**President Trump 2018 Thread**

[Soxbadger]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/republican-lawma...-155008158.html

 

Senate Judiciary committee is getting push back from WH/Sessions on bill that would potentially reduce sentences for nonviolent offenders.

 

Seems like the only people that Trump and Co care to protect are violent offenders.

[StrangeSox]

Scott Pruitt is wasting money flying first class. He is doing this because he needs a safe space because someone yelled "you're ruining the f***ing environment" at him once. What a snowflake.

 

https://t.co/jpYVwO19bp

[caulfield12]

The FBI had the “black eye” photos of Porter’s ex wife a week after Trump’s Inauguration...and, at the very least, communicated their concerns if not directly sharing the pictures with the WH Personnel Office.

 

 

Washington (CNN)The FBI obtained photos of the bruised face of Colbie Holderness seven days after President Donald Trump's inauguration last year, according to emails obtained by CNN, raising questions about what information White House counsel Don McGahn had at his disposal regarding her ex-husband, Rob Porter.

 

Holderness provided the photos to the bureau as part of a security clearance background check that was being conducted into Porter. At the time, Porter was Trump's staff secretary, managing the flow of some of the most sensitive information destined for the President. But, according to the White House, the full extent of the domestic violence allegations weren't known by senior officials until last week, when pictures were published by the Daily Mail.

 

It's unclear if the FBI sent the photos to the White House, though a law enforcement source said the bureau would have at least provided a synopsis of what they portray. But the existence of the photos is leading law enforcement experts and officials in previous administrations to strongly question how McGahn didn't act on the domestic violence allegations, which have rocked the White House over the past week and triggered at least one congressional investigation. Like other top presidential lawyers before him, McGahn had legal staff in his office who were assigned to deal with clearance issues.

 

"That isn't reasonable," national security expert Mark Zaid said of the idea that McGahn only learned about the photo when it was published. "I would be surprised that if in their partial report in March, the FBI either didn't include the photo or, at a minimum, reference they had photographic evidence of the domestic assault."

 

He added: "And I can't fathom it not being part of the completed report" that the FBI delivered to the White House in July.

Edited February 16, 2018 by caulfield12

[caulfield12]

Donald Trump, a Playboy Model (most famous of the 90’s), and a System for Concealing Infidelity

One woman’s account of clandestine meetings, financial transactions, and legal pacts designed to hide an extramarital affair.

 

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/do...-karen-mcdougal

 

 

As the pool party at the Playboy Mansion came to an end, Trump asked for McDougal’s telephone number. For McDougal, who grew up in a small town in Michigan and worked as a preschool teacher before beginning her modelling career, such advances were not unusual. John Crawford, McDougal’s friend, who also helped broker her deal with A.M.I., said that Trump was “another powerful guy hitting on her, a gal who’s paid to be at work.” Trump and McDougal began talking frequently on the phone, and soon had what McDougal described as their first date: dinner in a private bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. McDougal wrote that Trump impressed her. “I was so nervous! I was into his intelligence + charm. Such a polite man,” she wrote. “We talked for a couple hours – then, it was “ON”! We got naked + had sex.” As McDougal was getting dressed to leave, Trump did something that surprised her. “He offered me money,” she wrote. “I looked at him (+ felt sad) + said, ‘No thanks - I’m not ‘that girl.’ I slept w/you because I like you - NOT for money’ - He told me ‘you are special.’

 

Afterward, McDougal wrote, she “went to see him every time he was in LA (which was a lot).” Trump, she said, always stayed in the same bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel and ordered the same meal—steak and mashed potatoes—and never drank. McDougal’s account is consistent with other descriptions of Trump’s behavior. Last month, In Touch Weekly published an interview conducted in 2011 with Stephanie Clifford in which she revealed that during a relationship with Trump she met him for dinner at a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where Trump insisted they watch “Shark Week” on the Discovery Channel. Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” alleged that Trump assaulted her at a private dinner meeting, in December of 2007, at a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Trump, Zervos has claimed, kissed her, groped her breast, and suggested that they lie down to “watch some telly-telly.” After Zervos rebuffed Trump’s advances, she said that he “began thrusting his genitals” against her. (Zervos recently sued Trump for defamation after he denied her account.) All three women say that they were escorted to a bungalow at the hotel by a Trump bodyguard, whom two of the women have identified as Keith Schiller. After Trump was elected, Schiller was appointed director of Oval Office Operations and deputy assistant to the President. Last September, John Kelly, acting as the new chief of staff, removed Schiller from the White House posts. (Schiller did not respond to a request for comment.)

