Gadianton vs. Gadianton

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Silver
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Re: Gadianton vs. Gadianton

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https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01- ... estigation


"Explosive", "Shocking" And "Alarming" FISA Memo Set To Rock DC, "End Mueller Investigation"
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by Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/18/2018 - 22:25
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All hell is breaking loose in Washington D.C. tonight after a four-page memo detailing extensive FISA court abuse was made available to the entire House of Representatives Thursday. The contents of the memo are so explosive, says Journalist Sara Carter, that it could lead to the removal of senior officials in the FBI and the Department of Justice and the end of Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation.

These sources say the report is “explosive,” stating they would not be surprised if it leads to the end of Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation into President Trump and his associates. -Sara Carter

a

A source close to the matter tells Fox News that "the memo details the Intelligence Committee's oversight work for the FBI and Justice, including the controversy over unmasking and FISA surveillance." An educated guess by anyone who's been paying attention for the last year leads to the obvious conclusion that the report reveals extensive abuse of power and highly illegal collusion between the Obama administration, the FBI, the DOJ and the Clinton Campaign against Donald Trump and his team during and after the 2016 presidential election.

a

Lawmakers who have seen the memo are calling for its immediate release, while the phrases "explosive," "shocking," "troubling," and "alarming" have all been used in all sincerity. One congressman even likened the report's details to KGB activity in Russia. “It is so alarming the American people have to see this,” Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan told Fox News. “It's troubling. It is shocking,” North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows said. “Part of me wishes that I didn't read it because I don’t want to believe that those kinds of things could be happening in this country that I call home and love so much.”

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., offered the motion on Thursday to make the Republican majority-authored report available to the members.

“The document shows a troubling course of conduct and we need to make the document available, so the public can see it,” said a senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the document. “Once the public sees it, we can hold the people involved accountable in a number of ways.”

The government official said that after reading the document “some of these people should no longer be in the government.” -Sara Carter


Lee Zeldin

@RepLeeZeldin
Immediately #ReleaseTheMemo #FISAMemo & ALL relevant material sourced in it. Every American needs to know the truth! We wouldn't be revealing any sources & methods that we shouldn't; only feds' reliance on bad sources & methods.

7:28 PM - Jan 18, 2018
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7h

Lee Zeldin

@RepLeeZeldin
Just read the classified doc @HPSCI re FISA abuse. I'm calling for its immediate public release w/relevant sourced material. The public must have access ASAP! #Transparency


Lee Zeldin

@RepLeeZeldin
Releasing this classified info doesn't compromise good sources & methods. It reveals the feds' reliance on bad sources & methods.

3:28 PM - Jan 18, 2018
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Ron DeSantis

@RepDeSantis
The classified report compiled by House Intelligence is deeply troubling and raises serious questions about the upper echelon of the Obama DOJ and Comey FBI as it relates to the so-called collusion investigation.

2:10 PM - Jan 18, 2018
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Ron DeSantis

@RepDeSantis
Replying to @RepDeSantis
While the report is classified as Top Secret, I believe the select committee should, pursuant to House rules, vote to make the report publicly available as soon as possible. This is a matter of national significance and the American people deserve the truth.

2:10 PM - Jan 18, 2018
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Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz (R) echoed Sara Carter's sentiment that people might lose their job if the memo is released:

a
Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein
“I believe the consequence of its release will be major changes in people currently working at the FBI and the Department of Justice,” he said, referencing DOJ officials Rod Rosenstein and Bruce Ohr.




Meanwhile, Rep. Matt Gatetz (R-FL) said not only will the release of this memo result in DOJ firing, but "people will go to jail."



Josh Caplan
@joshdcaplan
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) on blockbuster FISA memo: "I think this will not just end with firings, I believe there are people who will go to jail!"

8:41 PM - Jan 18, 2018
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Silver
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Re: Gadianton vs. Gadianton

Post by Silver »

Ask yourself what we should be watching now when the media is using headlines that contain words like "shocking."

Silver
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Posts: 5247

Re: Gadianton vs. Gadianton

Post by Silver »

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01- ... prove-them

Republicans Have Four Easy Ways To #ReleaseTheMemo...Not Doing So Will Prove Them Shameless Frauds

Sat, 01/20/2018 - 22:25

Authored by Glenn Greenwald and Jon Schwarz via The Intercept,

One of the gravest and most damaging abuses of state power is to misuse surveillance authorities for political purposes. For that reason, The Intercept, from its inception, has focused extensively on these issues.

https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default ... 0_memo.jpg

We therefore regard as inherently serious strident warnings from public officials alleging that the FBI and Department of Justice have abused their spying power for political purposes.

