Triipe
All Star
data science is the most potentially damaging tool for marginalization that exist
RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
- Thread starter ☑︎#VoteDemocrat
- Start date
Grano-Grano
The Bando
call me when Mueller comes thru
I wouldn't trust Congress to change a lightbulb, much less conduct a meaningful investigation
This
that won't save them
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
The Hill
1 hr ·
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal fired back at President Trump for saying Puerto Rico threw his budget “out of whack,” tweeting: "No, what’s 'out of whack' is leaving millions of American citizens without power, clean water, or fuel for two weeks.”
Dem senator fires back at Trump: What’s ‘out of what’ is your Puerto Rico response
"I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you've thrown our budget a little out of whack,” Trump said while touring the island today.
THEHILL.COM
1 hr ·
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal fired back at President Trump for saying Puerto Rico threw his budget “out of whack,” tweeting: "No, what’s 'out of whack' is leaving millions of American citizens without power, clean water, or fuel for two weeks.”
Dem senator fires back at Trump: What’s ‘out of what’ is your Puerto Rico response
"I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you've thrown our budget a little out of whack,” Trump said while touring the island today.
THEHILL.COM
GET READY. MUELLER IS COMING IN HOT!!!!
Mueller Tasks an Adviser With Getting Ahead of Pre-Emptive Pardons
Mueller Tasks an Adviser With Getting Ahead of Pre-Emptive Pardons
More stories by Greg FarrellOctober 3, 2017, 5:02 AM EDT
U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has a distinctly modern problem. The president, judging by his tweets, could try to pardon people in his circle even before prosecutors charge anyone with a crime.
Mueller’s all-star team of prosecutors, with expertise in money laundering and foreign bribery, has an answer to that. He’s Michael Dreeben, a bookish career government lawyer with more than 100 Supreme Court appearances under his belt.
Dreeben with a jersey commemorating the number of his U.S. Supreme Court appearances.
Source: National Association of Former United States Attorneys
Acting as Mueller’s top legal counsel, Dreeben has been researching past pardons and determining what, if any, limits exist, according to a person familiar with the matter. Dreeben’s broader brief is to make sure the special counsel’s prosecutorial moves are legally airtight. That could include anything from strategizing on novel interpretations of criminal law to making sure the recent search warrant on ex-campaign adviser Paul Manafort’s home would stand up to an appeal.
"He’s seen every criminal case of any consequence in the last 20 years," said Kathryn Ruemmler of Latham & Watkins LLP, who served as White House counsel under President Barack Obama. "If you wanted to do a no-knock warrant, he’d be a great guy to consult with to determine if you were exposing yourself.”
Three Decades
Dreeben, 62, built that expertise over three decades as an appeals lawyer at the Justice Department. As a deputy solicitor general, he’s pored over prosecutors’ moves in more than a thousand federal criminal prosecutions and defended many of them from challenges all the way to the nation’s highest court.
Dreeben has begun working on legal issues as a counselor to Mueller but is also retaining some of his solicitor general work for the sake of continuity, according to Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel’s office. Carr declined to elaborate on Dreeben’s work with Mueller or make Dreeben available for comment.
Pre-emptive pardons are a distinct possibility now that current and former Trump advisers are under Mueller’s scrutiny. Trump himself has tweeted that everyone agrees the U.S. president has “complete power to pardon." Some of those kinds of executive moves have been well studied, including Gerald Ford’s swift pardon of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton’s exoneration of fugitive financier Marc Rich. But the legal territory is largely uncharted over pardons of a president’s own campaign workers, family members or even himself -- and how prosecutors’ work would then be affected.
Trump, Russia and the Early Murmurs About Pardons: QuickTake Q&A
What Dreeben brings to the question, say those who know him, is a credibility that comes from parsing how criminal prosecutions have played out across the country. A balding and bearded New Jersey native with a slightly nasal delivery, he has a knack for building careful arguments and the eloquence in court to lay them out in well-reasoned paragraphs, said Miguel Estrada, a lawyer at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
His path wasn’t exactly direct. Dreeben intended to pursue an advanced degree in history at the University of Chicago before changing his mind and enrolling at Duke University School of Law, according to a profile of him last year in Law360. He studied at Duke under Sara Beale, who’d worked in the Solicitor General’s office and helped plant the idea of representing the U.S. in arguments before the country’s highest court.
