Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

[Tero]

Trump freaking out about Sessions

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-attacks ... 4139c83de/
This also suggests a carrot-and-stick approach to the way Trump could be approaching the Mueller investigation. He uses public attacks on the perceived disloyalty of current and former staff who have been interviewed by Mueller as the sticks. For the carrots, there are the reports that Trump’s lawyers dangled pardons in front of Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn (as well as the use of Republican party money to fund the legal defenses of other aides).

[Tero]

Fox News asks Republicans about Trump’s ‘spying’ claims. They weren’t buying it.
https://thinkprogress.org/trey-gowdy-an ... e925aca97/

[Forty Two]

Fox News asks Republicans about Trump’s ‘spying’ claims. They weren’t buying it.
https://thinkprogress.org/trey-gowdy-an ... e925aca97/

This is a rhetorical argument. They did have informant(s) in the campaign. The only argument is over the use of the word "spy." The don't want to use the word spy, because that implies some sort of wrongfulness. However, there was a confidential informant.

There was spying going on. Halper, and possibly others, were secret informants planted into the Trump campaign. James Clapper, notorious for perjuring himself to Congress over the NSA data collection issue, among other things, said that there was spying, but the spying was "of the Russians" or directed to find out if any Americans in Trump's campaign were involved with the Russians. He even used the word spying.

The media, or some reason, thinks it has to defend the FBI here, and claim that there is "no evidence" of any spy in the Trump campaign at all. They are carrying water when they do that. Does anyone have any illusions that if this was a different campaign that the media would just be trusting the honorable FBI and right honorable James Clapper here? There'd be no "anonymous sources" suggesting a political motive for the FBI and the previous administration? LOL. Come on...

So, the denial about spying is that the FBI planted a spy to collect information on the Trump campaign for political purposes. There is no denial that there was a spy in the Trump campaign - they admit Halper was there, secretly and collecting information, the denial is that there was any political motivation.

[Forty Two]

The media reported the other day about the Trump administration keeping refugee immigrant kids in cages. Scary pictures of kids behind chain link, and a Twitter storm followed about the human tragedy that is Trump's immigration system....

...only... the pictures were from 2014. As soon as that was brought to light, the articles came down, the Tweetstorm was deleted.... nobody outraged anymore... nothing to see here.... http://www.news1130.com/2018/05/29/ap-f ... on-debate/

Kids in cages under the Obama administration is not something that needs to be talked about. LOL. Once we know it was in 2014, we know that the pictures don't accurately portray what was happening, and we can trust that all the best and kindest actions were taken..... lol

[pErvinalia]

Really? You don't think it's more likely that they were brought down because they were obviously not relevant (nor true) any more (assuming the kids weren't still behind fences)? Honestly, I think your mind is programmed to sabotage you. I can't understand how you come up with some of the stuff you come up with.

[Joe]

Fox News asks Republicans about Trump’s ‘spying’ claims. They weren’t buying it.
https://thinkprogress.org/trey-gowdy-an ... e925aca97/

This is a rhetorical argument. They did have informant(s) in the campaign. The only argument is over the use of the word "spy." The don't want to use the word spy, because that implies some sort of wrongfulness. However, there was a confidential informant.

There was spying going on. Halper, and possibly others, were secret informants planted into the Trump campaign. James Clapper, notorious for perjuring himself to Congress over the NSA data collection issue, among other things, said that there was spying, but the spying was "of the Russians" or directed to find out if any Americans in Trump's campaign were involved with the Russians. He even used the word spying.

The media, or some reason, thinks it has to defend the FBI here, and claim that there is "no evidence" of any spy in the Trump campaign at all. They are carrying water when they do that. Does anyone have any illusions that if this was a different campaign that the media would just be trusting the honorable FBI and right honorable James Clapper here? There'd be no "anonymous sources" suggesting a political motive for the FBI and the previous administration? LOL. Come on...

So, the denial about spying is that the FBI planted a spy to collect information on the Trump campaign for political purposes. There is no denial that there was a spy in the Trump campaign - they admit Halper was there, secretly and collecting information, the denial is that there was any political motivation.

