DEMS SUBPOENA MUELLER REPORT WHAT IS BARR HIDING?
By Emily Tillett
The House Judiciary Committee voted to authorize subpoenas for special counsel Robert Mueller’s full report on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and potential ties between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. The resolution passed Wednesday morning 24-17 in a party line vote. The committee will now also move to subpoena all underlying documents related to Mueller’s findings.
Before Wednesday’s vote, Republicans largely blasted the Democratic-led effort as violating the law, claiming the public release of the full Mueller report would present national security issues as much of the report is expected to contain redacted materials pertaining to grand jury information.
Republican members on the committee also claimed the resolution was a continuing effort to undermine the Trump presidency, with some claiming Democrats were pursuing the subpoenas as an attack on the president.
“As much as Democrats may hate the president, I would hope you love America more,” said Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck. He said that “if love trumps hate” Democrats should afford the attorney general enough time to properly release the findings.
Meanwhile, as Democrats continue to push for transparency, President Trump pushed back, calling out committee Chairman Jerry Nadler for opposing the release of independent counsel Ken Starr’s report on the investigation of former President Clinton.
“With the NO COLLUSION Mueller Report, which the Dems hate, he wants it all. NOTHING WILL EVER SATISFY THEM!” tweeted Mr. Trump on Tuesday.
Committee spokesman Daniel Schwarz said in a statement on Tuesday that the debate in 1998 “was not about Congress receiving evidence” but rather about “what type of material from the underlying evidence in the Starr report should be made public.”
“Our expectation is that Attorney General Barr will be as forthcoming now as Mr. Starr was in 1998,” added Schwarz, saying Barr “should provide the full Mueller report to Congress, with the underlying materials, at which point we will be in a better position to understand what Special Counsel Mueller uncovered during his investigation.”
The House already overwhelmingly voted 420-0 on a non-binding resolution to release the full Mueller report, but Sen. Lindsey Graham blocked a vote on the resolution in the Senate.
As a result of the resolution, Nadler’s committee will also issue subpoenas for a variety of Trump associates. They include former White House Counsel Donald McGahn, former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and former White House Counsel Chief of Staff Ann Donaldson.
They are being subpoenaed as part of the Judiciary Committee’s separate investigation into possible threats to the rule of law by the president.
“Because we may have to go to court to obtain the complete text of the Special Counsel’s report, and because the President may attempt to invoke executive privilege to withhold that evidence from us, it is imperative that the Committee take possession of these documents, and others, without delay,” explained Nadler.
Highlights from the Judiciary Committee vote below:
Nadler pushes for report release
Speaking before Wednesday’s vote, Nadler said in opening remarks that on multiple occasions, he asked Barr “to work with us to go to the court and obtain access to materials.” Nadler claimed however that Barr has “so far refused.”
“I will give him time to change his mind. But if we cannot reach an accommodation, then we will have no choice but to issue subpoenas for these materials. And if the Department still refuses, then it should be up to a judge—not the President or his political appointee—to decide whether or not it is appropriate for the Committee to review the complete record,” said Nadler.
Republicans blast committee probe
Ranking Member Rep. Doug Collins, R-Georgia, meanwhile slammed the committee’s ongoing probe of the president and investigation, saying time would best be spent on issues like the crisis on the Southern border. Collins said the asks for further documents was “reckless, irresponsible and disingenuous.”
“What’s the rush? Spring break probably, we don’t want to wait until May,” Collins suggested of Nadler’s calls for subpoenas as Barr has vowed to testify before lawmakers in early May. He claimed Democrats were simply calling for the subpoenas of documents to make headlines after Mueller didn’t make a determination as to whether Mr. Trump committed obstruction of justice.
“This is great political theater,” he added, arguing that asking Barr to release any grand jury materials was illegal, citing potential national security issues.
Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado echoed Collins, saying the public release could “comprise intelligence sources and methods” that Barr previously expressed concerns about this to the committee.
“As much as Democrats may hate the president, I would hope you love America more,” said Buck. He said that “if love trumps hate” Democrats should afford the attorney general enough time to properly release the findings.
Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas meanwhile urged a subpoena of Robert Mueller himself, saying the committee should let Mueller speak about “whether or not he thinks the report he created should be disclosed without considerations of redactions of classified information.”
Fellow Texan Louie Gohmert blasted Democrats claiming they were the ones who colluded with the Russian government. He called the ongoing probe an “outrageous assault on the office of the president even after the truth has come out.”
“It’s time to go back and clean up the mess that’s been made,” added Gohmert.
Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida agreed with Gohmert, saying Democrats are in denial over Muller’s report, saying the report’s initial release is the the “death rattle of the Democrats’ Russian collusion lie.” He said they’re going through the “stages of grief” in real time over Mueller’s less-than-fruitful findings into obstruction of justice and collusion.
