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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livew...-says-ig-will-review-counterintelligence-work

After Trump Announces Demand, DOJ Asks IG To Review Counterintelligence Work


The Justice Department on Sunday confirmed that its inspector general would investigate whether “there was any impropriety or political motivation” in the FBI’s work during the 2016 campaign.

The new investigation, the DOJ said, would be added to an existing one into the FBI’s application for a FISA warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

The announcement came just hours after President Donald Trump appeared to demand just that in a tweet:



Justice Department spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement she shared with TPM:

The Department has asked the Inspector General to expand the ongoing review of the FISA application process to include determining whether there was any impropriety or political motivation in how the FBI conducted its counterintelligence investigation of persons suspected of involvement with the Russian agents who interfered in the 2016 presidential election. As always, the Inspector General will consult with the appropriate U.S. Attorney if there is any evidence of potential criminal conduct.

She added the following statement from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein:

“If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action.”

The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, announced in March that he would probe the FBI’s application for a surveillance warrant to suveil a member of Trump’s campaign — believed to be foreign policy adviser carter page.
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Well let's see how the world turns with this, my issue is he definitely is gonna want instant information and results and won't be patient enough to allow it to go to work, which will guarantee fuckery.
 
When people were blowing the whistle on the NSA spy program a few years ago saying that it and among things could be the mechanism of a fascist government in our country, nobody took them seriously.

Now we've got a president in office that, had there not been a massive bureaucracy and checks and balances, it would've already been a wrap

If he wasn't as polarizing, and a little more charming and charismatic, dude could really run shit with very little to stop him. This is really beginning to show the lack of teeth on said checks as well.
 
Zagreus said:
When people were blowing the whistle on the NSA spy program a few years ago saying that it and among things could be the mechanism of a fascist government in our country, nobody took them seriously.

Now we've got a president in office that, had there not been a massive bureaucracy and checks and balances, it would've already been a wrap

If he wasn't as polarizing, and a little more charming and charismatic, dude could really run shit with very little to stop him. This is really beginning to show the lack of teeth on said checks as well.
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I don’t think it’s would’ve been wrap as long as there still have freedom of the press, to bring light to the fuckery.

The press is a often forgotten part of the checks and balances.
 
2_sleepy said:
I don’t think it’s would’ve been wrap as long as there still have freedom of the press, to bring light to the fuckery.

The press is a often forgotten part of the checks and balances.
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Just to clarify what I mean by it being a wrap is just those assets being mechanized for individual gain, not waking up one morning to the Gestapo at your door lol

Most certainly, but even that is being eroded before our eyes. Large swaths of the population believe anything that isnt in trump's favor is fake news, huge broadcasting corporations like Sinclair have hundreds of local channels supporting the man in lockstep and suppressing damaging info, Facebook now tells you what news is real or what's not.

It's a very slippery slope is all I'm saying.
 
Focal Point said:
Black ppl gonna need to band together... and soon, shit getting real tight
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man i just had a big ass argument with a bunch of niggas in charlotte.....

we aint banding together no time soon.

they gonna have to put niggas on boats send them out into the water and sink them while raping their mother and infant daughter before niggas even think about what shoulda been done a long time ago
 
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/fox-fri...-claim-that-innocent-people-died-in-gaza-meh/

Fox & Friends’ Pete Hegseth Responds to Co-Host’s Claim That Innocent People Died in Gaza: ‘Meh’

Fox News host Pete Hegseth offered a curious response to Ed Henry when his Fox & Friends Weekend co-host reminded him that innocent people died in the violent clashes between Palestinians in Gaza and Israeli security forces.

Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls Gaza, urged unarmed civilians to rush the Israel-Gaza border as US and Israeli officials celebrated the opening of the new embassy in Jerusalem miles away earlier this month. More than 50 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces — some were Hamas members, others were innocent children.

On Fox & Friends Sunday morning, Ed Henry tried to point this out.