Fox News asks Republicans about Trump’s ‘spying’ claims. They weren’t buying it.
https://thinkprogress.org/trey-gowdy-an ... e925aca97/

This is a rhetorical argument. They did have informant(s) in the campaign. The only argument is over the use of the word "spy." The don't want to use the word spy, because that implies some sort of wrongfulness. However, there was a confidential informant.

There was spying going on. Halper, and possibly others, were secret informants planted into the Trump campaign. James Clapper, notorious for perjuring himself to Congress over the NSA data collection issue, among other things, said that there was spying, but the spying was "of the Russians" or directed to find out if any Americans in Trump's campaign were involved with the Russians. He even used the word spying.

The media, or some reason, thinks it has to defend the FBI here, and claim that there is "no evidence" of any spy in the Trump campaign at all. They are carrying water when they do that. Does anyone have any illusions that if this was a different campaign that the media would just be trusting the honorable FBI and right honorable James Clapper here? There'd be no "anonymous sources" suggesting a political motive for the FBI and the previous administration? LOL. Come on...

So, the denial about spying is that the FBI planted a spy to collect information on the Trump campaign for political purposes. There is no denial that there was a spy in the Trump campaign - they admit Halper was there, secretly and collecting information, the denial is that there was any political motivation.

“I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got, and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump,” Gowdy said.

You have a funny definition of "rhetorical argument" Forty Two. This sounds like a member of the House Intelligence Committee calling bullshit on Trump's claims.

In addition, John Dickerson recently tweeted:

Congressman Trey Gowdy on FBI use of an informant on @CBSThisMorning: "The president himself told James Comey..."I didn’t collude with Russia but If anyone connected with my campaign did, I want you to investigate it." It strikes me that that's exactly what the FBI was doing."

Judge Napolitano said:

 “But the allegations by [Trump’s lawyer, Rudy] Giuliani over the weekend which would us to believe that the Trump people think the FBI had an undercover agent who inveigled his way into the campaign and was there as a spy on the campaign seem to be baseless. There is no evidence for that whatsoever.”

Rhetorical argument. Heh!

Sent from my LG-H700 using Tapatalk

[Joe]

Dang, messed that one up.

Still new to Tapatalk, but you get the point.

Sent from my LG-H700 using Tapatalk

[Forty Two]

Yes, but it's not "bullshit." There WAS a secret, confidential informant placed in the Trump campaign, placed there to collect information and bring it back to the FBI. That part is not "bullshit."

The only "bullshit" is calling that "confidential and secret informant" a "spy."

What else does the a spy do, but go in there in secret and collect information and bring it back?

What more would there have to be going on for the person to be called a spy?

Typically, a spy would be someone sent to confidentially inform on an adversary. So, the only absent feature - what folks are saying is "bullshit" is the political motivation to look into Trump as a political adversary (ie. the political motive).

“But the allegations by [Trump’s lawyer, Rudy] Giuliani over the weekend which would us to believe that the Trump people think the FBI had an undercover agent who inveigled his way into the campaign and was there as a spy on the campaign seem to be baseless. There is no evidence for that whatsoever.” - sure - there is no dispute though that the FBI had an undercover agent who inveigled his way into the campaign. The part that is "baseless" is an alleged political purpose to spy ON THE CAMPAIGN. The guy was obviously there to collect information, in secret, and report it to the FBI. What the fuck else was the secret, confidential informant doing?

[Joe]

What's bullshit is you trying to spin their statements into a quibble about Trump's choice of words.

The Gowdy quote directly refutes that. He backed the FBI, as does the Napolitano quote. The terms "baseless" and "no evidence" are straightforward enough.

The John Dickerson tweet I tried to reference supports this. Let me try this again.

Congressman Trey Gowdy on FBI use of an informant on @CBSThisMorning: "The president himself told James Comey..."I didn’t collude with Russia but If anyone connected with my campaign did, I want you to investigate it." It strikes me that that's exactly what the FBI was doing."

You seem to have their argument wrong.

Sent from my LG-H700 using Tapatalk

[Forty Two]

What's bullshit is you trying to spin their statements into a quibble about Trump's choice of words.