Click here to watch a video of Dreeben giving a talk at Duke Law in 2010
Dreeben got his first shot in 1989. His opponent before the Supreme Court was another first-timer, a private practice lawyer named John Roberts.
Dreeben lost. But the moment left an impression on Roberts, now the court’s Chief Justice. After Dreeben made his 100th argument before the court last year, Roberts called him back to the lectern, recalling the decades-earlier meeting.
“You have consistently advocated positions on behalf of the United States in an exemplary manner,” Roberts said, extending the court’s appreciation for his “many years of advocacy and dedicated service.”
Dreeben had urged the court that day to uphold the conviction of former Virginia governor Robert McDonnell on charges of public corruption. The Supreme Court ultimately overturned McDonnell’s conviction.
Dreeben’s reviews of how cases were built against McDonnell and others will be invaluable to Mueller. Appellate lawyers like Dreeben are stuck with decisions already made at the prosecutorial level, said Estrada, who worked in the Solicitor General’s office in the 1990s. But now, he added, Dreeben is in a position to troubleshoot problems before cases are filed.
“You have to argue what you’ve got, and the cake is already baked,” Estrada said. On Mueller’s team, by contrast, Dreeben “has the opportunity to measure the flour.”
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r.
Mueller Tasks an Adviser With Getting Ahead of Pre-Emptive Pardons
Mueller Tasks an Adviser With Getting Ahead of Pre-Emptive Pardons
More stories by Greg FarrellOctober 3, 2017, 5:02 AM EDT
U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has a distinctly modern problem. The president, judging by his tweets, could try to pardon people in his circle even before prosecutors charge anyone with a crime.
Mueller’s all-star team of prosecutors, with expertise in money laundering and foreign bribery, has an answer to that. He’s Michael Dreeben, a bookish career government lawyer with more than 100 Supreme Court appearances under his belt.
Dreeben with a jersey commemorating the number of his U.S. Supreme Court appearances.
Source: National Association of Former United States Attorneys
Acting as Mueller’s top legal counsel, Dreeben has been researching past pardons and determining what, if any, limits exist, according to a person familiar with the matter. Dreeben’s broader brief is to make sure the special counsel’s prosecutorial moves are legally airtight. That could include anything from strategizing on novel interpretations of criminal law to making sure the recent search warrant on ex-campaign adviser Paul Manafort’s home would stand up to an appeal.
"He’s seen every criminal case of any consequence in the last 20 years," said Kathryn Ruemmler of Latham & Watkins LLP, who served as White House counsel under President Barack Obama. "If you wanted to do a no-knock warrant, he’d be a great guy to consult with to determine if you were exposing yourself.”
Three Decades
Dreeben, 62, built that expertise over three decades as an appeals lawyer at the Justice Department. As a deputy solicitor general, he’s pored over prosecutors’ moves in more than a thousand federal criminal prosecutions and defended many of them from challenges all the way to the nation’s highest court.
Dreeben has begun working on legal issues as a counselor to Mueller but is also retaining some of his solicitor general work for the sake of continuity, according to Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel’s office. Carr declined to elaborate on Dreeben’s work with Mueller or make Dreeben available for comment.
Pre-emptive pardons are a distinct possibility now that current and former Trump advisers are under Mueller’s scrutiny. Trump himself has tweeted that everyone agrees the U.S. president has “complete power to pardon." Some of those kinds of executive moves have been well studied, including Gerald Ford’s swift pardon of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton’s exoneration of fugitive financier Marc Rich. But the legal territory is largely uncharted over pardons of a president’s own campaign workers, family members or even himself -- and how prosecutors’ work would then be affected.
Trump, Russia and the Early Murmurs About Pardons: QuickTake Q&A
What Dreeben brings to the question, say those who know him, is a credibility that comes from parsing how criminal prosecutions have played out across the country. A balding and bearded New Jersey native with a slightly nasal delivery, he has a knack for building careful arguments and the eloquence in court to lay them out in well-reasoned paragraphs, said Miguel Estrada, a lawyer at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
His path wasn’t exactly direct. Dreeben intended to pursue an advanced degree in history at the University of Chicago before changing his mind and enrolling at Duke University School of Law, according to a profile of him last year in Law360. He studied at Duke under Sara Beale, who’d worked in the Solicitor General’s office and helped plant the idea of representing the U.S. in arguments before the country’s highest court.
