Tag: Scandals

Investigation: The “Bots” Did It!

Beware of the “Bots”.

We all have heard the accusations about the 2016 election and the meddling by Russia……they, the FBI, is focusing on the social media as their investigations progresses……

Today, it’s social media bots, with investigators looking into the question of whether sites publishing pro-Trump news, of which Breitbart News and InfoWars were singled out by sources, were “assisting Russia’s operatives” in getting Trump elected.

There’s seemingly no evidence of that, but certain bots were flooding Facebook and Twitter with links to the “pro-Trump stories” from the two media outlets, along with Russia’s Sputnik News and RT. Officials are also claiming some of the stories “were false.”

While social media bots are ubiquitous, the FBI appears to believe that this could lead to a link between the sites and Russia. Rep. Adan Schiff (D – CA), always eager to push the Trump-Russia narrative, says it amounts to “circumstantial evidence of collusion,” and suggested that Congress would get involved to investigate the “deception” by the media outlets.

There is little doubt that someone somewhere manipulated the social media and the news with crap…..and the FBI is looking at two of the biggest crap generators

As part of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) inquiry into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election, hard-right media outlets are facing scrutiny.

Outlets including Breitbart News and Infowars are being investigated by the FBI Counterintelligence Division to see exactly what their role was in the Russian manipulation of last year’s election. Their part in spreading pro-Trump news and anti-Hillary rumors happen to have coincided with “operatives for Russia [who] appear to have strategically timed the computer commands, known as ‘bots,’ to blitz social media with links to the pro-Trump stories.”

According to Journalists Peter Stone and Greg Gordon: “The bots’ end products were largely millions of Twitter and Facebook posts carrying links to stories on conservative internet sites such as Breitbart News and InfoWars, as well as on the Kremlin-backed RT News and Sputnik News. Some of the stories were false or mixed fact and fiction.”

Source: FBI Investigating Infowars, Breitbart for Colluding with Russia to Manipulate the 2016 Election | Top US & World News | Susanne Posel

Also it appears that some of those around Trump may have been playing hide the weenie with Russia…..people like Flynn, Manafort, and on and on……

The FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, US officials told CNN.

This is partly what FBI Director James Comey was referring to when he made a bombshell announcement Monday before Congress that the FBI is investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, according to one source.
Source: US Officials Say Evidence Suggests Trump Associates May Have Coordinated with Russians | World Affairs Journal
This issue is becoming interesting…there is so many twists and turns that it is playing like a Guy Richie movie…..
There is one more thing….to get into a official press conference one must have the proper credentials….we already have nutjobs on the Right with them and now a new player wants to get into the fun……

Russian state-owned news outlet Sputnik has applied for a White House press pass, Politico reported Friday.

Sputnik is applying to be a member in the White House Foreign Press Group, which would give it a chance to be a part of a group of about 22 foreign outlets covering Trump alongside pool reporters from U.S. news sources.

The White House Foreign Press Group head Philip Crowther told Politico that if Sputnik meets the required criteria, there “shouldn’t be any reason” for the Russian publication to not join the press pool.The requirements would include a membership in the White House Correspondents’ Association, a verification by the State Department that Sputnik is based in Russia, and a White House-approved hard pass.

Interesting…..with all the hub-bub about Russia these days….will they be permitted into the inner sanctum of news?

By “Wiretapping” He Did Not Mean Wiretapping

By now most Americans are over this wiretapping controversy, especially the “Ignorati”(strong Trump supporters)….but the humorous part is the “spokespeople” Trump allows to go out and make the case…..

Some of my fave quotes from these dolts…..

Kellyanne Conway Suggests That Obama Could Have Used Microwaves to Spy on Trump”

“Yes, Kellyanne Conway just suggested Trump Tower could have been monitored through TVs and microwaves (sad part is this has been picked up and now we are getting all sorts of dire warnings about our appliances).

