Tag: RUSSIAGATE

Maxine Waters: “Impeachment the Only Answer”

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Dems swept up in impeachment frenzy

By Dan Lyman Tuesday, March 05, 2019

Democrats are on a warpath to impeach President Trump, with Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) leading the charge alongside Congressional colleagues Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff.

Waters has hardly modulated her impeachment rhetoric, even when other Democrats did so in the lead up to the 2018 midterm elections.

Now that House Democrats have launched a sweeping probe into the President’s affairs, Waters is doubling down on her wild claims regarding Trump’s alleged misdeeds.

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“Obstruction of justice reality show: Firing Comey, sending coded messages to Manafort & others that he has the power to pardon; lying abt Trump Tower meeting; threatening Cohen’s in-laws; attempting to destroy Mueller,” Waters tweeted. “What more do we need to know? Impeachment is the only answer.”

“For the faint of heart, who’ve been waiting for every “t” to be crossed and every “i” to be dotted, now is the time to demonstrate your patriotism. Support impeachment!”

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During recent comments following the testimony of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, Waters claimed to believe the Trump Foundation is actually a tax evasion front.

“There’s one thing that I think should not be missed that came out of the hearing, and that is how [Trump] directed payments into the foundation to keep from paying taxes,” Waters said. “I think there’s more than we know about at this time.”

“I think that’s an area that should be looked at because I think the foundation has been used by him to avoid paying taxes on money he’s earned.”

A new Quinnipiac poll found that only 35 percent of Americans favor impeaching the President, while an overwhelming 59 percent oppose the idea.

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‘Soft child-porn’ or honest political debate? Take a guess which one YouTube failed to censor

By Robert Bridge

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Despite employing a small army of ‘anti-extremist’ flaggers, YouTube somehow overlooked an entire prison block of pedophiles on its platform. Is the video-sharing site wasting too many resources censoring political content?

Last week, a regular guy named Matt Watson, working at his home computer, shook the wired world to its very foundations by providing convincing evidence that YouTube supports – either wittingly or unwittingly – a pedophile ring that openly preys on the most vulnerable members of society, children.

As Watson demonstrated, not only are these bottom feeders free to comment on videos that feature minors, but they also provide time stamps, presumably for the benefit of the wider pedophile community, indicating exactly when the children can be seen in their most compromising positions. They also actively promote links to porn sites that cater for these twisted minds.

The discovery prompted some of the most popular corporate brands, including Disney and Nestle, to bolt for the emergency exits after it was discovered their ads were running alongside the work of sexually depraved deviants. Needless to say, not the best business model.

Aside from the lewd comments accompanying the videos, which is not overly surprising considering the planet’s high creep factor, one of the most disturbing revelations is how ‘user friendly’ YouTube has become for pedophiles. Watson showed how Google-owned YouTube, through no more than a couple mouse clicks, navigates users to a frolicking playground where the sidebar is loaded with nothing but children-themed videos, a virtual pedophile paradise. But it gets more disturbing.

Once a user has entered this “wormhole,” as Watson calls it, there are no alternative video options available for escaping from it. A user will not even find ‘awareness’ videos, for example, that discuss the threat of child predators. In other words, once the user makes it to YouTube’s children video section it is game over, so to speak, unless he or she physically activates a new search.

The reason that this scandal makes no sense is that YouTube has known about its pedophile problem for years. Back in 2017, advertisers were fleeing the platform for the very same reason they are today – their ads were being featured next to scantily clad girls, as well as the predictable depraved comments. Today, algorithm technology is so advanced that Google Maps, for example, is able to blur out the faces of every single person’s image that is captured by its Google Street View. Yet somehow YouTube appears to be technologically handicapped when it comes to finding ways to combat online pedophiles. Why is that?

READ MORE: YouTube says it ‘accidentally’ shut down conservative channels

One possible explanation is that Google and YouTube, as well as the majority of other IT companies, have become overly attentive to politics at the expense of everything else – and more so ever since Donald Trump ‘stole’ the White House from the Democratic darling Hillary Clinton.

First, it is important to state the obvious: Silicon Valley is to Liberals what Yankee Stadium is to the New York Yankees. In other words, the holy of the holies. To quote Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, Silicon Valley, the home to hundreds of IT companies, is an “extremely left-leaning place.” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, meanwhile, admitted that his company is so liberal that conservative employees “don’t feel safe to express their opinions” in the workplace.

Given this blatant liberal predilection within the industry, who do you think Google and YouTube teamed up with to police its content from ‘extremist’ (i.e. conservative) content? Certainly not far-right groups.