Click here to watch a video of Dreeben giving a talk at Duke Law in 2010
Dreeben got his first shot in 1989. His opponent before the Supreme Court was another first-timer, a private practice lawyer named John Roberts.
Dreeben lost. But the moment left an impression on Roberts, now the court’s Chief Justice. After Dreeben made his 100th argument before the court last year, Roberts called him back to the lectern, recalling the decades-earlier meeting.
“You have consistently advocated positions on behalf of the United States in an exemplary manner,” Roberts said, extending the court’s appreciation for his “many years of advocacy and dedicated service.”
Dreeben had urged the court that day to uphold the conviction of former Virginia governor Robert McDonnell on charges of public corruption. The Supreme Court ultimately overturned McDonnell’s conviction.
Dreeben’s reviews of how cases were built against McDonnell and others will be invaluable to Mueller. Appellate lawyers like Dreeben are stuck with decisions already made at the prosecutorial level, said Estrada, who worked in the Solicitor General’s office in the 1990s. But now, he added, Dreeben is in a position to troubleshoot problems before cases are filed.
“You have to argue what you’ve got, and the cake is already baked,” Estrada said. On Mueller’s team, by contrast, Dreeben “has the opportunity to measure the flour.”
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r.
Holy. fukk.
This is WILD. John Kelly is LITERALLY saving the country!
This is WILD. John Kelly is LITERALLY saving the country!
http://www.businessinsider.com/john...ana-rohrabacher-from-talking-to-trump-2017-10
John Kelly is blocking a pro-Russia congressman from talking to Trump
Joe Perticone
WASHINGTON — California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican known for his fondness of the Russian government and ties to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, said he is unable to even speak to President Donald Trump due to barriers put in place by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.
Rohrabacher told Business Insider on Tuesday that Kelly and "a coalition of people in the White House" are preventing him from having a conversation with Trump that would entail clearing Assange and the Russian government from allegations they meddled in the 2016 presidential election.
Several government agencies expressed "high confidence" that Russian government agents directly attempted to interfere in the 2016 election, according to a January report from the Director of National Intelligence.
But Rohrabacher is unconvinced. Last month during a phone call with Kelly, Rohrabacher requested a pardon of Assange in exchange for evidence that would clear the fugitive's name.
Weeks later, he is still unable to speak directly with Trump, but said that "there are others involved who are talking to Trump" about Assange.
Rohrabacher added that he is imploring a similar strategy in talking to Assange, who currently lives in asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
"I have not spoken to [Assange] directly, but we're going through a period of time where a lot's getting done one person removed in a lot of different ways," he said.
According to Rohrabacher, the end arounds are necessary because Trump's top advisors are preventing him from reaching the president.
"The White House staff and other top people in the administration are trying to protect the president from himself," Rohrabacher said. "That's what they think and in fact they are usurping his authority to make decisions — the important decisions — himself."
On Tuesday, it was also revealed that Rohrabacher met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya during a trip to Moscow last year, according to Foreign Policy. Veselnitskaya is known for her meeting with Donald Trump, Jr. at Trump Tower in New York, where she supposedly discussed potentially damaging information about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r.
the artist known az
Hail the victors
Holy. fukk.
This is WILD. John Kelly is LITERALLY saving the country!
http://www.businessinsider.com/john...ana-rohrabacher-from-talking-to-trump-2017-10
John Kelly is blocking a pro-Russia congressman from talking to Trump
Joe Perticone
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) speaks during a House Foreign Affairs Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats Subcommittee hearing. Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters
WASHINGTON — California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican known for his fondness of the Russian government and ties to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, said he is unable to even speak to President Donald Trump due to barriers put in place by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.
Rohrabacher told Business Insider on Tuesday that Kelly and "a coalition of people in the White House" are preventing him from having a conversation with Trump that would entail clearing Assange and the Russian government from allegations they meddled in the 2016 presidential election.