”The Bergen Record journalist asked her was “do you know that Trump Tower was wiretapped?” — and said she’s “not in the job of having evidence.”

Then there was Spicer….another fave of mine…..

When answering a question about the “taps” he said “He did not mean “wiretapping” (the use of air quotes) when he said wiretapping. (I like this one)

Then the president himself had to add to the idiocy……

“Wiretap covers a lot of different things,” Trump tells Carlson. “I think you’re going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next 2 weeks.”

They just cannot shut up….they keep trying to explain something that cannot be explained…..

But by all means let there be an investigation…..

The White House is standing by its explosive allegation that former President Barack Obama ordered the wiretapping of Trump Tower phones—despite the Senate Intelligence Committee’s finding that there’s no evidence for the claim. “Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016,” committee chief Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican, said in a statement with ranking Democratic Sen. Mark Warner. The statement came the day after a similar statement from the head of the House Intelligence Committee, the New York Times reports.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Thursday that the president stands by the claim. During a testy news conference, Spicer refused to answer questions about the president’s reaction to the congressional statements. Instead, he repeated that the president meant surveillance when he said “wiretapping” and read out news reports he said backed up the claim, becoming annoyed when reporters told him they were based on the “anonymous sources” the White House has often criticized, Politico reports. Spicer repeated Trump’s claim that more information will surface in the weeks ahead. (The Breitbart editor who wrote the story Trump may have based the claim on says it was more of a “potential scenario.”)

Time to end this.  It all began because some juvenile person had to Tweet something that was a “scenario” not a actual program.  You want this to stop then someone grow a pair and cut-off the Twitter button to the president.

If you want this to end then maybe it is time to have a talk with the idiot that began the controversy.

We Have A “Spygate”

Look shiny keys….rattle….rattle….fetch!

We have had Watergate…Bridge-gate……and a wealth of other gates.  Anything the media thinks they can milk for some benefit they will label it a “-gate”…..that is whatever they can sensationalize.

One of the most recent was the Russia-gate fiasco…..you know what I mean…..but in case you are a dolt or completely ignorant…..

The hysteria over “Russia-gate” continues to grow – as President Trump’s enemies circle – but at its core there may be no there there while it risks pushing the world toward nuclear annihilation

There may be a turn-about-is-fair-play element to Democrats parsing the words of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other Trump administration officials to hang them on possible “perjury” charges. After all, the Republicans made “lock her up” a popular chant citing Hillary Clinton’s arguably illegal use of a private email server as Secretary of State and her allegedly false claim under oath that her lawyers had hand-checked each of her 30,000 or so emails that were deleted as personal.

But there is a grave danger in playing partisan “gotcha” over U.S. relations with the world’s other major nuclear superpower. If, for instance, President Trump finds himself having to demonstrate how tough he can be on Russia — to save his political skin — he could easily make a miscalculation that could push the two countries into a war that could truly be the war to end all wars – along with ending human civilization. But Democrats, liberals and the mainstream news media seem to hate Trump so much they will take that risk.

Source: The Politics Behind ‘Russia-gate’ – Consortiumnews

And of course all this back and forth the Trump people are spreading around about that ominous sounding “Deep State” was a logical next step…a “SPYGATE”.

Everyone is suddenly talking about the Deep State – the configuration of spy agencies, career bureaucrats, and overseas spooks whose murky omnipresence has been brought to light by President Trump’s contention that he was “wiretapped” by his predecessor.

With his usual imprecision, Trump managed to confuse the issue by ascribing the surveillance to Barack Obama, and so naturally spokesmen for the former President had no trouble batting this charge away. But as a former Obama speechwriter put it:  “I’d be careful about reporting that Obama said there was no wiretapping. Statement just said that neither he nor the [White House] ordered it.”

Source: Spygate: America’s Political Police vs. Donald J. Trump by — Antiwar.com

This is all so silly.  It is a diversion from the horrible state of political affairs.