Social media this week has been flooded with inflammatory and quite dramatic claims now being made by congressional Republicans about a four-page memo alleging abuses of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act spying processes during the 2016 election. This memo, which remains secret, was reportedly written under the direction of the chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, GOP Rep. Devin Nunes, and has been read by dozens of members of Congress after the committee voted to make the memo available to all members of the House of Representatives to examine in a room specially designated for reviewing classified material.

The rhetoric issuing from GOP members who read the memo is notably extreme.

North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Meadows, chair of the House Freedom Caucus, called the memo “troubling” and “shocking” and said, “Part of me wishes that I didn’t read it because I don’t want to believe that those kinds of things could be happening in this country that I call home and love so much.”

GOP Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania stated: “You think about, ‘Is this happening in America or is this the KGB?’ That’s how alarming it is.”

This has led to a ferocious outcry on the right to “release the memo” – and presumably thereby prove that the Obama administration conducted unlawful surveillance on the Trump campaign and transition.

https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default ... _memo1.jpg

On Thursday night, Fox News host and stalwart Trump ally Sean Hannity claimed that the memo described “the systematic abuse of power, the weaponizing of those powerful tools of intelligence and the shredding of our Fourth Amendment constitutional rights.”

Given the significance of this issue, it is absolutely true that the memo should be declassified and released to the public - and not just the memo itself. The House Intelligence Committee generally and Nunes specifically have a history of making unreliable and untrue claims (its report about Edward Snowden was full of falsehoods, as Bart Gellman amply documented, and prior claims from Nunes about “unmasking” have been discredited). Thus, mere assertions from Nunes — or anyone else — are largely worthless; Republicans should provide American citizens not merely with the memo they claim reveals pervasive criminality and abuse of power, but also with all of the evidence underlying its conclusions.

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have the power, working together or separately, to immediately declassify all the relevant information. And if indeed the GOP’s explosive claims are accurate – if, as HPSCI member Steve King, R-Iowa, says, this is “worse than Watergate” — they obviously have every incentive to get it into the public’s hands as soon as possible. Indeed, one could argue that they have the duty to do so.

On the other hand, if the GOP’s claims are false or significantly misleading – if they are, with the deepest cynicism imaginable, simply using these crucial issues to whip up their base or discredit the Mueller investigation, or exaggerating or making claims that lack any evidentiary support, or trying to have the best of all worlds by making explosive claims about the memo but never having to prove their truth - then they will either not release the memo or they will release it without any supporting documentation, making it impossible for Americans to judge its accuracy for themselves.

Anyone who is genuinely concerned about the claims being made about eavesdropping abuses should understand why the issue of evidence is so critical. After all, the House, Senate, and FBI investigations into any Trump collusion with Russia have so far proceeded with many startling claims in the media, but to date little hard evidence for the public to judge. Nobody rational should be assuming any claims or assertions from partisan actors about the 2016 election are true without seeing evidence to substantiate those claims.

The good news is there are at least four easy ways for congressional Republicans and/or Trump to definitively prove that all the right’s darkest suspicions about the Obama administration are true. If this memo and the underlying documents prove even a fraction of what GOP politicians and media figures are claiming about them, then what could possibly justify its ongoing concealment? Any or all of these methods should be promptly invoked to ensure that the public sees this evidence:

1. Trump can declassify anything he wants.
All classification by the U.S. government has no basis in laws passed by Congress (with one tiny exception that is irrelevant here). Rather, all classification is based on presidential executive orders, which rely on the president’s constitutional role as commander in chief of the armed forces. According to the Supreme Court, the presidential power “to classify and control access to information bearing on national security … flows primarily from the constitutional investment of power in the president.”

That means presidents can also declassify anything they chose to — for any reason or no reason — as they have done in the past. George W. Bush, under pressure in 2004, declassified the section of the 2001 presidential daily brief headlined “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” Barack Obama declassified the Justice Department memos produced during the Bush presidency on the legality of torture.