Several government agencies expressed "high confidence" that Russian government agents directly attempted to interfere in the 2016 election, according to a January report from the Director of National Intelligence.
But Rohrabacher is unconvinced. Last month during a phone call with Kelly, Rohrabacher requested a pardon of Assange in exchange for evidence that would clear the fugitive's name.
Weeks later, he is still unable to speak directly with Trump, but said that "there are others involved who are talking to Trump" about Assange.
Rohrabacher added that he is imploring a similar strategy in talking to Assange, who currently lives in asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
"I have not spoken to [Assange] directly, but we're going through a period of time where a lot's getting done one person removed in a lot of different ways," he said.
According to Rohrabacher, the end arounds are necessary because Trump's top advisors are preventing him from reaching the president.
"The White House staff and other top people in the administration are trying to protect the president from himself," Rohrabacher said. "That's what they think and in fact they are usurping his authority to make decisions — the important decisions — himself."
On Tuesday, it was also revealed that Rohrabacher met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya during a trip to Moscow last year, according to Foreign Policy. Veselnitskaya is known for her meeting with Donald Trump, Jr. at Trump Tower in New York, where she supposedly discussed potentially damaging information about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r.
How is a person like that a congressman?
INSIDER ANALYSIS FROM INTELLIGENCE LEGAL PROS!!
Bombshells ahoy!
Evidence Mounts that White House Anticipates Damaging Results from Russia Investigation
Evidence Mounts that White House Anticipates Damaging Results from Russia Investigation
By Ryan Goodman
Tuesday, October 3, 2017 at 11:58 AM
As the Russia investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller and Congress plow ahead, are there telltale signs that the White House is worried about the eventual findings? According to an assortment of news reports, several signs suggest that President Donald Trump’s inner circle is increasingly concerned about where the Russia investigations could lead. The signs include the preparation of contingency plans, like the resignation of Jared Kushner in anticipation of revelations of the June 9, 2016 meeting with Russians and the need for support from Republican senators if the investigation goes south for Trump. Earlier signs included Trump’s desire to fire Mueller and his contemplating sweeping pardons, including for himself.
Here are more recent data points to consider.
1. Trump and Kushner rejected White House Counsel’s advice on protocols to avoid coordinating stories on Russia investigation; White House Counsel contemplated resigning
White House Counsel Don McGahn had to be talked out of resigning by other White House officials, the Wall Street Journal’s Peter Nicholas, Michael C. Bender and Rebecca Ballhaus reported on Friday. White House officials were concerned that McGahn would resign because the President Trump and Jared Kushner wouldnot follow protocols, as he had advised, to avoid meetings that “could be construed by investigators as an effort to coordinate their stories, three people familiar [with] the matter said.”
It would likely take a significant infraction for the administration’s senior lawyer to veer toward resignation. It is also revealing that Trump and Kushner would defy the White House Counsel’s advice to take steps to ensure against coordination or even the appearance of coordination of their stories involving the Russia investigation. On the one hand, perhaps the two thought they had nothing to hide. On the other hand, if they had nothing to hide then why risk legal exposure for potentially coordinating stories and why risk the relationship with McGahn?
Note that the WSJ report does not end with Trump and Kushner complying. It ends with McGahn being satisfied that another legal team was brought into the White House to handle the affairs related to the Russia investigation.
2. Trump legal team prepared for Kushner resignation in light of June 9 Russia meeting
When the Trump inner circle anticipated that the news media would report the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians , here’s what they did: Members of the legal team prepared “a statement that would explain a potential Kushner resignation,” the Wall Street Journal’s Peter Nicholas, Rebecca Ballhaus, Erica Orden and Anton Troianovski reported.
Once again, Kushner could have resigned due to the distraction created even if the surrounding allegations did not have underlying merit. And the prepared statement reportedly toed that line in terms of the stated public rationale for his departure. But it would be unlikely for Kushner to step down without there being underlying merit to the concerns raised about his actions. What’s more, the lawyers’ anticipated the need for his resignation even before the news broke, which is even more suggestive of misconduct.
