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NYT: Trump Team Had "Repeated Contacts" With Russian Intelligence During the Presidential Campaign

by KathieZxckyniu Posted on February 15, 2017

Mother Jones

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ZOMG!

Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.

American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time that they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee….The intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin….The officials said the intercepted communications were not limited to Trump campaign officials, and included other associates of Mr. Trump.

….Officials would not disclose many details, including what was discussed on the calls, which Russian intelligence officials were on the calls, and how many of Mr. Trump’s advisers were talking to the Russians.

This is from Michael Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti, and Matt Apuzzo at the New York Times. If Trump thought that firing Michael Flynn was going to stop the recent bloodletting, he thought wrong.

Just to make this clear: At the same time that Russian intelligence was hacking various email accounts in order to sabotage Hillary Clinton, multiple members of the Trump team had repeated phone calls with senior Russian intelligence officials. And during this entire time, Trump himself was endorsing a foreign policy that appeared almost as if it had been dictated to him by Vladimir Putin.

As a number of people have pointed out, the American intelligence community has all but declared war on Trump since his inauguration. I hardly need to spell out why this is dangerous. At the same time, it’s sure becoming a lot clearer why they’re so alarmed by the guy.

And by the way, I shouldn’t miss this chance to flog my favorite hobbyhorse again: FBI Director James Comey, who knew all about this, pushed hard not to make it public during the campaign. Instead he considered it more important to inform Congress that he had discovered additional copies of Hillary Clinton’s emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Priorities.

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NYT: Trump Team Had "Repeated Contacts" With Russian Intelligence During the Presidential Campaign

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Trump Knew About Michael Flynn Situation for "Weeks," Sean Spicer Says

by AlfonzoIRKZ Posted on February 14, 2017

Mother Jones

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White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that President Donald Trump has known for several weeks that his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, may have been untruthful about his communications with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak.

“We’ve been reviewing and evaluating this issue with respect to General Flynn on a daily basis for a few weeks trying to ascertain the truth,” Spicer said.

According to Spicer, then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates informed the White House last month that Flynn may have misled the administration about the nature of his December phone calls with Kislyak. “Immediately after the Department of Justice notified the White House counsel of the situation, the White House counsel briefed the president and a small group of senior advisers,” Spicer said.

Spicer maintained that the decision to remove Flynn did not stem from legal concerns but a “trust” issue.

The statement that Trump has known about the issue for weeks appears to directly contradict the administration’s previous comments on the controversy, including Trump’s own remarks aboard Air Force One last week. On Friday, Trump claimed he was unfamiliar with the allegations—raised in a Washington Post story—that before Trump took office, Flynn had discussed easing sanctions against Russia with Kislyak.

“What do you think about reports that Gen. Flynn had conversations with the Russians about sanctions before you were sworn in?” a reporter asked Trump on Friday.

“I don’t know about it, I haven’t seen it,” he responded. “What report is that?”

After a reporter mentioned the Post story, Trump added, “I haven’t seen that. I’ll look into it.”

When asked about that exchange on Tuesday, Spicer insisted that the president was not denying that he knew about the Justice Department’s warning, but was instead simply claiming not to have seen the specific Post story in question.

During Tuesday’s press briefing, Spicer also said that Trump had asked Flynn to step down from his post because of the “evolving and eroding level of trust” between Flynn and the president. Hours earlier, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway made multiple media appearances in which she claimed Flynn resigned on his own.

Shortly after Tuesday’s briefing, the New York Times reported that the had FBI interviewed Flynn during his brief tenure as national security adviser about his conversation with Kislyak. As the Times noted, the revelation “raises the stakes of what so far has been a political scandal” because “if he was not entirely honest with the FBI, it could expose Mr. Flynn to a felony charge.”

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Trump Knew About Michael Flynn Situation for "Weeks," Sean Spicer Says

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Government Ethics Watchdog Urges Trump to Investigate Conway and Consider Disciplining Her

by DenisBolt94 Posted on February 14, 2017

Mother Jones

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The government’s top ethics watchdog sent a letter to the White House on Tuesday stating that Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Donald Trump, almost certainly broke ethics rules by promoting Ivanka Trump’s clothing line and that the administration should investigate her and consider disciplinary action.

Conway appeared on Fox & Friends last week to discuss the decision by the retail chain Nordstrom to drop Ivanka Trump’s clothing line from its stores. Standing in the White House briefing room in front of a presidential seal, Conway bragged that she owns Ivanka Trump clothing and urged viewers to purchase items from the president’s daughter’s line.

In the letter to Stefan Passantino, deputy counsel to the president and the White House’s designated ethics officer, Office of Government Ethics executive director Walter Shaub cited a rule forbidding executive branch employees from endorsing commercial products and pointed to a hypothetical example written into the regulation that’s nearly identical to Conway’s behavior.

“I note the OGE’s regulation on misuse of position offers as an example the hypothetical case of a Presidential appointee appearing in a television commercial to promote a product,” Shaub wrote. “Ms. Conway’s actions track that example almost exactly.”