CBS News’ Rebecca Kaplan contributed to this report.
AND YET, PEOPLE STILL TRUST US . . .
THE MEDIA IS OUR ENEMY
(NO, IT’S NOT AN APRIL FOOL’S JOKE.) – Facebook plans to curate ‘high quality’ news for its users from ‘trusted outlets’
Mark Zuckerberg is considering hiring human “editors” to hand-pick “high-quality news” to show Facebook users in an effort to combat fake news — and no, it’s not an April Fool’s joke.
In his ongoing quest to satisfy the political censorship demands of Western governments, Zuckerberg told German publishing house Axel Springer that he is considering the introduction of a dedicated news section for the social media platform, which would potentially use humans to curate the news from “broadly trusted” outlets. Zuckerberg said Facebook might also start paying news publishers to include their articles in this dedicated news section in an effort to reward “high-quality, trustworthy content.”
With social media censorship already at worryingly high levels, who will decide which outlets are “broadly trusted” and which are untrustworthy? What qualifies one outlet as more “trusted” than another? Will Zuckerberg make the criteria public?
Collective punishment? Zuckerberg’s call for internet regulation is aimed at competitors – analyst
Fresh from the anti-climactic Russiagate saga and long-awaited Mueller report, will Facebook penalize all the outlets that incessantly pushed the Trump/Russia “collusion” narrative and hyped fake “bombshells” for more than two years sans evidence, or will the likes of MSNBC and Rachel Maddow automatically earn “trusted” status? The answer to that question is blindingly obvious.
Facebook’s efforts to combat fake news are reminiscent of other recent efforts from apps like NewsGuard, the US government-linked app which “rates” news websites according to their “trustworthiness” and, unsurprisingly, targets alternative media sites which do not strictly adhere to establishment narratives. If recent history is any indicator, Facebook’s own efforts to rate news will also fall directly in line with US government objectives.
The social media giant has been rightly accused of blatant censorship on multiple occasions in recent memory — and there doesn’t seem a way that a group of Facebook-hired editors could be trusted to curate the news for anyone, unless it took some serious steps to address its various biases. In fact, even if it did that, isn’t hiring human editors with their own political biases and preferences to sift through all the available news and select the stories deemed fit for public consumption just an Orwellian idea in the first place?
Facebook should probably already be aware of the pitfalls when it comes to hiring human editors for such purposes. During the 2016 US presidential election, the company’s solution to political bias in its trending news section was to fire the human editors responsible for it. Maybe Zuckerberg thinks this time it will be different? Or maybe, and more likely, this is just another PR effort to placate the pro-censorship crowd on Capitol Hill.
There is no shortage of examples of Facebook censorship at this point. Last year, the platform inexplicably took down the English-language page belonging to left-leaning, Venezuela-based news network Telesur — and deleted the page belonging to Venezuela Analysis, another left-leaning outlet offering commentary critical of Washington’s foreign policy in Latin America. The pages were later restored, but Facebook was not forthcoming with an explanation.
Changes made to Facebook algorithms to combat “fake news” in 2017, saw traffic to multiple socialist and government accountability websites plummeting — including Police the Police (a page exposing US police brutality) and the Free Thought Project (which promotes government transparency). Alternative news websites like Truth-out.org, Democracy Now and Alternet also suffered as a result of those algorithm changes.
More recently, Facebook suspended popular pages run by Maffick Media, which is 51 percent owned by RT’s video agency Ruptly. Coincidentally, the content on those pages is also highly critical of the US government. Funnily enough, Facebook isn’t often caught censoring popular pages whose content is Washington-friendly. The Maffick pages were later restored, but Facebook forced them to include more explicit information about their funding, which in itself is no big deal, but it is a requirement curiously not demanded of US government-funded or linked pages.
ALSO ON RT.COMZuckerberg asks governments for more internet regulation in self-flagellation exercise
Not only has Facebook been accused of censorship, however, it has also been found to be working at the behest of certain governments — but again, only Washington-friendly ones, of course.
The Intercept reported last year that Facebook met with Israeli government officials and complied with orders to delete the accounts belonging to certain Palestinian activists. Facebook quickly bowed to Israel’s demands after threats that it would be forced into complying with the deletion orders by law if it failed to do so voluntarily.
But things don’t look to be getting any better on the Facebook censorship front since then. A journalist for Israeli news outlet +972 Magazine tweeted on Monday that Facebook was now punishing news sites (in the form of lower views) for publishing content that “could be a negative experience” for users — whatever that means. The content in question was an article by the magazine about Gaza’s Great Return march and the casualties inflicted on protesters by the Israeli army.