In 2017, YouTube doubled the size of its so-called ‘Trusted Flaggers’ program, which now partners with over 100 organizations, the full member list of the program remains confidential. Among the few members that have been made public, however, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), No Hate Speech and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), they could best be described as ‘extremist’ in their liberal ideology. Meanwhile, as the Wall Street Journal reported, “less than 10 of the slots are filled by government agencies.”

Ironically, given the nature of this discussion, several of those agencies deal with “child-safety” issues.

Conservatives argue that the glaring lack of transparency with regard to the secretive ‘Trusted Flaggers’ program, combined with the IT industry’s well-known liberal affections, explains why so many right-wing and alternative news sites are being either demonetized, downgraded, or outright banned. And since we are talking about private businesses, these organizations have no legal obligation to uphold the Constitution’s First Amendment that guarantees ‘freedom of speech.’ They just casually shrug their shoulders and blame everything on the almighty algorithms. Yet, as even the most technologically handicapped person knows, algorithms were not magically conjured up out of thin air. Human beings, not robots (at least not yet), work tediously to develop them.

As just one example of the Orwellian atmosphere now pervading Planet Google, Jordan Peterson, a professor with a reputation for opposing political correctness, had one of his YouTube videos blocked in over two dozen countries last year. YouTube duly informed him that it had “received a legal complaint” about the video and decided to block it. Just like that!

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Meanwhile, Google can take draconian measures to downgrade RT and Sputnik, for example, over totally unfounded charges related to ‘Russiagate’ hysteria, yet they seem incapable of micromanaging the comments section in kiddie videos.

What this is intended to show is that YouTube does not hesitate to take deliberate steps to intervene in issues that matter most to them, which overwhelmingly seem to be of a political nature. Yet, when the welfare of children is at stake, the mini-surveillance state that the platform has built always goes missing in action, as it has now for many years.

How is it possible that one young man, working alone and without pay, is able to weed out a viper’s den of pedophiles from YouTube’s dungeon? Yet YouTube, with its army of ‘flaggers’ and moderators and government agencies, has failed to filter these miscreants for several years?

The sad reality is that the world of IT is totally consumed with politics, and politics is totally consumed with the world of IT, to the point where society’s most vulnerable are left at risk.

Unfortunately, parents must assume a great deal of vigilance against pedophiles when their children use the video sharing platform because YouTube has obviously dropped the ball on the issue and simply cannot be trusted. Like the rest of the IT kingdom, their heart is in politics, and that is it.

@Robert_Bridge

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Richard Blumenthal: Democrats May Subpoena Full Mueller Report If It’s Not Released

By Josh Hammer

On Thursday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) confirmed that congressional Democrats may seek to subpoena the impending full report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in the event newly confirmed Attorney General William Barr chooses to redact or otherwise only partially release the much-anticipated document.

Bloomberg reports:

“The public will feel rightly that there is a coverup” if details are withheld, [Blumenthal] told CNN Thursday.

Blumenthal, who is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he hopes the Republican-led panel would be among the congressional committees that seek to compel the release of any details that aren’t forthcoming. The subpoenas could seek the full report or even Mueller himself. “A Senate or House committee can subpoena anyone,” he said.

As Bloomberg notes, Mueller is expected to submit his report’s final prosecutorial decisions to Barr as early as next week. Barr, as Attorney General, then retains ultimate discretion as to how to act (or not) upon the report’s conclusions and recommendations.

As Roll Call notes, Barr has been noncommittal as to whether he would permit Mueller to testify before Congress, as well as whether he would resist a hypothetical subpoena for Mueller’s report.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, echoed Barr’s comments last month. As CNN reported, at the time, Nadler told Anderson Cooper at the time: “If necessary, our committee will subpoena the report. If necessary, we’ll get Mueller to testify. The American people need the information here.”

As The Daily Wire reported earlier today, CNN appears to be actively attempting to lower its viewers’ expectations as to what to expect from the Mueller report’s impending release:

Asked by “New Day” host Alisyn Camerota Wednesday if he believed the Mueller investigation would find “enough” to take down Trump, former National Intelligence Director and rabid anti-Trump CNN analyst James Clapper attempted to temper the audience’s expectations.

“That’s the big question,” Clapper said. …”I think the hope is that the Mueller investigation will clear the air on this issue once and for all. I’m really not sure it will, and the investigation, when completed, could turn out to be quite anti-climactic and not draw a conclusion about that.”

The Mueller investigation has been dominating news cycles for much of the past week, due in no small part to the firestorm caused by fired former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s remarkable “60 Minutes” interview with Scott Pelley, in which McCabe claims that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had openly discussed the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment after President Trump’s firing of then-FBI Director James Comey. Last week, The Daily Wire’s Emily Zanotti reported:

The New York Times reports that McCabe claims “top Justice Department officials were so alarmed by President Trump’s decision in May 2017 to fire James B. Comey, the bureau’s director,” that they reached out to individual Cabinet members to judge their receptiveness to triggering the removal clause of the 25th Amendment, which allows the Cabinet to “vote out” a president who is incapacitated or otherwise unable to fulfill the duties of his job.