While Democrats in Washington have criticized the Trump administration for a string of potential ethical lapses, Republicans have generally kept quiet. Conway’s comments, however, led to quick criticism from congressional Republicans, including House Oversight Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz, who together with the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings, sent a letter to Shaub recommending that he review the incident.

Last week, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that Conway had been “counseled” on the incident, but he did not elaborate on what that meant. Shaub, in his letter, said he has not been notified by the White House of any disciplinary action against Conway.

“Under the present circumstances, there is strong reason to believe that Ms. Conway has violated the Standards of Conduct and that disciplinary action is warranted,” Shaub wrote.

The decision on whether to discipline Conway rests with the White House. Shaub requested notification by February 28 of any disciplinary action. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Government Ethics Watchdog Urges Trump to Investigate Conway and Consider Disciplining Her

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Raw Data: Deportation of Criminal Aliens, 2000-2016

by Brian68819245134 Posted on February 14, 2017

Mother Jones

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Last week, ICE coordinated a set of raids in several cities that ended with the arrest of nearly 700 undocumented immigrants. ICE claims this was business as usual. President Trump says it was all part of keeping his campaign promise to get tough on criminals who are in the country illegally. “Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!” he tweeted. Who’s right?

One set of raids isn’t enough to tell. In terms of raw numbers, there doesn’t seem to be anything unusual going on. However, ICE doesn’t generally conduct raids in multiple cities over the course of just a few days. That suggests that maybe there was something unusual going on.

My guess: the arrests themselves were fairly routine. However, they were deliberately conducted in a way to maximize publicity. This would certainly gibe with Trump’s usual way of doing business.

We won’t get a real answer about this until the end of the year, when ICE releases total removal numbers for FY2017, which ends September 30. That will tell us whether ICE is deporting more people, and in particular, whether they’re targeting criminals more vigorously than in the past. For comparison, here are total removal numbers for criminal aliens since 2000:

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Raw Data: Deportation of Criminal Aliens, 2000-2016

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The Dead Pool – Special Michael Flynn Edition

by TamikaCsi5 Posted on February 14, 2017

Mother Jones

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My previous post (“Michael Flynn Is In Big Trouble”) was either an example of spectacularly good timing or spectacularly bad timing. I’m not sure which. In any case, just as I clicked the Publish button, an alert popped up on my screen telling me that Michael Flynn had resigned. Thank God. The man was a paranoid nutcase, and National Security Advisor is the last place in the world for a nutcase.

The real reason Flynn resigned, of course, is that he lied about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. There’s no official reason yet, though. I imagine it will be something like I’m confident I did nothing wrong, but I don’t want to be a distraction during this critical time.

Question: Will the investigation continue? There’s still a question of how much Trump knew about all this, after all. Second question: Where will Flynn end up? The Heritage Foundation? Infowars? Working for RT? At CNN as a national security analyst? We’ll have to wait and see.

UPDATE: Here is Flynn’s resignation letter. No real reason given except that he “inadvertently” provided Mike Pence with “incomplete information” due to “the fast pace of events.” Really? A National Security Advisor who has a hard time handling the fast pace of events? That’s really not a position for someone who’s easily flummoxed.

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The Dead Pool – Special Michael Flynn Edition

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President Trump Likes Graphics and Maps

by Mariam89Z29516 Posted on February 13, 2017

Mother Jones

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Here is more on President Trump’s reading habits:

While Mr. Obama liked policy option papers that were three to six single-spaced pages, council staff members are now being told to keep papers to a single page, with lots of graphics and maps. “The president likes maps,” one official said.

One page with lots of graphics and maps? Is there room for any words at all? Hell, even comic books have words. We also learn this:

Two people with direct access to the White House leadership said Mr. Flynn was surprised to learn that the State Department and Congress play a pivotal role in foreign arms sales and technology transfers. So it was a rude discovery that Mr. Trump could not simply order the Pentagon to send more weapons to Saudi Arabia — which is clamoring to have an Obama administration ban on the sale of cluster bombs and precision-guided weapons lifted — or to deliver bigger weapons packages to the United Arab Emirates.

Congress keeps getting in his way! But I guess that’s not going to last long. Here is Stephen Miller on Face the Nation, where John Dickerson asked him about yet another branch of government that’s been getting in Trump’s way:

We have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become in many case a supreme branch of government….The idea that you have a judge in Seattle say that a foreign national living in Libya has an effective right to enter the United States is beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.

The end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.

Tough talk! Dickerson also asked Miller what Trump is planning to do about North Korea’s “intolerable” ballistic missile test yesterday:

MILLER: So you saw the president following through on exactly what he said he would. He went out last might in front of the TV cameras and stood shoulder to shoulder with the prime minister of Japan and sent a message to the whole world that we stand with our allies….

DICKERSON: So no other show of strength in terms of military —

MILLER: That show last night was a show of strength, saying that we stand with our ally. Having the two men appear on camera worldwide to all of planet earth was a statement that will be understood very well by North Korea.

That’s…not so tough. In political movies, the final act often has the president going in front of the cameras and saying something strong and resolute—which somehow makes the opposition melt away. I guess Miller and Trump believe this is how the real world works too. Merely appearing on camera is a show of strength that will surely stop these North Korean tests in their tracks.