Give them, the media, a new “shiny object” to chase.

The Walls Have Ears

I begin my day at 0100 hours…..I read and post as I finish my research.  Most days I have two posts waiting for the earlier ones I post and then I set about getting my stuff together for the rest of the day.

And this is what happens when I take the weekend off…..

Today is Monday and the big news is this wiretapping accusation by the man in the White House….our fearless leader is a paranoid tool….and what better way to try and change the conversation fro his and his boyz involvement with the Russians and than a new scandal in the making.

Before I start let me say that I do not say this NEVER happened but I am a bit suspicious at the timing of this revelation.

President Trump started his Saturday with a series of extraordinary allegations against his predecessor. In a series of early-morning tweets, Trump accused Barack Obama of having his “wires tapped” in Trump Tower during the election campaign, the Guardian reports. “Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” Trump tweeted. In follow-up tweets, he claimed a court order had rejected the alleged surveillance, wondered if it was “legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president prior to an election” and said: “How low has President Obama gone to tapp (sic) my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”

“I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!” Trump said in yet another tweet. He didn’t provide any evidence or make it clear what report he was basing the accusations on, though the Hill notes that Breitbart reported Friday on radio host Mark Levin’s claim that the Obama administration used “police state” tactics to undermine Trump.

Of course the Obama team has denied all such allegations…….

A spokesperson for Barack Obama says President Trump’s accusations about Obama wiretapping Trump Tower are “simply false,” NBC News reports. “Neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any US citizen,” Kevin Lewis says. The Obama camp wasn’t the only one denying the veracity of Trump’s claim, which came in a flurry of tweets Saturday morning and was presented without evidence. A senior US official says Trump didn’t speak to anyone in the government who would have knowledge of a wiretap. And a former deputy national security adviser says presidents don’t have the power to order wiretaps on citizens.

Nancy Pelosi responded to Trump’s tweets by calling him the “deflector-in-chief” and demanding an independent investigation into his alleged Russia connections, USA Today reports. According to CBS News, Howard Dean pointed out that if Trump Tower was actually wiretapped, it means a judge found probable cause of Trump being involved in something criminal. And Paul Ryan says he doesn’t believe the Obama administration was conducting surveillance on Trump. But Lindsey Graham said he was concerned about the accusations and promised “to get to the bottom of this” during a town hall meeting Saturday. In recent days, right-wing media has started accusing Obama of leading a “silent coup” to take down Trump.

This is starting to smell like a “Fire” moment that I have been waiting for…..the alt-Right has embraced this so-called incident with both hands….I expect to see the blogosphere blow up with these accusations.

But what promoted this outrage and accusations from the Prez?

So where did President Trump’s bombshell accusation that his predecessor tapped his phones come from? The White House tells the Fact Checker blog at the Washington Post that he’s relying on reports “from BBC, Heat Street, New York Times, Fox News, among others.” After an analysis, the Post finds that the two most important ones are from the right-leaning Heat Street and the BBC. (Other reports have cited an article at Breitbart News, but it relies on the Heat Street piece.) The two articles say that US intelligence officials went to the FISA court (which deals with intelligence matters) because they wanted to investigate possible activity between two banks in Russia and a computer server in Trump Tower (which, to make matters more confusing, might actually be located in Philadelphia). Excerpts:

  • Heat Street: “Two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community have confirmed to Heat Street that the FBI sought, and was granted, a FISA court warrant in October, giving counter-intelligence permission to examine the activities of ‘U.S. persons’ in Donald Trump’s campaign with ties to Russia.”
  • BBC: It says Justice Department lawyers went to the FISA court. “Their first application, in June, was rejected outright by the judge. They returned with a more narrowly drawn order in July and were rejected again. Finally, before a new judge, the order was granted, on 15 October, three weeks before election day.”