 

[StrangeSox]

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/16/trump-r...-investigation/

 

Is Donald Trump A Traitor?

Americans must live with the uncertainty of not knowing whether Trump has the best interests of the United States or those of Russia at heart.

 

Start of a four-part series. This one examines whether Russia intervened in the 2016 US elections to help Trump win, including the Cold War history of similar efforts. It's a long piece so I'm only excerpting parts of the intro.

 

I FIND IT hard to write about Donald Trump.

 

It is not that he is a complicated subject. Quite the opposite. It is that everything about him is so painfully obvious. He is a low-rent racist, a shameless misogynist, and an unbalanced narcissist. He is an unrelenting liar and a two-bit white identity demagogue. Lest anyone forget these things, he goes out of his way each day to remind us of them.

 

At the end of the day, he is certain to be left in the dustbin of history, alongside Father Coughlin and Gen. Edwin Walker. (Exactly – you don’t remember them, either.)

 

What more can I add?

 

Unfortunately, another word also describes him: president. The fact that such an unstable egomaniac occupies the White House is the greatest threat to the national security of the United States in modern history.

 

Which brings me to the only question about Donald Trump that I find really interesting: Is he a traitor?

 

Did he gain the presidency through collusion with Russian President Vladimir Putin?

 

One year after Trump took office, it is still unclear whether the president of the United States is an agent of a foreign power. Just step back and think about that for a moment.

 

As a practical matter, the special counsel is highly unlikely to pursue treason charges against Trump or his associates. Treason is vaguely defined in the law and very difficult to prove. To the extent that it is defined – as providing aid and comfort to an “enemy” of the United States – the question might come down to whether Russia is legally considered America’s “enemy.”

 

Russia may not meet the legal definition of an “enemy,” but it is certainly an adversary of the United States. It would make perfect sense for Russian President and de facto dictator Vladimir Putin to use his security services to conduct a covert operation to influence American politics to Moscow’s advantage. Such a program would fall well within the acceptable norms of great power behavior. After all, it is the kind of covert intelligence program the United States has conducted regularly against other nations – including Russia.

 

Throughout the Cold War, the CIA and the KGB were constantly engaged in such secret intelligence battles. The KGB had a nickname for the CIA: glavnyy vrag or “the main enemy.” In 2003, I co-authored a book called “The Main Enemy” with Milt Bearden, a retired CIA officer who had been chief of the CIA’s Soviet/Eastern European division when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. The book was about the intelligence wars between the CIA and the KGB.

 

Today’s cyber-spy wars are just the latest version of “The Great Game,” the wonderfully romantic name for the secret intelligence battles between the Russian and British empires for control of Central Asia in the 19th century. Russia, the United States, and other nations engage in such covert intelligence games all the time – whether they are “enemies” or simply rivals.

 

In fact, evidence of the connections between Trump’s bid for the White House and Russian ambitions to manipulate the 2016 U.S. election keeps piling up. Throughout late 2016 and early 2017, a series of reports from the U.S. intelligence community and other government agencies underlined and reinforced nearly every element of the Russian hacking narrative, including the Russian preference for Trump. The reports were notable in part because their findings exposed the agencies to criticism from Trump and his supporters and put them at odds with Trump’s public dismissals of reported Russian attempts to help him get elected, which he has called “fake news.”

 

In addition, a series of details has emerged through unofficial channels that seems to corroborate these authorized assessments. A classified NSA document obtained by The Intercept last year states that Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, played a role in the Russian hack of the 2016 American election. In August, a Russian hacker confessed to hacking the Democratic National Committee under the supervision of an officer in Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, who has separately been accused of spying for the U.S. And Dutch intelligence service AIVD has reportedly given the FBI significant inside information about the Russian hack of the Democratic Party.

 

Given all this, it seems increasingly likely that the Russians have pulled off the most consequential covert action operation since Germany put Lenin on a train back to Petrograd in 1917.

 

THERE ARE FOUR important tracks to follow in the Trump-Russia story. First, we must determine whether there is credible evidence for the underlying premise that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump win. Second, we must figure out whether Trump or people around him worked with the Russians to try to win the election. Next, we must scrutinize the evidence to understand whether Trump and his associates have sought to obstruct justice by impeding a federal investigation into whether Trump and Russia colluded. A fourth track concerns whether Republican leaders are now engaged in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice through their intense and ongoing efforts to discredit Mueller’s probe.