McCabe also claims that Comey’s firing “prompted Mr. McCabe to order the bureau’s team investigating Russia’s election interference to expand their scope to also investigate whether Mr. Trump had obstructed justice.”

 

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Justice Department preparing for Mueller report as early as next week

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By Evan Perez, Laura Jarrett and Katelyn Polantz,

Attorney General Bill Barr is preparing to announce as early as next week the completion of special counsel Robert Mueller‘s Russia investigation, with plans for Barr to submit to Congress soon after a summary of Mueller’s confidential report, according to people familiar with the plans.

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The preparations are the clearest indication yet that Mueller is nearly done with his almost two-year investigation.
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The precise timing of the announcement is subject to change.
The scope and contours of what Barr will send to Congress remain unclear. Also unclear is how long it will take Justice officials to prepare what will be submitted to lawmakers.
But with President Donald Trump soon to travel overseas for a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Justice officials are mindful of not interfering with the White House’s diplomatic efforts, which could impact the timing.
The Justice Department and the special counsel’s office declined to comment.
Barr has said that he wants to be as “transparent” as possible with Congress and the public, “consistent with the rules and the law.”
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Under the special counsel regulations, Mueller must submit a “confidential” report to the attorney general at the conclusion of his work, but the rules don’t require it to be shared with Congress, or by extension, the public. And, as Barr has made clear, the Justice Department generally guards against publicizing “derogatory” information about uncharged individuals.
As a result, one of the most pressing questions Barr will face in the coming weeks is the extent to which Mueller’s findings should be disclosed to Congress.
Michael Cohen won't have to report to prison until May, judge rules

Michael Cohen won’t have to report to prison until May, judge rules
The regulations require Mueller to explain in his report all decisions to prosecute or not prosecute matters under scrutiny. Barr would also need to inform Congress if the Justice Department prevented the special counsel team from pursuing any investigative steps.
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Trump said Wednesday that it’s “totally up to Bill Barr” as to whether Mueller’s report comes out while he is overseas in Vietnam next week.
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“That’ll be totally up to the new attorney general. He’s a tremendous man, a tremendous person, who really respects this country and respects the Justice Department, so that’ll be totally up to him,” Trump told reporters in the White House.
Speculation about the end of the probe has been running rampant in Washington. NBC News reported recently the probe would be done by mid-February.

Life after Mueller

While the Mueller investigation may soon come to a close, there continue to be court cases that will be handled by other federal prosecutors.
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In addition, Mueller has referred certain matters that fell outside the scope of the Russia probe to other US Attorneys to pursue. Some of those investigations have already been revealed, including the investigation in New York into former Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen. That probe has spawned subsequent federal investigations in New York into the Trump Organization and the Trump Inaugural Committee. It is possible the special counsel’s team has referred other matters that have not yet come to light.
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RELATED: Michael Cohen won’t have to report to prison until May, judge rules
For close watchers of the federal courthouse and the Mueller team, small changes have added up in recent weeks.
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On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday last week, special counsel’s office employees carried boxes and pushed a cart full of files out of their office — an unusual move that could foreshadow a hand-off of legal work.
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At the same time, the Mueller prosecutors’ wo
-rkload appears to be dwindling. Four of Mueller’s 17 prosecutors have ended their tenures with the office, with most returning to other roles in the Justice Department.
And the grand jury that Mueller’s prosecutors used to return indictments of longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and several Russians hasn’t apparently convened since January 24 the day it approved the criminal charges against Stone.
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Even with these signs of a wrap up, the DC US Attorney’s office has stepped in to work on cases that may continue longer than Mueller is the special counsel.
Judge calls new hearing on gag order after Roger Stone's inflammatory post

Judge calls new hearing on gag order after Roger Stone’s inflammatory post
That office has joined onto some of the Mueller’s team’s casework, including the cases against Stone, a Russian social media propaganda conspiracy, and in an ongoing foreign government-owned company’s fight against a grand jury subpoena.
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Mueller and his prosecutors are still reporting to work as frequently as ever — with some even coming in on recent snow days and Presidents’ Day. But also visiting them more often than ever before are the prosecutors from the DC US Attorney’s Office and others in the Justice Department who’ve worked on the Mueller cases.
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In one court case, against Concord Management for its alleged support for the social media conspiracy prosecutors told a judge in January there’s still a related “matter occurring before the grand jury.”
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In other cases, including Manafort’s, the Mueller team has made heavy redactions to its recent public court filings, including to protect pending investigations and people who haven’t been charged with crimes.
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ADAM SCHIFF REFUSES TO STAND DOWN IF MUELLER FINDS NO COLLUSION

Adam Schiff Refuses to Stand Down If Mueller Finds No Collusion

‘We’re going to have to do our own investigation, and we are,’ he tells CNN

Washington Examiner – FEBRUARY 17, 2019

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., wouldn’t say Sunday if he would accept special counsel Robert Mueller being unable to find direction collusion between President Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.

