard to measure, but hard to erase.

If coordination or collusion with the Russians by anyone on the Trump campaign is revealed, just as important is the question of “What then?”

Polls continue to find a strong appetite for the ultimate remedy: Trump’s impeachment. You would get no resistance from me if it ever came to that. But I also understand the order of succession and that, too, gives me pause.

It moves from the zealot Mike Pence, to the weasel Paul Ryan, to anti-abortion crusader Orrin Hatch, to Rex “Russian Order of Friendship” Tillerson, to the former Hollywood producer Steven Mnuchin . . . The list goes on and on.

Yes, an administration without Trump would be less of an international embarrassment and exceedingly more predictable, but these men have all cozied up to Trump or were picked by him, so there is little daylight among them on policy.

[W]e must clear the hurdle of finding out exactly what happened and who was involved. That could take months, if not years.

We must now decide how to process the mounting suggestions of impropriety.

The journalistic caution in me keeps having to write that these could all be coincidences, but the journalistic instinct has learned long ago that coincidence is the albino alligator of political reality: It exists, but is exceedingly rare.

Devin Nunes Is Dangerous

Nunes - Trump co-conspirator?

The efforts by House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes to protect Der Trumpenführer and to keep the American public from learning the truth about Trump's Russia ties have become so extreme that not only is it time for the appointment of a special prosecutor, but it's time that Nunes himself be investigated.  Remember, Nunes was on Trump's transition team and may either have known of or been involved in improper behavior.  Having him chair the committee investigating possible wrongdoing - and treason - is putting the fox in charge of the hen house.  A column in the New York Times looks at the dangerous situation.  Here are excerpts:

Representative Devin Nunes obviously fancies himself Jason Bourne. To sneak onto the White House grounds for that rendezvous with an unnamed source last week, he switched cars and ditched aides, vanishing into the night.

But Senator Lindsey Graham looks at him and sees a different character. Graham said on the “Today” show on Tuesday that Nunes was bumbling his way though something of an “Inspector Clouseau investigation,” a reference to the fantastically inept protagonist of the “Pink Panther” comedies.

I salute Graham’s movie vocabulary. I quibble with his metaphor. While Clouseau was a benign fool, there’s nothing benign about Nunes’s foolishness.

As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Nunes, a California Republican, is a principal sleuth in the paramount inquiry into whether members of the Trump campaign were in cahoots with Russia, and from all appearances, he either doesn’t want to know the answer or has determined it already — in President Trump’s favor.

Democrats are rightly calling on him to recuse himself. They’ve been joined in their alarm by Graham, a South Carolina Republican, and Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican. As Graham summoned the specter of Clouseau, McCain said on “CBS This Morning” that “something’s got to change.”

But Nunes was defiant when asked by reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday whether he would continue to guide that effort, saying, “Why would I not?”  Oh, many reasons.

Let’s start here: The Intelligence Committee isn’t supposed to be a partisan arm of the majority party (though it has behaved that way in the past). And any collusion with the White House is a betrayal of its special oversight role.

When James Comey, the F.B.I. director, appeared before Nunes’s committee to confirm his own agency’s investigation into Trump-Russia ties, Nunes changed the subject to the media’s acquisition of classified information, going on about leaks, leaks, leaks. He sounded more like a plumber than a politician.

And when Nunes gathered reporters around him two days later, it was to say that he’d seen secret documents suggesting that people around Trump may indeed have been subject to surveillance by our government.

This week we learned that Nunes got that information during that rendezvous, details of which he has not provided to his fellow committee members, just as he failed to share the information itself with Democrats on the committee before he went public with it.

All of this is irregular enough to peg him as a puppet of the Trump administration or a complete boob. Either way, he has surrendered his investigation’s integrity — and his own.

Spicer is right that we’re obsessed with Russia, wrong that it’s as random as condiments. We’re obsessed because every signal from the administration and its allies is that they don’t want us looking any further or any closer, and Nunes’s Bourne identity is the most glaring signal of all.

If Trump and his associates have nothing to hide, why all the cloak and dagger? And why such clumsiness?