[Quin]

13 new indictments.

 

Gawd damn.

[StrangeSox]

Kushner, who's been working under an "interim" security clearance for over a year now, has had to 'correct' his financial disclosure form yet again.

[Dick Allen]

Kushner, who's been working under an "interim" security clearance for over a year now, has had to 'correct' his financial disclosure form yet again.

 

It's really hard to believe this is allowed to happen this many times and for this long. Supposedly, there may even be more coming. Time for Jared to get fired and file for bankruptcy like his hero.

[StrangeSox]

13 new indictments.

 

Gawd damn.

 

13 indictments against Russian nationals and 3 against Russian propaganda outfits for interfering in the 2016 election to help Trump or hurt Clinton.

 

These people will never be extradicted, so this seems more like a move to show that, yes, there was Russian interference in the election on behalf of Trump and against Clinton. Whether there was any collobaration between Trump's team and the Russians, beyond Papadopolous, and Page, and Trump Jr./Manafort/Kushner meeting with a group of Russians presenting themselves as working on behalf of the Russian government with dirt on Clinton, we'll have to wait to see.

 

 

edit: There's some interesting language in the indictment about "Russian affiliates, posing as US persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with "unwitting individuals" within the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities"

Edited February 16, 2018 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

They astroturfed our country so hard in 2016 for a total of like $2M. That's an amazing return on investment.

[Jenksismyhero]

So...

 

(1) the stories i'm reading state that this stuff started in 2014, before Trump even declared his intent to run. So neither the Obama admn nor the Hillary camp saw any of this coming and/or they failed to stop it. I mean the Obama admn specifically....they're buddy buddy with Silicon Valley. How does no one call up Zucker and say "hey, stop these fake websites/groups from spreading false news on your site."

 

(2) I have to believe if the DOJ/FBI has dirt on Trump and collusion they would have presented it before, or at the same time, as these indictments. And in fact i'm sure they tried to get some of these people to flip for testimony before the indictments came down. I still don't see much more than greedy, immoral morons running a government that they have no business running and they're either ignoring and/or not aware of certain protocols and laws. That's even more evidence to show that they shouldn't be in power, but it's not proving collusion.

 

(3) What exactly has Russia gained? I'm seeing a bunch of crap on twitter that Putin was afraid of Hillary, but I find that hard to believe. I could see him maybe thinking that Trump would be dumb (accurate!) but thus far, hasn't the Trump admn increased the sanctions on Putin? What have they gotten out of this other than to get the country more pissed off and divided?

 

edit: i guess on 3 it's a perfect Trumpism. He signed the new sanction legislation into law but then publicly said he wouldn't enforce it.

Edited February 16, 2018 by JenksIsMyHero

[StrangeSox]

1) Yeah, they were definitely tracking this for a while and definitely didn't do enough to stop it. Social media companies in particular did absolutely nothing even when they were repeatedly asked. For example, the actual Tennessee GOP tried to get them to take down the @TENGOP account as a fraud multiple times, but twitter routinely ignored it. I don't know how much was just not caring versus having no idea what to even do about it. Their efforts since 2016 haven't exactly shown that they've figured it out. On the flip side, there's been some recent political science research that's found that most of the intentionally Fake News social media stuff was consumed by a small portion of the electorate, 10% or so, on the hard right. The question there would still be not whether it flipped votes but if it kept the base motivated, though.

 

And it wasn't just social media s***posting of fake news. There was astroturfing rallies and gatherings and what not.

 

2) Eh, maybe. The people today are all Russian nationals living in Russia who'll never be extradited and won't actually face up to these charges. There's no flipping these people. This seems more like a series of indictments to strengthen the recent statements from every top intelligence official that, yes, Russia definitely did interfere in the 2016 elections and yes they are definitely planning to do it again. This article I posted earlier today goes into when it started and how they identified these people--it was Dutch intelligence.

 

WHILE THE WASHINGTON press corps has been obsessing over Donald Trump’s tweets and a ginned-up memo from House Republicans seeking to discredit the Trump-Russia investigation, another major break in the story has just begun to unfold in the Netherlands. In late January, a Dutch newspaper, de Volkskrant, along with Nieuwsuur, a Dutch current affairs television program, reported that Dutch intelligence service AIVD has turned over to the FBI conclusive inside information about the Russian hack of the Democratic Party.