The Gowdy quote directly refutes that. He backed the FBI, as does the Napolitano quote. The terms "baseless" and "no evidence" are straightforward enough.

It's not baseless that there was a secret informant in the Trump campaign, right? And if the FBI is to be believed, the purpose was to find out if members of the Trump campaign were up to no good vis-a-vis Russia, right? Is that "bullshit?"

The John Dickerson tweet I tried to reference supports this. Let me try this again.

Congressman Trey Gowdy on FBI use of an informant on @CBSThisMorning: "The president himself told James Comey..."I didn’t collude with Russia but If anyone connected with my campaign did, I want you to investigate it." It strikes me that that's exactly what the FBI was doing."

You seem to have their argument wrong.

Sent from my LG-H700 using Tapatalk

No, because Trey Gowdy is not saying it's bullshit that a confidential informant was placed in the campaign. What he's saying is that it wasn't done for an improper purpose. He's talking about why the informant was there, not whether the informant was there.

One thing that seems to be getting in the way here is the assumption that "spying" would be illegal, and "confidential informing" would be fine. What Trey Gowdy is disputing is whether the FBI did anything wrong by spying, not that it didn't spy. Sending a confidential, secret informant into the campaign to get information and bring it back is.....drum roll...spying. It's synonymous. What the hollers of "bullshit" are all about is to sell the notion that no confidential informant was ever placed there. But he was.

If you listen to Gowdy's statements, he's talking about the purpose of the informant, which Gowdy says was targeted at Russia and "Trump was never the target."

[Joe]

Gowdy, and Napolitano, are plainly saying Trump and Giuliani's accusations are bullshit. To frame their remarks as a "rhetorical argument," and say "the only argument is over the use of the word 'spy'" misrepresents this. The direct quotes refute the assertion.

Trump tried to spin up a controversy and was rebuffed by his own team. "SPYGATE" is a nothing burger, and pedantic hairsplitting doesn't change that.

[L'Emmerdeur]

What's bullshit is you trying to spin their statements into a quibble about Trump's choice of words.

The Gowdy quote directly refutes that. He backed the FBI, as does the Napolitano quote. The terms "baseless" and "no evidence" are straightforward enough.

It's not baseless that there was a secret informant in the Trump campaign, right?

Yes, I think it's baseless; the informant was never 'in' the Trump campaign. He spoke to staff members of the campaign, but as far as I'm aware nobody but Trump and Trump supporters with a penchant for repeating his lies have claimed that he was ever 'in' or 'implanted' in the campaign. To be in the campaign, he would have to be recognized by the campaign as at least an informal consultant. Nowhere have I seen evidence that he had any such a relationship with the campaign. If you know of any, I'd be very interested in seeing it.

[Forty Two]

Gowdy, and Napolitano, are plainly saying Trump and Giuliani's accusations are bullshit. To frame their remarks as a "rhetorical argument," and say "the only argument is over the use of the word 'spy'" misrepresents this. The direct quotes refute the assertion.

Trump tried to spin up a controversy and was rebuffed by his own team. "SPYGATE" is a nothing burger, and pedantic hairsplitting doesn't change that.

Stefan Halper is a real, live guy, who exists, and acted as a confidential informant for the FBI, unknown to the people he was dealing with in the Trump campaign. He acted in secret, gathered information, and reported back to the FBI. Whatever you call that, that part is not "bullshit." https://theintercept.com/2018/05/19/the ... -election/

In response, the DOJ and the FBI’s various media spokespeople did not deny the core accusation, but quibbled with the language (the FBI used an “informant,” not a “spy”), and then began using increasingly strident language to warn that exposing his name would jeopardize his life and those of others, and also put American national security at grave risk. On May 8, the Washington Post described the informant as “a top-secret intelligence source” and cited DOJ officials as arguing that disclosure of his name “could risk lives by potentially exposing the source, a U.S. citizen who has provided intelligence to the CIA and FBI.”

The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, who spent much of last week working to ensure confirmation of Trump’s choice to lead the CIA, Gina Haspel, actually threatened his own colleagues in Congress with criminal prosecution if they tried to obtain the identity of the informant. “Anyone who is entrusted with our nation’s highest secrets should act with the gravity and seriousness of purpose that knowledge deserves,” Warner said.