Obama’s DNI has called this a falsehood (I would expect him to do so…so this is nothing new)……you would think that the leak atmosphere in DC these days it would a simple thing to find the FISA warrant, right?

The Fact Checker’s assessment? Even if the stories are accurate, and that hasn’t been confirmed, they do not say that President Obama was behind the request. Plus, they involve a computer server, not the tapping of phone lines. And, finally, they “do not back up the administration’s revised claim of politically motivated investigations.” As a result, Trump gets the blog’s worst rating of Four Pinocchios.

The man who was the director of national intelligence until January 20 wasted little time in shooting down President Trump’s claim that former President Obama’s administration wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 election, reports the AP. “There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president, the president-elect at the time, as a candidate or against his campaign,” James Clapper told Meet the Press on Sunday, shortly after the White House demanded a congressional investigation into the issue. Clapper says he would have been aware of a “FISA court order on something like this. Absolutely, I can deny it.”

Now fearless leader is calling on Congress to get involved…..something they are good at…wasting time and money on investigations…..

The White House demanded on Sunday that Congress investigate whether former President Obama abused his executive powers in connection with the 2016 presidential election, reports the AP. President Trump leveled that claim Saturday when he accused his predecessor of tapping telephones at Trump Tower. But Trump offered no supporting evidence, a spokesman for Obama denied the claim as “simply false,” and lawmakers in both parties asked for proof. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement Sunday that reports “concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling.”

“President Donald J. Trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016,” Spicer said. It was unclear what reports Spicer was referring to, and what prompted Trump to make the allegation. Spicer ended the statement by saying that neither the White House nor Trump will comment further “until such oversight is conducted.” In a series of morning tweets Saturday, Trump suggested Obama was behind a politically motivated plot to upend his campaign. He compared the alleged events to “Nixon/Watergate” and “McCarthyism!” And he called Obama a “Bad (or sick) guy.”

Is that really a good idea, Mr. President?

This could backfire on him.

Like I have said….stranger things have happened….but this sounds like an attempt to change the tone of the news…a diversion from all the Russian noise these days.

Instead of blaming Obama maybe Trump should look to his VP….whose side is he really on?

See what happens when I step away from the keyboard?  Sorry but Pence has a look about him….I would not trust him one inch…just saying…..

News Update:  FBI Director James Comey has waded into the controversy surrounding President Trump’s claim that he was wiretapped by Barack Obama last fall, the New York Times reports. Officials say Comey has asked the Justice Department to publicly reject Trump’s explosive claim, both because he believes it is false and because he believes it suggests the FBI was engaged in illegal behavior. The Times‘ sources say senior FBI officials are also worried that if the public believes there was a court-approved Trump wiretap, they might expect them to find solid evidence of Russian interference in last year’s election.

You just cannot make this stuff up…..this is looking more and more like reality TV…..what can we expect from a star of that genre?

Behind Closed Doors

Nope not some chessey country song from the 80’s……

We have had a little over a  month of a new president (really?  Seems like more than that)….and in all that time there has been one “scandal” after another…..granted none are proven scandals but the whispers are there….like them or not.

And the newest one involves our recently confirmed AG…..

Jeff Sessions spoke with Russia’s ambassador to the US twice in 2016, but he didn’t disclose those communications during his confirmation hearing to become attorney general. When asked about possible contact between Moscow representatives and Trump campaign members, Sessions specifically said he “did not have communications with the Russians” during the campaign and that he was “not aware of” any other campaign members doing so. Per the Washington Post, the revelation from Justice Department officials could spark more calls from Congress to appoint a special prosecutor to look into Russia’s alleged attempts to interfere with the 2016 election. Sources tell the Wall Street Journal US investigators have looked into the newly released contacts between Sessions and Russia, though it’s not clear whether the investigation has concluded. Following the disclosure of the conversations, Sessions said he “never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign,” per the AP.