Thus if the House Intelligence Committee merely releases a version of its memo without the supporting documentation, that won’t be just because they don’t want Americans to see it – it will be because Trump doesn’t want us to see it either. Note that GOP House members are insistent that releasing the memo and the underlying source material would not remotely harm national security:



18 Jan

Lee Zeldin

@RepLeeZeldin
Just read the classified doc @HPSCI re FISA abuse. I'm calling for its immediate public release w/relevant sourced material. The public must have access ASAP! #Transparency


Lee Zeldin

@RepLeeZeldin
Releasing this classified info doesn't compromise good sources & methods. It reveals the feds' reliance on bad sources & methods.

3:28 PM - Jan 18, 2018
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So what possible justification is there for Trump to continue to conceal this alleged evidence of massive criminality from the American people by hiding it behind “classified” designations? Indeed, it is illegal to abuse classified designations to hide evidence of official criminality: so not only can Trump declassify such evidence, one could argue that he must, or at least should.

2. The House (and Senate) intelligence committees can declassify any material they possess.
According to the procedural rules of both houses of Congress, their intelligence committees can declassify material in their possession if the committee votes that such declassification would be in the public interest. It is then declassified after five days unless the president formally objects. If the president does object, the full chamber votes on the question.

It is true that – in a measure of how embarrassingly deferential Congress is to the executive branch – neither the House nor the Senate intelligence committees has ever utilized this power, so it’s impossible to know how this gambit would play out in practice. But if Trump refused to release proof of the Obama administration’s misdeeds, congressional Republicans should have a straightforward way to overrule him.

3. The Constitution protects members of Congress from prosecution for “any speech or debate in either House.”
Members of Congress have legal immunity for acts they commit as part of the legislative process. Article I, Section 6, clause 1 of the Constitution states that “for any speech or debate in either House, [Senators and Representatives] shall not be questioned in any other place.” It is this constitutional shield that protected Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska from legal consequences in 1971 when he read sections of the Pentagon Papers during a meeting of the Senate Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and then placed the rest of the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record.

It’s true that members could face legal consequences for ancillary acts — perhaps if they unlawfully removed the relevant material from the congressional SCIF. But they could go to the House floor and describe both the memo’s revelations and the underlying evidence for it without any fear of legal consequences.

If the memo really proves what they claim, it would seem to be their patriotic duty would compel them do this. Ordinary citizens — like Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning — have risked prison in order to expose what they believed were serious official crimes; these members of Congress can do this without any of those consequences. So what justifies their failure to do this?

4. Republicans can leak everything to the news media.
If for some reason Trump and the congressional leadership refuse to use any of the above options to vindicate themselves, a brave member of Congress could turn whistleblower and transmit the classified proof of the GOP’s claims about the memo to the news media.

Many outlets now have secure methods of sending sensitive material to them, such as Secure Drop. Those for The Intercept can be found here. (All leaking entails risks, as we describe in our manual for whistleblowers.)

* * *

So that’s that. All Americans, particularly conservatives, should ask every Republican making spectacular assertions about this memo when they will be using the above ways to conclusively demonstrate that everything they’ve said is based in rock-solid fact.

If they do not, Republicans will conclusively demonstrate something else.

They will prove conclusively that all of this is about them shamelessly making claims they do not actually believe, fraudulently posturing as caring about one of the most vital, fundamental issues facing the United States: how the U.S. government uses the vast surveillance powers with which it has been vested.

Silver
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Re: Gadianton vs. Gadianton

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https://www.thenewamerican.com/reviews/ ... h-in-syria

Friday, 19 January 2018
A U.S.-Turkish Clash in Syria?
Written by Patrick J. Buchanan


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A U.S.-Turkish Clash in Syria?
The war for dominance in the Middle East, following the crushing of ISIS, appears about to commence in Syria — with NATO allies America and Turkey on opposing sides.

Turkey is moving armor and troops south to Syria's border enclave of Afrin, occupied by Kurds, to drive them out, and then drive the Syrian Kurds out of Manbij further south as well.

Says President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, "We will destroy all terror nests, one by one, in Syria, starting from Afrin and Manbij."

For Erdogan, the Kurdish YPG, the major U.S. ally in Syria, is an arm of the Kurdish PKK in Turkey, which we and the Turks have designated as a terrorist organization.

While the Kurds were our most effective allies against ISIS in Syria, Turkey views them as a mortal peril and intends to deal with that threat.

If Erdogan is serious, a clash with the U.S. is coming, as our Kurdish allies occupy most of Syria's border with Turkey.

Moreover, the U.S. has announced plans to create a 30,000-man Border Security Force of Kurds and Arabs to keep ISIS out of Syria.