But now, as a result of some very odd choices by the nation’s largest media outlets, everyone knows the name of the FBI’s informant: Stefan Halper. And Halper’s history is quite troubling, particularly his central role in the scandal in the 1980 election. Equally troubling are the DOJ and FBI’s highly inflammatory and, at best, misleading claims that they made to try to prevent Halper’s identity from being reported.

To begin with, it’s obviously notable that the person the FBI used to monitor the Trump campaign is the same person who worked as a CIA operative running that 1980 Presidential election spying campaign.

It was not until several years after Reagan’s victory over Carter did this scandal emerge. It was leaked by right-wing officials inside the Reagan administration who wanted to undermine officials they regarded as too moderate, including then White House Chief of Staff James Baker, who was a Bush loyalist.

The NYT in 1983 said the Reagan campaign spying operation “involved a number of retired Central Intelligence Agency officials and was highly secretive.” The article, by then-NYT reporter Leslie Gelb, added that its “sources identified Stefan A. Halper, a campaign aide involved in providing 24-hour news updates and policy ideas to the traveling Reagan party, as the person in charge.” Halper, now 73, had also worked with Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Alexander Haig as part of the Nixon administration.

When the scandal first broke in 1983, the UPI suggested that Halper’s handler for this operation was Reagan’s Vice Presidential candidate, George H.W. Bush, who had been the CIA Director and worked there with Halper’s father-in-law, former CIA Deputy Director Ray Cline, who worked on Bush’s 1980 presidential campaign before Bush ultimately became Reagan’s Vice President. It quoted a former Reagan campaign official as blaming the leak on “conservatives [who] are trying to manipulate the Jimmy Carter papers controversy to force the ouster of White House Chief of Staff James Baker.”

THERE IS NOTHING inherently untoward, or even unusual, about the FBI using informants in an investigation. One would expect them to do so. But the use of Halper in this case, and the bizarre claims made to conceal his identity, do raise some questions that merit further inquiry.

To begin with, the New York Times reported in December of last year that the FBI investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia began when George Papadopoulos drunkenly boasted to an Australian diplomat about Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton. It was the disclosure of this episode by the Australians that “led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired,” the NYT claimed.

But it now seems clear that Halper’s attempts to gather information for the FBI began before that. “The professor’s interactions with Trump advisers began a few weeks before the opening of the investigation, when Page met the professor at the British symposium,” the Post reported. While it’s not rare for the FBI to gather information before formally opening an investigation, Halper’s earlier snooping does call into question the accuracy of the NYT’s claim that it was the drunken Papadopoulos ramblings that first prompted the FBI’s interest in these possible connections. And it suggests that CIA operatives, apparently working with at least some factions within the FBI, were trying to gather information about the Trump campaign earlier than had been previously reported.

Then there are questions about what appear to be some fairly substantial government payments to Halper throughout 2016. Halper continues to be listed as a “vendor” by websites that track payments by the federal government to private contractors.

It is difficult to understand how identifying someone whose connections to the CIA is a matter of such public record, and who has a long and well-known history of working on spying programs involving presidential elections on behalf of the intelligence community, could possibly endanger lives or lead to grave national security harm. It isn’t as though Halper has been some sort of covert, stealth undercover asset for the CIA who just got exposed. Quite the contrary: that he’s a spy embedded in the U.S. intelligence community would be known to anyone with internet access.

Equally strange are the semantic games which journalists are playing in order to claim that this revelation disproves, rather than proves, Trump’s allegation that the FBI “spied” on his campaign. This bizarre exchange between CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and the New York Times’ Trip Gabriel vividly illustrates the strange machinations used by journalists to justify how all of this is being characterized:

[Sean Hayden]

[Forty Two]

Should he pardon himself? Well, actually...The instant answer should be "of course not!" The political price of a president pardoning himself should be so high that no one would ever consider it. As President Trump's microphone-friendly attorney Rudy Giuliani said on NBC Sunday, "Pardoning himself would be unthinkable and probably lead to immediate impeachment."

