Alot of shenanigans going on recently, Mueller must be getting way too close for comfort
RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
- Thread starter ☑︎#VoteDemocrat
- Start date
Mueller already got Sater in the bag.. the gop trying to conduct interviews off site is a joke and I bet Sater will not answer any of their questions lmaoo
GnauzBookOfRhymes
Superstar
The GOP is up to their fukking eyebrows in this shyt. No other justification for all of this attempted obstruction.
MIKE SPLEAN
Superstar
Ohhhhhhh shyt
CEO of Morgan Industries
Superstar
People were speculating that the GOP was helping the Trump campaign launder Russian money. The GOP is acting just as they would if this were true.
:ALERTRED:
SATER AND GRAFF ARE BEING INTERVIEWED IN NYC BY CONGRESSIONAL AIDES, NOT MEMBERS
POLITICS
Interviews in Russia Probe Are Scheduled for New York, Angering Democrat
Intelligence committee plan means panel staff, not lawmakers, will question Trump associates
Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat of the House Intelligence Committee, criticized the panel for scheduling witness interviews in its Russia investigation in New York instead of Washington. PHOTO: JACQUELYN MARTIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Byron Tau
Updated Dec. 14, 2017 4:21 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON—The Republican-led House Intelligence Committee has scheduled staff interviews with two witnesses in its probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election to take place in New York City next week while Congress is in session on Capitol Hill, meaning committee members won’t be able to question them directly.
A Republican familiar with the committee’s deliberations said one of the attorneys for a witness suffered an injury and a New York interview was seen as more convenient. Both Republican and Democratic staff will participate in the interviews.
Up to this point, interviews by the House Intelligence Committee in its wide-ranging probe into whether President Donald Trump or any of his associates colluded with Russia during the presidential campaign last year have largely been open to everyone on the 22-person committee.
The panel, made up of 13 Republicans and nine Democrats, typically conducts its investigative work on the Russia probe in closed-door sessions held in a room designed for secure, classified discussions in the basement of the U.S. Capitol.
The plan for staff interviews to be held in New York drew protests from the top Democrat on the intelligence panel, who accused his Republican colleagues on the committee of trying to protect Mr. Trump by rushing through the investigation in order to bring it to a premature conclusion.
He questioned the decision of his Republican colleagues to schedule key witnesses for remote interviews during a busy week in Washington where important votes are expected on major tax legislation and a spending bill to keep the government from shutting down.
“These witnesses would be interviewed out of state at a time when we’re in session and may be voting on the tax bill," said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the committee. “These steps are clearly not in the interest of the investigation.”
Mr. Schiff declined to give the names of the witnesses, but two other people familiar with the matter say they are Felix Sater and Rhona Graff. Mr. Sater is a longtime business associate of Mr. Trump. Ms. Graff is Mr. Trump’s longtime personal assistant.
Mr. Schiff said both expressed willingness to travel to Washington, D.C., to appear and there was no reason to have them interviewed elsewhere.
Ms. Graff and an attorney for Mr. Sater didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Mr. Trump has long denied his campaign colluded with Russia, and Moscow has denied interfering in the U.S. election.
Both Ms. Graff and Mr. Sater are seen as important figures in the committee’s work to determine whether there was any U.S. assistance in Russia’s campaign of election interference.
Mr. Sater is a Russian-born businessman who has worked with Mr. Trump since 2010. In a November 2015 email to Mr. Trump’s lawyer, he wrote that he planned to enlist the help of Russian President Vladimir Putin in getting Mr. Trump a business deal in Russia that could boost his U.S. political fortunes.
“Our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it,” he wrote in an email previously described to The Wall Street Journal by two people. “I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”
Ms. Graff has worked for Mr. Trump for nearly three decades, starting as a secretary in the Trump organization and rising to senior vice president. She is considered an important gatekeeper to Mr. Trump. Ms. Graff’s name was mentioned in emails setting up a controversial Trump Tower meeting between a Russian lawyer linked to the Kremlin and top campaign aides to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr. , was originally told the purpose of the meeting was for the Russian government to provide allegedly incriminating information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, according to emails he released this summer.
According to a January report from the U.S. intelligence community, the highest levels of the Russian government were involved in directing the electoral interference to boost Donald Trump at the expense of Mrs. Clinton.
Write to Byron Tau at byron.tau@wsj.com
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @wire28 @smitty22 @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @.r. @GinaThatAintNoDamnPuppy! @GnauzBookOfRhymes @Dracudiddy @Dameon Farrow @TheNig
This shyt reeks of coverup.