Erdogan has branded this BSF a "terror army," and President Bashar Assad of Syria has called BSF members "traitors."

This U.S. plan to create a BSF inside Syria, Damascus declared, "represents a blatant attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity and unity of Syria, and a flagrant violation of international law."

Does not the Syrian government have a point?

Now that ISIS has been driven out of Raqqa and Syria, by what authority do U.S. forces remain to arm troops to keep the Damascus government from reimposing its authority on its own territory?

Secretary of State Tillerson gave Syria the news Wednesday.

The U.S. troop commitment to Syria, he said, is now open-ended.

Our goals: Guarantee al-Qaida and ISIS do not return and set up sanctuary; cope with rising Iranian influence in Damascus; and pursue the removal of Bashar Assad's ruthless regime.

But who authorized this strategic commitment, of indefinite duration, in Syria, when near two decades in Afghanistan have failed to secure that nation against the return of al-Qaida and ISIS?

Again and again, the American people have said they do not want to be dragged into Syria's civil war. Donald Trump won the presidency on a promise of no more unnecessary wars.

Have the American people been had again?

Will they support a clash with NATO ally Turkey, to keep armed Kurds on Turkey's border, when the Turks regard them as terrorists?

Are we prepared for a shooting war with a Syrian army, backed by Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Shiite militias from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, to hold onto a fourth of Syria's territory in alliance with Kurds?

The U.S. coalition in Syria said this week the BSF will be built up "over the next several years" and "be stationed along the borders ... to include portions of the Euphrates river valley and international borders to the east and north."

Remarkable: A U.S.-created border army is going to occupy and control long stretches of Syria's borders with Turkey and Iraq, over Syria's objections. And the U.S. military will stand behind the BSF.

Are the 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria really up to that task, should the Turks decide to cleanse the Syrian border of Kurds, or should the Syrian regime decide to take back territory occupied by the Kurds?

Who sanctioned this commitment to a new army, which, if Syria and its Russian and Iranian allies, and the Turks, do not all back down, risks a major U.S. war with no allies but the Kurds?

As for Syria's Kurds casting their lot with the Americans, one wonders: Did they not observe what happened when their Iraqi cousins, after helping us drive ISIS out of Mosul, were themselves driven out of Kirkuk by the Iraqi army, as their U.S. allies watched?

In the six-year Syrian civil war, which may be about to enter a new phase, America faces a familiar situation.

While our "allies" and adversaries have vital interests there, we do not. The Assads have been in power for the lifetime of most Americans. And we Americans have never shown a desire to fight there.

Assad has a vital interest: preservation of his family regime and the reunification of his country. The Turks have a vital interest in keeping armed Kurds out of their border regions adjacent to their own Kurdish minority, which seeks greater independence.

The Israelis and Saudi royals want the U.S. to keep Iran from securing a land bridge from Tehran to Damascus to Lebanon.

The U.S. War Party wants us to smash Iran and remain in the Middle East forever to assure the hegemony of its favorites.

Have the generals taking us into Syria told the president how and when, if ever, they plan to get us out?

Silver
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Posts: 5247

Re: Gadianton vs. Gadianton

Post by Silver »

http://theantimedia.org/saudi-arabia-as ... s-dropped/

Saudi Arabia Asks for All 9/11 Lawsuits to Be Dropped
January 19, 2018 at 11:36 am
Written by Middle East Monitor

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(MEMO) — Michael Kellogg, a lawyer hired by Saudi Arabia, has asked the American judge tasked with the case looking into the Kingdom’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks in US in 2001 to drop any lawsuits linking the Kingdom to the attacks.

The request was made during the local hearings in Manhattan, New York investigating the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, according to Bloomberg.

Kellogg told the US District Judge George Daniels at the start of the hearing, which lasted all day yesterday, that “conclusions, speculation, hearsay, are not enough” to link Saudi Arabia to the attacks.

He also said there is no evidence of Saudi Arabia’s involvement or support of Al-Qaeda.

He argued that the victims have not provided any evidence to back their cases and “reports from the 9/11 Commission, FBI, CIA and 9/11 Review Commission found no proof Saudi Arabia backed the attacks”.

Lawyers for the 9/11 victims and their families claim Saudi Arabia directed money through its charities to the terrorist group. They supported their case with sworn statements from two former FBI officials and former Florida senator Bob Graham, an ex-chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, in which they provide their opinions that Saudi officials in the US provided support to two of the 11 September hijackers.