The House Intelligence Committee is embarking on a sweeping investigation into Trump’s financial transactions and Russia, and Schiff adamantly stressed that his panel will continue its work unimpeded regardless of what Mueller says.

During an interview on CNN, Schiff discussed at length all the “evidence in plain sight” of collusion he believes there is, but said “it will be up to Mueller to decide if that amounts to criminal conspiracy.”

However, when he was asked point blank if he would accept Mueller’s findings if no clear evidence of collusion is determined, Schiff demurred. Instead he focused his answer on how his committee will conduct its own inquiry and how he’ll fight to gain access to Mueller’s evidence should it be withheld from public view.

“We’re going to have to do our own investigation, and we are. We’ll certainly be very interested to learn what Bob Mueller finds. We may have to fight to get that information. Bill Barr has not been willing to commit to provide that report either to the Congress or to the American people. We’re going to need to see it,” Schiff said on “State of the Union,” referring to Trump’s newly confirmed attorney general.

“The American people need to see it. We may also need to see the evidence behind that report,” he added. “There may be, for example, evidence of collusion or conspiracy that is clear and convincing. But not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The American people are entitled to know if there is evidence of a conspiracy between either the president or the president’s campaign and a foreign adversary. At the end of the day, the most important thing for the American people to know is whether the president is somehow compromised, whether there’s a leverage the Russians could use over the president, and if the Russians are in a position to expose wrongdoing by the president or his campaign.”

Host Dana Bash pressed Schiff again, asking if he would accept Mueller’s findings separate from his own investigation. Schiff’s response focused on the integrity of Mueller’s operation.

“You know, I will certainly accept them in this way, Dana. I have great confidence in the special counsel. And if the special counsel represents that he has investigated and not been interfered with and not been able to make a criminal case, then I will believe that he is operating in good faith,” Schiff said.

Schiff and his Democratic majority are reopening the House Intelligence Committee’s inquiry into Russian interference after the GOP-led panel in the last term completed an investigation that found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. At the time, the Democrats said the GOP-led effort wrapped prematurely.

Schiff also dismissed a recent assertion made by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., that Schiff’s panel’s Russia investigation has yet to turn up evidence of collusion. He quipped “Chairman Burr must have a different word for” collusion, citing such controversies as the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting and Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos, who last year served 12 days for lying to FBI investigators about his contact with people linked to Russia during the 2016 campaign.

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MCCABE: DOJ DISCUSSED REMOVING TRUMP…

By Dylan Stableford

Senior Editor
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Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe says that after President Trump fired his boss, FBI Director James Comey, there were discussions within the Department of Justice about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.

Last year, the New York Times reported that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed recruiting Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment.

McCabe confirmed the report in a new interview with “60 Minutes” host Scott Pelley, who relayed what McCabe told him on “CBS This Morning” Thursday.

“There were meetings at the Justice Department at which it was discussed whether the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet could be brought together to remove the president of the United States under the 25th Amendment,” Pelley said.

In a statement released by the Justice Department, Rosenstein said McCabe’s account of a discussion of invoking the 25th amendment was “inaccurate and factually incorrect.”

Trump responded in a pair of tweets later Thursday morning.

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The discussions occurred between the time of Comey’s firing in May of 2017 and the appointment eight days later of special counsel Robert Mueller to oversee the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

According to the Times, Rosenstein also suggested that he secretly record Trump in the White House. Rosenstein disputed the account, and a Justice Department official said he made the remark sarcastically. But McCabe told Pelley that Rosenstein’s offer to wear a wire was made more than once and that he ultimately took it to the lawyers at the FBI to discuss.

McCabe, who was named acting director of the bureau after Comey’s firing, launched obstruction of justice and counterintelligence investigations into whether Trump obstructed justice by firing Comey.

He told Pelley he did so in order to preserve the FBI’s Russian probe in case there was an effort by Trump to terminate it.

“I was very concerned that I was able to put the Russia case on absolutely solid ground, in an indelible fashion,” McCabe said. “That were I removed quickly, or reassigned or fired, that the case could not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace.”