Exactly... This isn't for the sake of the Republican agenda. They're hiding something. All of them. Or most of them anyway...
Mantis Toboggan M.D.
Drink wolf cola
They’ve been covering up large scale crimes of their own for decades. Iran-contra under Reagan, all the stonewalling around 9/11 (they spent 4X as much money investigating Clinton lying about getting his dikk sucked as they did 9/11), the reasons we went into Iraq, the murder of army ranger Pat Tillman, and this of course just to name a few things. There’s no reason given their history and the way they’ve acted since Obama took office that they actually have any interest in preserving a functioning democracy anymore.
dangerranger
All Star
Exactly. I been thinking the same thing. All these republicans deciding to step down and not rerun. I’m saying they are either have sexual harrasment allegations coming out. But then I was like they started stepping down before that came to be a focus in the news. I think they are directly complicit or had involvement with the Russians and were probably offered the chance to step down in exchange for not being exposed.
NaijaProdigy Redux
Veteran
Democrats want to know more about a strange omission from the Trump campaign's digital director about his foreign contacts
Natasha Bertrand
- The ranking members of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees want to subpoena two of the data firms hired by President Donald Trump's campaign team for documents related to Russia's election interference.
- The firms: Cambridge Analytica and Giles-Parscale.
- Cambridge Analytica and Giles-Parscale have not denied that they had contact with foreign actors during the campaign, the Democrats wrote, but they have failed to turn over documents requested by the committees in October.
Reps. Elijah Cummings and Jerry Nadler sent a letter to Cambridge Analytica's CEO Alexander Nix and Giles-Parscale cofounder Brad Parscale — who also served as the Trump campaign's digital director — in October. The letter asked whether their firms received "information from a foreign government or foreign actor" at any point during the election.
The letter was also sent to the heads of Deep Root Analytics, TargetPoint Consulting, and The Data Trust, which were among the outfits hired by the Republican National Committee to bolster the Trump campaign's data operation.
Whereas Deep Root, TargetPoint, and The Data Trust responded to the documents request, Cambridge Analytica did not. Parscale's response, moreover, was insufficient, the Democrats said.
"As I made clear in the 60 Minutes interview cited in your letter, I share your concerns and would not want foreign governments meddling in our elections," Parscale wrote, referring to his interview with CBS earlier this year about Russia's election interference. "But as I stated in that same interview, I do not have any firsthand knowledge of foreign interference in the 2016 election."
He added: "I respectfully decline to make document productions and respond to inquiries that are duplicative" of the work being done by the congressional intelligence committees and special counsel Robert Mueller."
Parscale's letter mirrored those written by the RNC data firms and used virtually the same language — with one notable exception. Whereas the firms' letters included a line denying that they had had contact with any "foreign government or foreign actor," Parscale's did not.:weebaynanimated:
"Giles-Parscale and Cambridge Analytica did not deny that they had contacts or communications with foreign governments or foreign actors during the 2016 campaign," Cummings and Nadler wrote in a letter on Thursday to House Oversight Chair Trey Gowdy and House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte.
They continued:
"Because the first three companies have asserted unequivocally that none of their employees had contacts with any foreign agents during the presidential campaign, we are willing to delay any further inquiry unless or until evidence to the contrary emerges. However, neither Giles Parscale nor Cambridge Analytica have denied these contacts. We therefore request that our committees issue subpoenas to these companies to compel the production of the information they are withholding from Congress."
Parscale and Cambridge Analytica have come under the microscope as congressional investigators probe whether voter information stolen by Russian hackers from election databases in several states made its way to the Trump campaign. Investigators are also examining whether the Trump campaign's data firms coordinated with Russia to disseminate fake news and propaganda in particular states and districts.
The data operation Parscale directed was supervised by Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has landed in Mueller's crosshairs over his contacts with Russia's ambassador and the CEO of a sanctioned Russian bank in December.
The Trump campaign hired Cambridge Analytica in June 2016 to help target ads using voter data collected from approximately 230 million US adults. The firm's CEO,Alexander Nix, reached out to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that month to offer help in finding Hillary Clinton's "missing" emails.
It is still unclear how much Cambridge Analytica actually did for the campaign. But Trump campaign aides and even current and former Cambridge employees have consistently tried to downplay its role.
Giles-Parscale and Cambridge Analytica did not immediately return a request for comment.
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @wire28 @smitty22 @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @.r. @GinaThatAintNoDamnPuppy! @GnauzBookOfRhymes @Dracudiddy @Dameon Farrow @TheNig