3. Bannon thought/said there was enough evidence on Kushner to sink the president’s son-in-law
Stephen Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist and chairman of his presidential campaign, apparently thought there was enough damning evidence on Kushner to bring him down. Buzzfeed’s Adrian Carrasquillo reported, shortly before Bannon’s departure from the White House, that “the former Breitbart mogul, a source close to the administration said, told people behind Kushner’s back that ‘hopefully Jared will go down in things pertaining to Russia,’ or real estate holdings that were increasingly under a legal microscope.”
There are other possible, though less likely, explanations. Bannon may have been telling a fib to outsiders to undermine Kushner. Also, the cloud over Kushner could be a sufficient distraction for the White House that he would eventually need to step aside, even if there were no underlying merit to the more serious allegations against him.
4. Kushner may have advised Trump to appease Republican Senators in case the Russia investigation goes south
Kushner reportedly advised his father-in-law to back Luther Strange in the Alabama Republican primary, HuffPost’s Vicky Ward reported. One of the reasons may have been shore up support from the Republican leaders in the Senate. “He’s going to need them if things go south in the Russia investigation,” a Bannon ally told Ward.
It is questionable whether “allies of Bannon” can be trusted sources in this regard due to the dispute between Bannon and Kushner. That said, this particular statement hurts Trump as much if not more than it hurts Kushner by suggesting the prospect that the Russia investigation will produce damaging conclusions. It is curious that Trump supported Strange in the primaries when Roy Moore was the more natural fit and headed for a highly probable victory.
5. Roger Stone predicted (or: threatened) that congressional members should fear for their lives if they vote for impeachment
In late August, in answer to a TMZ reporter’s questions, Roger Stone said that members of Congress would endanger their lives if they voted to impeach Trump. Stone said on camera:
“Try to impeach him, just try it. You will have a spasm of violence in this country, and insurrection, like you’ve never seen. … This is not 1974. The people will not stand for impeachment. A politician who votes for it would be endangering their own life. There will be violence on both sides. I’ll make this clear: I am not advocating violence, but I am predicting it.”
If those remarks were meant as an implicit threat, presumably Stone would say them only if he worried there was a real likelihood that congressional members may eventually vote to impeach the president.
Finally, in light of the above data points, it is worth remembering that Kushner and Stone reportedly each advised Trump to fire James Comey as FBI director in charge of the Russia investigation.
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r.
Bombshells ahoy!
Evidence Mounts that White House Anticipates Damaging Results from Russia Investigation
Evidence Mounts that White House Anticipates Damaging Results from Russia Investigation
By Ryan Goodman
Tuesday, October 3, 2017 at 11:58 AM
As the Russia investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller and Congress plow ahead, are there telltale signs that the White House is worried about the eventual findings? According to an assortment of news reports, several signs suggest that President Donald Trump’s inner circle is increasingly concerned about where the Russia investigations could lead. The signs include the preparation of contingency plans, like the resignation of Jared Kushner in anticipation of revelations of the June 9, 2016 meeting with Russians and the need for support from Republican senators if the investigation goes south for Trump. Earlier signs included Trump’s desire to fire Mueller and his contemplating sweeping pardons, including for himself.
Here are more recent data points to consider.
1. Trump and Kushner rejected White House Counsel’s advice on protocols to avoid coordinating stories on Russia investigation; White House Counsel contemplated resigning
White House Counsel Don McGahn had to be talked out of resigning by other White House officials, the Wall Street Journal’s Peter Nicholas, Michael C. Bender and Rebecca Ballhaus reported on Friday. White House officials were concerned that McGahn would resign because the President Trump and Jared Kushner wouldnot follow protocols, as he had advised, to avoid meetings that “could be construed by investigators as an effort to coordinate their stories, three people familiar [with] the matter said.”
It would likely take a significant infraction for the administration’s senior lawyer to veer toward resignation. It is also revealing that Trump and Kushner would defy the White House Counsel’s advice to take steps to ensure against coordination or even the appearance of coordination of their stories involving the Russia investigation. On the one hand, perhaps the two thought they had nothing to hide. On the other hand, if they had nothing to hide then why risk legal exposure for potentially coordinating stories and why risk the relationship with McGahn?
Note that the WSJ report does not end with Trump and Kushner complying. It ends with McGahn being satisfied that another legal team was brought into the White House to handle the affairs related to the Russia investigation.