One of the conversations between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak happened in September, when Sessions, then a senator, was a senior member of the Armed Services Committee and one of Trump’s top advisers; officials say Sessions didn’t remember the details of his conversations with Kislyak by the time his confirmation hearing came around, and that the meeting was related to Sessions’ work on the armed services panel, not the Trump campaign. Sessions’ spokesperson says there was nothing “misleading” about his answers at the confirmation hearing because he was only asked about communications related to the campaign, not to his work as a senator. Following the latest revelations, top Democrats have called for Sessions to step down as AG, Mediaite reports. Republicans are split on whether Sessions should lead any potential probe into Russia’s alleged election tampering. A conversation with Kislyak is also what forced Michael Flynn to step down as Trump’s national security adviser.

After the news broke the other night then the slugs came out from under their rocks…….first the Dems gave their typical response…..

Democrats don’t just think that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should recuse himself from an investigation into Russian ties with the Trump campaign, they think he should step down from his post, period. “The Attorney General must resign,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi wrote in a statement, per the Hill, because he “lied under oath.” Her call for him to resign, echoed by Democrats including Elijah Cummings in the House and Elizabeth Warren in the Senate, comes after the Washington Post reported that he met with the Russian ambassador to the US twice during the 2016 campaign. Sessions, an early Trump backer, says he did nothing wrong because he met with Sergey Kislyak in his capacity as a senator, not as an advocate for Trump. During his confirmation hearing, he declared, “I did not have communications with the Russians.”

Even his party is not above the rhetoric…….

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Wednesday that while he doesn’t know if the Trump campaign had improper communications with Russians, the attorney general would have to recuse himself from an investigation. “It is clear to me that Jeff Sessions, who is my dear friend, cannot make this decision about Trump,” he said, per Politico.

There is more and more calls from all sectors of the government for an investigation into Russian influence, if there is any……

Top Republicans said Thursday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should recuse himself from federal investigations of whether Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said during an appearance on MSNBC that Sessions should bow out to maintain “the trust of the American people.”

Minutes later, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) joined McCarthy’s call, tweeting that “AG Sessions should clarify his testimony and recuse himself.”

The calls from two of the House’s most prominent Republicans follow revelations that Sessions met with the Russian ambassador during election season. Under oath in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing in January, Sessions had said that he had not met with any Russian officials.

(WaPo)

Like I said this news just broke recently…..but it will be very telling to see what track this situation takes from today forward…..

Any bets on how long Sessions will survive as AG?

Update:  There has been turn after this post was published and I would like to get my readers caught up……

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Thursday he would recuse himself from any investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election because he was involved with President Donald Trump’s campaign

“I have recused myself in the matters that deal with the Trump campaign,” Sessions told reporters in the latest twist of the controversy over ties between Trump associates and Russia that has dogged the early days of his presidency.

Now you are caught up….for now……chuq

Closing Thought–17Nov16

Presidential scandals……it seems in recent history we have had more than our fair share of scandals around the White House.

Nixon it was Watergate and Agnew, Carter it was the hostages and peanut-gate, Reagan it was Iran-Contra, Clinton it was many most of them dealing with sex, Bush2 it was the lies for war and Obama…he had very little scandals other than the major news fakes…..and now we have a new president-elect, Donald Trump…..

It has been a little over a week since his victory and there has been nothing but confusion and contradictions and lies flying around Trump Tower…….how soon before we have our fist Trump Admin scandal?

On Monday, appearing at his first press conference since Donald Trump was made president-elect, Barack Obama spoke proudly about his administration’s track record, which was squeaky clean by two-term presidential standards. “I am very proud of the fact that we will—knock on wood—leave this administration without significant scandal,” he said. “We’ve made mistakes, there have been screw-ups, but I will put the ethics of this administration and our track record in terms of just abiding by the rules and norms, and keeping trust with the American people—I will put this administration against any administration in history.”