“We should separate out,” Henry said. “There could be some innocent Palestinians, including children, who were killed.”

“Because Hamas told them to go to the front of the line and get shot!” Hegseth said.

“Okay, but there are some innocent people who died,” Henry reiterated.

“Meh,” Hegseth replied with a shrug.

“Caught in the crossfire, whatever it is, children, let’s just point that out,” Henry added.

“Meh,” Hegseth said.

“Hamas terrorist groups that charge the fence and die for us, they’re to blame for the case of death,” Hegseth continued.

“But a human being is a human being,” co-host Abby Huntsman noted.

“But if the terrorist sends the kid out front, the terrorist is to blame. The innocent blood is on the hands of the terrorist who put the kid out to charge a fence with no prospect of crossing that border,” Hegseth said. “We use vague words like ‘Palestinians’ and ‘innocents’ and it’s like, no, Hamas wants to wipe Israel off the map.”
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/pompeo-threatens-strongest-sanctions-against-iran

Pompeo Threatens ‘The Strongest Sanctions In History’ Against Iran

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a steep list of demands Monday that he said should be included in a nuclear treaty with Iran to replace the Obama-era deal, threatening “the strongest sanctions in history” if Iran doesn’t change course.

Following President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the deal, the United States will ensure “Iran has no possible path to a nuclear weapon, ever,” Pompeo said. As he called for a better agreement to constrain Iran’s activities, he said the U.S. would “apply unprecedented financial pressure” to bring Tehran back to the table.

“These will end up being the strongest sanctions in history by the time we are complete,” Pompeo said at the conservative Heritage Foundation, his first major policy speech since taking over as top diplomat.

Pompeo’s list of 12 requirements included many that Iran is highly unlikely to consider.

He said Iran must “stop enrichment” of uranium, which was allowed within strict limitations under the 2015 deal. Iran must also allow nuclear “unqualified access to all sites throughout the country,” Pompeo said, alluding to military sites that were off-limits under the 2015 deal except under specific circumstances. To that end, he also said Iran must declare all previous efforts to build a nuclear weapon, reopening an issue that the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency has already deemed a closed matter.

Pompeo also demanded that Iran cease from a range of activities throughout the Middle East that have long drawn the ire of the U.S. and its allies. He said Iran must end support for Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen, “withdraw all forces” from Syria, halt support for its ally Hezbollah and stop threatening Israel.

Iran must also “release all U.S. citizens” missing in Iran or being held on “spurious charges,” he said.

At the same time, Pompeo offered Iran a series of dramatic potential U.S. concessions if it agrees to make “major changes.” Under a new agreement, the U.S. would be willing to lift all sanctions, restore full diplomatic and commercial ties with Iran, and even support the modernization of its economy, Pompeo said.

“It is America’s hope that our labors toward peace and security will bear fruit for the long-suffering people of Iran,” Pompeo said.

Pompeo’s speech came after Trump earlier this month infuriated U.S. allies in Europe by withdrawing from the 2015 deal brokered by President Barack Obama, Iran and world powers. Europeans allies had pleaded with Trump not to scuttle that deal and are now scrambling to keep the deal alive even without the U.S.

But the Trump administration has held out hope that those same allies will put aside that frustration and work with the U.S. to ramp pressure back up on Iran through sanctions in a bid to bring Tehran back to the negotiating table for a stronger deal.

Pompeo said he understood that Trump’s decision “will pose financial and economic difficulties for a number of our friends.” But he warned them that the U.S. planned to follow through with threats to punish European companies that continue doing business with Iran that is allowed under the deal but will violate reimposed U.S. sanctions.