McCabe’s comments come ahead of the release of his new book, “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump,” due out next week.

In an excerpt of the book published Thursday in the Atlantic, McCabe describes a phone call he received from Trump on his first full day on the job as acting director of the FBI. According to McCabe, Trump told him that he had “hundreds of messages from FBI people [saying] how happy they are that I fired [Comey].”

“You know — boy, it’s incredible, it’s such a great thing, people are really happy about the fact that the director’s gone, and it’s just remarkable what people are saying,” Trump said, according to McCabe. “Have you seen that? Are you seeing that, too?”

McCabe was eventually fired in March 2018, less than two days before he would have collected a full early pension for his FBI career.

“Andrew McCabe FIRED,” Trump tweeted on the day of McCabe’s dismissal. “A great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI – A great day for Democracy.”

Trump has since railed against McCabe dozens of times on Twitter. “He LIED! LIED! LIED! McCabe was totally controlled by Comey – McCabe is Comey!” he exclaimed last April. “No collusion, all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!”

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(THE FBI IS PART OF THE DEEP STATE) – Trump Slams McCabe As “Disgrace To The FBI & Country” After Russia Probe Admission

By Tyler Durden

Update: As one might expect, President Trump has chimed in on twitter, where he slammed McCabe for giving Hillary Clinton a pass and accused the former deputy director, who admitted to lying to the DOJ’s inspector general, of giving “Hillary a pass.”

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And as Breitbart’s Sean Davis reminds us, Trump’s criticisms are very much justified.

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Trump Jr. took the attack one step further, accusing McCabe of trying to orchestrate a “deep state coup” against his father, before declaring that it’s time that somebody should “investigate the investigators.”

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And though Rosenstein has already announced his plans to resign from the DOJ after William Barr has been confirmed, Freedom Caucus leader Mark Meadows is renewing the call for him to resign immediately following McCabe’s revelations.

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In his first interview about the Russia probe since he was summarily fired by President Trump just 26 hours before he was set to retire and collect his pension, and while the possibility of criminal charges over his attempts to cover up his leaks to the press, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe sat for an interview with CBS about the early days of the Russia probe.

McCabe

In an excerpt of the full interview, which is set to air on Sunday, McCabe described how he quickly moved to start the Russia probe a day after meeting with Trump in May 2017 in the days after James Comey‘s firing, over fears that he would soon be fired. After authorizing the investigation into Trump’s Russia ties, McCabe sought to ensure that the investigation – which was eventually rolled into the probe eventually taken over by Special Counsel Robert Mueller – would be on “solid ground” even if he was booted from the FBI.

“I was very concerned that I was able to put the Russia case on absolutely solid ground in an indelible fashion that were I removed quickly or reassigned or fired that the case could not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace,” McCabe told CBS.

The interview marked the first time McCabe has ever opened up about his thought process when he launched the probe. In his recounting of his conversation with President Trump, McCabe said he felt intimidated by the president.

“I was speaking to the man who had just run for the presidency and won the election for the presidency and who might have done so with the aid of the government of Russia, our most formidable adversary on the world stage,” McCabe said in an excerpt aired on CBS on Thursday. “And that was something that troubled me greatly.”

He compared Trump’s request that McCabe allow him to visit the FBI – a visit that McCabe suggest would have been well outside the bounds of decorum – to tactics used by Russian mobsters that McCabe had once prosecuted.

“In this moment, I felt the way I’d felt in 1998, in a case involving the Russian Mafia, when I sent a man I’ll call Big Felix in to meet with a Mafia boss named Dimitri Gufield,” McCabe wrote. “The same kind of thing was happening here, in the Oval Office. Dimitri had wanted Felix to endorse his protection scheme. This is a dangerous business, and it’s a bad neighborhood, and you know, if you want, I can protect you from that. If you want my protection. I can protect you. Do you want my protection? The president and his men were trying to work me the way a criminal brigade would operate.”

Of course, nobody in the mainstream press has pointed out that the timing of McCabe’s decision to launch the probe would suggest that he was looking for leverage to stop him from being fired along with Comey…though, thanks to his decision to lie to the DOJ’s inspector general, that problem swiftly took care of itself.

He also admitted that he launched the investigation without any actual evidence…just partisan hackery.

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In a discussion about the interview, McCabe’s interviewer Scott Pelley said McCabe affirmed that there had been discussions about invoking the 25th amendment to remove Trump – something that was the subject of a series of leaks last year…

…about a plot allegedly concocted by Rod Rosenstein (Rosenstein, for what its worth, has issued a statement denying McCabe’s assertion that the Deputy Attorney General raised the issue of Trump Administration officials wearing a wire during their talks with the president).