2. Trump legal team prepared for Kushner resignation in light of June 9 Russia meeting
When the Trump inner circle anticipated that the news media would report the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians , here’s what they did: Members of the legal team prepared “a statement that would explain a potential Kushner resignation,” the Wall Street Journal’s Peter Nicholas, Rebecca Ballhaus, Erica Orden and Anton Troianovski reported.
Once again, Kushner could have resigned due to the distraction created even if the surrounding allegations did not have underlying merit. And the prepared statement reportedly toed that line in terms of the stated public rationale for his departure. But it would be unlikely for Kushner to step down without there being underlying merit to the concerns raised about his actions. What’s more, the lawyers’ anticipated the need for his resignation even before the news broke, which is even more suggestive of misconduct.
3. Bannon thought/said there was enough evidence on Kushner to sink the president’s son-in-law
Stephen Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist and chairman of his presidential campaign, apparently thought there was enough damning evidence on Kushner to bring him down. Buzzfeed’s Adrian Carrasquillo reported, shortly before Bannon’s departure from the White House, that “the former Breitbart mogul, a source close to the administration said, told people behind Kushner’s back that ‘hopefully Jared will go down in things pertaining to Russia,’ or real estate holdings that were increasingly under a legal microscope.”
There are other possible, though less likely, explanations. Bannon may have been telling a fib to outsiders to undermine Kushner. Also, the cloud over Kushner could be a sufficient distraction for the White House that he would eventually need to step aside, even if there were no underlying merit to the more serious allegations against him.
4. Kushner may have advised Trump to appease Republican Senators in case the Russia investigation goes south
Kushner reportedly advised his father-in-law to back Luther Strange in the Alabama Republican primary, HuffPost’s Vicky Ward reported. One of the reasons may have been shore up support from the Republican leaders in the Senate. “He’s going to need them if things go south in the Russia investigation,” a Bannon ally told Ward.
It is questionable whether “allies of Bannon” can be trusted sources in this regard due to the dispute between Bannon and Kushner. That said, this particular statement hurts Trump as much if not more than it hurts Kushner by suggesting the prospect that the Russia investigation will produce damaging conclusions. It is curious that Trump supported Strange in the primaries when Roy Moore was the more natural fit and headed for a highly probable victory.
5. Roger Stone predicted (or: threatened) that congressional members should fear for their lives if they vote for impeachment
In late August, in answer to a TMZ reporter’s questions, Roger Stone said that members of Congress would endanger their lives if they voted to impeach Trump. Stone said on camera:
“Try to impeach him, just try it. You will have a spasm of violence in this country, and insurrection, like you’ve never seen. … This is not 1974. The people will not stand for impeachment. A politician who votes for it would be endangering their own life. There will be violence on both sides. I’ll make this clear: I am not advocating violence, but I am predicting it.”
If those remarks were meant as an implicit threat, presumably Stone would say them only if he worried there was a real likelihood that congressional members may eventually vote to impeach the president.
Finally, in light of the above data points, it is worth remembering that Kushner and Stone reportedly each advised Trump to fire James Comey as FBI director in charge of the Russia investigation.
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r.
HUGE NEWS.
TRUMP AND TILLERSON ARE NEAR A BREAKING POINT!!
TILLERSON CALLED TRUMP A "MORON" :weebaynanimated::shakingdamn:
TRUMP AND TILLERSON ARE NEAR A BREAKING POINT!!
TILLERSON CALLED TRUMP A "MORON" :weebaynanimated::shakingdamn:
Tillerson's fury at Trump required an intervention from VP Pence
Tillerson’s Fury at Trump Required an Intervention From Pence
by Carol E. Lee, Kristen Welker, Stephanie Ruhle and Dafna LinzerOct 4 2017, 5:50 am ET
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was on the verge of resigning this past summer amid mounting policy disputes and clashes with the White House, according to multiple senior administration officials who were aware of the situation at the time.
The tensions came to a head around the time President Donald Trump delivered a politicized speech in late July to the Boy Scouts of America, an organization Tillerson once led, the officials said.
Just days earlier, Tillerson had openly disparaged the president, referring to him as a “moron,” after a July 20 meeting at the Pentagon with members of Trump’s national security team and Cabinet officials, according to three officials familiar with the incident.