Then again, Trump has warned us many times that he doesn’t like to signal military action before it happens. Maybe he’s planning to lob a nuke at Pyongyang on Monday. Can anyone say for sure that he won’t?

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President Trump Likes Graphics and Maps

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Saturday Night Live Just Aired A Kellyanne Conway Sketch That Is Very Controversial

by VaughnBundy Posted on February 12, 2017

Mother Jones

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Kellyanne Conway and Jake Tapper in a remake of Fatal Attraction.

Twitter is divided!

But a lot of people thought it was funny.

Who knows!

Make up your own mind.

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Saturday Night Live Just Aired A Kellyanne Conway Sketch That Is Very Controversial

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Britain Will Spend the Next Decade Doing Nothing But Negotiating a Pointless Exit From the EU

by StewartOZX Posted on February 10, 2017

Mother Jones

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For a brief moment, let’s turn our attention away from Donald Trump and focus on another country’s woes. The folks over at National Review are no fans of the EU and have generally been pretty happy about the passage of Brexit. Today, however, Andrew Stuttaford—relying on Brexit expert Christopher Booker—is pretty scathing about prime minister Theresa May’s handling of the whole thing. First, here’s Booker explaining what he’s learned over the past 25 years about exiting the EU:

As I came to appreciate just how enmeshed we were becoming with that system of government, was that extricating ourselves from it would be far more fiendishly complicated than most people realised…Also, as I listened and talked to politicians, was how astonishingly little they seemed really to know about how it worked. Having outsourced ever more of our lawmaking and policy to a higher power, it was as if our political class had switched off from ever really trying to understand it.

That sounds sort of familiar, doesn’t it? Continuing:

On leaving the EU the UK becomes what the EU terms a “third country”, faced with all the labyrinth of technical barriers to trade behind which the EU has shut itself off from the outside world. Last week I read a series of expert papers explaining some of the mindbending regulatory hurdles we would then have to overcome in trying to maintain access to what is still by far our largest single overseas market.

Take, for instance, our chemicals and pharmaceutical industries, which currently account for a quarter of all our exports to the EU, which currently account for a quarter of all our £230 billion a year exports to the EU. By dropping out of the EU, these would lose all the “authorisations” which give them what Mrs May calls “frictionless” entry to its market, and the process of negotiating replacements for them would be so complex that it could take years.

And now Stuttaford:

Booker observes that these aspects of Britain’s divorce from the EU “could have been achieved infinitely more easily if Mrs May had not slammed the door on our continued membership of the EEA the European Economic Area, which would guarantee us much the same “frictionless” access we enjoy now”.

That would be the ‘Norway option’ that you may have read about a few times in this very Corner, an option rejected by May for reasons so unclear that I cannot keep thinking the (doubtless unfair) thought that she has very little idea of what it actually is.

And then, Booker frets, there is May’s “terrifying” threat “that, if she is not given what she wants, she will simply “walk away”.” He’s right to worry. May has said that “no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain”, an elegant but false dichotomy: “No deal” for Britain would be a “bad deal”, a very bad deal indeed.

This has all the signs of becoming an unbelievable cockup. By a slim 52-48 vote, Britain has doomed itself to many, many tortuous years of negotiating dozens or hundreds of separate agreements with the EU. Switzerland has done the same, and it’s taken them the better part of 20 years.

If there were any real advantage to this, it might be worth it. But just to keep Polish immigrants out? This might be one of the dumbest things any country has ever voluntarily subjected itself to.

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Britain Will Spend the Next Decade Doing Nothing But Negotiating a Pointless Exit From the EU

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Trump’s Immigration Order Has Made Him More Popular

by AnastasLyke Posted on February 10, 2017

Mother Jones

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A couple of weeks ago I said we’d need to wait a couple of weeks to see how President Trump’s immigration order affected his favorability rating. Well, those couple of weeks are up. Here’s how he’s doing:

Trump was already on a post-inauguration upward swing, and his immigration order seems to have kept it going. He’s gained more than three points of favorability since he announced it—and that’s despite the chaos surrounding the rollout and the near-daily revelations of other incompetence on his part. Buckle up.

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Trump’s Immigration Order Has Made Him More Popular

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Top General Tells Senate We Can Win in Afghanistan With Just a “Few Thousand” More Troops

by JannaIZCOteot Posted on February 10, 2017

Mother Jones

I almost forgot about this:

The commander of the American-led international military force in Afghanistan, warning that the United States and its NATO allies are facing a “stalemate,” told Congress on Thursday that he needed a few thousand additional troops to more effectively train and advise Afghan soldiers.

“We have a shortfall of a few thousand,” Gen. John W. Nicholson said in a sober assessment of America’s longest war to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

A few thousand! We weren’t able to stamp out the Taliban and train the Afghan army when we had over 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, but Nicholson wants us to believe we can break the current stalemate with just a few thousand more troops? Is he serious?

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Top General Tells Senate We Can Win in Afghanistan With Just a “Few Thousand” More Troops

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