Trump Fires FBI Director - Attempt to Kill Russia Probe?

My sense of deja vu  of the Watergate era just went off the charts this morning as I learned that Der Trumpenführer has fired FBI Director James Comey.  I have no particular love for Comey who I hold to bear much responsibility for putting Trump in office.  However, he did seem to be pushing to get to the bottom of the Russiagate probe and now - given his firing - to confirm that Trump and his campaign colluded with Russian intelligence and committed treason.  What happens to that probe now is worrisome and it is clear that Trump will do anything to keep the truth from coming out.  The big concern is that Congressional Republicans will continue to put their political party ahead of the nation and a traitor will continue to occupy the White House.  I find the word "coup" coming to mind and the predictions of some that America had less than a year under Trump before he would attempt a coup.  We may be witnessing at this moment.  The most laughable part of the whole situation is that Trump is using "Unfair treatment " of Hillary Clinton as justification - this from the man who chanted "lock her up."  I'm sorry, but that simply doesn't wash.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at this very frightening development.  Here are highlights:

President Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey on Tuesday, at the recommendation of senior Justice Department officials who said he had treated Hillary Clinton unfairly and in doing so damaged the credibility of the FBI and the Justice Department.

The startling development comes as Comey was leading a counterintelligence investigation to determine whether associates of Trump may have coordinated with Russia to interfere with the U.S. presidential election last year. It wasn’t immediately clear how Comey’s ouster will affect the Russia probe, but Democrats said they were concerned that his ouster could derail the investigation.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe, would be the acting director of the FBI. As a presidential candidate, Trump explicitly criticized Comey and McCabe for their roles in the Clinton probe while at other points praising Comey for his “guts.”

“The president has accepted the recommendation of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters in the White House briefing room. The firing is effective “immediately,” he said.

Democrats have long argued that Comey’s decisions in the months and days before the election hurt Clinton’s standing with voters and affected the outcome, but the president and his closest advisers had argued that Comey went too easy on Clinton and her aides.

Just last week, Trump publicly accused Comey of giving Clinton “a free pass for many bad deeds’’ when he decided not to recommend criminal charges in the case.

Democrats immediately linked the dismissal to the Russia probe. . . . . “The decision by a President whose campaign associates are under investigation by the FBI for collusion with Russia to fire the man overseeing that investigation, upon the recommendation of an Attorney General who has recused himself from that investigation, raises profound questions about whether the White House is brazenly interfering in a criminal matter,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. The House committee is looking into Russian interference in the election.

Some Republicans were also concerned. “I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey’s termination,” said Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is also examining Russian meddling.

There were multiple calls by Democrats on Tuesday night for the appointment of a special prosecutor to lead the Russia investigation and take the matter out of the hands of Justice Department leadership.

The senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), however, compared Tuesday’s developments to the Watergate scandal and said the actions “reek of a coverup and appear to be part of an ongoing effort by the Trump White House to impede the investigation into Russian ties and interference in our elections.’’

[M]any Democrats blamed Comey for what they viewed as his unprecedented interference in the election process, but most later came to see him as an independent figure in the Trump administration who would be critical to a fair and thorough investigation of any possible ties between Russia and Trump associates.

My take aways?  1. Trump and company are guilty of collusion with Russian and this is a ham handed effort to kill  the Russiagate probe. 2. If a special prosecutor is not appointed, we will know that Republicans put protecting a traitor and their party ahead of the nation's interests and future.  I have a very sick feeling that the equivalent of a coup has just occurred. It will now be up to foreign intelligence agencies to expose Trump and take him down. 

Did Michael Flynn Involve Trump in His Misdeeds?

Donald Trump and Mike Flynn 

Donald Trump was engaged in a tweet storm yesterday panning the testimony of Sally Yates and James Clapper before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  He also sought to blame Barack Obama for his own stupid allegiance with Michael Flynn.  It was all typical Trump: lies, bluster and disavowal of any personal responsibility.  Behind it all, however, may be real fear that Flynn could take Trump down if he had involved Trump in his foreign dealings and payments - something that a column in Talking Points Memo suggests is a real possibility.  The column also speculates that throughout Trump's campaign, Flynn WAS the foreign policy director and attached to Trump at the hip.  Let's hope the author is correct and that the Flynn affair ultimately implicates Trump and helps take him down.  Here are column highlights:

[T]here’s a backstory that is either implicit or unstated in both stories which I think is critical to understanding the full story.

The aim of the people providing these accounts is clearly to point a finger at Flynn and also note that Trump officials themselves were concerned about it. But what is clear from both stories is that the officials in question were not people from the campaign. They were more experienced Republican foreign policy and national security hands who got involved immediately after Trump was elected. Perhaps some of them had some connection to the campaign. But broadly speaking you’re talking about an entirely different cadre of people who had little or nothing to do with the campaign.

The key thing is that for most of the campaign, certainly the most critical months from early Spring through November, when it came to national security Michael Flynn was the campaign. He was basically it. Not only was he Trump’s sole major foreign policy and national security advisor. Unlike others who have had such a role in the past, Flynn traveled frequently with Trump on the campaign trail and actually featured as a speaker in numerous rallies. In the late Spring and early Summer he even was seriously discussed as a potential running mate. His influence and contact were deep and pervasive.