“I know our allies in Europe may try to keep the old nuclear deal going with Tehran. That is their decision to make,” Pompeo said. “They know where we stand.”
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/how-embedded-fbi-trump-campaign-informant-theory-spread

How Trump’s New Deep State Conspiracy Theory Emerged From The Fever Swamps


If there’s a dark conspiracy theory circulating about Deep State efforts to undermine Donald Trump, it’s a safe bet that it started with Rep. Devin Nunes, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

That seems to be the case with the purported scandal du jour: that the FBI planted an informant in the Trump campaign in order to gain information about its possible ties to Russia. Such a move, Trump allies argue, would render the Mueller investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference illegitimate.

The source met with three different Trump campaign officials, the Washington Post reported Friday evening. And the source’s name began circulating late last week in right-wing media. Still the nature of the intelligence the source provided, and exactly what prompted the FBI to seek to obtain intel from this person remain unclear.

As with previous Nunes-driven controversies, this one started weeks ago with the California Republican’s efforts to disclose classified intelligence information, festered in the media fever swamps, and then percolated up to the president, who on Friday said it may be the “all time biggest political scandal!”

Trump remained focused on the issue over the weekend, and on Sunday, in an extraordinary tweet, pledged to “demand” a DOJ investigation into whether the Obama administration was behind this supposed politically-motivated spying.



It’s a good case study in how outlandish theories designed to discredit the Mueller investigation and bolster Trump’s position travel from the fringes to the White House. Here’s how we got here.

Since at least early April, Nunes has been demanding from the Justice Department un-redacted versions of the materials detailing the launch of the Russia probe. Slow-rolled by DOJ top brass, Nunes issued a subpoena in early May for all documents related to a person described by the Washington Post as a “sensitive, longtime intelligence source for the CIA and FBI.”

As a pair of Post articles, dated May 8 and 9, explained, the DOJ has refused to provide the documents, concerned that the safety of the U.S. citizen source could be endangered, and that ongoing intelligence investigations could be compromised.

DOJ and FBI officials ultimately agreed to hold an hour-long classified briefing with Nunes and House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy on May 10, which appeared to quell the tensions somewhat.

The two GOP congressmen released a statement calling the meeting “productive” and expressing hope for a continued “dialogue” with the Justice Department.

But it was too late. That evening, the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel published a column calling the DOJ’s reported concerns about the source’s safety a sign of “desperation” and interpreting the Post report to mean that the person was likely engaged in “outright spying” on, as well as trying to “infiltrate,” the Trump campaign.

Strassel’s claims were seized upon by Rush Limbaugh. It’s “a pretty safe bet that the FBI planted an informant in the Trump campaign,” Limbaugh said, in order to “catch and to discover and to witness Trump’s collusion with the Russians.”

Two days later, National Review’s Andrew McCarthy published a column noting that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson testified that Christopher Steele, who Fusion had hired to look into the campaign’s ties to Russia, had told Simpson that the FBI had a “human source” in the Trump campaign. McCarthy speculated that the spy’s information was the real source of the U.S. Russia investigation.

The story broke wide open last week with the first mention of the word “informant” by a major mainstream publication. Buried in a lengthy Wednesday New York Times story on the origins of the Russia probe was this sentence: “At least one government informant met several times with Mr. [Carter] Page and Mr. Papadopoulos, current and former officials said.”

Breitbart jumped on the news with a headline about the FBI’s “spy operation” against the Trump campaign. Trump allies from Kellyanne Conway to Rudy Giuliani were soon sharing grave concerns about the presence of a spy in the campaign’s midst.

Any improper spying by such an informant would render the entire Mueller probe “completely illegitimate,” Giuliani told the Post on Thursday, before acknowledging to CNN Friday that they didn’t know “for sure” that such an individual even existed.

And Trump tweeted:



Of course, all of these interpretations rest on the notion that if the FBI surveilled the Trump campaign, it was motivated by political bias. None consider that these agencies could have been attempting the difficult task of investigating Russia’s meddling in the campaign on Trump’s behalf without improperly influencing the election by revealing the probe.

They also gloss over the fact that we’ve been down this road several times before. Nunes has been at war with the DOJ and FBI on Trump’s behalf for well over a year, trying to uncover evidence that will prove that Trump was unfairly targeted.