With such a terrible track record when it comes to political bias and willingness to censor news and information, don’t be surprised if Facebook’s planned “dedicated news section” of “high-quality” information turns out to be a failure.
Danielle Ryan
Big League Politics Editor Patrick Howley: Obama and Brennan’s Crime of the Century Included Coercing A Supreme Court Justice
By
Big League Politics Editor-in-Chief Patrick Howley joined host Matt Locke on the syndicated Conservative Cartel radio show (12-3 PM on Mojo 5-0 Radio) to discuss his landmark piece on the “Crime of the Century” carried out by Barack Obama and Deep State conspirators against President Donald Trump.
It turns out the Russia Collusion Hoax even included the attempted coercion of a Supreme Court justice by two Obama administration intel officials.
READ THE FULL REPORT: HOW OBAMA, HILLARY, AND BRENNAN CARRIED OUT THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY
MSNBC’s Maddow keeps spinning Russian collusion hysteria, even as her OWN NETWORK corrects her
The post-Mueller comedown has been hard for many MSM journalists, but none more so than MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. The prime-time host continued to spin collusion hysteria, even as her own network corrected her live on air.
With Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report clearing President Trump of colluding with Russia to influence the 2016 election, the focus among anti-Trump types in the media and in Washington has now shifted to pushing for access to the full contents of the report, including its underlying evidence. Surely, they argue, there must be a speck of collusion in there somewhere.
Attorney General William Barr, who released a summary of its findings last Monday, has promised to turn over as much of the report as possible, “consistent with applicable law, regulations, and Departmental policies.”
According to Maddow, “it’s hard to believe” that Mueller would allow Barr – a Trump appointee – to pick through the report himself, deciding what passages need redaction. “They wouldn’t leave that to Barr,” she said on Sunday night. But Barr, she continued, is doing that “all by himself.”
Except he’s not. In a letter sent to Congress on Friday, Barr explicitly stated that Mueller is “assisting us” in making these redactions. Even Maddow’s own producers flashed this newsline across TV screens, as Maddow argued the opposite.
In the two years Mueller has been investigating Trump, Maddow has stood out as one of the mainstream media’s most fervent Russiagate conspiracy theorists, starring in her very own detective thriller every night on live TV. Trump, she said, was “curiously well versed” in “specific Russian talking points.” The Kremlin, meanwhile, was running a “continuing operation” to steer the US government from within, and could “flip the switch” at any time if discovered, shutting down the entire US power grid.
As Maddow saw ‘Reds under the bed,’ MSNBC covered Mueller more than any other cable network, mentioning the investigator-turned-savior of democracy almost every day last year.
Could it be that the network’s producers are finally tiring of Maddow’s tinfoil-hat proclamations? If so, it’s about time.
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CNN didn’t get ‘anything’ wrong in Russiagate reporting, host claims. It didn’t?
The host of CNN’s State of the Union, Jake Tapper, tried to defend the network’s coverage of Russiagate, claiming it actually got nothing wrong. The bold claim, however, was challenged by other journalists.
Tapper made the controversial remark while talking to acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney on Sunday.
“I’m not sure what you’re saying the media got wrong. The media reported the investigation was going on. Other than the people in the media on the left, not on this network, I don’t know anybody that got anything wrong,” Tapper stated.
Mulvaney shot back at what he called Tapper’s personal “recollection of history.”
“Face it, the media got this wrong. It’s okay. People get stuff wrong all the time, just not at this level,” he said.
Tapper’s defense of the ‘balanced’ CNN coverage raised a few eyebrows among the journalist community, as some took to Twitter to challenge the claim and bring up embarrassing retractions of the stories on ‘collusion’ the network had to make.
Others pointed out previous statements by Tapper himself.
And even accused him of reporting fake news.
Many users took issue with the overall tone of the coverage, as well as opinions expressed by CNN guests who pushed the conspiracy theory really hard.
Some joked that Tapper’s remark was proof that he was among those viewers who stopped watching CNN as it obsessed over the disproven ‘Trump-Russia collusion’.
ICYMI: Mueller’s collusion delusion: US media is furious their president isn’t a Russian spy (VIDEO)
The dysfunction in American politics has reached the bizarre stage where there is visible anger that President Donald Trump didn’t collude with Russia to take the office.
Russiagate has been a fixture in the news for two years, where the media sold a story that it wasn’t a case of ‘if’ but ‘when’ Special Counsel Robert Mueller would find evidence to prove that Trump was Moscow’s man in the White House.
Unfortunately, Mueller wasn’t playing ball and – having taken the unprecedented approach of considering facts and not wishful thinking – he concluded that there was no evidence of collusion to be found.
So ICYMI looks at how America is dealing with the fact that Trump may have been elected because people thought he was the best option.
For more, follow #ICYMI on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
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