The Deputy Attorney General never authorized any recording that Mr. McCabe references. As the Deputy Attorney General previously has stated, based on his personal dealings with the President, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment, nor was the DAG in a position to consider invoking the 25th Amendment.

Finally, the Deputy Attorney General never spoke to Mr. Comey about appointing a Special Counsel. The Deputy Attorney General in fact appointed Special Counsel Mueller, and directed that Mr. McCabe be removed from any participation in that investigation. Subsequent to this removal, DOJ’s Inspector General found that Mr. McCabe did not tell the truth to federal authorities on multiple occasions, leading to his termination from the FBI.”

The full interview will air Sunday night at 7 pm. But CBS has published an excerpt below:

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HOAX: Adam Schiff and Natalia Both Met With Fusion GPS…Here’s How The Plot Went Down

By Patrick Howley

The Russia collusion hoax is on its last legs as the Senate Intelligence Committee finds no evidence of collusion between President Donald Trump’s team and the Russians. Despite charging Roger Stone with process crimes, to which Stone pleads not guilty, Robert Mueller has come up empty in his mission to fulfill Hillary Clinton’s media narrative hoax, which she concocted as the 2016 election began to slip away from her. (READ: CIA Whistleblower Says Hillary Clinton Laundered Russian Money Through Uranium One).

It turns out that Adam Schiff met with a co-founder of Fusion GPS, the “Dirty Dossier” research firm, in Aspen last summer, according to veteran investigative journalist Jon Solomon.

Natalia Veselnitskaya was charged with obstruction of justice to prevent her from coming back to the United States to testify in the Robert Mueller-related cases because her statements have already contradicted Mueller’s narrative, according to high-level FBI sources.

Veselnitskaya, who is now in Russia, was charged for making a “misleading declaration” in a civil money-laundering case. Veselnitskaya’s indictment was filedin federal court in Manhattan and unsealed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, formerly led by anti-Trump activist Preet Bharara and still dominated by his underlings.

Now Veselnitskaya can’t return to the United States to contradict the Michael Cohen-focused case, because she would be arrested upon her arrival in this country. So what could Veselnitskaya spill if she testified? For one thing, Fusion GPS has tried to claimno knowledge of Veselnitskaya’s Trump Tower meeting, despite the fact that Veselnitskaya had dinner with Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson the night before the meeting and also the night after the meeting.

Veselnitskaya’s appearance on Fox News, in which she discussed her relationship with Glenn Simpson, did not sit well with the Operation Crossfire Hurricane conspirators. Particularly her quote, “But my meeting was not at all connected with Mrs. Hillary Clinton.”

Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney who signed the Veselnitskaya indictment, was recused from the Michael Cohen case by Department of Justice officials working under Rod Rosenstein. Berman is identified in the press as a Trump appointee but he is actually a Jeff Sessions appointee.

Here is what an FBI insider tells us:

“Mueller’s team of partisans has a problem.  They want to get Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner so they are working hard to prove that Jr and Kushner lied about the June 9th 2016 Trump Tower meeting.  The Special Counsel has their version (Fusion GPS’ version) of what happened in the meeting but Veselnitskaya and Manafort’s versions don’t support their version. They tried to squeeze Manafort into reciting their version but in the end he resisted. So they claimed to the Judge that Manafort lied in his proffer to them. Veselnitskaya already met with Senate investigators and gave testimony about the meeting. This testimony doesn’t fall in line with the Special Counsel’s version so they have to discredit her and keep her from coming to the U.S. for any future hearings hence the strange indictment today by holdovers of Preet Bharara.

The Trump Tower meeting, facilitated by Fusion GPS and debriefed by Fusion GPS, was an original attempt to get candidate Trump to make commitments to Russia regarding the subversion of the Magnitsky Act.  This was the original purpose of the entrapment but candidate Trump didn’t fall for it. So they didn’t want a good set-up to go to waste.

Veselnitskaya only mentioned dirt on Hillary as a rouse to get the Trump campaign to meet with her regarding the Magnitsky scheme. Fusion GPS, Brennan and Comey were trying to set Trump up to commit a serious crime related to Russia but they were unsuccessful.  After Trump was elected they dug through all of their attempts to find something useful and realized they could spin several setup meetings with Trump Campaign officials as somehow being related to hacked emails. This is proven by the fact that all the meetings were conducted by people associated with the CIA (Halper and Mifsud) and the FBI (Fusion GPS and Henry Greenburg).  It is also proven by the fact that the FISA warrants obtained by the FBI never had any mention of Hacked emails.”