The judge has not yet issued is decision on whether the lawsuit against Saudi Arabia will continue to be pursued or dropped. However, Associate Press hinted at the possibility of Daniels pursuing the lawsuit.

Silver
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Re: Gadianton vs. Gadianton

Post by Silver »

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01- ... rewing-fbi

"Too Big To Believe" - Massive Scandal Is Brewing At The FBI

by Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/24/2018 - 11:30

As the Potemkin Village walls of The Left's 'Trump Collusion' narrative crash and burn along with special counsel Mueller's credibility, The New York Post's Michael Goodwin sees far more wide-ranging problems ahead for America's 'intelligence' agencies as the anti-Trump 'secret society' and lovers-texts-gate debacles threaten the core of the Deep State.

Goodwin writes that, during the financial crisis, the federal government bailed out banks it declared “too big to fail.” Fearing their bankruptcy might trigger economic Armageddon, the feds propped them up with taxpayer cash.

Something similar is happening now at the FBI, with the Washington wagons circling the agency to protect it from charges of corruption. This time, the appropriate tag line is “too big to believe.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default ... 24_fbi.jpg

Yet each day brings credible reports suggesting there is a massive scandal involving the top ranks of America’s premier law enforcement agency. The reports, which feature talk among agents of a “secret society” and suddenly missing text messages, point to the existence both of a cabal dedicated to defeating Donald Trump in 2016 and of a plan to let Hillary Clinton skate free in the classified email probe.

If either one is true — and I believe both probably are — it would mean FBI leaders betrayed the nation by abusing their powers in a bid to pick the president.

More support for this view involves the FBI’s use of the Russian dossier on Trump that was paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. It is almost certain that the FBI used the dossier to get FISA court warrants to spy on Trump associates, meaning it used the opposition research of the party in power to convince a court to let it spy on the candidate of the other party — likely without telling the court of the dossier’s political link.

Even worse, there is growing reason to believe someone in President Barack Obama’s administration turned over classified information about Trump to the Clinton campaign.

As one former federal prosecutor put it, “It doesn’t get worse than that.” That prosecutor, Joseph ­diGenova, believes Trump was correct when he claimed Obama aides wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower.

These and other elements combine to make a toxic brew that smells to high heaven, but most Americans don’t know much about it. Mainstream media coverage has been sparse and dismissive and there’s a blackout from the same Democrats obsessed with Russia, Russia, Russia.

Partisan motives aside, it’s as if a scandal of this magnitude is more than America can bear — so let’s pretend there’s nothing to see and move along.

But, thankfully the disgraceful episode won’t be washed away, thanks to a handful of congressional Republicans, led by California Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House’s Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. After he accused the FBI of stonewalling in turning over records, the bureau relented, at least partially.

The result was clear evidence of bias against Trump by officials charged with investigating him and Clinton. Those same agents appear to have acted on that bias to tilt the election to Clinton.

In one text message, an agent suggests that Attorney General Loretta Lynch knew while the investigation was still going on that the FBI would not recommend charges against Clinton.

How could she know unless the fix was in?

All roads in the explosive developments lead to James Comey, whose Boy Scout image belied a sinister belief that he, like his infamous predecessor J. Edgar Hoover, was above the law.

It is why I named him J. Edgar Comey last year and wrote that he was “adept at using innuendo and leaks” to let everybody in Washington know they could be the next to be investigated.

It was in the office of Comey’s top deputy, Andrew McCabe, where agents discussed an “insurance policy” in the event that Trump won. Reports indicated that the Russia-collusion probe was that insurance policy.

The text was from Peter Strzok, the top investigator on the Trump case, and was sent to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer and also his mistress.

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40 . . . ” Strzok wrote.

It is frightening that Strzok, who called Trump “an idiot,” was the lead investigator on both the Clinton and Trump cases.

After these messages surfaced, special counsel Robert Mueller removed Strzok and Page from his probe, though both still work at the FBI.

Strzok, despite his talk of an “insurance policy” in 2016, wrote in May of 2017 that he was skeptical Mueller’s probe would find anything on Trump because “there’s no big there there.”

Talk about irony. While Dems and the left-wing media already found Trump guilty of collusion before Mueller was appointed, the real scandal might be the conduct of the probers themselves.

Suspicions are hardly allayed by the fact that the FBI says it can’t find five months of messages between Strzok and Page, who exchanged an estimated 50,000 messages overall. The missing period — Dec. 14, 2016 through May 17, 2017 — was a crucial time in Washington.