But as is the case with so much involving Trump, the "unthinkable" gets an inordinate amount of thinking. There is, in fact, a case for the president to issue a blanket #RussiaGate pardon, and the case is getting stronger, thanks to the irrational hatred of his opponents.

On the question of whether Trump has self-pardoning power, the weight of opinion appears to be with Giuliani—He can, but he shouldn't. UCal-Berkley law professor and former legal adviser to the Geoge W. Bush administration John Yoo speaks for the vast majority of scholars when he points out the Constitution grants the president virtually unlimited pardon power in Article II of the Constitution. The Constitution says the president can"grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment." That's it.

"President Trump can clearly pardon anyone — even himself — subject to the Mueller investigation," Professor Yoo writes.

Another former DOJ official, Andrew McCarthy, agrees with the legal consensus that a president can pardon himself, and goes even farther. He notes that Trump need not wait to be charged with a crime before issuing a pardon:

"After President Nixon resigned, President Ford pardoned him even though he had not been indicted. President Lincoln mass-pardoned Confederate soldiers and sympathizers, and President Carter mass-pardoned Vietnam draft evaders. Thus, the fact that special counsel Mueller has not, and may never, file criminal charges would not prevent President Trump from issuing pardons," McCarthy writes.


There are dissenters of course.

But if this idea sounds crazy, it's actually been floating around since at least last October, when respected Republican attorneys David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey—who both served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations —floated it in the Wall Street Journal:

"Mr. Trump can end this madness by immediately issuing a blanket presidential pardon to anyone involved in supposed collusion with Russia or Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign, to anyone involved with Russian acquisition of an American uranium company during the Obama administration, and to anyone for any offense that has been investigated by Mr. Mueller's office," they wrote. "Political weaponization of criminal law should give way to a politically accountable democratic process."

And this is the most powerful argument for the self-pardoning case: "a politically accountable democratic process."

While cable news continues its obsession with the #RussiaGate story and every tweet, text or eyebrow-twitch related to it, President Trump and his allies have a strong and simple argument to make: They literally have more important things to do.

And that is Trump's strongest argument in this entire debate. Most Americans are focused on record jobs reports, and the possibility of a North Korea deal, and whether Trump's trade war will result in a negotiated settlement that benefits American workers or an economic fiasco that kills jobs and drives up prices.

Trump can argue that he's taking care of the people's business while his opponents are engaged in—as the POTUS loves to put it—a "partisan witch hunt." He seems to have a point: In addition to the steadily-growing support for Trump even as the media's #RussiaGate mortar fire continues, a recent CBS poll found that a majority of Americans view the Mueller investigation as politically motivated.

Given the steady stream of new information about the FBI and DOJ's behavior during the 2016 campaign—including an inspector general's report expected to be highly critical of the pro-Clinton bias inside the agencies—public trust is likely to continue its decline.

In other words, we're looking at months of legal wrangling, political posturing and maniacal early-morning Trump tweeting, all to get to a Mueller report that many Americans will reject out of hand, whatever the final conclusions. What's the point? Why shouldn't Trump issue a pardon today and move on with being president?

The real answer is that he doesn't need to. As CBS News found in its latest poll, the GOP's position headed into the midterms is getting stronger. There's a slim-but-real chance the Democrats might not take the House, and the GOP has an excellent chance of adding to its majority in the U.S. Senate.

The "pardon and get past it" advice might have made sense last October when Trump and the GOP's prospects looked dismal. Today, Trump can keep sending his lawyers out to make the most extreme political case—a president can't commit obstruction, for example—while he gives speeches about peace abroad and prosperity at home.

J. Christian Adams, a former DOJ official and president of the conservative Public Interest Legal Foundation defends the president's power to oversee and—if necessary—end the #RussiaGate investigation this way:

"Hatred of Trump can lead to blindness about the Constitution. In this case, unhinged, unrestrained, unaccountable bureaucrats are the bigger threat to liberty. Don't like Trump firing Comey because he controls a unitary executive? Vote against him. That's how the system works."

In a few months, the American people can elect a Congress to impeach Trump if they so choose. Two years from now, the American people can vote him out.

Why isn't that good enough?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/commentary ... mself-yes/