FBI source’s statement concludes

Stone’s lawyer Grant Smith wrote the following in a letter to Rep. Devin Nunes: “By way of example, as you know, back in June I sent this Committee a letter regarding a longtime FBI informant named Gennadiy Vasilievich Vostretsov who, under the alias “Henry Greenberg”, was sent to approach my client in May 2016 with claims of having access to information that could impact the election. Mr. Stone not only immediately and forcefully declined to participate in anything this FBI informant was proposing, but never saw or spoke to the informant again. Mr. Stone believes it highly likely that Mr. Vostretsov/Greenberg’s status as an FBI informant was not “former”, and that Vostretsov/Greenberg was, in fact, actively working on behalf of the FBI at the time of their meeting, acting upon a calculated effort to entrap Mr. Stone and, further, to infiltrate and compromise the Trump effort. Notably, Vostretsov was admitted to the country nine separate times on an FBI Informant’s visa.”

My reporting on Natalia and the Fusion GPS plot against President Trump has changed the face of the news cycle:

The Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya who set up Don Trump Jr. for a meeting in Trump Tower as part of a Fusion GPS plot was operating out of the Washington offices of Cozen O’Connor, a law firm run by an anti-Trump former Obama administration official whose super PAC donated to Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush in the 2016 presidential election.

Veselnitskaya’s work from the Cozen O’Connor office provides more evidence of a Democrat and establishment Republican effort to set up the Trump campaign for a future Russian collusion case. Veselnitskaya was allowed into the United States by the Obama Department of Justice while the former Obama official who runs Cozen O’Connor publicly warned then-candidate Trump that if he became president he would be investigated by the DOJ for contacts with foreign leaders. Veselnitskaya reportedly had dinner meetings with Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson the day before she met in Trump Tower and also the day after she went inside Trump Tower.

Big League Politics has confirmed that a Cozen O’Connor partner who lives in the same apartment building as James Comey’s friend Daniel Richman — who leaked classified information to the press on Comey’s behalf — spoke with Richman during the period that Comey and the Fusion GPS team were trying to obtain FISA warrants on Trump Tower.

I reported from outside Cozen O’Connor headquarters in Washington, D.C.

CAP

Let’s break down the facts of an Obama administration official’s involvement in the Trump Tower plot:

Russian and U.S. citizen Rinat Akhmetshin, a Soviet military veteran, was present at Veselnitskaya’s meeting with Don Jr. in Trump Tower after leading a lobbying push supposedly to repeal the Magnitsky Act. Akhmestshin is believed by insiders to be linked to Russian government intelligence, a fact that the Washington Post seized on when reporting that he met with Don Jr. and Jared Kushner in Trump Tower. A nonprofit group focused on promoting Akhmetshin and Veselnitskaya’s cause to lawmakers actually hired Cozen O’Connor, which the law firm confirms.

The Washington Post reported (emphasis added):

“In the spring of 2016, as the presidential race was heating up, Akhmetshin and lobbyists he hired sought meetings on Capitol Hill to make their case against the sanctions law. Akhmetshin hired former Democratic congressman Ron Dellums, along with a team of lobbyists from the law firm of Cozen O’Connor.
Steve Pruitt, a business colleague speaking on Dellums’s behalf, said his involvement was brief and ended when he determined that Congress was unlikely to change the law.

In June, after visiting Trump Tower in New York, Veselnitskaya came to Washington to lend a hand in the lobbying effort.

She attended a meeting of the team at the downtown offices of Cozen O’Connor, where she spoke at length in Russian about the issues but confused many in the room, who had not been told previously about her involvement, according to several participants.”

Washington Post passage ends

Cozen O’Connor managing partner Howard Schweitzer is listed here on a DOJ form from an investigation into the breaking of lobbying laws by Russians trying to repeal the Magnitsky Act — which was just a front to get Russians in the room with Don Jr. We know now that Natalia Veselnitskaya was actually operating out of the Cozen O’Connor offices.

Schweitzer worked as general counsel for the Export-Import Bank under George W. Bush and was chief operating officer of the TARP bailout program under both Bush and Obama from 2008-2009.

“In October 2008, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson appointed Howard as the first COO of TARP. In this position, Howard led program execution and built the TARP infrastructure. He served as a key point person regarding the financial crisis through the presidential transition and continued to serve as TARP COO under Secretary Timothy Geithner until August 2009,” reads Schweitzer’s Cozen O’Connor bio.

“He served as chief operating officer of the TARP in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations,” reads Schweitzer’s bio for a Politico piece he wrote in August 2016 headlined “7 Reasons Why Trump Would Hate Being President.”

Schweitzer’s virulently anti-Trump piece for Politico tries to make the case that Trump was “sabotaging his own bid for the White House.” Schweitzer said that if Trump became president then “He’ll be investigated to death” by Congress and the Justice Department for his business dealings and “relationships with foreign leaders.”