Why did Flynn continue his on-going contacts with Kislyak after people on the transition warned him off the idea and pressed him on the fact that calls with Kislyak were almost certainly being monitored? The only plausible answer is that Flynn simply didn’t care. And in a sense, why should he have? From his perspective – and not altogether implausibly – in mere weeks everyone who might be monitoring him or be in a position to stand in his way would be working for him.

But here’s the really important thing. We don’t know yet quite what Flynn’s game was – reckless, stupid, crooked or operating with some darker agenda? Trump meanwhile was almost totally ignorant of the most rudimentary knowledge of security and foreign policy. He is also notorious for believing and saying whatever he heard from the last person he talked to.

Let’s assume for the moment the Mr Magoo version of the Trump campaign and presidency (not at all implausible): ignorant, gullible, angry, reckless.

These were months when Flynn was carrying on conversations with the Russian Ambassador; he was acting as a paid foreign agent working on behalf of the Republic of Turkey; he was discussing plans to abduct a US permanent resident and deliver him back to Turkey; he was being paid by a Turkish-American businessman who also had ties back to Russia. On the most generous view, the mix of Flynn’s recklessness and corruption and Trump’s impulsiveness and gullibility leave a high, high probability that Flynn involved Trump in his nonsense.

What we see described in these articles is establishment professionals coming into the campaign just after the election and finding what they clearly saw as a disturbing situation – one which they attempted to rein in or clean up. It seems to have had little effect in the short-run but was likely part of process that ended in Flynn’s ouster less than a month after Trump’s inauguration. But the better part of a year had already passed when Flynn was figuratively and often literally alone with Trump and operating entirely on his own. He was the one with Trump’s ear during the failed Turkish coup, Trump’s repeated attacks on NATO and comments about Putin, during the entirety of the hacking and Russian election interference campaign and Trump’s frequent statements of support of the same. They could start cleaning things up going forward. But a lot had already happened. They couldn’t do anything about that. They probably had little way of finding out even what had happened. That probably generated a lot of anxiety and rightly so.

As I argued back in March, sometimes you cover up not because you know you’re guilty but because you actually don’t know whether you are or not.  Think about it. Trump was flying solo with Flynn for pretty much the entire campaign. If you were them, you’d be worried too.

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.  

Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking

The New York Times is carrying a piece that ought to concern truly patriotic Americans.  It concerns the issue of Russian efforts to throw the 2016 presidential election to Der Trumpenführer and the steps taken by the Obama administration to protect information on possible treason so that it would not be destroyed by Der Trumpenführer's henchmen once they took over control of the executive branch.  The risk remains, of course, that Republicans in Congress will kill any meaningful investigation to get to the truth about Trump/Putin ties.  To far too many Republicans, political party now takes precedence over the good of the nation.  As often noted, I have little doubt that Trump would have rejected Russian assistance.  The man is a dangerous narcissist who throughout his career has deemed himself above the law and willing to engage in corrupt and illegal practices to further his interests. Why anyone would expect him to change is dumbfounding.  Here are article highlights:

In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government. Former American officials say they had two aims: to ensure that such meddling isn’t duplicated in future American or European elections, and to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators.

American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials — and others close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence. Separately, American intelligence agencies had intercepted communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Mr. Trump’s associates.

Then and now, Mr. Trump has denied that his campaign had any contact with Russian officials,  . . . .Mr. Trump’s statements stoked fears among some that intelligence could be covered up or destroyed — or its sources exposed — once power changed hands. What followed was a push to preserve the intelligence that underscored the deep anxiety with which the White House and American intelligence agencies had come to view the threat from Moscow.

As Inauguration Day approached, Obama White House officials grew convinced that the intelligence was damning and that they needed to ensure that as many people as possible inside government could see it, even if people without security clearances could not. Some officials began asking specific questions at intelligence briefings, knowing the answers would be archived and could be easily unearthed by investigators — including the Senate Intelligence Committee, which in early January announced an inquiry into Russian efforts to influence the election.

At intelligence agencies, there was a push to process as much raw intelligence as possible into analyses, and to keep the reports at a relatively low level of classification to ensure as wide a readership as possible across the government — and, in some cases, among European allies. This allowed the upload of as much intelligence as possible to Intellipedia, a secret wiki used by American intelligence analysts to share information.

More than a half-dozen current and former officials described various aspects of the effort to preserve and distribute the intelligence, and some said they were speaking to draw attention to the material and ensure proper investigation by Congress.

Some Obama White House officials had little faith that a Trump administration would make good on such pledges, and the efforts to preserve the intelligence continued until the administration’s final hours. This was partly because intelligence was still being collected and analyzed, but it also reflected the sentiment among many administration officials that they had not recognized the scale of the Russian campaign until it was too late.

But it wasn’t until after the election, and after more intelligence had come in, that the administration began to grasp the scope of the suspected tampering and concluded that one goal of the campaign was to help tip the election in Mr. Trump’s favor. In early December, Mr. Obama ordered the intelligence community to conduct a full assessment of the Russian campaign.

Beyond leaving a trail for investigators, the Obama administration also wanted to help European allies combat a threat that had caught the United States off guard. American intelligence agencies made it clear in the declassified version of the intelligence assessment released in January that they believed Russia intended to use its attacks on the United States as a template for more meddling.

“We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned,” the report said, “to future influence efforts worldwide, including against U.S. allies.”

#NotMyPresident