There was last spring’s botched effort to prove that Trump staffers’ identities were improperly revealed in transcripts of conversations swept up in foreign surveillance. National security experts and bipartisan lawmakers said that there was nothing out of the ordinary about the unmasking requests.

Then there was this February’s memo that was supposed to serve as definitive proof of anti-Trump bias among DOJ and FBI leadership and bring the Mueller probe to a screeching halt. It was a bust.

He may not have succeeded yet. But the new “spy” controversy suggests that Nunes’ efforts will continue.
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-concerned-north-korea-embarrassment

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/20/us/politics/trump-north-korea-nuclear.html

Trump Concerned North Korea Summit Could Evolve Into An Embarrassment

President Donald Trump is becoming increasingly concerned that his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un could evolve into a political embarrassment, The New York Times reported Sunday.

According to foreign officials and people from the Trump administration who spoke with the Times, Trump was shocked by the statement from North Korea’s head nuclear negotiator last week that indicated total denuclearization of the Korean peninsula was not going to happen.

The President has reportedly been talking to aides about whether he should move forward with the historic meeting. On Saturday night, he called South Korean President Moon Jae-in — the Washington Post was first to report — to discuss the North’s latest statement and why it was in contradiction with private conversations Moon has had with Kim. Officials told the Times that the call, just three days before Moon was set to travel to Washington, D.C., is a signal of Trump’s unease surrounding the meeting.

According to aides who spoke with the Times, Trump has made no specific indication that he is planning to pull out of the talks, but officials are concerned that Trump has been too publicly eager about the meeting — like his remark that “everyone thinks” he should win a Nobel Peace Prize for the historic summit.

Trump is set to meeting with Kim in Singapore next month.
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-hypes-wsj-where-world-obama

‘Very Good Question!’: Trump Hypes Op-Ed Asking ‘Where In The World’ Was Obama


President Donald Trump on Monday gave The Wall Street Journal a virtual pat on the back in a tweet, citing the paper’s two-day-old editorial questioning “where in the world” former President Barack Obama was when his FBI was surveilling “affiliates of a presidential campaign.”

“A very good question!” Trump tweeted.



The WSJ editorial, penned by James Freeman, calls out the media for burying mentions of Obama in its coverage of revelations that a government informant met with two members of Trump’s campaign before the election. Freeman also calls on the former President to provide a public explanation for why his intelligence and law enforcement agencies decided to focus surveillance efforts on a “domestic political campaign.”

Freeman writes:

“By this point it seems clear that Mr. Obama didn’t think much of the theory that Mr. Trump colluded with the Russians. But presumably he learned quite a bit about his government’s efforts to investigate it. It’s not clear what an FBI official meant in 2016 when texting that President Obama ‘wants to know everything we’re doing.’ But we can assume that the President was fairly well-informed about the law enforcement agencies reporting to him. Therefore let’s hear from him in detail the full history of how the government came to investigate the presidential campaign of the party out of power.”

Since the New York Times first reported last week that a secret intelligence source met with the Trump campaign’s foreign policy aides, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, Trump has become increasingly frustrated with the Russia probe. He called the news last week “bigger than Watergate!” and demanded on Twitter Sunday that the Justice Department investigate whether the FBI “infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes.”
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Trump Logic 101: When feeling the heat find a way to blame the black guy...
 
Zagreus said:
Just to clarify what I mean by it being a wrap is just those assets being mechanized for individual gain, not waking up one morning to the Gestapo at your door lol

Most certainly, but even that is being eroded before our eyes. Large swaths of the population believe anything that isnt in trump's favor is fake news, huge broadcasting corporations like Sinclair have hundreds of local channels supporting the man in lockstep and suppressing damaging info, Facebook now tells you what news is real or what's not.

It's a very slippery slope is all I'm saying.
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True true.
 
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