While it's unclear if he was aware of the incident, Vice President Mike Pence counseled Tillerson, who is fourth in line to the presidency, on ways to ease tensions with Trump, and other top administration officials urged him to remain in the job at least until the end of the year, officials said.
Officials said that the administration, beset then by a series of high-level firings and resignations, would have struggled to manage the fallout from a Cabinet secretary of his stature departing within the first year of Trump’s presidency.
Pence has since spoken to Tillerson about being respectful of the president in meetings and in public, urging that any disagreements be sorted out privately, a White House official said. The official said progress has since been made.
Yet the disputes have not abated. This weekend, tensions spilled out into the open once again when the president seemed to publicly chide Tillerson on his handling of the crisis with North Korea.
NBC News spoke with a dozen current and former senior administration officials for this article, as well as others who are close to the president.
Tillerson, who was in Texas for his son’s wedding in late July when Trump addressed the Boy Scouts, had threatened not to return to Washington, according to three people with direct knowledge of the threats. His discussions with retired Gen. John Kelly, who would soon be named Trump’s second chief of staff, and Defense Secretary James Mattis, helped initially to reassure him, four people with direct knowledge of the exchanges said.
Related: Trump Tweets Tillerson 'Wasting His Time' Talking to North Korea
After Tillerson’s return to Washington, Pence arranged a meeting with him, according to three officials. During the meeting, Pence gave Tillerson a “pep talk,” one of these officials said, but also had a message: the secretary needed to figure out how to move forward within Trump’s policy framework.
Kelly and Mattis have been Tillerson’s strongest allies in the cabinet. In late July, “they did beg him to stay,” a senior administration official said. “They just wanted stability.”
At that time, however, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert responded to speculation that Tillerson was thinking about resigning by saying he was “committed to staying” and was “just taking a little time off” in Texas.
Tillerson's top State Department spokesman, R.C. Hammond, said Tillerson did not consider quitting this past summer. He denied that Tillerson called Trump a “moron.” Hammond said he was unaware of the details of Tillerson’s meetings with Pence.
Hammond said he knew of only one time when the two men discussed topics other than policy: A meeting where Pence asked Tillerson if he thought Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was helpful to the administration, or if he was worried about the role she was playing. He added that whenever the vice president gives advice on how processes could run more smoothly, the advice is a good thing.
Hammond also said that he wouldn’t characterize the secretary’s conversations with Mattis or Kelly as attempts to convince Tillerson to stay in his position.
A Pentagon official close to Mattis denied any awareness of a specific conversation about Tillerson’s future in the administration. But the official said the two men speak all the time and have a regular breakfast together.
The White House declined to comment on the record for this story.
Tillerson and Trump clashed over a series of key foreign policy issues over the summer, including Iran and Qatar. Trump chafed at Tillerson’s attempts to push him – privately and publicly – toward decisions that were at odds with his policy positions, according to officials. Hammond said Tillerson has had no policy differences with Trump. “The president’s policy is his policy,” Hammond said.
In August, Trump was furious with Tillerson over his response to a question about the president’s handling of the racially charged and deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, administration officials said. Trump had said publicly that white nationalists and neo-Nazi sympathizers shared blame for violence with those who came out to protest them.
“The president speaks for himself,” Tillerson said at the time, when asked on “Fox News Sunday” about Trump’s comments.
Hammond said Trump addressed the issue with Tillerson in a meeting the next day. He said that during the meeting, Trump congratulated another White House official, Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert, for his performance on the Sunday news talk shows. Bossert had defended Trump’s controversial pardon of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.
President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confer during a working lunch with African leaders during the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sept. 20, 2017. Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
The president, according to Hammond, told Tillerson he was upset with his comments when he saw them the first time. But, Hammond said Trump told Tillerson, after watching the interview a second and third time, the president understood that Tillerson was trying to say Trump is the best person to convey what his values are.
Still, the message was clear that Trump wanted Tillerson to defend him more, Hammond said.
The frustrations run both ways. Tillerson stunned a handful of senior administration officials when he called the president a “moron” after a tense two-hour long meeting in a secure room at the Pentagon called "The Tank," according to three officials who were present or briefed on the incident. The July 20 meeting came a day after a meeting in the White House Situation Room on Afghanistan policy where Trump rattled his national security advisers by suggesting he might fire the top U.S. commander of the war and comparing the decision-making process on troop levels to the renovation of a high-end New York restaurant, according to participants in the meeting.