Source: The Trump cabinet is going to be plagued by scandals. | New Republic

This admin is shaping up as one that will be the talk of the town for decades after it slides into the annals of history…..it is looking like these years will make the corruption and scandals during the Grant admin look like amateurs….(don’t know about those years?  Read a damn book!)

For those that are too lazy to read that book…..

Source: Ulysses S. Grant presidential administration scandals – Wikipedia

Scandals are nothing new….but I think this time it will epic even more so than the scandals of the Grant admin…..

Baiting The Trap

We have yet another deluge of email talk…..this time it cam in just before the Dem Convention began…..now with all the talk about these things I started wondering if Trump’s reply to the upcoming scandal was some sort of trap he was setting for the Dems…..

Apparently I am not the only one that saw this as a ploy by Mr. Trump to try and steal some thunder from the convention….and guess what the Dems took the bait!

If you wondered how Trump would steal the headlines back from Hillary Clinton this week, now you know: Russian hackers and Hillary’s email. And the Dems fell for it, says Jake Novak.

Source: The Democrats just fell for Trump’s Russian email-hack bait—commentary

I knew that most of the politicos were not the brightest bulb in the group….but these guys proved me right……the Dems took the bait and now they are spending valuable air time explaining their position…..

God I love this stuff…the games politicians play……very amusing.

A Primer on Bill and Hillary Clinton Scandals

I know there are some out there that are just beside themselves because the Clintons are a breath away from the White House (again)…..these people are constantly trying to throw every scandal that the Clintons were near at their faces with the hopes that something will stick…..

I thought I would try and help my more Right leaning readers with a primer that they can print out and use when writing about the Clintons…..

If one is going to go off on Hillary then there should be some fact in there to at least they sound credible….(just trying to help)…..

The release of the Benghazi report should have made this a great week for Hillary Clinton, but questions about her email—and a questionable social call by Bill Clinton—have cast clouds over it.

This should have been a great week for Hillary Clinton. On Tuesday, the special House committee appointed to investigate the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, released its long-awaited report. (Well, the majority report. Democrats on the committee released their own polemic the day before.)

The report turned out about as well for Clinton as she could have hoped. While the panel found fault with the way the Obama administration, and Clinton’s State Department, ran security for embassies and other U.S. stations around the world, it did not find any new bombshells about the night of the attacks, no details that would suggest Clinton could have acted differently that evening and saved the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others. That outcome largely vindicates Clinton’s claims all along, and it mostly puts the question of the attacks to rest after a long and extremely detailed investigation (though not, as Democrats like to claim, the longest). Clinton’s political opponents are unlikely to quit talking about it, but the threat of a new, damaging disclosure now seems remote.

Source: From Whitewater to Benghazi: A Primer on Bill and Hillary Clinton Scandals – The Atlantic

I know how much my Right wing brethren enjoy bad-mouthing the Clinton clan…….so I am happy to help…if you gonna be a dick then be an accurate dick.

I just want to please…Hahahaha

Whitewater, explained for people who don’t remember the Clinton presidency – Vox

Now that it is official and Clinton is running for the presidency we can expect all the HATERS on the Right to start digging up the past…….a new “story” every week or so….that is so that the media can milk it for all the possibilities……Benghazi, emails, etc……

I would like to assist my more Right wing readers….I know how hard it is to concentrate with FOX yelling in your ear…….So to get a jump on the d/bags on the Right…..let me start with Whitewater…….

You decide if you want to re-hash an old “scandal”…..or move into the present and fixate on problems and solutions…..

 

Whitewater, explained for people who don’t remember the Clinton presidency – Vox.

The real scandal and the fake scandal in Hillary Clinton’s e-mails – Vox

We all use e-mails………and Clinton is NO different….only difference is she may run for president and that makes for possible scandals to win an election……

I really do not want to be part of this witch hunt….but it is news and I saw an article that was pretty good……

 

The real scandal and the fake scandal in Hillary Clinton’s e-mails – Vox.