 

The two news organizations reported that in 2014, Dutch hackers working for the AIVD gained secret access to the Russian hacker group known as Cozy Bear – also known as Advanced Persistent Threat 29 – a Russian intelligence unit behind the hack of the DNC.

 

Dutch intelligence first told their American counterparts about their successful penetration of Cozy Bear in 2014, tipping off Washington that the Russian hackers were trying to break into the State Department’s computer system. That warning led the NSA to scramble to counter the Russian threat.

 

In 2015, the Dutch were also able to watch, undetected by the Russians, as the Cozy Bear hackers launched their first attack on the Democratic Party, according to the two news organizations. In addition to gaining access to the Cozy Bear computers, the Dutch were able to hack into a security camera that recorded who was working in Cozy Bear’s office in a university building in Moscow near Red Square. The Dutch discovered that there were about 10 people working there, and they were eventually able to match the faces to those of Russian intelligence officers who work for the SVR.

 

The information flowing from the Dutch was considered so vital by the Americans that the NSA opened a direct line with Dutch intelligence to get the data as fast as possible, according to the Dutch news organizations. To show their appreciation, the Americans sent cake and flowers to AIVD headquarters in the Dutch city of Zoetermeer.

 

If the Dutch story is accurate, it would help explain why the U.S. intelligence community is so confident in its assessment that Russian intelligence was behind the attack on the Democratic Party.

 

The Dutch news organizations say that the AIVD is no longer inside the Cozy Bear network, and that Dutch intelligence has become increasingly suspicious of working with the Americans.

 

Since Trump’s election, who can blame them?

 

3) A weakened US, and they've had a goal of weaken democracy across the West in general. There's a lot in Russian politics about lost dignity after the collapse of the SU and lost global influence.

Edited February 16, 2018 by StrangeSox

[CrimsonWeltall]

How does no one call up Zucker and say "hey, stop these fake websites/groups from spreading false news on your site."

 

First Amendment.

 

It's different if they know for sure that it's foreigners running afoul of federal election laws. But if it might just be Joe Basementdweller creating a Facebook group and posting a bunch of nonsense, what are they gonna do? Any report of the Obama admin trying to crack down on Facebook for allowing anti-Hillary content would be a scandal.

[illinilaw08]

So...

 

(1) the stories i'm reading state that this stuff started in 2014, before Trump even declared his intent to run. So neither the Obama admn nor the Hillary camp saw any of this coming and/or they failed to stop it. I mean the Obama admn specifically....they're buddy buddy with Silicon Valley. How does no one call up Zucker and say "hey, stop these fake websites/groups from spreading false news on your site."

 

(2) I have to believe if the DOJ/FBI has dirt on Trump and collusion they would have presented it before, or at the same time, as these indictments. And in fact i'm sure they tried to get some of these people to flip for testimony before the indictments came down. I still don't see much more than greedy, immoral morons running a government that they have no business running and they're either ignoring and/or not aware of certain protocols and laws. That's even more evidence to show that they shouldn't be in power, but it's not proving collusion.

 

(3) What exactly has Russia gained? I'm seeing a bunch of crap on twitter that Putin was afraid of Hillary, but I find that hard to believe. I could see him maybe thinking that Trump would be dumb (accurate!) but thus far, hasn't the Trump admn increased the sanctions on Putin? What have they gotten out of this other than to get the country more pissed off and divided?

 

edit: i guess on 3 it's a perfect Trumpism. He signed the new sanction legislation into law but then publicly said he wouldn't enforce it.

 

On (1), hasn't it been pretty well established that the Obama administration was falling all over itself to avoid the appearance of any bias in the run up to 2016? Could you imagine the outcry on the Right if the Obama administration tried to stop Facebook posts that were spreading *allegedly* false news that favored the Republican side of the aisle?

[Jenksismyhero]

First Amendment.

 

It's different if they know for sure that it's foreigners running afoul of federal election laws. But if it might just be Joe Basementdweller creating a Facebook group and posting a bunch of nonsense, what are they gonna do? Any report of the Obama admin trying to crack down on Facebook for allowing anti-Hillary content would be a scandal.

 

First Amendment doesn't apply to a private company like Facebook.