It is unclear whether Trump was told of Tillerson’s outburst after the Pentagon meeting or to what extent the president was briefed on Tillerson’s plan to resign earlier in the year.
Tillerson also has complained about being publicly undermined by the president on the administration’s foreign policy agenda, officials said.
Those strains were on display this past weekend when Tillerson said, to the White House’s surprise, that the U.S. is attempting diplomatic talks with North Korea.
Trump quickly took the opposite position, writing on Twitter “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man...,” using his latest epithet for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“...Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!” Trump added in a second tweet.
Asked whether the president still has confidence in Tillerson, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Monday that he does.
Trump has already seen an unusually high level of turnover in his administration, with the departures of his national security adviser, deputy national security adviser, his chief of staff, press secretary, communications director — twice — his chief strategist, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the acting head of the Justice Department. Last Friday Trump accepted the resignation of Tom Price, the Health and Human Services secretary.
One senior administration official described late July as “a tough period of time” for Tillerson. His frustrations appeared to mount in the preceding weeks. Trump publicly undermined Tillerson in June over a dispute between Qatar and other Persian Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Tillerson had called on the countries to ease their blockade of Qatar, yet just hours later Trump said the Saudi-led effort was necessary.
Tillerson also pushed Trump to certify in July that Iran was complying with the 2015 nuclear deal.
Tillerson has been at odds with Trump on other issues as well, arguing against sanctions on Venezuela and reportedly suggesting Israel return to the U.S. $75 million in aid. Tillerson also is seeking to use the implementation of arms deals Trump struck with Saudi Arabia and the UAE as leverage to prod the two countries to resolve the dispute with Qatar, according to U.S. and Arab officials.
Administration officials speculate that Tillerson would be succeeded by Haley if Tillerson were to depart.
Tillerson’s tenure has been rocky from the start. He was confirmed by a Republican-led Senate on 56-to-43 vote. That represents the most votes against a secretary of state in Senate history.
Since then, Tillerson, the former chief executive of ExxonMobil, has been slow to fill jobs within his department and appears to have alienated officials in the White House, the Cabinet and Congress.
He has become known for being difficult to reach and tends to take his time returning phone calls, administration and congressional officials said. Congressional Republicans balked at his proposed cuts to the State Department budget.
“It’s hard to get him to return phone calls,” a senior Republican congressional aide said of Tillerson. “It’s hard to get him to answer letters.”
Hammond said Tillerson is quick to return calls and respond to lawmakers.
Tillerson has clashed with the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who has a broad portfolio that includes policies in the Middle East, officials said.
A second White House official downplayed any tensions between Tillerson and Kushner, noting that Kushner’s efforts on an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement are run through the relevant agencies and that a State Department representative went on his most recent trip to the region.
A third White House official disputed the notion that Tillerson has alienated people in the White House, Cabinet and Congress.
Trump’s July 24 speech at the Boy Scouts gathering struck a political tone unusual for the event, with the president talking about his electoral victory and the “cesspool” of Washington. He also joked about firing his Health and Human Services secretary if congressional Republicans didn’t pass a health care bill. The head of the Boy Scouts later apologized for the political tone of the speech.
Tillerson is an Eagle Scout and a former president of the Boy Scouts. He had appeared at the gathering just three days before Trump. Hammond, his spokesman, said Tillerson was not upset with Trump’s speech. He said Tillerson told him that at the end of the day the scouts are going to remember that the president came to speak at their event, and their parents can answer any questions they might have about the message he delivered.
It’s unclear if the latest disagreement between the White House and Tillerson on North Korea spells an end to the late-July reset.
Nicholas Burns, former undersecretary of state for political affairs under President George W. Bush, said Trump “completely undercut Tillerson” with his tweets.
“This was a direct public, I thought, repudiation of what Tillerson said,” Burns said. “It feeds the perception that Tillerson does not have a trusting relationship with the president, and that’s very harmful.”
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Tillerson might as well resign. This is damning as fu¢k
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r.
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ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
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