The narrative was being set.

The Philadelphia-based Cozen O’Connor law firm also has a political action committee that donated to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, in addition to Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and Martin O’Malley. In the 2018 election cycle, the Cozen O’Connor PAC donated more money to Hillary Clinton’s dormant campaign.

Here is Veselnitskaya seated behind Obama ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul at a June 2016 congressional hearing focused on Russia.

Cozen O’Connor’s connections to the anti-Trump “Operation Crossfire Hurricane” plot are wide-ranging, and show up in unexpected places.

James Comey’s friend, Columbia University professor Daniel Richman, leaked classified information that Comey gave him. During this leaking period, Richman was apartment-building neighbors with a partner at the Cozen O’Connor law firm that strategized with Fusion GPS operative Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian plant who set up Don Jr. in Trump Tower.

Veselnitskaya and Fusion GPS, led by Glenn Simpson, were part of John Brennan and Peter Strzok’s CIA-led “Operation Crossfire Hurricane” plot aimed at President Donald Trump and the Trump campaign.

“Yes, he is my neighbor,” Amy Wenzel, a partner at Cozen O’Connor, confirmed in a phone conversation with Big League Politics, confirming that they spoke. They live near each other in a Brooklyn high-rise.

The Washington Post’s release of Trump Tower documents shows the crowd surrounding non-sexual honeypot Natalia Veselnitskaya. The crowd of conspirators knew they were damaging Trump by setting up the meeting.

The Post confirms British-citizen music promoter Rob Goldstone’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, in which he described the conspirators’ push to get the meeting despite the fact that they knew it would create trouble for the Trump campaign.

The Post reports:

“Rob Goldstone told the committee that his client, the Russian pop star and developer Emin Agalarov, had insisted he help set up the meeting between President Trump’s son and the lawyer during the campaign to pass along material on Clinton, overriding Goldstone’s own warnings that the meeting would be a bad idea.

“He said, ‘it doesn’t matter. You just have to get the meeting,’ ” Goldstone, a British citizen, testified.

The intensity with which Agalarov and his father, the billionaire Aras Agalarov, sought the Trump Tower meeting, which has become a key point of scrutiny for congressional inquiries and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, was revealed in more than 2,500 pages of congressional testimony and exhibits released by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning.”

Washington Post passage ends

Natalia Veselnitskaya is also inextricably linked to the case against Paul Manafort.

The Russian attorney partner of Paul Manafort who was named as a defendant in new Robert Mueller charges is also linked to the Russian spy Natalia Vesenilskaya, who attended a meeting with Don Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner in Trump Tower.

According to Mueller’s new charges, Manafort’s Russian partner Konstantin Kilimnik tried to intimidate or coerce witnesses in Manafort’s upcoming money laundering trial. That puts Konstantin Kilimnik at the center of the Mueller effort to find obstruction of justice in Trump-World (Mueller is giving himself until September 1 to try to find obstruction of justice, after finding no Russian collusion involving Trump).
So who is Konstantine Kilimnik? It turns out that Kilimnik is linked to Veselnitskaya, the Fusion GPS agent, according to Senate documents.

Here is how ProPublica described Kilimnik: “Konstantin Kilimnik: Manafort, who worked for the pro-Russian party in Ukraine before running Trump’s campaign, had an employee in Kiev named Konstantin Kilimnik who U.S. and Ukrainian authorities have suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence, according to Politico. Kilimnik served in the Russian army and learned English at a school that experts say often trains spies. Kilimnik denied being a spy to The Washington Post. Manafort had dinner with Kilimnik last August in New York, just before he was forced out of the Trump campaign amid growing questions about his work in the Ukraine, the Post reported.”

Documents reveal Kilimnik’s ties to Veselniskaya. Let’s take a look at United States Senate Judiciary Committee documents questioning Veselniskaya in October. Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley and Ranking Member Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked Veselniskaya if she knew a handful of characters believed to be conspirators in the case.

Grassley and Feinstein specifically asked Veselnitskaya if she knew Konstantin Kilimnik.

Here is page 4 of the documents, naming Kilimnik:

Current Attorney General Jeff Sessions was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee as senator from Alabama.

Veselnitskaya’s meeting with Don Jr. in Trump Tower provided some of the basis for warrants to surveil Trump Tower and for other FBI surveillance measures on the Trump campaign.

The fact that Veselnitskaya, a lawyer herself, was in the meeting with Trump Jr. and Kushner opened the president’s son and son-in-law up to being qualified as “target associations” for law enforcement under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, passed during the Bush administration.

Veselniskaya’s link to suspected conspirator Kilimnik is now coming under scrutiny.

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