[StrangeSox]

The official White House statement continues to lie, still claiming that the intelligence community and now the Special Counsel say Russian interference had no affect on the outcome of the election. Neither group has claimed that (or would be in a position to claim that).

 

Trump has insisted for over a year that the very idea of Russian interference was a complete hoax, so at least now they're sort of recognizing that it actually happened. Doubt they'll do anything to prevent it from happening again this year, though.

 

e:

First Amendment doesn't apply to a private company like Facebook.

 

It would apply to the government asking Facebook to pull content

 

On (1), hasn't it been pretty well established that the Obama administration was falling all over itself to avoid the appearance of any bias in the run up to 2016? Could you imagine the outcry on the Right if the Obama administration tried to stop Facebook posts that were spreading *allegedly* false news that favored the Republican side of the aisle?

 

Obama should have come forward with what was known in the fall of 2016 and told the country that McConnell was threatening him in order to cover it up imo.

Edited February 16, 2018 by StrangeSox

[RockRaines]

First Amendment.

 

It's different if they know for sure that it's foreigners running afoul of federal election laws. But if it might just be Joe Basementdweller creating a Facebook group and posting a bunch of nonsense, what are they gonna do? Any report of the Obama admin trying to crack down on Facebook for allowing anti-Hillary content would be a scandal.

Plus Facebook and others thrives on traffic, they dont care how they get it.

[Jenksismyhero]

On (1), hasn't it been pretty well established that the Obama administration was falling all over itself to avoid the appearance of any bias in the run up to 2016? Could you imagine the outcry on the Right if the Obama administration tried to stop Facebook posts that were spreading *allegedly* false news that favored the Republican side of the aisle?

 

Which I never understood. The dude campaigned for her (or at least made a few speeches here and there). He already has a bias. Who cares?

[Jenksismyhero]

The official White House statement continues to lie, still claiming that the intelligence community and now the Special Counsel say Russian interference had no affect on the outcome of the election. Neither group has claimed that (or would be in a position to claim that).

 

Trump has insisted for over a year that the very idea of Russian interference was a complete hoax, so at least now they're sort of recognizing that it actually happened. Doubt they'll do anything to prevent it from happening again this year, though.

 

e:

 

It would apply to the government asking Facebook to pull content

 

 

 

Obama should have come forward with what was known in the fall of 2016 and told the country that McConnell was threatening him in order to cover it up imo.

 

Not sure that's true either. Even still, circumvent that and just provide them with the info that Russia is infiltrating their sites with false stories and ask them to act accordingly.

[CrimsonWeltall]

First Amendment doesn't apply to a private company like Facebook.

 

You were asking why the government wasn't getting involved and telling Facebook to stop them.

[StrangeSox]

Which I never understood. The dude campaigned for her (or at least made a few speeches here and there). He already has a bias. Who cares?

 

Obama was the most decorum-obsessed President in history, and McConnell was essentially blackmailing him and the FBI by threatening to immediately politicize any disclosure and claim that Obama was abusing the powers of the office to hurt political opponents.

 

But campaigning separately while in office and using the tools and power of the office for campaigning are two very different things.

Edited February 16, 2018 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Not sure that's true either. Even still, circumvent that and just provide them with the info that Russia is infiltrating their sites with false stories and ask them to act accordingly.

 

They're a public for-profit company driven almost entirely on ad revenue. What's "acting appropriately" here? Do private multinational corporations have some sort of civic duty?

 

Why should Facebook really care if they're flooded with foreign propaganda if it's driving clicks and traffics until the point it becomes unacceptable from a PR standpoint?

[Jenksismyhero]

They're a public for-profit company driven almost entirely on ad revenue. What's "acting appropriately" here? Do private multinational corporations have some sort of civic duty?

 

Why should Facebook really care if they're flooded with foreign propaganda if it's driving clicks and traffics until the point it becomes unacceptable from a PR standpoint?

 

True, I guess i'm assuming that Zuckerberg would want to help his liberal friends. But as always, the almighty dollar always trumps (ba-doom-ching) politics.

[RockRaines]

True, I guess i'm assuming that Zuckerberg would want to help his liberal friends. But as always, the almighty dollar always trumps (ba-doom-ching) politics.

The dollar always wins, and turning down probably millions of pages views isnt worth it to them.

[RockRaines]

It is pretty funny to watch the President actually catch himself in lies.