There were numerous leaks of classified material just before and after Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

And the president fired Comey last May 9, provoking an intense lobbying effort for a special counsel, which led to Mueller’s appointment on May 19.

Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, has emerged from his hidey hole to notice that the FBI has run amok, and said Monday he would “leave no stone unturned” to find the five months of missing texts.

Fine, but the House is racing ahead of him. Nunes has prepared a four-page memo, based on classified material that purportedly lays out what the FBI and others did to corrupt the election.

A movement to release the memo is gaining steam, but Congress says it might take weeks. Why wait? Americans can handle the truth, no matter how big it is.


el buitre Jan 24, 2018 2:08 PM
Like the FBI was ever anything but a scumbag organization starting with its founding psycho director J. Edgar Hoover, whose favorite pass time was slipping into a slip with a pair of pumps and prancing about with "special" agent Clyde Tolson. Obama would have loved him. He was a significant player in the JFK hit though overshadowed by Poppy Bush, the local coordinator who was taking orders from then defrocked CIA director Allen Dulles, later to be the janitor on the Warren Commission. Fox guarding the henhouse doesn't begin to describe it.


JBLight Jan 24, 2018 2:00 PM
We're at an interesting crossroads. We're either a nation of laws or we're not. These kind of criminal acts have been done in the dark for decades. Now names have been named, Congress knows, the media is reporting it. If these people are not exposed and punished, then what? The nation will die. But perhaps that's what needs to happen to finally rebuild something of significance on this planet.

Silver
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Re: Gadianton vs. Gadianton

Post by Silver »

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01- ... emo-secret

Andrew Napolitano: Wrong To Keep Mass Surveillance Memo Secret

by Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/24/2018 - 15:31

Authored by Adam Dick via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

What is the deal with a memorandum by Republican employees at the Intelligence Committee of the United States House of Representatives that allegedly demonstrates very disturbing use of surveillance power through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court not being publicized or shared widely among Congress members until shortly after legislation (S 139) to extend legal authority for such surveillance for six years cleared the Congress?

https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default ... elease.jpg

If the memorandum provides as disturbing of revelations as some Congress members are claiming, every House and Senate member, and the American people too, being able to review it before congressional votes on the bill could have had significant consequences.

Maybe the memorandum’s wide distribution would have resulted in the bill failing to pass, passing with alterations to address problems evidenced in the memorandum, or passing with a significantly shorter reauthorization period. That a small group of Congress members “sat on” the memorandum, keeping its information from their fellow Congress members, legal scholar Andrew Napolitano says in a new interview with host Kennedy at Fox Business, “is either incompetence or malfeasance in office.”

And why is the memorandum now kept secret from the public despite Congress members’ claims that its revelations show reprehensible actions in the US government related to the mass surveillance program? Napolitano, who is the Fox News senior judicial analyst as well as a Ron Paul Institute Advisory Board member, finds this lack of openness intolerable.

Continuing to keep the memorandum secret from the people, Napolitano argues in the interview, is wrong.

“The use of raw intelligence data for political purposes,” which is apparently a focus of the still-secret memorandum, says Napolitano, “will destroy and undermine democracy.”

“If that happened,” says Napolitano, “we have a right to know about it.”

Napolitano continues:

It is just as bad for members of Congress to say: 'We know about it, but we can’t do anything; because it’s a secret, we can’t tell you about it; it’s horrific if you know about it, but you will never know about it.' What kind of democracy is that? Do we work for them, or do they work for us?

Preventing the publication of the memorandum, supposing it does contain information that would lead people to criticize the mass surveillance program, Napolitano says, will mean that the memorandum will become no more than “a historical footnote” and something largely forgotten six years from now when reauthorization is again considered in Congress.

Watch Napolitano’s complete interview here:

Napolitano also says in the interview that he is “looking for a courageous member” from among the twelve Congress members who knew about the memorandum before the vote but kept the memorandum secret to “take it to the floor of the Congress and release it, where the releaser is immune from criminal and civil liability.”

The immunity Napolitano is referring to is the protection provided to Congress members found in the Speech and Debate Clause of Article One, Section Six of the United States Constitution. It is this protection that Sen. Mike Gravel (D-AK) took advantage of in 1971 when he entered into the record of the Senate subcommittee he chaired the Pentagon Papers, the publication of which the US government was fighting to prevent, and worked on ensuring copies of the Pentagon Papers were then handed to reporters.

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